3 months and 2 lizards

So the day before yesterday when I went into my kitchen in the morning and looked in the sink this is what I saw.  At first I was kind of freaked out but when you consider all the insects it might not be bad to had a lizard in your kitchen I decided.  So I left this little guy there where I found him and went to work,  He was gone when I went home - probably my housekeeper had a different opinion but I don't want to know so I'm not going to ask.

This lovely creature I encounter at work the very same day.  Togo is full of lizards and there are 2 basic kinds - gecko sized brown ones and stricking larger ones that have an orange head and a tail with a fat black and orange stripe (I think I may have put a photo of this type on here but if not I will - one lives in my yard).  This lizard was right outside my office window having a fight with its reflected image.  I was sitting at my desk and I hurt a knocking at the window.  There are a couple of brown birds who sometimes stop at the window to speak with their reflections but they usually chirp so I looked around to see what was there and it was this!  It was probably a foot long from nose to tail tip and it has a ruff on itss head and under its that you can kind of see here but they were more expanded.  It spent several hours right outside the window so I got to see and take some photos.

This makes it look more big and terrifying - I showed it to my Togolese secretary/coworker and she started laughing nervously and said it looked pretty big.

So 3 months in Togo tomorrow which is one eighth of the way through my time here.  It's going pretty fast and yet, in some ways, I feel like I've been here for a very long time.  As I said to someone the other day, life here is at a much different pace; very slow.  I have decreased expectations of what I can or should get done in a set amount of time.  My work pace doesn't require too much quick thinking (except sometimes on the phone since a good deal of our contact with sick volunteers is over the phone rather than face to face).  The likelihood that we will have something critical happen right here in the office is very slight since our patients are mostly spread out all over the country.  We spend a lot of time preparing for what-if scenarios which makes sense because if something serious happens there are huge logistical considerations here that would never happen in the US.  There are ambulances but not many and you can't really count of them -you would be better off finding a taxi even if you are exsanguinating.  There's one morgue in the city of Lome and one pathologist in the whole country who does autopsies.  (I'm not trying to be morbid but we spent last week doing an exercise on how to deal with a death so now I know arcane facts like the above.)  We need to know what resources are available outside of Lome (they're kind of limited, needless to say) which Aurelia, the other PCMO, is looking into this week while I hold down the fort here.

I've gotten mah jongg going here but, as we mah jongg players know, there's a bit of learning curve so it'll be a while till I have a real game going assuming I can get my new learners hooked enough to keep with it.  The new card has arrived in New York along with a tentative spring and I find myself a little homesick for both!

More travels

The dress!  The photo doesn't do it justice, in my opinion.  The print has a real hand done quality and is mostly purple and orange - two colors I rarely wear but they just popped on this fabric for me.  There's quite a bit of seaming and a zipper up the back (I've had to do extra yoga to keep my shoulders limber enough to zip it up myself - a new problem what with living alone for the first time in my life!).  It's a little longer than I'd wear in the States but the women here don't often show their knees.

I took a trip to Dapaong this week and we stopped on the way up in Kara for lunch.  I'd wanted to go to a restaurant that I knew of in Kara that has nice bathrooms but my driver didn't know where it was and took me here.  The restaurant was nice enough and the food was delicious (see below for more details) but the bathroom was a hole in the ground.  Interestingly it was a very elaborately tiled hole.  The area around the hole and the walls were made from a colorful assortment of broken tiles (like you would find on a floor).  This is a very common way of using tiles - there are few areas of sidewalk in my neighborhood made the same way.  It struck me that so much care was taken to decorate the latrine while the latrine itself was so basic.  Also no toilet paper so I have a little packet of tissues with me at all times.  Not easy to wash the hands either so I had some purell in the car. 

I thought this mural on the wall in the restaurant was quite interesting.  I'm not sure if it's legible but it's a prayer.  Many of the small businesses in Togo, the trucks on the road, etc. have religious names (like Thank God) as part of their names or painted on them (in the case of the trucks) - mostly Christian seeming.  I think it's done in hopes that God will help the business to prosper and the trucks to avoid overturning (more about that later).  Togo is about equally divided between Muslims and Christians with about half the population having traditional, animistic beliefs.  Supposedly there are more Muslims in the north but they seem more prevelant in the middle part of Togo (from Kante to Sokode) and scattered elsewhere.  The women wear head coverings that are long (and not infrequently made of sequined material so they sparkle) but often have bare shoulders.  There seems to be a lot of variety in how they dress.  The mosques are often the best kept building in town.

