A first-time visitor to the border town of Agotime-Afegame in the Volta Region is struck by the empty houses in the town. 
The reason is that majority of the young adults in the area have ‘fled’ the town to other parts of the country in search of comfort and jobs. 

For years, the people of Agotime-Afegame had made their fortune from cross-border trade with neighbouring Togo and also by selling their bountiful harvests of vegetable in ready markets at Ho, Kpetoe, Ziope and other parts of the region. 
The massive storey buildings in the town which are now decaying depict lost years of wealth and glory.
In the PNDC era under Flt-Lt J.J Rawlings, Agotime-Afegame was said to be an important spot for intelligence gathering from across the border and that guaranteed security in the town. 
Today, Agotime-Afegame is a pale shadow of its excellent past. 
For some time now, the people of the border town have been held “hostage” in their homes. 
This follows heavy rains which destroyed various portions of the 9.5kilometre untarred road from Agotime-Beh, along the Ho-Aflao road, to the town. 
A journey on the road by car which under normal circumstances takes 10 minutes can now take more than one-and-a-half hours due to the nightmarish nature of the road. 
In the absence of cellular phone signals, the community which has about 1,300 inhabitants is now in a grave state of uncertainty as the people can hardly contact their relatives in other parts of the country. 
The road continues to Kpordzaxo in Togo which is just metres away from Agotime-Afegame, and then to the Republic of Benin. 
That international road could rightly be described as an “international ruin”. 
In times of downpours the stretch becomes a river course making it totally unusable and further tightening the hostage status of the people of Agotime-Afegame. 
Now, the border is still shut, depriving them of their livelihood and with the nature of what is meant to be the road leading to the town, the people cannot sell their farm produce anywhere. 
When some journalists waded through the muddy waters and visited the area last month, the atmosphere was a scary one. 
The sick cannot access healthcare outside the town. 
Plans to bury the dead in the land of their brothers and sisters at Kpordzaxo are frustrated by the official location of Kpordzaxor in Togo. 
The road from the Beh junction to the town was constructed in the early 1970s and for more than 48 years the only rehabilitation was occasional reshaping. 
In the absence of potable water, the people of Agotime-Afegame rely on River Tordze which according to local residents, is so polluted that one would not even want to use to flush the toilet. 
With no link road, no cellular service and no potable water in the wake of little food stocks and an uncertain future, the people of the food basket are gripped with anxiety. 
The town once known for wealth has been brought to its knees. 
Citizens of the Agotime-Afegame who live in other parts of the country are now avoiding the nightmare in their hometown by keeping their distance from the town.
 

From Alberto Mario Noretti, Agotime-Afegame