Updates on the situation

A lot has happened this week in Hohoe, the village I live in. There has been some violence between the Hohoe township and the Zongo (Muslim) community. It has been a very frustrating, heartbreaking, and even a bit scary of a week. Here is the  run down since the situation started:

Earlier last week the drama began with a Muslim young man being electrocuted to death. When he was brought to the Hohoe Hospital he was put into the morgue. When his family came to pick up his body they were outraged that he had been put in the morgue, which is completely against their religion. Some of his friends later vandalized part of the hospital and beat the man that was in charge of the morgue.

Then, on Sunday morning, the head Iman of the Volta Region (leader of the Muslim people) died. His people brought him to Hohoe to be buried and was told by the chief of Hohoe township that in order for him to be buried here, they must pay 10,000 CD. The Muslim people refused, saying this was a bribe that they would not take part in and buried their leader anyway. On Sunday night the body of the chief was exhumed and placed on the roadside next to the mosque. It is rumored that the chief gave the order for the body to be dug up, but nothing has been confirmed.

The Zongo community was outraged and set fire to part of the chief’s property and one of his vehicles. The Hohoe township then retaliated by setting fire to many of the Muslim shops in the community on Monday. This resulted in almost half of the small shops in town to be destroyed and looted. Four deaths and many injures also occurred at this time, one death to a 15 year-old boy who was gunned down by a stray bullet.

When all of this was occurring on Monday, myself with the rest of the volunteers were in lockdown at the home base. Our location is far enough out of the center of the city that we were not in any imminent danger, but we could not leave our house at all on Monday.  A 6pm to 6am curfew resulted from the events that occurred, but we were lucky enough to get out to our volunteer placement on Tuesday. Although, most of our schools were closed for the rest of the week, we went to a special needs boarding school so we could at least do something. The ride to the schools was devastating. The special needs school is on the exact opposite side of town from our house, so we had to drive through the thick of it, and see all of the destruction that happened the days before The village that I have come to love so much for the past 6 weeks looked like a war zone. Rumble lay everywhere and almost every other shop had been burned down. People lined the street watching each other and some had begun cleaning up. It was clear that people were still on edge.

Placement at the special needs schools was another hard part of the day. They receive basically no care and kids run around with wet pants and no personal hygiene measures were taken while I was there. The dorms were completely filthy with both pee and poop covering the floors. It really was a horrifying sight.

After we were brought back from the school for the day, we were not allowed to leave the house for another afternoon. I was really beginning to get restless and it was quite a difficult afternoon to just sit around and do nothing.

The following day, the schools were still not open and I went with the rest of the group to Happy Kids’ Orphanage. There, I did a small lesson about environmental health and the importance of cleaning up trash. We had the kids go around with trash bags to pick up the trash that littered their campus. It was a nice afternoon and a good way to forget the mess that was going on in town. When we finished for the day, we headed back to our house and on the way we saw half a dozen military vehicles and tank-like machines that were patrolling the city. These men were pretty intimidating; all of them had large guns slung over their shoulder and scarves wrapped around their face.

When we arrived back at home base, one of the other groups of volunteers said they saw people in town swarming a car and trying to set it on fire. It was beginning to be clear that the conflict was not over. I heard later from one of the staff that many people are waiting for the chief to give a statement about the events that have occurred, but as to my knowledge he has said nothing yet.

This morning I heard that a journalist was beaten yesterday by police after they found him taking pictures of the destruction. Our director here seems to think that the violence is calming done and things will get back to normal next week. He said that many Muslims have moved out of town, but are being urged to come back. I am not sure what this will result in, but only time will tell.

On a personal level, this has been a very heartbreaking week. It has been very trying because I have felt like I am just sitting around for most of the day. It is so hard because this village felt so safe and I could go and do whatever I wanted, but as of this week we cannot even walk into town. I am torn because I cannot do what I came here to do, but I do not want to abandon Hohoe just because the going got rough.

I would ask for your prayers of peace and safety and also for people to have open minds and hearts in order to settle this issue without any one else being harmed. Also, for guidance in how I can help this village that I have fallen in love with.

I will keep updates coming

Liz