Going Quietly Crazy

This is my first blog post from my new computer.  It is a 13-inch Macbook pro.   Very pretty.  The screen is enormous compared to my netbook.  I get lost looking at it sometimes. 

Yesterday I took my meds for for schistosomiasis.  Apparently the side effects include feeling you were shat out of a large dinosaur.  That is a day of my life I am not getting back.  I had a list of things I was going to do.  Instead I ate cookies and ice cream, played video games, and tried not to move.  I had a weird sensation in my mouth that made everything taste like it was made out of cardboard, hence the diet of cookies.  Not that I need an excuse for that.  I went outside in the evening to go for a stroll around the estate.  The estate started spinning so I went back inside and read comic books.  At least I don't have blood flukes anymore.

One of the hard things about crossing cultures is that one gets lost in reality.  Or rather, the fabric of reality suddenly blooms so kaleidoscopic that it seems some existential veil is shredding.  I had this problem a lot in Togo; I have blogged about it frequently.  A fetish ceremony, a funeral, a moto ride, a conversation at a tchapka stand, any point where I was doing or seeing something so beyond the pale of my American cultural experience as to render it almost impossible to describe to you my gentle audience.  The same happens here.  Like watching a crop dusting plane buzzing mere meters over corn fields and dodging trees is an experience that most Togolese could hardly begin to imagine.  Nor is walking into a supermarket where the produce of the world is literally at your fingertips, and conveniently packaged in barrels of crude oil.  It is not so much the experience itself that renders the world suddenly strange, but rather the intimate knowledge that somewhere, on this same earth, there are people who can only begin to imagine what you are experiencing. I have a foot on both the near and far shores.

Drinking fountains are amazing.  You have no idea.  Water everywhere that is 99% likely to not make you spend the next 2 days shitting yourself is a miracle.  Why drinking fountains are right next to vending machines selling bottled water, I have no idea. 

It has been cloudy and rainy here for two days.  And cold, but that is beside the point.  I felt myself going quietly crazy yesterday when I thought about doing my laundry and I could not figure out why.  Then I realized that its because there was no sun to dry my clothes.  Then this morning I woke up, looked outside, and felt sad.  Now I have come to realize that I am like a little flower, I need a bit sunshine to make me bloom.   Thanks Africa.

I have been congratulating myself on how well I am re-adjusting to life in the US.  Then I realized that I rarely leave my parents' farm.

I love my new computer, but something about it was making me quietly crazy.  Then I changed the clock to 24 hour time and felt much better.

Yes, I spend a lot of time here going quietly crazy.  Or maybe its just a constant state of being.

Stuff has this weird way of working out.  My great aunt died yesterday.  She was 92.  In my original returning-from-the-Peace-Corps plans I would have been in the process of leaving Togo right now, and getting back to the States on Aug 2.  This way I got to see her twice before she died. 
 I finally did it.  I went grocery shopping with my mom in a supermarket.  I walked in and parts of my brain excused themselves and crawled under the bed.  I do not know which part freaked me out more, the produce section or the meat section.   I mean, the sheer quantity of options that the average American has for feeding herself is beyond baffling.   Crisp lettuce dripping water, ready-to-eat fruit oozing its syrupy guts all over the insides of plastic containers,  sterile looking egg plant glowering from a shelf, amputated king crab legs waving dismally from a bed of ice, yards of coolers stuffed with meat products at least 2 degrees separated from their animals of origin, etc. While my mom shopped I amused myself by looking at the "country of origin" stickers on things.  Pineapple from Chile (not as good as Togo), green beans from Mexico, a plethora of stuff from Guatemala, apples and things from Canada. My mom grabbed mangoes and avocados at the same time.  I felt my eyes crossing.  Neither of these are in season anymore in Togo. 

As fond as I am of refrigeration, you guys do it way to much.  Most fruit tastes better, and is meant to be eaten, at normal temperatures.

My sister ate a mango this morning from the above mentioned shopping expedition.  I tried a bit.  And was depressed. 

Another thing that has been screwing with my head is getting a cell phone.  I currently do not have one.  This is a source of amazement to most people here.  I have the choice between paying a lot for a phone, or paying a lot for an annual contract.  Both of these options can bite me. I want a smartphone, but only because I want a map app. Life here is complicated when one is not part of the system.

I took a phone message yesterday for my dad.  I wrote half of it in french before I realized what I was doing.

For most blog posts I write, I have a working title in mind as I write.  For this post, however, there seems to be a common thread that connects many of my vignettes. Hence the title. 

Finally, much ado about clothes

It is 71 degrees here.  I am cold. 

I saw a status on Facebook a couple of days ago from someone I know who just got back to the States from living in Jerusalem.  It said something to the effect of "people in the US look naked and the produce is huge."

Yesterday I went to the mall with my two lovely little sisters to buy myself some clothes.  Shopping was painful for a variety of reasons.  One of these reasons was, of course, ongoing cultural shock.  One facet of which I am about to write about.

