Last post - goodbye Togo

Aurelia and Carolina at my goodbye/birthday party in the med unit November 30, 2012 (it would be nice if I could rotate this but I can't figure out how to do it!)

Me and Pat at the same event.  Rose, our med unit cook/housekeeper made a delicious meal of fish, rice, salad, banana cake and pineapple (so unbelievable wonderful here - I've never even really like it before and now I won't be able to enjoy it until I come back to West Africa).

I know why I couldn't keep this blog up well during my time here - the internet connection is just so slow.  I've become a lot more patient with delays and slow technology since coming to Togo but not that patient.  In any event, I'm leaving early Saturday morning and I've been saying goodbye to everyone I see here.  It's been a great experience for me - I'm sure I've gotten far more out of being here than I could possibly have hoped to give but I hope I've been helpful where I could be.  Our things were packed out yesterday by an efficient moving company (coming and going with all my stuff has been surprisingly easy in both directions).  We're cleaning the numerous papers and magazines to put out into the trash and giving lots of stuff to our cook/housekeeper who said he'd take anything we didn't want.  Not much goes to waste here in Togo although they do use a lot of plastic bags that they just discard.  It will take me a while to fully process my experience here so I won't try to do that right now.  I'm looking forward to being back in the US, back in a culture I more fully understand.  I've spent 2 years marveling at how different things are here and mostly finding that the US holds up well in comparison in my mind but I'm sure it's just my cultural bend - I get the US and I'll never get a lot about Togo.  It's been interesting kind of resting on the surface of things here - observing, pondering, wondering but often, not understanding.  My main guides to my experience here have been my immediate co-workers:  Aurelia most of all but also Diana the medical secretary and Rose the cook.  I've learned a lot from my replacement in the past few weeks, a Beninese physician who has lived in West Africa her whole life.  Pat and I had a fufu dinner with one the associate country directors, Alex, the other week and talked about the politics in Togo in greater depth than ever before and also learned a lot.  I came here very ignorant about many things, I realize.  I knew very very little about Africa and, while I have much to learn still, I do know so much more and will be forever grateful that I was given this opportunity.  I hope very much to come back someday as I will profoundly miss many things, people and places but at least I had the chance to live and work here for 2 years.
I've spent the last few months thinking about what I'll miss about Togo and what I won't:
Will miss:  Walking 3 minutes to get to work, the local dogs that Toby and I see on our morning walk/run, the croissants and pan au chocolat we can get just down the street for 60 and 65 cents that are as good as any I've ever had, the lunches I've had in my backyard with Pat when it's incredibly hot on our street but somehow pleasant sitting at our table with the umbrella, the amazing tropical fruits here: mangos, pineapples, little pink-inside papayas, the thin-crust pizzas from the Annex, the adorable children who go to school around here in lavender shirts and khaki pants/skirts, the bright colors that people wear, the lazy weekends with no housework or yardwork to do, the lizards, the strange bird next door that we've never seen but that makes a lot of interesting sounds, the chickens and goats, Kundalini yoga (a new discovery and a lifesaver for me here), teaching yoga to my coworkers, how people here rarely get angry or out-of-sorts, the nighttime wildlife noises at the Pagala training site (I can't imagine the creatures that make those sounds), the lovely weather of July - the nicest month in Lome (and the worst one in NY), swimming in the ambassador's pool - it'll never be that nice again.
Won't miss:  The heat from early morning to late afternoon (it's particularly bad right now), the sandy roads that are like walking on the beach, the motos and other bad drivers in Togo, the crummy roads (they're getting better but they have along way to go), the humid yet dry climate (although I haven't had to use a moisturizer for 2 years which is good but all the folliage in my yard is dying right now which is not good), the crapshoot that ordering chicken or any other kind of meat can be here (will it be edible or will it be like leather?), the unfestiveness of the Christmas season (it's just impossible for me here...), the sloooowwww internet at work - also impossible to live with, and the power outages, the water outages the internet outages - all par for the course here (it's how I've learned to be more patient...lol).
GOODBYE TOGO!

