Doin' His Job

We've all been online, Googling "Hydroelectric plant Togo", and come up empty-handed. Which isn't to say it's an osbcure topic - the internet seemed to eliminate obscurity and replace it with degree-of-completeness-as-of-x-date. In fact, I found a website which claimed to catalogue every power plant in the world, with an image of each. Hydro-electric - Africa - West failed to include the very special place we visited during our romp into "the nature" outside of Kpalome, north of Lome in the plateau region. On our way out of town and close to the foot of the mountain (shout out to our driver, hooked up by a guy at a CD stand in the market) the car was surrounded suddenly by a sinister looking gang of local men, presenting a Document forbidding us from exploring the mountain without paying them (they seem to be inching their way toward the Park/reserves model here), at least part of the money going to the local village. I was freaked, and threw my camera under my feet (everyone wants money for picture-taking there).We had to let one of them into the car as our "guide", after paying them a negotiated lower fee, being that 2 in the car were locals. The guy warmed up after my 27th question or so, and humored me and the Spaniard by busting open a Cocoa nut (not a coconut. hmm.) and letting us eat it. I kissed it, out of respect for all cocoa has done for me in my life, forgiving the addictive pitfalls. I'm stronger for it.
Anyway, the not-jungle junglescape was marred by only one thing - the noise of a powerplant coming from somewhere below. The trickling falls I baptised myself in are apparently torrential, flooding the whole area we walked, when they open some dam at the top of the mountain. It all seemed to defy the primitive, natural state of the place. So he walked us up to the building where the racket came from. Our Togolese host got the scoop and yelled in my ear that the Germans had this rigged up when they took over "Togoland" ages ago - and the machinery itself was I think Hungarian. It looked like something out of Wonka's factory, not like something that could provide electricity for a century or so to a section of the country.
Anyway, I was distracted by the rad aesthetic of these old-school panels of dials on the wall. People in the states try to create things that look like that wall. I took pics of them and hope to make big ass prints of them as 4 posters or something. Anyhow, somehow those dials and wavering needles by the dozens were the only thing between this attendant and a catastrophic incident, or so I imagined. All I know for sure is that this sweet man (who probably had not been visited in quite some time during one of his daily 12 hour shifts of staring at the dials and writing in an ancient notebook all of the numbers) seemed unphased by the nature of his work. He was smiling when we walked in, and smiling when we walked out. I don't know anything else - what does he think about? Does he have family? Has anything scary ever happened? Does he get anxious about Danger de Mort? Scared someone is sneaking up on him with a lead pipe or coconut or something? I just asked if I could take his photo and enjoyed a gloriously human handshake with a beautiful person.
More tributes coming, to people who work a hundred times harder than I do without thinking much of it, to barely get by. Here's a song by a beloved, Malcolm Holcombe (see sidebar for SleepytimeSongs explanation).