I, dear reader, have been thinking about this post for a couple of years.  I have been hesitant to post it, but now feels like a good time.   On a base level, this post is about boobs.  On a more intellectual level, it is about clothing, standards of dress, and how these are different here than in Togo.

I remember the first time I saw a topless woman in Togo.  It was, I think, September 2010.  We were returning to Gbatope from a training session in Tsevie.  There was a middle-aged woman standing on a streak corner dressed in a skirt and streaks of white voodoo paint.  Her boobs reached to her belly button. For one surreal moment I thought I was in one of those issues of National Geographic from the 1970s that introduces Americans to "exotic" or "tribal" peoples from around the world by showing pictures of their women in various stages of undress. "Boobs! look how different these people are! their women are topless!" Ugh.  Women in southern Togo, or in bigger towns, usually don't go topless.  Then I went to village.

I might have blogged about Togolese dress before, I can't remember. So my apologies if you have read some of this before.  In Nampoch, which is by no means indicative of the rest of Togo since clothing customs tend to change between ethnic groups/regions, peoples' approach to clothes seems to be somewhat lackadaisical, at least at first.  Kids of both sexes are mostly naked, normally, until they are about 3 or 4. Then they gradually graduate to pants, or underwear to us.  Then about age 10 or so they start wearing shirts.  Of course they all have "nice" clothes that they wear when they go to the marche, or when there is a funeral or something.  But, on a daily basis, pre-teen kids dont wear a whole lot.  Once the girls hit puberty, sometimes later depending on the village, they start wearing shirts pretty much constantly.  Adha, for example, always wears shirts during the day.  At night, she may or may not.  When women give birth, however, they are free to do whatever they want.  Ntido was fairly careful about wearing shirts around me until she had Alix, then she didnt care anymore.  I could not count, in a given day, how many times I saw a well-dressed woman breast feeding a baby in a car, in the marche, along the road, where ever. Just "boom" boob and happy, usually, kid.  This, I think, is a much healthier, not to mention smarter, more natural, and less puritanical, approach to breast feeding than here.  But I digress.

Anyway, thus, I grew accustom to seeing my host mom's  boobs all day. Every day.  If she was going out, she would dress up.  If she was hanging out at home, topless.  The same with most of my neighbors.  I would be sitting on my porch reading a book, without a shirt, and some woman would come over in a skirt.  No problem. I would go visit Kodjo and his wife would be hanging out in a skirt.  This is not to say that people in Nampoch are somehow immodest.  Quit the opposite.  Women, and men, may spend most of their leisure time topless, but they always wear pants/skirts. And they Always dress well when they go out.

Compared to this, Americans, in public at least, generally look like they are naked. 

If my host mom goes to the marche, or anywhere, she dresses up.  She puts on her best clothes.  She gets her purse and wears her shoes.  She might pull out a boob to feed her child, but that is natural and not immodest. Togolese certainly see it that way.  Here, I still do a double-take when my sister goes to work wearing short shorts.  Or when I am in the mall and I see some guy with his shirt ripped down the sides to his waist.  Petit would wear a shirt like that to the field, never in public.  Togolese women wear shorts like that as underwear. 

I think the discontinuity, for me at least, rests in the fact Togolese care a lot more about their appearance in public than Americans do, yet are more relaxed about the human body in general.  It is the opposite here.  "Casual" dress has become a point of pride bordering on a quasi- "right" in which "comfort" equals strategically placed "less."  It is, at least to me, a lot simpler to take the Togolese approach- to dress well, to have pride in what you are wearing, and, by doing so, respecting both yourself and people around you.  But that is just me.   

In the same vein, shopping sucks.  I have not had to worry about matching.  Or styles. Or fashion.  Or what guys my age wear now for 3 years.  Styles have passed me by.  And what the hell is with all the tshirts having some kind of advertising on them now?  I want to wear a shirt, not be some bullshit billboard for some cooperation.  I miss being in Togo where I can throw clothes on and be "well dressed" as long as what I am wearing is clean and in good repair.  The really funny thing is that all these fashions now will be there in a couple of years.  Tommy jeans look really good after a season in the fields. 

Menus and the Persistence of the Over-Abundance of Food

Menus make my brain quietly short-circuit.  My consciousness crawls into itself and mews "help me" from some dark corner under the bed.  I frantically cast about for some shiny thing to catch my eye and point "urg give me. daniel want" This results in my acquisition of such delicacies as the Arby's Berry something milk shake.  A sickly sweet concoction of what tasted like whipped cream and some sort of viscous "berry" flavored syrup that made my teeth hurt and my head ache. Today I got a cookie-dough blizzard-esque thing from a local ice cream establishment simply because it was the first thing I saw on the menu.  I do not like decision making any more.  The overabundance of choices scares me.  On a brighter note I avoided projectile vomiting said blizzard-esque frozen treat all over the car on the way home. 

