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!