A weekend in Ghana and life in Lome

I am not in this picture but it shows several staff members playing at the soccer game.  I also played and didn't do anything awful.  I actually ran around in the hot sun for quite a bit longer than I would have thought I could.  We lost 2-5 but the really amazing thing for me was watching my co-workers - they showed an incredible amount of skill and drive for a bunch of office workers!  They must play on the weekends or something.

I went to Ghana in my car with Susan (at far left) to visit Laura (nearer left) who used to work in Togo but is now posted in Ghana for 2 months. We left Friday afternoon and only managed to get through the formalities at the border by 3pm.  It was supposedly a 3 hour trip but it took us 7.  We got severely lost close to Accra (the large city which is the capital of Ghana) such that we actually ended up west of the city without ever realizing we had gone by it.  I have no idea how that happened but it was dark and we got stuck on some road under construction in amazingly bad traffic.  We had heard that the traffic was bad in Accra so we thought we must be in the right place.  Eventually we figured out where we were (we asked at gas stations mostly and mostly got the right answer) and after maybe another hour finally got to our destination.  We went out that night for dinner to Frankie's which replicates the menu of a typical diner - I had a burger which was the best I've had since I came to Africa (I can't recommend them in Togo at all) and fabulous french fries which you can also get in Togo.  It came with coleslaw that seemed extremely heavy on the mayo so I skipped it.

Ghana is a favorite destination of the volunteers I have to assume because it has all the comforts of home.  The streets are paved.  The buildings look like those you would see in any spread out city.  There are a lot of townhouse type developments.  The highlights are there's a mall with a movie theater (but not great movies) and a food court and there are many quite good restaurants with all kinds of food.  It's like a little taste of the US and a break from the hardships of Togo which I realized, while I was in Accra, are many.  On the other hand, I'm glad I wasn't posted in Accra or I wouldn't appreciate that West Africa is quite different from the US.  There isn't a whole lot to do in Accra - we went shopping and I bought a shawl and some fabric and walked around although the distances are far there so you can't really get around that way too well.  On Sunday (Easter), I convinced my friends to go to a botanical garden (the picture above) in the the mountains north of Accra  - about 23 km away but, of course, it took 2 hours to get there due to the roads we ended up on which were paved but with tremendous potholes like in Togo.  Most of these roads would be much improved by being only dirt which they probably will be one day since I doubt the potholes will be fixed.  The botanical garden and the little town it was in were very nice and we had a delicious lunch there of red red - a bean dish made with palm oil and served with fried plantains and moist chicken that was not tough (for a change).  I also had some gelato (coffee and chocolate) back in Accra that night which was terrific.  Our trip back to Togo the next day included a stop at the beach below.  You couldn't really swim there - it was rocky and there was a tremendous undertow which is common on the beaches around here - but the water was a wonderful temperature for wading before our car trip back to Togo (only 4 hours in that direction).

So my sister has asked me some specific questions which I will address here in case they're of general interest.  They mostly relate to my life here - what is typical.  I get up Monday through Thursday at about 5:30 am so that I can take a little walk before work before it gets too hot (can't do it at lunchtime) or I'm too tired (after work).  So I listen to my MP3 player (either music or stuff I've downloaded like NPR's Selected Shorts) and do a little walk around my neighborhood.  By the time I get back, I'm hot and sweaty (just from the still air and the humidity) so I have to give myself at least a half hour before I take a shower or it won't "take" (Seinfeld reference).  I eat breakfast which is coffee, fruit (mango, pineapple or banana) and a muffin (I made some date ones and froze them) or a cinnamon roll (my cook makes) or, right now, I have bagels (I think my cook made them but I'm not sure) - they're decent.  I read or I listen to French language news which I eat breakfast.  I make my lunch - usually leftovers but sometimes I made a sardine sandwich and go to work - a five minute walk (fabulous!). 