My mom made a ham for lunch/dinner today.  My reservations about eating pork are suspended until I can convince myself to stop making a pilgrimage to the kitchen every 35 minutes for another slice.  I usually eat it with my eyes closed.

There are things here of which I am unfamiliar.  Yesterday my mom scanned her iphone at Starbucks.  My jaw dropped. She and the cashier thought this was funny.  I am still not sure what pinterest and reddit are.  Or if they are actually different things.  I do not know what a frappaccino is.  Or even if that is how you spell it.  The cashier at Starbucks asked me if i wanted one in lieu of a smoothie.  I said "yes" because I felt like little adventure into the unknown.  I have discovered that people think you are weird if you are a 31 year old white male and are fingering dimes and asking your sister if they have always been so small. 

It is cold here.  I sleep under my down comforter at night with the window open.  Due to engrained physiological reasons, I can not understand sleeping without a fan on when there is one readily available.  This might be due to months of laying awake at night in a puddle of sweat wishing I had a fan.  Anyway, according to the weather men on TV, this is a "welcome cool-down" period.  I shiver.  90f + humidity isnt hot. 120 is.

Along the same lines, I think that America has fetishized air conditioning.  My mother and I went to see my great-aunt Ruth yesterday.  She is in a very nice assisted living home, is 92, and probably will not last another month.  It is a good thing I moved up my COS date.  Anyway, we walked into her room, which is larger than my house in Togo, and she was in bed wearing a shirt, a sweater, and curled up under 2 blankets.  I felt like joining her.  She kept complaining that her hands were numb.  My fingertips were cold.  I looked around for a thermostat or something, but there wasnt one.  We both would have been a lot more comfortable without a/c and the window open.  Why does a residence/facility for the elderly need to be kept at near arctic temperatures? It seems like this is less for the residents and more for the people who work there.

The human body is extraordinarily capable of adapting to many different climates and temperatures.  This is why people live in Africa as well as in Siberia.  Air conditioning, and the 68 degree standard that seems to have been elevated to a natural right by this point, is another societal myth of happiness.  Sort of like the myth that everyone needs to have a personal automobile.

Rant ended.  Off for more ham.   

Cheese & Music

I have been back on US soil for exactly a week now.  In this time I am fairly certain I have eaten my body weight in cheese.  And again in chocolate chip cookies.  Seriously, where has smoked Gouda been all my life?

I drove for the first time since being back yesterday afternoon.  I went to see my friend Lauren and her new baby.  I almost drove the speed limit. 

The trick to survive being back here, I think, is instincts.  Or muscle memory.  I have to do things on instinct and not think about them.  If I think, I go crazy.  Like trying to remember if I can make a left hand turn in a turn lane when the other lights are green but mine is not.  Or which interstate exit to take. Or that twist-cap bottles exist.

Every day I find some new little orgasmic slice of gastronomical bliss. Like blueberries.  Wow. 

Every day, at least on those days when I leave hiding and emerge from my parents' house, I find at least one culturally inappropriate thing, for the US, that I must unlearn.  Like the two handed wave. Or talking about nursing. Or drinking beers at 9 am. 

On the way to and from my friend Lauren's last night, I listened to the radio.  X-103, Indy's New Rock/Alternative.  In about 2 hours of listening I hear approximately 8 new songs.  2 of these were repeats, so I heard 6 new songs.  And a lot of other songs that I havent heard in 3 years but to which I could still sing along.  So much for the music scene since I have been away. I find it interesting that "new rock" can still be new after 6 years.

Driving, or riding in cars, here makes me quietly panic. I feel like Edvard Munch's "The Scream."  Everyone drives so fast. And there are no obstacles, like huge potholes, or washouts, or wrecks, or goats, or slow motos, or people on the road to dictate what drivers are going to do.  And there are cops.  Everywhere.  To whom I cannot slip a cadeau so that they leave me alone.

It is very nice to be re-acquainted with my cat.  He just jumped up on my lap.  When I am depressed and bored here I go snuggle him and feel better.   He does remind me of Tadji, and Nigarmi, and Ningan.  My Togolese cats.  This is sad.

The other hard part about being back, well one of them, is the feeling of uselessness.  I used to have a purpose in life.  Now I have to find another purpose.

