As soon as I made my way into Lome, I realized I was back in a prelinguistic stage again. I walked through this French-speaking city like I was deaf all the time. No one anyone said made sense to me. People smiled at me as if to say, "Look at that poor imbecile. It must be hard to be American." I couldn't even type in my own language because the French keyboards are all tweaky.

This made it clear that I did the right thing in coming to Togo to learn French. I needed to learn French for my degree at school, and I thought since I study West African literature, West Africa would be the best place to learn it.

Unfortunately, no one at the school understood my American accent. Though many of them spoke wonderful English, I apparently did not. And since I didn't speak French either, trying to register for a class was quite a feat.

Once I managed to get that done, I realized that I had signed up for an intense summer. I wouldn't see any of Lome until classes were over, which I figured was a whole lot like my life at school anyway. The classes were truly bizarre, as I think any learning experience outside of America might seem to us, and as language courses always are. We always wonder why the teaching seems so foreign to us. I guess it is always me who is foreign to the language.

In the first hour of class, I learned the following words:

ver intestinal
de-parasité
vomir

All very useful and strangely familiar, I think. This was the end of the semester for the rest of the students, so I had to assume that this was a typical class. My professor told me not to let the lesson worry me — we all have intestinal worms.

New to the class, I really wanted to perform well. I was a whole semester behind the rest of the students, but my feeling was that everyone who speaks English knows a little French, so I would be ok. The first activity was to complete a sentence in the best way possible. It basically said: "The monkey is cunning. The plate of food is very good. It is ....." I was supposed to finish that. It turned out that I was supposed to write "It is delicious." Or savory. Or tasty. But I couldn't figure out what the monkey had to do with it. I responded, "It is funny." Everyone laughed and said obviously the monkey didn't have anything to do with it. I just said okay.

I wasn't sure that this lesson was going to get me anywhere closer to being able to order food on the street. Much less deal with monkeys if they were to arise.

By the end of the semester, I was still unable to complete the activities to my professors' satisfaction.

One day, we were taught how to leave phone messages in French. Class always follows a textbook published in France. No matter how absurd the exercise, we do it. So we begin to work on the phone message exercise. Around Lome, there are lots of cell phones and voice mailboxes, so that seems like a reasonable assignment. But we learned how to leave a phone message for 1) a doctor who makes house calls, 2) a plumber because our tub is overflowing and we can't make it stop (which is particularly irrelevant for many of these folks who don't bathe in a Western bathtub and might not even have running water in their homes), and 3) a pizza place. The real action came with the phone call to the pizza place. Willing to play along, I didn't mention that one would not simply leave a message at any of these places. Especially a pizza place.

So we continue. The teacher points to me and says, "Laura, how many pizzas will you order for this situation?" Feeling pretty smug in my position as the only person in the room with any experience ordering or even eating pizza, I look at the instructional drawing. The picture depicts four young people waiting for a pizza. I confidently respond, in French, "I would order one, maybe two pizzas, depending on how hungry we are." I said that in French. I was so proud of myself.

It's important to note that this professor has a particular penchant for avoiding the obvious, pat teacher phrases like, "No I'm sorry, that's not correct," replacing it instead with the endearingly tough-love cry of "ZERO!" which is always accompanied by a swift cutting motion he makes with his hand. This is the response with which he spears me after my clearly ridiculous response of one measly pizza.

He asks other students, who dutifully count the people in the picture and announce that a good host should feed everyone, thus, four pizzas are in order. They address his question simply with the word "Quatre," and receive the praise I was seeking. I just put my head down on the desk because this is not the first time I have been off track in this class period. He has also given me a big ZERO for my message to the plumber that he should call me back immediately instead of the correct answer which was that he should come over immediately because by the time he calls me back, the tub would have overflowed.

This time, the teacher notices my confusion, and he asks what is wrong. Thinking it was a good chance to practice French, I give a little lesson in what a pizza is and how one orders it, avoiding any mention of sides of cheesesticks or possible supersizing opportunities. The teacher thanks me for enlightening him, and we move on. All of the other students roll their eyes at me.

