Togo

Narrow as a ribbon, Togo runs from a short Atlantic shore far into West Africa. Lagoons lie behind the beaches, and on the far shore of Lake Togo stands the old town of Togoville. Inland, the wooded Togo Mountains slant across the country, with coffee and cocoa farms around Kpalimé beneath Mont Agou. Savannah covers the north, where in Koutammakou the Batammariba build fortress-like mud houses with turreted granaries.

Ewe tradition tells of an exodus from the walled town of Notsé, escaping a harsh king called Agokoli. Europeans called this shore the Slave Coast. In July 1884 the German explorer Gustav Nachtigal signed a treaty at Togoville with its chief, Mlapa III. British and French troops seized the colony in August 1914 and split it between them. The British part voted in 1956 to join the Gold Coast, soon to become Ghana, and French Togo gained independence in April 1960.

Vodun shrines stand beside churches and mosques, and the fetish market at Akodessewa sells charms and dried animals. Each July the Kabye hold Evala, a wrestling contest marking young men’s passage to adulthood. Fufu with palm-nut sauce fills the bowls. In Lomé’s great market the Nana Benz, women traders in Dutch wax-print cloth, grew rich enough in the 1970s to drive Mercedes cars. Phosphate is mined inland from the lagoon and processed at Kpémé, the north grows cotton, and the deep-water port at Lomé moves goods for the landlocked Sahel.