I ordered a new Macbook Pro the other day.  This might make me happier.  I can engage in retail therapy here at least

Of cheese curds and chocolate chip cookies

I forgot how much I missed, and love, cheese curds until I went shopping in the fridge this morning.  A little piece of heaven in my mouth

Oh, and I forgot how amazing fully functioning refridgorators are too

I have been hiding out in my parents' house since I got home.  My little sister, Annabelle, has been my chauffeur as the thought of driving here makes me quietly panic

I just ordered myself a new computer this afternoon.  A 13-inch macbook pro.  I have been dreaming of having such a machine for at least the past year.  I think I weirded out PCVs in Togo when I would ask them if I could touch their macbooks cause they are so pretty

Aside from that, I fulfilled another need by getting a beard trimmer.  I did in 5 minutes what it took me a half hour to do in Togo with scissors in a comb

I go to sleep with the sweet green smell of growing corn coming in my window on the night breeze.  I realized this morning that there is probably more corn on my parents' farm than in the entire canton of Nampoch

I sleep with my window open and a fan on much to the bemusement of my dad who doesnt really understand why I dont want to sleep in air conditioning.  I sleep better with a fan and my sinuses dont feel like they have been baked when I wake up in the morning

My cats are Huge. Like, gargantuan, compared to Tadji and Ninghan.  My cat Mustafa is roughly the size of Little Doggy in Nampoch.  Seriously.  But he is a lot lazier.  Think a black Garfield

So far, I have not physically interacted with anyone here outside of my family.  Aside from my friend Ashley who gave me an awesome hair cut today. I am too scared too

One thing that I am having a hard time adjusting to is daylight.  Right now it is something like 830pm.  It is this dark about 545 pm in Togo, and dark by 630 pm.  I never know what time it is anymore, nor really even what day it is

my sister is making chocolate chip cookies. more little slices of heaven waiting for me to eat them

You Can Never Go Home Again: The Continuing Voyages of an RPCV

So. I am an RPCV. And writing this from my parents' house.

So, my dear readers, think of this not as the end. I will keep this blog going for awhile to accomplish 2 things.  First, to talk about my (attempted) readjustment to life in the States. Secondly, to bring to light other facets of my Peace Corps service that may have been heretofore neglected, or possibly unmentioned

I got off the plane in New York and got a taxi to Karen's house. . . .Just like I have been doing for the past 3 years.  I have felt, the past couple of weeks, that my life for the past couple of years has been coming in a full circle. Last night was no exception.  I got to Nampoch in 2010 and Karen was there to greet me and to tell me that everything was going to be all right.  I got back to the States from Nampoch and Karen was there to greet me and tell me that everything was going to be alright.  So I bought her dinner.

But seriously, it was nice to get off the plane and be able to franglia with someone.  Except for a couple embarrassing culture shock episodes.

On my flight from Casablanca to New York I sat next to a guy from Cote d'Ivoire.  This morning, I hailed a taxi to the airport. The driver is from Sokode.  The steward on my flight from Charlotte to Indianapolis this morning is from Nigeria (I recognized his accent).  All of these things were happy and lessened the inevitable "shit. I am back in the US" feeling. For a time.

What is culture shock?  Let me count the ways.  I have been doing this a lot in the past 36 hours.

1. Sensory overload. It is not just all the crap that is Everywhere.  Not just the constant bombardment with stimuli.  In Togo, I became used to quiet. To solitude.  When I was around  people they spoke either French or local language. If I wanted to know what they were saying, I had to listen, if they spoke French, or guess if they spoke local language.  In the airports from JFK in New York to Indianapolis I understood what EVERYONE was saying, mostly. Whether I wanted to or not.  100 different conversations blasting into my head at the same time.  And I listened to all of them because I am used to listening when someone speaks in English now. I felt like I was having a schizophrenic episode. All day.

2. Stranger in a strange land.  It was so nice to run in to west Africans because I am used to interacting with them.  I do not know how to interact with Americans anymore. I have to think about it.

3. There is so much stuff. Stuff stuff shit shit stuffy stuff stuff. Count every item you own, divide that number by like 50. Thats how much stuff the normal person in Togo owns.

Etc. More on this later.

I got off the Royal Air Maroc flight into JFK and the first thing I noticed was the smell.  That melange of clean, crisp A/C, lemon disinfectant, and new carpet.  That's when it hit me that I was back in the US

It is always a shock, returning from overseas, when I switch from an international flight to a domestic one. The planes are crappier and the service worse.  On my Royal Air Maroc flight I watched an attendant play with a little girl who was running in the aisles.  On my US Airways flight an attendant yelled at a couple women next to me for talking during her riveting safety spiel.  Seriously, if you do not know how to buckle a seat belt, you should not be on a plane. Period. On international flights you, the passengers in your section, and your attendants become like a little family by the time the flight is over. You bond.  Domestic flights- shit, they cant wait till you're gone.

I seriously saw this in JFK.  A vending machine selling bottled water next to a drinking fountain.  Seriously?

Drinking fountains are absolutely amazing.  One of my favorite things about the US. Paper towels in bathrooms? not so much.

 My cats here are like 3 times bigger than my cats in Togo.  This is a conservative estimate.

I think it will take me awhile to get used to seeing people take pictures with their tablets.

Americans are some of the dumbest travelers in the world.  Everyone speaks English to some degree.  And they still screw up the most basic stuff. 