If I felt a little like I was in high school again, I wasn't the only object out of context here. Though the school taught a number of classes in African literature and philosophy, they had to rely on French textbooks to teach the beginning language courses. Though the upper-level students were discussing the injustice of claims that African languages could not express as much as French could, the beginner classes had to learn how to be a good French citizen. One day we learned from one of our readings that it is completely déclassé to order caviar on a first date. Another day we learned about how to dress properly, like how not to wear belts with suspenders. These ideas had no place in the context of West Africa where a nice meal would not include fish eggs and dressing up would not necessarily include a sport coat. The things we needed to know — how to order African food or how to talk about the architecture of the area or how to get a ride on a bushtaxi or how to talk to people at the French consulate (something for which we could all have used some extensive instruction) — were all missing from the lessons. Instead, there were pages and pages of lessons on French politesse, a leftover from the days when the French thought West Africans would be willing to exchange their own system of etiquette for some crazy ideas about Lobster Thermidor and napkins on laps.

In the midst of all this, we all still managed to learn some usable French.

By my last day in Togo, I had learned a lot. I learned to type on the French keyboard almost as quickly as I type at home. I learned that in French it is possible to express time precisely through verbs but there aren't nearly as many words as in English to say cool, excellent, fabulous, etc. "Hyperbon!" just doesn't leap out of my mouth with the regularity it should. I learned to suppress the desire to say "Have a Nice Day" all the time, and have replaced it with "Bonjour" and "Bon Soir," generally at the right time of day, but not always. But learning French in West Africa taught me a lot more than what the French textbooks could explain. I figured out exactly how to order my rice and sauce just the way I want it, and how to say politely, "No, that definitely looks like it will make my weak stomach sick." I learned to wait to open a gift until after the giver has left and how to say thank you the next day. I learned to do a little joking in French which has gained me access to some kind of nightly French practice palaver with the Ghanaian French major guys in my compound.

Sometimes all these people even understand what I am saying, even I'm still a little unsure about how to order pizza.

Long life and good health: At the inauguration of President Eyadema

No one told me that the French classes I have been taking here in Lome, Togo were cancelled for the day one Friday. It turned out that on television the night before, the president announced that in honor of his inauguration, he was canceling all business and school. Everyone in Lome seemed to know but me.

Sad to realize that I was going to miss a lesson with my favorite professor here, I started to wonder what I would spend my day doing. I considered studying all day, but rejected that pretty quickly, seeing as the day was a beautiful one for the rainy season. I thought about going to the beach, but decided it would be too crowded if everyone had the day off.

Then I realized it. When would I ever get another chance to see an African presidential inauguration? I haven't even seen an American presidential inauguration, and I've lived through a few.

I asked around the campus to see who else was going. No one else seemed to be very interested. Most students around here are furious that Eyadéma is still president. He has been president of Togo for 36 years. The constitution stated until this January that Eyadéma could not run for office again, and it was not until the last days of the election that he announced that would only run again because of what he considered the undeniable desire of the people of Togo for his continued presidency. When he won, no one was completely shocked, but many people said that something had to change in Togo if anything was going to get any better.

So I didn't have any takers when I suggested that we go to see this spectacle, this celebration.

On the other hand, everyone was encouraging, though they were unsure I would make it into the Palais du Congres, where the celebration was to be held.

When I arrived at the Palais, the military men only looked a little surprised to see me pull up on my moto-taxi. Every man in green that I ran into searched my bag. It wasn't until one of them asked me if I had a camera and it was clear that he simply wanted me to take a picture of him, that I realized that the searches were more of a chance to get to talk to me than to actually maintain any measure of security.

Once past the guards, the parade ground at the Palais was covered with dancers and majorettes and marching bands and cheerleaders, all dressed in greens and golds and purples. There was the ever-present troop of Togolese women dressed in traditional pagne skirts with Eyadema for president t-shirts. These women celebrate Eyadéma's support of the rights of women. There are constant rumors, though, that Eyadéma pays these women a lot of money to praise his name publicly.

After watching a few short programs on the parade ground, I realized that I needed to figure out how to get into the Palais if I really wanted to see the inauguration. It was clear that the dancing women were not being let into the ceremony. Chauffeured Mercedes and BMWs were pulling up to the door of the Palais and only the people in them were being allowed into the ceremony. And though I had on the nicest clothes I have with me here in Africa, I still wasn't really dressed for the occasion.