My work hours are insanely long - we start at 7:30am and go till 5pm (though lots of people stay later - I have no idea why) Monday through Thursday.  Friday is a half day - we leave at 12:30 (though lots of people stay later then too - go figure).  I never go out for lunch - it's just too hot.  I go home and, unless I'm doing something that night (not usually), I eat dinner and watch TV or read.  I go to bed pretty early cause I get up so early.  It's a decent, tolerable routine.  On weekends I sleep later and go swimming in the late afternoon when, again, it's not so hot.

Mah jongg has taken off - I have 4 people I play with.  Sometimes we play 3 handed but usually there are 4.  We don't really have a set day - we usually play one weekend afternoon and sometimes a weeknight but that has to be at another house because I don't have consistent electric service in the evening - lots of brownouts that make mah jongg impossible.  The bookgroup was meeting once a month but had sort of a breakdown in April so we're going to meet next week.  It's not really about the books - it's more of a cocktail/snack hour followed by chit chat about what we've read.  I do most of my reading on a Kindle but I read a hard copy of something every month so I can share a book which is the idea.  You can't get English language books here but of course you can order on Amazon.  The international dining group is also on some kind of hiatus which, frankly, is okay with me - the restaurants here are nothing special and you kind of get stuck with whomever you are sitting next to.  Good local food - an oxymoron as far as I can gather so far.  The best things I've had are pizza (made with a thin crust in a woodburning oven) and falafel - both imports.  The Togolese like to eat starchy things like foufou (mashed up manioc or yams), rice or pate (a cornmeal thick porridge) with sauces of various kinds - only the sauces have any flavor and the ones I've had have been remarkably oily if tasty.  I just keep thinking that what I'm eating has zero nutritional value.  And yet the Togolese are very healthy looking overall - lean and muscular by and large. 

My cook makes lots of different things - a lot of vegetable melanges, rice based dishes with vegetables, chicken, fish (too many bones - not my favorite), quesadillas (with a swiss cheese inside), pizza (also with swiss cheese).  I believe he studied cooking in Ghana where there are many different kinds of cuisine.  I know he prides himself on making western type foods so he hasn't made me anything Togolese per se but then I don't have a real hankering for that kind of food.. He also is a baker - bread, cookies, biscotti, mango and apple pies.  I actually am amazed that I have lost some weight since coming here - there are no processed foods to speak of and no junk food of the type I can't resist (chips) so maybe that's helping. 

The French is not going all that well - I'm tongue tied although I can often understand a lot.  At other times, I can't understand it at all.  The local language here is Ewe and I feel like there's a lot of going back and forth between that and French so I'm not feeling too bad about it.  My teacher hasn't been available lately and she's my main practice partner so it is what it is.

I had an interesting chat with my fellow PCMO today.  We have 4 beds here in the Health Unit for volunteers to stay when they are too sick to stay at their sites and a cook/housekeeper who sometimes cooks for the volunteers when they are staying here if they are too sick to go out and get their own food.  On the weekends this requires her to work overtime which is exhausting for her and expensive.  So I've been saying to Aurelia (the other PCMO) that we should stock canned soups or frozen foods for the weekends so that Rose, the cook, doesn't have to come in.  We've actually had this conversation a few times.  It was only today that Aurelia said I would have to talk to Rose about this because this concept is foreign to the Togolese.  They only eat food made fresh each time!  She said she would have no idea how to freeze food or how long it would keep.  Imagine!  So I'll be in charge of the dietary department here from now on.

Playing games

As requested by my brother I finally attended a soccer game (le futbal) played in a village between two school teams.  It was 2 lycees which are comparable to high schools but the students range in age from 15 to well into their twenties.  I guess there's no social promotion here.  The game was arranged by some volunteers and was actually a pretext to promote the use of the moringa tree which is a fast growing tree many parts of which can be used to suppliment the diet which in many parts of Togo consists of little but refined starches.  In the picture below the woman at the left is holding a branch of the moringa tree.  The easiest way to use it is to dry the leaves and then pound them into a powder and add it to a sauce (which is put on the rice, cornmeal and yams that are dietary staples).  Moringa is very high in many vitamins, protein and calcium.  It's pretty much a miracle food for a place like Togo.  I haven't had it myself but I hear it doesn't taste bad and that added to a sauce you hardly know it's there.  So before the game and at half time, a verbal presentation was given in Ewe (the local language) and French on the benefits of moringa to bunches of mostly small children as in the bottom picture. 

