Togoville

Crossing to the Village by Pirogue

There is no road to Togoville. You reach it by pirogue from the lakeside town of Vogan or Aného — a fifteen-minute crossing over Lake Togo that begins in the deep shade of a dock crowded with motos and sellers and ends in a quiet village where the main sounds are birdsong and the splash of water against the hull. The transition is abrupt enough to feel like travel in the older sense of the word: a change of mode, a change of pace, a change of register entirely.

The lake itself is remarkable — a shallow coastal lagoon separated from the Atlantic by a narrow strip of land, its water turning silver in the morning and bronze in the afternoon. Fishermen work it in long narrow dugouts, and on the crossing you pass their nets staked just below the surface with wooden poles. I sat in the front of the pirogue and watched a grey heron pace us for about thirty seconds before losing interest.

Where Togo Got Its Name

The country’s name comes from this village. In 1884, the German explorer Gustav Nachtigal signed a treaty here with the local chief Mlapa III, establishing a German protectorate over the territory. The original treaty is not here — it’s in a German archive — but there’s a simple stone marker near the water’s edge commemorating the event in language that reads carefully neutral. Colonial history in West Africa has this quality sometimes: the monuments are still there but the tone around them has shifted, and you’re never quite sure how the locals regard them.

Mlapa III’s descendants still live in Togoville, and the current chief receives visitors in a modest compound near the center of the village. I was brought in to greet him — this is expected rather than optional — and we exchanged pleasantries through a translator while I drank a small glass of water that I understood to be a formal gesture of welcome. The encounter lasted five minutes and felt entirely genuine.

The Cathedral and the Voodoo Shrines

What makes Togoville theologically interesting is the cohabitation of its cathedral — a handsome colonial structure that John Paul II visited by boat in 1985, an event still commemorated in photographs on every wall inside — and its voodoo shrines, which are scattered throughout the village with the casual density of mailboxes. The statue of the Virgin Mary in the cathedral was apparently brought from Germany in the nineteenth century and is credited by locals with miraculous properties. The voodoo priests in the village do not seem to find this claim troubling.

This kind of syncretism is common in West Africa and I always find it more interesting than either religion in isolation. The woman who showed me around the cathedral — an older woman named Mawuli who had been sweeping the steps when I arrived and decided to give me an unofficial tour — explained that many families in the village attend Mass on Sunday and consult the bokonon during the week. She said this the way you’d explain an obvious fact to someone who’d never encountered seasons before.

The Village on Foot

Togoville is small enough to walk in an hour. The streets are sand and the houses are a mix of old colonial structures with faded stucco and newer concrete blocks. Bougainvillea grows over the fences. There’s a small museum of local history that is enthusiastically curated but unevenly lit. There are three restaurants, one of which is excellent — grilled tilapia from the lake, served with attiéké and piment, eaten under a mango tree at a table someone has painted blue.

I stayed until the late afternoon pirogue and arrived back on the mainland in the dark, the village lights reflecting on the water behind me in long broken lines.

When to go: Year-round, though November through March offers the most comfortable conditions. The lake crossing becomes rougher during heavy rains. The village is quietest on weekdays; if you want to see the market and more daily life, Saturday morning is the best time to arrive.