On my Air Maroc flight they gave me a US customs card to fill out.  But it was in French.  I started to fill it out, until i realized that this would probably really confuse the Customs people.  This is not a good thing. They do not handle confusion well.  So I asked for an English one. 

Another thing that I like about international flights is how everyone claps as  soon as the plane touches down.  Like saying "thanks for getting us here in one piece"

Since when do you have to pay to switch from a window seat to an aisle seat on domestic carriers? Seriously? 

Between exhaustion and copious beer, I have become comfortably numb.  My biological clock doesnt even know what month it is anymore

Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

I am no longer a Peace Corps Volunteer and it is weird.

I got down to Lome Monday morning about 6 am and began my Close of Service procedures.  Herein lies the tale . . .

Many PCVs, in our self-centered arrogance, believe that leaving village, and service, is all about us.  "We" are leaving, going "home," getting the f*** out of Togo etc, with all the attendant emotions and stresses.  We often overlook how hard us leaving is on the people we leave behind.  We've lived and worked with our communities for two years.  We've formed networks and relationships with people.  We've become fixtures in our communities.  Then "boom" we're gone.  As Kodjo said, "you come here, we just have time to know you and get used to you, then you're gone."  The look on Ntido's face as I waited for my car to leave from Nampoch was enough to tell me that me leaving was screwing with her life.

I just realized this post might not be completely coherent.  I am running on a sizable sleep deficit right now.

Leaving, logistically, sort of sucked.  I had a plan. It was a good plan.  It was optimistic.  Plans do not work in Togo.  I planned to leave Nampoch on Sunday with a morning marche car, have a leisurely day in Kouka, then take a car to Bassar, then an overnight bus to Lome. Saying goodbye to people all the way.  Ha.
About 9 am Sunday morning, it started raining.  Kodjo and Djidjil started laughing and were like "haha we called for rain cause we dont want you to leave."  I didnt laugh.  My blood was singing songs of angry men. By about 1300 the rain pretty much finished.  I took wet pictures with people then we went out and waited for the car to fill up.  Got to the marche finally.  Ntifoni and Djabob helped me take all my stuff over to the marche station.  The road looked like chocolate mousse.  Kader and Kevin came.  Kevin and I went to drink tchakpa and hang out while I waited on the car.  It was good to see him again.

Kader was coming down to Lome with me to see me off.  We waited about 3 hours for the Bassar car to leave.  Got to Bassar about 19h00.  We drove through the ejecta of a massive termite orgy on the way.  The rain prompted flying termites to do whatever it is they do.  The yellow street lights in Bassar hosted clouds of termites.  From a distance it looked like snow flurries in the lurid yellow glow.  Or at least what I imagine snow flurries to look like.  Kids were running around under the lights with bowls of water to trap the termites.  They make a good snack when fried up.

Anyway.  Kader's friend got us seats on a bus going down to Lome.  It picked up passengers at the Ghana border, then stopped in Bassar for a bit.  Our seats were  in the very back of the thing.  I hate sitting in the back of the bus, but I thought, whatever, I'll sleep most of the time.  Time came to get on and the bus filled up quickly.  Then the conductors whipped out plastic stools and started filling up the aisles.  This triggered my incipient claustrophobia in the worst way.  I was counting down heart beats to a freakout.  I was sitting by the window- I made Kader switch seats with me.  The guy in the aisle in front of me didnt even have a stool.  He just stood there.  The windows didnt open and the atmosphere in the bus started heating up.  I pictured the next 7 hours like this.  The countdown sped up.  Then the bus left and some quasi-A/C kicked on and I calmed down.  Then I woke up in Sokode.  Then again in Atakpame.  And realized that as long as the air was on and I didnt think I was not going to completely lose my shit.  Excuse me while I go shudder. 

We made it to Lome without incident or screaming

After 3 years here, I have developed the ability to be able to wake up at 230 and tell where I am in Togo within 50k solely by the sound of the wheels on the road.

Ive also lost the ability to distinguish, in casual conversation, whether someone is speaking to me in French or English.  Sadly, I have not subsequently gained the ability to speak in tongues.  I think maybe I am just tired or something.

My going-away party in Nampoch was nice.  Although not for the 3 chickens we ate.  It was the first time I've had a party and not had to pay for it or arrange anything.  We had fufu from new yams which made me incredibly happy.  There was speechifying, and toasting.  And everyone told me at least once to say hi to my parents and not to forget the people of Nampoch

You never know when you are doing something or seeing someone for the last time

My cat is gone.  Kader took him down to Saye's house on Thursday, but he missed her by about 15 minutes.  He left the box w/ my cat at her door cause he couldnt find anyone else around.  Apparently the dogs freaked my cat out, and he chewed his way out of the box and ran off.  Now he'll have a short, mean life in the bush until someone cuts his throat and eats him for a fete.  Sometimes the universe sucks.

