Yaka Yele - Just come to the Farm

We took the car and drove for 2 hours outside Lomé. Heading to the mountains and the waterfalls of Togo, in the region of Kpallime. The kids were excited, my parents were eager to discover outside the capital but I was quickly heavy-hearted when the rural views started filling the car window. For all the years I have been living in West Africa...seeing poverty in the villages still has the same impact on me that it had that first day I put one foot in Benin to visit Boyfriend Husband years back. Poverty of everything. Water, electricity, connectivity, food scarcity. The distance between the have's (I) and have nots scarring your heart. I am not the only one feeling that way, my team in Togo spent the week in Northern Togo (up to Kara) visiting projects and they have all came back in a state of shock and incredulity. The have nots are so many, so clearly lacking everything. They even lack the rain, so venerated in these lands, making Togo extremely dry this time of the year, the expert colleagues tell me. 

But while it aches there are many fighters trying to make that dry land, fertile, that good idea, a reality, that passion, his work. One of those is Victor. The owner of the farm Yaka Yele. https://www.yakayale.org/ Yaka Yele means "Just come to the farm". Just come to Africa and feel how your heart and mine both ache and smile.