A few years ago I was in Togo, where I met the officials of the Tourism board and of some other ministries. They were somewhat interested in selling some of the old hotels (Hotel de la Paix, Tropicana,..) while they were in advanced conversations about the sale of Hotel 2 Fevrier (which now belongs to a rather well known international chain).

They brought me to the Tropicana. It was a fairly large property. Quite a lot of land was cultivated, there were many bungalows, a massive club house, and, on the ocean side, there was what was left of the beach and of the two swimming pool (one of which had already been reclaimed by the Ocean’s coastal erosion).

The idea was to sell the property, to renovate it and to use it to revamp the tourism industry in the country. The price was unreasonably high and I had doubts about whether we could find anybody willing to cover the cost of the renovations on top of the price of the purchase.

I was told that they’d arrange direct flights to bring tourists in. I asked whether they’d consider changing the kind of visas that they were issuing – incidentally a noted Tanzanian professor and I actually convinced the then Tanzanian Minister of Tourism to do– but Togolese authorities did not want to hear any of it. Our conversations stalled until they decided to show me another one of the projects. They were planning to convert a villa/building near Lome’, I believe it was in Baguida, into a Tourism school to train all kind of tourism professionals. They gave us a tour of the villa. I was there with my brother and a Nigerian Lady, who drove all the way from Lagos to spend a few days with us. At the end of the visit the government officials asked us to take a group photo.

The Nigerian Lady refused. “This is Togo” she said “where they take your picture and steal your soul”

(This is incidentally a true story)