It still does not seem like I am not going back to Nampoch.  I am getting a plane in a couple hours, but it reality hasnt set in yet.  Leaving here is so much harder than coming.  I left a life to come here.  Now I have to leave a life and go reconstruct my old one.  Or find a new one. 

Civic Engineering and Snakes (again)

Well, this is it.  Quite possibly the last blog post I will write from Karen/Bry’s house in Guerin-Kouka.  Last night I was sitting with people at Kodjo’s house.  I looked at the calendar in my phone and realized that, in a week, I will be spending my last night in Togo.  A week from right now, I will not be in Togo.   

  

I stepped on a green mamba Monday.  It was in a patch of grass on a “street” in Kouka.  I got off my bike to navigate what was once a culvert and is now an example of Togolese civic engineering.  Then I happened to look down where I was stepping.  The only reason I saw the snake was because it was dead and its pale belly stood out against the grass.  Someone had chopped off its head.  Despite this fact, it still took a couple minutes before my heart let go of my tonsils. 

Speaking, again, of snakes, yesterday Petite came and asked to borrow my big knife.  The Fulani who takes care of his cows said that one of his yearling calves had died, so they brought it back to the house to chop up.  Or to butcher it in the most literal sense of the word. Anyway, when they got back, I wandered out and asked Petite what had happened to it—he originally thought that it had eaten a plastic bag or something.  Petite was like, “well, we found a lot of coagulated blood, so the Fulani says a snake bit it.”  Yeah, any snake that can drop a 300 pound calf is not something I want to run across.  

Regardless, I think that the only parts of the calf that will not be eventually eaten, gnawed on, or tossed in a sauce are the horns and hoofs.  Serious.  Adha was grilling its penis, testicles, and other hunks last night. 

Downtown Kouka is gutted.  In the week I was in Lome, the road guys came in, bulldozed the right-of-way and starting slapping concrete gutters through town.  I ate breakfast this morning while a steam shovel ripped out the little trees outside of the cafeteria where I was eating.  I had to move my bike.  Work on the road between Kabou and Kouka is at a standstill because the powers that be allegedly screwed around with the financement.  The section going out of Kouka, though, its apparently fully funded.  It looks like a superhighway, albeit dirt, heading out of town now. Since the main road through town is dug up, they scrapped off the other streets to accommodate the increased traffic.  Nice, freshly graded dirt roads here are only graded until the next heavy rain.   

I’ve come home to a lot of crap, both literal and figurative, in the past couple of years.  Chicken crap, lizard heads, stuff my cats have spread all over my house, etc.  However, this last time was quite possibly the best, or worst, depending on your perspective.  I found a dead bat in my shower bucket.  Gushing maggots.  I washed my bucket.  Bleached it.  And still couldn’t bring myself to use it again.  This trumps the time I came home to find that the soja that I’d forgotten in my garde manger had become a maggoty swamp.  I still use my garde manger.  

I really miss D.  I’ve spent the past 20? months either able to text or with her. With the ability to immediately impart my current thoughts/state of being to someone who knows exactly what I’m talking about.  Like when I want to yell at people on the bus that they’re on a bus, not a bush taxi—they gotta get off at the freaking station like the rest of us.  Or that I’m sitting with people in Nampoch who are saying how much they miss her. Or that I am stuck in a thunderstorm and pissed cause I might not be able to make it home before dark. etc.  I still haven’t been able to break the habit of wanting to text her goodnight.    

  

Its officially rainy season again.  Every afternoon sees thunderstorms piling up on the eastern horizon and tumbling haphazardly across the countryside.  This means that it is not, relatively speaking, hot.  But it can be annoying.  Like the other afternoon when I was getting ready to bike home from Kouka.  I left Bry’s about 1645.  It had just rained and the sky to the east looked fairly clear.  I biked up town and was buying food when the wind picked up and it started raining.  I made it to Ntido’s work just as it started pouring. 

 Freaking storm came out of the south.  I sat there for about 45 minutes watching Togolese civic engineering wash past me and fretting about whether I was going to be able to make it home before dark.  The rain finally stopped about 1740.  Just enough time.  Ntido was like “oOoh” when I told her I was leaving—in the absence of drainage, the streets here function as gutters.  Water was knee deep in some places.  I’d just made it out of town when the rain picked up a bit.  Then I realized that I’d caught up with the storm. I bike like the wind.  The rain had tapered off out towards Nampoch, so the road was only a torrent for the first couple of kilometers.  I made it back just as it got too dark to see the road.  I was covered in sand though.  C’est la vie. 

 

The thought of Ntido being in town without a way to contact anyone bothered me, so I bought her a cell phone.  She was stunned when I gave it to her on Monday.  It was kind of cute.  Petite called her yesterday evening.  I felt like I was witnessing the first ever phone call or something.  Her mom was sitting there hanging on to every word.  I won’t have to rely messages when I go to Kouka now.  I did take Ntido a bag of corn on the back of my bike on Monday though.  