Mostly not in Togo

I previously posted this photo on facebook and sent it to everyone I could think of but I think it's worth posting again since these are extremely cute dogs.  Poor Toby on the left had his "fixing" today and does not feel too perky right now so this is in honor of him.  He's really a great dog and I feel terrible for him right now.  He's trying to wag his tail everytime I walk by him (he's lying on the floor) but you can tell it's an effort.  I wanted to download a photo of the nice beach here in Lome that has the seaport view (it's a big shipping hub so there are constantly boats going in and out) but it wouldn't download for some reason.  Otherwise, all these photos are of South Africa where I just spent 2 weeks.  First I was in Johannesburg for a conference.  The conference was good and it kept us busy so I didn't see much of Joburg but, frankly, I don't think I missed much.  It's not a very attractive city, for the most part (although the weather was fabulous), and we were told how dangerous it was (although it didn't really seem so bad).

This is me outside the Soweto Hotel which is a very nice looking hotel that we stopped at the one afternoon we had off when we took a bus tour.  We stopped in front of Nelson Mandela's childhood house (a nice looking but small brick house) and drove by Bishop Tutu's house also.  They live/d in a nicer part of Soweto.  There are also some pretty bad slums although the ones near Cape Town seemed even worse.

 So after Joburg, I went to Kruger National Park with another PCMO and 2 friends of hers from Ghana.  We saw lots of animals - I couldn't include them all since it takes so long to download pictures here- but particularly notable were the elephants.  We saw many and were able to see them up close and observe them for a while.  It's interesting how agile they are - I always thought of them as kind of awkward and lumbering but they really aren't.  We saw giraffes, rhinos, baboons, vervet monkeys, water buffalo, wildebeests, many kind of antelope-type creatures, hippos, alligators, a puff adder (a very deadly snake!), zebras and lots of birds.  We saw female lions eating a giraffe and keeping vultures at bay.

 This is in the Drakenburg mountain area just east of Kruger where we stopped on the way back to Joburg.  It's amazingly beautiful.

 The rhinos at Kruger - these are white rhinos of which there are many.  We didn't see any black rhinos which are smaller and rarer.

 The picture above is me on top of Table Mountain with a view of Cape Town behind.  Cape Town is very amazingly set between the water and the hills behind.  The city itself isn't really all that interesting although, as someone coming from Togo, it's the height of Western civilization with its malls, restaurants, etc.  But it has great weather and everywhere you look there's a fantastic view.  The beaches along the coast south of the city are beautiful, too, but it was a little too chilly to think of beachgoing.

 A rock hyrax also known as a dassie in South Africa.  It's about the size of a very small woodchuck but it's related to elephants. I've wanted to see one ever since I read "Born Free" as a child. It was on top of Table Mountain - a must-do activity for anyone who visits Cape Town.  You can take a cablecar up to the top (or walk if you're very ambitious) and there are amazing views like the one below.  Also many hiking trails though we didn't have time to do much hiking since we were there late in the day.  The view below is looking south from a hilltop towards the Cape of Good Hope.

So now I'm back in Togo for my final 7 months or so.  Toby just jumped up on the couch next to me so I guess he's feeling a little better.  Life goes on here - working during the week and doing the usual during the weekend.  The new ambassador arrived and I've heard he's really nice.  He did say okay to our using his pool so I'm extremely happy about that.  Life here is very slow even though a lot of progress is being made with roads lately.  I've heard it's because there are elections coming up and the politicians like to have something they can point to as an accomplishment.  It certainly has made driving a lot easier. They've also put in a bunch of traffic lights so it's not such a free-for-all.  I will try to post again sooner!

Happy belated new year!