My lunch in Kara - not African food according to my driver (which is pate, foufou or rice with a sauce). The menus of the restaurants are all pretty similar - various meats, poultry or fish listed with various simple accompaniments.  This was the 1/4 chicken with pomme frites.  The chicken in Togo is a big crapshoot - sometimes it's like jerky and sometimes you can actually chew it easily.  Chickens are often seem walking around the restuarnts unfoot, I guess just waiting till their number is up.  This particular piece had little meat and was very very chewy but the pomme frites was the main attraction:  thick cut fries with big rings of fried onions, tiny hot peppers and sliced tomatoes on top.  Quite greasy but really delicious.  The bread, as usual, was nothing to write home about.  That Maggi pitcher had water in it but I wasn't going to drink it!  Maggi is a common brand name here - it's a type of seasoning that is common.  I may have had it on restaurant food (or my cook may use it), I don't know.  I had 1/4 chicken and pommes frites 2 other times on my trip - these were the best fries but the chicken got progressively better with the other meals.

The road between Kara and Kante.  It slopes down a large hill and we passed (very slowly cause there was so much traffic) two other overturned trucks.  The truck on the right had driven off the road, I'd guess, to avoid stopped traffic in front of it.  There's a tremendous amount of truck traffic in the northern part of the country - I think going back and forth to Burkina Faso.  The trucks are often loaded to far above the height of trailer in back which seems to make them unstable and prone to tipping.  When a truck goes over the Rue Nationale becomes a one lane road and travel is really slow.  North of Mango (I hope you have your Togo map handy) this main road becomes worse than usual - the sides of it are crumbling and it really is only one lane and  full of trucks going 5 miles/hour due to potholes.  It's kind of a nightmare.  I couldn't wait to leave Dapaong cause the traveling was so bad and, of course, it was so hot.  I literally spend my 3 days there bathed in sweat.  The area around Kante, though, is very pretty - brown grassy savannah with trees scattered over it and rocky hills in the distance ("what I thought Africa should look like" according to one of the volunteers I saw).  The houses up north are collections of round huts with thatched roofs.  The huts stay cooler with that design, apparently.

My driver stopped to answer his cell phone and I rolled down the window to take a photo of these huts.  A group of girls came out of nowhere and I took a few photos of them, too.  They found the whole thing very funny!

More on my house

This computer or this blog site is acting really weirdly today.  Problems downloading pictures and with alignment but at least something's coming up here.  I was just reading about the earthquake in Japan and tsunami in the Pacificas I was waiting for these pictures to download.  Scary photos.  I hope the damage is not too bad.  This is a photo of some plants in my backyard.  It is ringed by the green spikey plant which kind of looks like an amaryllis (the leaves do) but the flowers are those skinny white stars in the middle - kind of neat.  I find that nobody here knows what any kind of plant is - when I've tried to find out what a tree is, etc. I get a blank look.  I'll have to get my own botanical guidebook, I guess.

This is a view from my backyard towards the house at dusk.  Sometimes I sit out in the back on those chairs but often (you won't be surprised to hear this), it's too hot.  But when it isn't it can be very pleasant.  I was out there one Sunday morning a few weeks ago and was very comfortable.  The leaves on the big tree towards the middle of the photo recently changed color to red and then fell off in a big pile.  You can't tell from the photo but the leaves are really big - about 9 or 10 inches in diameter so a few leaves made a big pile.  There's a vine growing up the trunk that looks kind of like a fancy philodendron with lacy leaves.

This is a photo of my living room taken from the stairs that lead up towards the bedrooms.  The dining room is on the left and the kitchen straight ahead.  It does look kind of lived in, doesn't it?  I keep a lot of stuff in the living room cause I know that it's not going to be moved around at all.  A big plus of having a house to oneself.  It looks nice and bright during the day and it is very pleasant but it's so dark at night.

A picture of me in my living room looking towards the dining room.

A lizard in my backyard.  It's about a foot long from nose to tail tip and you can see it has an orange head and a tail with a big orange stripe on it.  They're quite striking looking.  A few weeks ago when I went swimming in the ambassador's pool there was one floating on its back in the pool.  I thought it was dead but when I scooped it out with a skimmer it flipped over and ran away.

