Labor Day Togo style

A new technical breakthrough!  I realized that my camera takes decent little movies and that I can download them here (although it takes a good long time).  Labor Day in Togo is May 1st and it's a pretty major holiday.  Employers have elaborate parties for their employees.  Of course, US Government agencies are a lot cheaper nowadays so the employees here had to pay for their own party which cut down on the number of attendees but it was still a lot of fun.  For $8 we had beverages and a meal of fish, goat, a stew (beef, I think), rice and a green bean salad with hardboiled eggs (very popular here in many dishes).  Then the dancing began.  We were listening to classic West African pop music according to one of my American coworkers who was a volunteer around 10 years ago in West Africa.  All my Togolese coworkers knew the words and were singing along as they danced.  I danced some too but eventually found it more interesting to watch everyone else dance - hence the little movie.  I took a bunch more but it took over an hour to download this one so that's all I'm going to post right now.

This is a photo from the restaurant - like many Togolese restaurants it's basically open air since it never gets cold here and you just need protection from the rain.  Those plastic chairs are ubiquitous in this country.

The outside of the restaurant.  The food was quite good so if you're ever in Lome, I would definitely recommend going here.

As I've said before there are a lot of amazing plants here but I haven't found anyone else who knows about them or cares.  But I know my New York friends appreciate orchids and that's what this long viney plant is.  Although it's next to the ambassador's pool where I spend quite a bit of time I just realized the other day that this one was blooming and, so realized what it was.

A close up of the flowers.  There's another gigantic orchid plant next to this one that isn't blooming but I'm keeping an eye on it because I can't wait to see what it will produce.

This is currently blooming next to the pool and it smells like a gardenia.  Heavenly!  The air in Lome often smells like exhaust (from the cars and motos) but every once in a while there will be a delicious whiff of something flowering like this.

It's been a busy week for me.  My coworker Aurelia is taking 2 weeks off (she's halfway through at this point) and I've been super busy in her absence.  This week was a close of service conference for the volunteers who will be leaving in August which I actually opened with a presentation and gave an additional one the next day.  Of course, since I'd never done this before, it was somewhat stressful plus everytime I do anything with a bunch of volunteers they have tons of medical questions and issues so I was crazy busy.  It took place at a very nice hotel (the Novela Star - I can also recommend this place) on a beach east of Lome which I had to go back and forth to a few times in the Lome traffic on a bad road.  I also misplaced a flash drive that has every presentation we ever give during all the trainings while I was there on Wednesday and no one could find till I got back and located it on Thursday.  Whew, was I relieved!  This coming week should be better.