Travels to KPalimé and KPadape

Traveled to the north country today with Edem and Kokuvi. Edem is the printer for PATC and Kokuvi is the SODEP House caretaker (see his weblog at http://agohakokuvi.blogspot.com). We hired a taxi for the day to reach the Kpalimé area 100 miles north of Lomé. It cost 35000 CFA which is about $75 CDN.

We traveled to Edem’s village, Kpadape, in the secluded mountainous area near the Ghana border. The small centre has a population of about 12,000 people and does not have a secondary school. It does have a private Catholic primary school. One of the reasons for my visit to the community was to explorer the possibility of SACHS becoming involved in building an African school.

In Kpadape students who go to secondary school must travel 6 kilometers to Kpalimé. Six kilometers to school in the morning, back home for an extended lunch period, back to school in the afternoon, and then home again. Twenty four kilometers through the dense bush regardless the weather. Many families choose to have their children work rather than endure the long road to school everyday.

Edem’s father has offered to provide the land if someone will sponsor to build a school. He estimates the cost will be 10,000,000,00 ($21,500 CDN) to construct a building and provide chairs for the students.


Proposed site for a future secondary school in KPadape, Togo

While in Kpadape Edem introduced me to how African’s farm cocoa, coffee, bananas, and other goods. Unlike Canadian farms, this type of farming takes place in the jungle not in well cultivated tracks of land.



After the Kpadape we stopped for lunch at a local restaurant. Edem, Kokuvi, and the taxi driver had goat. I just had a Coke. By the time we made it back to Lomé it was well into the evening. Night driving in this country is not something I cared to experience.