I watched as men in business suits were turned away or disregarded by the guards at the door. I was certain I would be turned away just the same. Suddenly a small delegation of important looking African men drove up. It was clear that they were going to be ushered in despite the crowd of people who preceded them at the door.

This was my chance. I stared right into the eyes of the nicest looking man in the delegation and he smiled back. Then I just followed him into the door. The guards assumed I was part of his entourage, and I slid in without giving him a hint to the contrary.

When I got in, I was hoping to take a seat with the kind delegate, but most of the seats were assigned. I started to panic, thinking that I would be caught out as the imposter that I am, but I calmly chose a seat on the floor at the feet of a businessman, where I was not too conspicuous. He told me he only let me sit there because I was "not too fat." He was lucky I was trying not to call attention to myself.

When I had a chance to look up, I realized I was surrounded by the country's best singing and dancing groups. They crowded the Palais, and their singing drowned out the chatter of the parades of village chiefs in traditional robes and crowns and the banter of the rich women.

I realized suddenly, that I was among the most important people in Africa. And some of the most nefarious in all of the world. Queasy, I wasn't sure that I should be there.

At one point, a crowd of men draped in huge swathes of cloth arrived. I asked the woman next to me who they were. The businessman behind me laughed and said, "I think he is the chief of your village." I didn't know what he was talking about until I turned and saw a pasty white man, covered in grey and white cloth, ankles bare, bald head crowned, that I realized what he meant. Everyone around laughed at me. Somehow, I still wasn't doing enough to keep attention off of me, but at least I wasn't wearing a crown.

Finally, the inauguration began. The Togolese high court presided, the members dressed in a red robes somewhere between a king's gown and a Santa Claus outfit. They announced, region by region, the final tally of the votes. People cheered for their own regions' participation in the election of the president. Momentarily, however, there was a rumbling when it was announced that in one region, one of the candidates did not even receive one vote. I wondered if it could even be that there were people here in the audience who had voted for that man in that region?

Then they "solemnly," according to the program, brought out the "new" president. Songs rang out in his praises. Songs that seemed to be designed as general presidential praises, but which all included Eyadéma's name. Eyadéma slowly walked to the La-z-boy recliner set on stage for him, and took his seat. After a round of songs and national anthems, Eyadéma rose from his comfortable chair to take his oaths. He promised to have integrity, to never use violence, and to protect the rights of women and the young.

Unsurprisingly, there was no mention of the change in constitution that made it possible for him to be there, no mention of the huge unemployment rate in Togo and the people living on the streets, no mention of the young children who die of starvation or malaria in Togo.

After he was sworn in, there was even more singing of his praise, and dancers from every region of the country performed for him.

There was a short scene change on stage, and then there appeared 30 or 35 chairs. Presidents of Africa or their delegates were welcomed on stage one by one to welcome the president to power and to congratulate him. The concern I had when I entered the room was right — there were presidents and delegates here from Congo and Algeria, from Libya and Cote d'Ivoire. It turned out that the delegates I snuck in with were from South Africa. Chirac even sent a delegate, seeing as the president of France is an old-time friend of Eyadéma's, despite his changing the constitution Chirac endorsed.

As each important figure walked on to the stage, a chorus of hundreds sang his name out, wishing him long life and good health. The song was repetitive and contagious, and I soon found myself wishing Khadafi's delegation long life. I tried to control myself.

I couldn't support some of these people, and I certainly couldn't fete a government that keeps almost all of its people unemployed and depressed. As infectious as the celebration was, I tried to keep my distance. But celebration is infectious.

In the end, there were a few more songs, as we all crowded onto the parade grounds, to be met by the cheering supporters who were not able to arrive in a limousine. I headed to a vendor and tried some new sauces on the side of the road for 20 cents and mourned the fact that while the delegates marched over to the nicest hotel in town for a sumptuous meal, the rest of Lome lay in the heat, hoping that they could make a dollar today.

Lome: A City on the Verge

Here, trees grow leaves big enough for Adam to cover his manhood and anything else he wanted to hide. It would be easy, too, to think that little has changed here since the beginning of time. Despite the paved roads and a couple of high-rise hotels, things in Lome seem to move slowly.

Maybe it's a little like my home town, New Orleans, where the heat is so dense that people cannot help but move slowly. But it's more than that.

