Good hamburgers, used bookstores, pizza delivery, a mall, milkshakes, many good restaurants, speaking English, and satellite television are all things that make one feel as though they are almost stepping outside of Africa for awhile when you come to Accra (at least when you are coming from Kara, Togo.)  We can go to any number of places and be with a very international community, in very comfortable, western type settings.  In fact, the lady at Enda (a coffee shop here) recently told me that they were trying to be as much like Starbucks as they can.  The setting does provide some relief from the inundation of sobering stories and sights with which we come in contact on a daily basis.

Today we took our girls out for a big lunch before we have to get on our flight this evening, and as we sat in a very westernized restaurant, an older European man came in with a very young and provocatively dressed African woman.  Unfortunately, this sight is pretty common around here, and it is something that always bothers me a great deal.  I have a hard time ignoring it and shaking it out of my mind.  Now I don’t mean to say that every time I see an older European or American man with a very young African woman that something is amiss, but I know that it would be naive to not realize that often times I am witnessing prostitution, or at the least a “sugar daddy” sort of deal.

There is something about these scenarios that bother me on a whole different level from other hardships we see.  The difficulties we see a lot in our work in Togo are a little bit more understandable to me, probably because people are fairly honest about them.  We have friends who have talked to us about not being able to conceive children, not having enough money to send children to school, being HIV+, being abandoned by their spouse, having to take in grandchildren due to irresponsibility or illness/death of their child, teenage pregnancy, rape, hunger, being persecuted for refusing to worship idols, and the list goes on.  In our ministry we have many opportunities to pray with, pray for, cry with, listen to, and sometimes help the people we know and love as they go through these things.  In my opinion, there is a new element of sorrow when one seems to be enjoying or thinks that the thing that has ensnared them will bring them satisfaction.  Most of these women are “well dressed” (meaning their clothes were probably expensive,) they are eating at nice restaurants, and one of the ladies I saw today had an iPod.  These scenes bring to mind a lady I met at one of the AED satellite clinics.  She moved to Cotonou, Benin so that she could find a good job.  She didn’t find a job but did find a man who would “take care” of her.  He got her an apartment and supported her until she became sick, then he cut her off. She was too sick to work and had to find a way back to her parent’s village.  Her parents allow her to live with them, but they haven’t really accepted her back.  Now she lives as an outcast in her own community and is fighting to reclaim her body from the disease that is devouring her.  How many of these lovely young women I see with these men will end up with a similar story?