I felt bad that I’ve lavished so much money, relatively, to Ntido and not on her siblings.  So Sunday, I got Adha out of going to the fields and took her pagne shopping at the Kouka marche.  This turned into me following Adha, Ntido, a couple cousins, and another woman around while they bounced between pagne venders.  All I did was point out likely pagne—I buying enough for the whole family—and pay at the appropriate moments.  I apparently have crappy taste in pagne, but otherwise it was the best shopping trip ever.  I didn’t have to haggle or anything, just pay.  Ntido even talked me into buying a pagne for Alix.  Since 1 pagne is 2 meters long, he’s going to be have clothes for a while.  Ntilabi, Adji, Mama, and Jidda were all really happy.  David, I think, was more excited about the pineapple I’d bought than his impending new clothes.  

New clothes, for people in Nampoch, are a big deal. This is a place where you can recognize people by what they are wearing before you can see their faces.  Petite has gotten 2 new pairs of jeans since I have been here.  I’ve traced the progress of his shirts from nice, meeting wear, to field wear, to tossed over the wall.  People get clothes and wear them to rags. Literally. I remember the last new clothes that Ntilabi and Adji got, about a year and a half ago.  They were really excited when they got them from the tailor and tried them on. 

Its not that there are more amazing people here than elsewhere in the world.  Its just that they are more visible, and their achievements more distinct.  Take this girl I met Sunday for example.  Her name is Fati.  Her parents are nomadic Fulani, ie basically second-class citizens.  Fati met up with me and Kader at Concorde on her way back from taking the BAC test in Bassar.  This is roughly equivalent to graduating high school.  I can count on maybe 2 hands how many people I know who have passed their BAC here.  Maybe 3 of them are women. Most girls in Nampoch are doing good to finish junior high.  Fati is the only Fulani girl in Dankpen, if not the only Fulani period, to take the BAC.  Kader said that her father had a little bit of schooling, then devoted most of his resources to make sure his daughters got as far as they could.  He’s been supporting Fati as much as he can.  He gave her a pep talk Sunday about going to university, avoiding boys, and not letting people in village pressure her into marriage.  And then he told her that she could live at his rented house in Kara while she went to school.  Fati wants to get her degree in science.  She speaks French better than probably 90% of the population here.  I’m in awe of how much she has achieved with how little she started from. 

Speaking of fathers doing as much as they can for their kids, if it weren’t for Petite, Jidda would be a child mortality statistic by now.  She gets seriously sick at least three times a year it seems, probably from malaria coupled with malnutrition.  You could probably read past posts to find out how often.  Every time, Mama rushes her off to the dispansaire and Petite shells out 7-10 mille on shots and medicine.  Petite made 140 mille from his cotton harvest last year.  And he has 7 kids.  Just because high infant/mortality rates exist does not mean that parents here love their kids any less than parents elsewhere.

I feel like an emotional basket case.  I was mentally fried when I came back up from Lome and physically exhausted.  I think part of this is due to these anti-amoeba meds I’m on.  I am counting down the last “normal” days I have here.  They end Thursday about 1500 when Kader comes out for a meeting.  When he leaves, he is taking Tadji to Saye’s house.  She lost her cat and has a bad mouse problem, so I told her she could have Tadji.  Tadji, the other day, ate 6 baby mice like I eat popcorn.  Also, Saye lost her cat about a week after she bought it a ticket back to the States.  So, if Tadji makes it, he’ll go to the States with her.  This makes it only marginally easier to say goodbye to him.  

It is legislative election season in Kouka.  This means that the power is on all the time cause the Minister is in residence.  It also means that Kouka has its own little garrison of Red Berets (Togo’s Airborne division) to protect us from “petite bandits.”  Yeah. 

I noticed I use more 'franglis' than usual in this post.  I am tired. Sorry.

An Interesting Week, or, the 4th in Togo. Again.

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was a comedy of errors. Or of other things. 

 

I am sitting in a hotel in Kara, getting ready to go home for the last time.  I am on my back from seeing D, Abby, and Maggie off in Lomé. I am exhausted in a variety of ways.  The past week has been an emotional rollercoaster, even though it was not me who was COSing.  I spent 7 hours on a (nice) bus yesterday, wedged between a bulky Togolese guy and the window. I am taking some kind of 7 day course of pills to treat the asymptomatic amoebic cysts that are apparently using my gut as a wading pool, until they move someplace else.

COSing (Close of Service), is a stressful time for any Volunteer.  There is about 2.5 days of checking out—medical, logistical, financial, administrative—before one becomes an RPCV.  For D, however, it was especially bad. I went down to Bassar on Thursday.  I had to do my final med exam in Lomé so I went with D to help her with all her stuff.  Thursday night, after her goodbye party in Bassar, we had a really bad altercation with her landlord over rent. We wound up having to spend the night at Saye’s. When I can think about it without wanting to hit something, I will write about it.  Then we met up with Maggie in Kara on Friday, after we got D out of her house.  Saturday we took a bus down to Lomé to begin the actual COS process.

