Togo Update

This is a curious world. Two days ago I knew nothing about Togo. Today I know--and fret over--its unpaved runways and periodically navigable waterways. I have heard of a town called "Mango." I can pick out the Togo flag from among many others.

Also today (well, tomorrow--it's one of those timezone things) Salon.com is running a story about Togo's literary history. Here's an excerpt, so we can all know a little more about Togo than we knew yesterday:

"Togo is the Zembla of West Africa: If it did not exist, it would have been invented by the author of an absurdist experimental novel, prompting generations of unwary readers to leaf through their atlases in search of the place. Indeed, some of Togo's own residents may occasionally be tempted to leaf through their atlases, to assure themselves of their own existence. How is one to account for this finger of a country tucked in between Ghana and Benin, its population of 5 million people speaking 40-odd different languages? A country that owes its existence to the off chance of having been the tiniest of Germany's short-lived African colonies, inherited by France after World War I, which absentmindedly failed to consolidate it into its other colonies? Where, until February of 2005, a general who had first seized power in 1967 still reigned, Mobutu-like, over a tribalized kleptocracy, propped up by French money and military advisors, referred to by his countrymen in hushed whispers as "le vieux." Is this place for real?"

For the full story, go here: http://www.salon.com/books/literary_guide/2006/06/15/togo/

And for an even fuller story, read George Packer's The Village of Waiting, the (apparently) classic novel about a Peace Corps teacher's complicated year-and-a-half in Togo.

And let's all pray that Togo, who simply by being at the FIFA World Cup is enjoying its greatest footballing achievement (something else I know now that I didn't know yesterday), take the Swiss for a ride on the 19th.

Go, Togo, go!