So much for resolutions...I've been as bad as ever about posting.  But it's been kind of a busy time and I have some photos to prove it.  Got through Christmas and decided I don't want to spend another holiday season here.  It's too weird to be in a hot dry place that is so unfestive.  Also, many of the volunteers go away at that time of year as well as staff so it's like the whole program shuts down for a month.  I found it very grim.  It's funny because at my last job January was also really slow.  I didn't mind it so much then but at least I made projects for myself.  December and January are truly slow here -trainings seem so far away it's hard to do any planning. 

The picture above is of an area of Ghana right next to Kpalime, Togo - around 2 hours from Lome (except there's a border crossing that takes forever).  I went for a weekend in mid-January with a group of women who take a yoga class here with an instructor whose husband is connected to the American Embassy.  She arranged for us to stay at a very basic lodge in this slightly mountainous region of Ghana and do yoga and hiking.  How great is that?  Two things I really love to do and someone else made all the arrangements!  It was a wonderful break.  We also went swimming in a small, cool pool at the base of a waterfall after a pretty strenuous hike (the trails here are not all that developed).  It felt heavenly, though.

As you can see!

We also went to a nearby village where kente cloth is woven in strips like this.  Everyone weaves - men, women and children.  All the women were away at a funeral, though, so we saw a lot of untended looms with a few men and boys weaving in the village.

Hillary Clinton came to speak to the President of Togo (Togo is now on the Security Council at the UN and she had been in Liberia for the inauguration of the new president there).  She stopped in at the embassy for 8 minutes (someone actually timed it), giving a brief speech and shaking the hands of everyone there (probably 75 people), including me.  I have pictures to prove it but they're on my work computer.  She's clearly a fast worker.

A few weekends ago the CLO (community liaison officer), Becky, here on the right, arranged for an artisan (3rd from right) to come to the embassy to show a bunch of us how to batik.  Here we are with our creations.  It was tremendously fun and I hope to get the chance to do it again.

Here's my cute dog who is mostly very sweet and I love having him.  I think he thinks I'm pretty boring (I don't run around much) but he's adjusting to my schedule.  He sleeps when I read, go on the internet, etc.  He's been with me exactly 2 months today.

So I'm coming home in 5 weeks for 2 weeks.  Looking forward to that but since I made the decision to leave Togo after December it doesn't seem quite as pressing.  I feel like the end is kind of in sight and I know what to expect from the rest of the year.  We will have only one group of trainees this year coming in early July but it will be a much bigger group that each one last year (40 as opposed to 23).  It will make for a different kind of training experience for sure.  I just got back from 4 days visiting new volunteers at their sites and seeing them has given me ideas about changing the training we do.  That is probably the most interesting part of the job - doing the training myself and then seeing later what they do or do not retain.  It helps me to figure out what to stress more the next time around.  I enjoyed seeing the volunteers at their various posts - many are in fairly remote small villages (which is more what I think of when I think of Peace Corps volunteers) but some in are large houses in small cities.  There's quite a variation among the posts here.

The thing that has struck me about Togo lately is that it seems not to change much compared with what we are used to in the US.  The climate is the same pretty much all the time - the gradations are too subtle for me to appreciate.  The differences between the dry season and the rainy season, the hot season and the not so hot season are not that easy to get a feel for and so every day seems the same really.  I wonder what it is like to have always lived in a place where everyday is the same weatherwise and lightwise.  I never realized how sensitive I was to the changing seasons and light but being here has underscored the need I have on a gut level to have those changes.  But even beyond that, when traveling particularly outside of Lome, I get the sense that the people living in the other parts of Togo live pretty much as they have always lived, that there is no expectation that their lives would, could or even should be different.  The volunteers talk about their villages being motivated or not - it's hard to see where they'd get even an idea that things could be different when they look around and see the unchangingness.  There are certainly aspects of Togo that would improve with change - the scores of malnourished children that can be seen in many villages, the lack of sanitation, the hand to mouth poverty.  But I look at the groups of women that gather with their children on their backs, the groups of children playing together after school and the community interaction you can see easily in any village and sometimes, the simplicity of life here doesn't seem so bad.  And I wonder, as a American, what exactly we have that we want to impart to Togo.