Two years ago when I was here, I bought plantains from a lady every day on a corner near my hotel. She is still there, selling plantains cooked with the same recipe. And if I return in ten years, she or her daughter will be there still, I bet.

And when I move to the edges of the city, where the paved roads begin to end, I see women sitting out in traditional pagnes, selling bananas and gossiping. It's an image that cannot be dated.

And seeing as the president hasn't changed here in 36 years, the word on the street is that there is nothing new out of Lome.

But to think that nothing in Lome ever changes would be a huge mistake. More and more children are able to school these days. In fact, Togo has a program of funding education for young girls so that more women will be educated here. It's a joyous sight to see girls in blue and white checked jumpers come skipping out of school in the afternoon.

And cyber cafés are on every block, even in the most remote parts of town, filled with young people clacking away into the late hours of the night. They instant message one another, chat with people in other countries, research religious organizations, and play games.

But the biggest buzz in Lome is politics. One student said that everything in Togo is about politics. A simple truth about life, in some respects, but in other ways, for Togo, very interesting.

Two years ago when I was here, people didn't talk much about politics. Unemployment was endemic and those who were working were often not being paid. But things are just like that, a high school art teacher named Espoir had said, even after not being paid for five months.

This June, however, Lome saw an election. The standing president was constitutionally not allowed to run, and Lome was hopeful that things were about to change drastically here.

But drawn back into the race by supporters he is rumored to have paid himself, Eyadéma chose to run in the last days before the election, and to no one's surprise, he won.

People here, especially the young, who saw their opportunities for work in their own country as linked to the end of Eyadéma's reign, are angry. You hear it everywhere you go. On the street, in the university, on moto-taxis and on thelong bus rides. Almost every young person I have met is openly talking about how to end Eyadéma's power.

It's hard to miss the fact that Eyadéma is responding to these concerns. But not in the way one would hope. There is a clear increase of military men in the streets of Lome, and more and more checkpoints appear every few days, with armed police rummaging through taxis and privately owned cars. When I ask taxi drivers if they think there are more police on the street, they respond, "Certainly. It is very very bad. I don't like to drive around Eyadéma's house at night." And it's true. Because my house is on the other side of town just past Eyadéma's home, it is almost impossible for me to get a ride home in the evening.

The response a lot of people have to the problems here is to leave. Everyone I meet here wants to move to America or England or France. A friend told me that he wanted to go to Canada but they required proof of 3 million cfa (the local currency here, equal to something like $6,000 American) for entry. He said that if he had that kind of money he would stay in Lome. I was surprised because I thought the dream of leaving the country was more deep-seated than that. But he said, "Of course I would stay here. I love my country."

I asked my friend Koffi what would have to happen for Lome to be a better place to live. He said "Everything. Everything would have to change. Everything is wrong here." As we walked out of the cyber café, he pointed to the man who collected our money for use of the computers. He says, "You see him, he works at that desk here at the cyber. He has a master's degree in sociology. He is lucky to have this work."

And it's clear when you walk the streets how difficult life here can be. Men lay about, hot and tired, dreaming of ways to find some way to get work or a visa out of here.

So the word on the street is that change has to happen. There was some sense that after exams ended at the universities in June, organizing would really start to happen. But we still have yet to see the results. People are sure in their argument that nothing violent can happen in Lome. They all agree that it will be bad for the people on the streets if something violent begins because the president has such a strong and visible army.

But there is a tension in the air in Lome, and excitement, especially when around the young. Change is brewing, but we must wait to see if anything can be done to make that change a reality.

Liberian Refugees Armed Only With Hope

When I am lost in a big city in another country, where I only barely speak one ofthe many languages being spoken, I seek the nicest looking person on the street to give me directions because I know they're going to have to be real patient with me if we're going to get anywhere.

Such was the case when I found myself unable to find my hotel in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, a beautiful and lush country in West Africa, just south of Mali. Alienated and lost, I turned to a woman, clearly a motherly type, wearing a huge flower-print dress.

I stopped her and asked in my poor French for the cathedral, the closest landmark I knew to my hotel. In an English-inflected French even more frightened than my own, she told me that she didn't speak French. I recognized at once a pal, a compatriot, someone who might even give me directions I could follow! I must have glowed when I said, "Oh, you speak English!! Where are you from?" This older woman seized me by the shoulders and pulled me into her, embracing me for longer than is ever comfortable for an American, blurting out joyfully, "My sister!!" "Oh sister," she said, "You are from America. I am your sister. I am from Liberia. A refugee here. You are my American sister!"

