90 Second Narratives
Season 7: “Community”
Episode 5: “Togolese Women in the Struggle for Independence”
Sky Michael Johnston:
Hello and welcome to 90 Second Narratives. I’m your host, Sky Michael Johnston. Our storyteller today is Marius Kothor, a PhD candidate in the Department of History at Yale University. Here is her story, “Togolese Women in the Struggle for Independence.”
Marius Kothor:
In Togo, people often tell a popular story about the country’s independence. The story goes something like this: In 1960, the former French colony achieved independence when a woman tucked a piece of paper into her undergarments and crossed the border from Ghana into Togo. The documents were not detected by the male colonial officials at the border since they could not search women’s bodies. The woman then delivered the documents to the leaders of the anti-colonial movement, thus ushering the country into the post-independence era.
In many ways, this story has all hallmarks of a legend, a kind of mythical rendition of history. Yet this story perfectly incapsulates the experiences of women like Madam Atakpaméto, a merchant and political activist who in Lomé, Togo’s capital city.
Before her death in 2020, I spent a series of summers having conversations with Madam Atakpaméto about her memories of Togo’s independence movement. Through songs and recitations of poetry, madam Atakpaméto told me stories about how she acted as a messenger in the movement, carrying documents to anti-colonial nationalist on both sides of the Ghana/Togo border.
Listening to Madam Atakpaméto stories and that of the other Togolese women, I write about, I realized that by narrating these stories, Togolese women present their bodies as carriers of Togo’s independence thereby casting Togo’s anti-colonial struggle as a gendered history in which women played a unique role that is distinct from that of men.
So, rather than being a folklore, that popular story of Togo’s independence that placed a woman as the central figure, is not so much a story about an individual woman but of a community of Togolese women who, in very literal terms, positioned their bodies at the vanguard of Togo’s liberation.
Sky Michael Johnston:
If you are interested in keeping up with Marius Kothor’s work, follow her on Twitter @MariusKothor, that’s M-A-R-I-U-S-K-O-T-H-O-R. And remember, following 90 Second Narratives on Twitter @90secNARRATIVES is a great way to find and connect with dozens of past storytellers—just take a look at the podcast’s “Following” list.
Thank you for listening and, as always, you are invited to come back for next week’s “little story with BIG historical significance.”