So that's all the photos for now and I know they're worth a thousand words each so I won't go on too long.  I'm leaving on Monday for Dapaong which is the northernmost city in Togo, right up near the Burkina Faso border.  I'll be making site visits mostly just in that area which should be less exhausting than my last trip which was a lot of traveling and spending every night somewhere else.  I'll have 3 straight nights in 1 hotel which should be nice.  It is reputedly very hot in the northern part as you get closer to the deserty part of northern Africa but at least it's a dry heat unlike Lome which is a humid heat.  I'll be going alone this time (but with a driver) so I'll have to do some fending for myself and I'm sure I'll need to drag out my sad French.  I'm going to spend the weekend reading French to get myself in the right mindset.

Two months in and further travels

 This is a picture of the ambassador's swimming pool that I spend a lot of time in each weekend day.  I was never much of swimmer before coming here but it's the most comfortable way to get some exercise outside but it's a nice place to sit afterwards when I've cooled off.  There's a tennis court too but I don't have a racket and I haven't found anyone who plays tennis thus far.

 Finally, a photo of a woman with a baby on her back and a large bowl on her head - quite a common site here.  This woman was delighted to have her picture taken  She is not typically dressed however - pants really are not that common on women here.

 This is a photo taken north of Kpalime in the mountains next to Ghana.  We were on the way to visit a volunteer who was posted at a higher altitude than most and had a cooler place to live.  It was a really pretty drive and I hope to return to this area some weekend when I get my car...

 We stayed overnight in a hotel in Kpalime arriving after dark and when I woke the next morning I discovered this compound across the street which housed about 7 goats.  They were taking turns jumping on and off the piles of concrete bricks.  I watched them, enjoying the morning air while I ate my delicious breakfast on my balcony.

Cafe au lait, orange juice, bread, butter, jam and cut up pineapple served in a boat.  It was heavenly!

I still have no pictures of me in my dress but I'll try to get that taken tomorrow.  Meanwhile I've bought 2 more pagnes of fabric and need to decide what to do with them.

The trip we took overnight to Kpalime was nice although the roads getting there were rough and the car exceptionally bouncy and vibrating.  It's hard not to feel a little carsick by the time you travelled a few hours to your destination.  But it was a pretty ride for much of the way cause you could see the mountains in the distance.  We ate pate for lunch in a local food stand.  Aurelia doesn't eat foufou out because she feels there's the potential for contamination in the preparation (which is pounding cooked yams and sometimes adding water that you can be sure isn't treated) but it was also served there. The pate (made from corn meal) is served hot with a sauce - mine was red with some tiny bits of vegetation.  You mold it with your right hand to be a little flat so you can scoop up the sauce.  I'm beginning to get the hang of it.  At the table (which you share with whoever is there) is a large basin and some cups and a little package of dry soap so you can wash your hands before you use them to eat.  If you're lucky someone will pour the water over your hands for you so can rinse well.  Of course you have to wash after eating too since your hand will be a mess.  The whole meal (about 2 cups worth of pate) was 200CFA (about 40 cents).
In addition to visiting some volunteers we also stopped at a hospital run by Baptist missionaries from the US.  Occasionally volunteers will end up there if they need emergent care.  Otherwise we try to get them to Lome and out of the country if they need surgery or something complicated.  Mostly the hospital serves the local population.  One of the doctors there offered me the chance to come and observe for a week to learn some tropical medicine which I hope I'll be able to do at some point.  There's a nice kind of a guesthouse to stay in right on the grounds of the hospital.
At our last site visit on Monday the volunteer we were visiting mentioned that there was a convent nearby where they bake fresh bread at the end of the day.  We drove over to try to get some but the sisters were in church.  Oh well, next time...
We tried to eat at a restaurant recommended by a volunteer but it was closed on Mondays (even in Togo many of the restaurants are closed Mondays, apparently) so we went elsewhere and had the best meal I've had out of my house - a delicious omelette with mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes and onions (it was more vegetable than egg).  There's a greater variety of food available in this area of Togo as it's not so hot and dry as much of the north.
The hotel was also nicer than the ones I stayed in further north plus I had that great balcony.  Definitely a place I'd return to for a weekend away from Lome.
The main road that goes from Kpalime to Atakpame (here's a link to a basic map of Togo http://www.lonelyplanet.com/maps/africa/togo/) was under construction so we were detoured off it quite a bit (luckily we had a driver very familiar with the area) on our visits to the volunteer sites. At one point we drove through Lavie - the village that George Packer was a volunteer in in the early 1980s.  He wrote a book about his experiences called The Village of Waiting which I enjoyed reading in the US before arriving but realize, now that I'm here, was quite negative about Togo.  For example, Lome certainly is not as bad as he paints it.  Other people I've spoken to here have also had negative reactions to the book.  I still think it's worth reading to get a flavor of what it's like to be in Togo and to be a volunteer.