I find myself, still, in an unfamiliar situation.  As Americans, we enjoy nearly unlimited freedom of travel in our own country, and many other places we would like to go. As an American abroad, there are days when I am forcefully reminded of the fact that I have a couple pieces of paper upon which my freedom of movement, and perhaps freedom in general, relies.  Passports and visas.  You have them, or you do not.  If you do not, and you are someplace, you are screwed.  Regard the following vignette.   

As Peace Corps Volunteers, and thus US government employees, we are issued special passports.  These are the passports we use for traveling during our service, and are the ones that contain all of our visas etc.  We are also required to bring our personal passports.  D’s personal passport was about to expire a couple of months ago, so she applied for a new one at the US embassy in Lomé.  We went to pick it up the other day.  D gave the lady her PC passport as ID to pick up her new one.  Apparently, it is policy to cancel the old passport when you get a new.  After about 10 minutes, they called D up to the window and were like “Well . . . we messed up.  We canceled your PC passport by mistake.”  In other words, they canceled the passport that contained D’s Togolese and Ghanaian visas (she planned to fly out through Accra).  D was suddenly, possibly, a stranger in a strange land.  To their credit, the consulate staff made a flurry of phone calls to make sure that she could still travel with her canceled passport and not-canceled visas. Then they gave her money to go to the Ghanaian embassy to make sure that they agreed.  Ghanaians are much more concerned about visas and stuff than Togolese are.  D handled the whole situation remarkably well considering.  That stomach dropping feeling of “oh shit, my documentation is not in order” is awful.  Especially in this day and age of international travel that depends on a carefully connected series of dots.  I know that D got through the Ghanaian border yesterday without a problem.  I do not know if she made it out of the airport, through Jordan, or to London without a problem. 

We did have to sit in the Ghanaian embassy for like 3 hours because the secretary never told the guy D was supposed to see that she was there. Once he knew, it took about 10 minutes for him to assure D that her visa was still good.

In happier news, I met my replacement, Lauren, Sunday.  I got up early and went out to Gbatopé to see her.  I was really stressed out about my replacement.  I should have had more faith in Paul.  He picked out a really good replacement for Nampoch.  Lauren is really cool, and asked me good questions about Nampoch, etc.  I feel much better now, like I am leaving my post in good hands.  I also said goodbye to my host family during stage.  I think that my host mom  about cried.  She definitely hugged me several times.

It is kind of weird, how over two years, people become fixtures of the landscape.  I am, for example, in Kara right now.  It is really weird being here without knowing that Abby is like 10 minutes away.  It would be really hard to go back to Bassar without D.

I finally celebrated the 4^th of July here.  Since we were in Lomé at the time, we went to the US embassy’s 4^th party.  It was pretty fun, if really weird.  The embassy, the part that does not look like a nice maximum security prison, is like a little slice of America.  Lawns, familiar bathroom with soap dispensers and paper towels, beach volleyball, a pool, etc.  Saye and I were some of the first Volunteers there.  When we arrived we saw that most of the tables and chairs were set up in the sun, so we got some chairs, and our beers, and set up under a tree on a little hill by the embassy building itself, from which vantage point we could see all.  It was a good spot, most of the like 40 Volunteers who came eventually ended up there.  We lost 2 rounds of tug-of-war against embassy personnel.  They are much brawnier than we are.  Then it was northern Volunteers vs southern Volunteers. We won.  I ate two hamburgers. I was in a sack race. And I helped some kids fly a kite. And we watched our Country Director and the US Ambassador in a “dunk” tank.  They both got wet.  I do not think “Proud to be an American” was ever played on the sound system, for which I was profoundly grateful, since almost everyone at the party was living out the song. No fireworks though.  Oh well.  Maybe next year. 

Then I woke up at 500 the next morning to say goodbye to D and head to the bus station.  So it goes.

D’s friend, Modar, came with us last Friday when we came to Kara.  Modar is about 18 I think, she’s really smart.  She’s on the verge of finishing the Togolese equivalent of high school, and she’s one of D’s best friends here.  Anyway, she stayed with us Friday night in the hotel.  It was the first time she’s stayed in Kara.  I do not know if she’d ever slept in A/C, but when she went to take a shower, she was like “Gniamba (D’s local name) um, how do you do this?”  Modar had never taken an overhead shower before.  I told her that, when we came to Togo, they had to show us how to take a bucket shower since Americans are only used to taking overhead showers with running water.  She thought that was pretty funny.             

  

I think one thing I will miss about Lomé, possibly the only thing, is the Lebanese food there. So good.