A Place Called Wahala

Every year the War Cemetery Memorial of Wahala in the former German colony of Togo (West Africa) hosts the 11th November Remembrance Day Ceremony in memory of the African colonial soldiers who died here in August 1914. But Wahala’s history and its name point to another painful past. In 1903 the German colonial administration set up a “correctional settlement” by the Chra river where people considered to be an obstacle to colonial order were obliged to live. Wahala: a place where the voice of the ancients resonates with present day pictures.