Archive - February 2, 2020

    Trauma in Togo by Mark Wentling (Honduras 1967-69 & Togo 1970-73) Published in American Diplomacy, February 2020 April 1991, while I was serving in Lomé, Togo as the USAID Representative for Togo and Benin, protests in Lomé against the dictatorial regime of President Eyadéma reached the boiling point. One night, President Eyadéma’s barbaric soldiers entered the original neighborhood of Lomé, Bè, and killed a couple dozen people or more. They collected the bodies and threw them into the lagoon which cut across the northern part of old Lomé. Their morbid idea was that when the people saw the dead bodies, they would cease revolting against Eyadéma, his cronies and all for which they stood. The opposite happened. Angrily, the people of Bè gathered the dead bodies and put them in a dump truck. Thousands of people marched with the truckload of bodies from Bè, on the eastern side of . . .