Right there on the street, Lydia hugged me again, and told me that she couldn't speak French and so she felt very alone in the middle of bustling Ouagadougou. Immediately I realized that the alienation I felt after a couple of weeks of speaking only French was nothing compared to the couple of years Lydia had spent unable to do more than buy groceries and manage her affairs in a language not her own. She was so happy to finally meet someone she could talk to.

And talk we did — on the street there, later in her house, and well into the night on her lawn. Lydia had a story to tell, and she was happy to finally have someone who could hear it and understand.

On the way to her house, Lydia began to describe the situation for her and her family as refugees in Burkina Faso. "Life is hard for us," she said. "We are refugees. We used to have a life and a business back home. Now all we have is this house, but it is not even nice enough to bring guests into."

She brought me into the compound of her home. The main building in which she lived was well-built and clean, made of cement, painted long ago, sparsely furnished but comfortable enough — not unlike a lot of the houses I have seen in West Africa. But it was clearly not the life Lydia and her husband Charles were accustomed to. And the buildings surrounding their home were crumbling. Some looked like they'd been hit with some kind of bomb, with gaping holes tearing out the sides. It was an unfortunate irony, which I doubt these refugees of war could have missed.

Lydia gave me the best chair in the house — a lawn chair without the cushion — and began to tell me, in an unorchestrated concert with her husband, the story of her flight from Liberia.

Lydia and Charles ran a beauty shop. When war broke out again a few years ago in Liberia, business stopped and they were afraid. Eventually, they found it necessary to go to Guinea to protect themselves from the war. In Guinea, they were provided for by the government as refugees, but eventually, Lydia said, the Guineans became suspicious that the refugees were starting war there as well, and forcefully sent them out of the country.

Charles and Lydia, then two months pregnant, arranged with a Burkinabe friend to run to Ouagadougou. In the middle of the night, leaving behind their belongings, this family fled one country of refuge for another.

In Burkina, they found themselves alone. Put into a hotel at first, they were forced to find their own housing quickly. Funded by refugee payments, they found the two-room house in which they live now. But the payments don't always come. Lydia says she waits in lines with other refugees, but sometimes the guards cruelly taunt them and refuse to give them their money.

Eventually Lydia got fed up. Her son, Goodness, now two years old, was very sick. She said she had to speak up because no one else would. She went straight to the US embassy, insisting on seeing the Ambassador. She was refused, but a couple of days later, someone from the embassy came to visit her. He helped her to find the medicine she needed for her son and praised her for speaking up. She was very proud of herself and wondered why no one else could stand up under the trampling.

Like many West African people, Charles and Lydia repeat constantly that they must put their faith in God and wait. Charles calls himself an "evangelist" and studies through correspondence courses to become certified as such.

But possibly just as much as faith, this family is putting their hopes in America. "I am American," Lydia announces over and over, reminding me that it was African Americans who settled in her country, Liberia. And she has genuine hope that George Bush will help Liberia to come to peace. Her constant, and possibly only, companion other than her husband is her beaten up 1980s style jambox, which she keeps tuned to Voice of America. She listens eagerly to reports that the UN is intervening in Liberia. She prays that Bush will make it possible for her to return home.

But Charles and Lydia are not foolish. "I know that there's nothing in Liberia that George Bush wants, so I don't know if he will help us." Lydia says they worry that Bush does not care for Africa enough to see them all the way to peace. "When your former President Bill came here, he shook our hands and he ate with us on the street. I hear on the radio that Bush is not eating with us," Lydia comments about Bush's visit to West Africa as we sit down to dinner. She is concerned that this is a sign that Bush is not really interested in how Africans live but simply in what they can provide him and the US.

Sophisticated and informed, this family still holds on to hope. "We are grateful and happy because at least here in Burkina, there is peace." Even though they are alone, out of work, far from home, and unable to maintain the lifestyle to which they were accustomed, Lydia and Charles are simply happy to be in a place where they are safe. But they are determined in their hopes that one day they can return home and experience the same.