These children were standing right in front of me and didn't seem to be paying much attention but I guess you never know what is getting through to people at a presentation like this.

Today, in honor of the Peace Corps's 50th anniversary, the female volunteers and staff members (yes, me too) are playing a soccer game against the English department female students at the University of Lome.  A number of the volunteers have played soccer either in high school and college so we might have a chance against English students!  There will only be one staff member on the field at a time and we don't have to play longer than 5 minutes which is good cause the game is at 3pm and it's going to be hot as usual.

I finally got my car yesterday and actually drove in Lome.  It wasn't as scary as I've been imagining even on a Friday when there tends to be quite a bit of traffic.  I picked up the car at the embassy and drove immediately to the supermarket so I could get some things that need refrigeration like ice cream and butter.  I always forget that everything is closed between about 12 and 3 and I got there at 2 so I had to go back later.  The Super Ramco is the biggest supermarket in Lome but I'm always surprised by what isn't there.  One week you can find something and then you'll never see it again so you need to stock up when you find things you think you might want.  Yesterday there were no eggs.  I can easily get eggs in my neighborhood but I found the lack quite surprising.  They also didn't have the roasted peanuts that are ubiquitous here as a snack.  And they had no Ben and Jerry's vanilla (though they had a bunch of other flavors for $7 + bucks a pop).  I wanted vanilla because my cook made me a delicious apple tart which is actually fine without ice cream but old habits die hard, I guess.  My cook convinced me to buy an ice cream maker which I agreed to do because ice cream is really expensive here (even the less fancy brands) and it's so hot that ice cream just seems like something you must have.  He hasn't used it yet though I guess because I already have a dessert in the house (the tart!).

So one last observation about Lome and maybe this is generally true everywhere but here there is always something not working.  This week my computer didn't work on several days.  When it finally got fixed on Wednesday my office air conditioning was out for 24 hours (it was my first extended experience here without A/C and actually it wasn't so bad since I started the day without it.  I could only open one window though because the ceiling of the balcony outside the other window was being painted and the smell was awful.  I was also a little worried that my lizard friend would get confused and come in the window but that didn't happen).  I was so happy that my A/C got fixed yesterday AND I found out that I could get my car.  I thought everything was finally running smoothly but when I got home with my car I found out that there is a padlock on the gate for the driveway and no one seems to know where the key is so I had to park at the office a few blocks away.  When I got home from the office I discovered that suddenly my TV wasn't working.  Electronic things make me very apprehensive but I pushed every button I could find till I finally got it to work.  Later, when I went to the kitchen to wash my dishes, there was no water (an ongoing problem in this area).  I still have no water today.  I came into the office this morning to find that I had locked the key to the padlock on the outer gate of the office IN the office.  Nice!  I couldn't find anyone to help me so eventually I just took a paperclip to the lock and popped it!  Now I'm going to go home and work on the one that's locking my driveway.  Although I have found people here to be very helpful I'm also becoming a bit more resourceful than I've been before.

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.

Assorted views from Togo

 A rare colorful sunset taken from my backyard.  When I first got here in January we were undergoing the harmattan winds that blow down from the Sahara and make the atmosphere here very hazy (with dust and sand) so the sun at the end of the day would be dim and red.  I realized in retrospect that the haze kept it from feeling so hot here (though it wasn't at all windy).  Late January and early February it suddenly felt really hot and humid.  Now that the harmattan is gone the sky is bluer some days.  Yesterday was like a lovely spring day with a bright blue sky (although considerably warmer than a NY spring).  I'm hoping it continues but I've been told that March is the hottest month here.

 These are weavers that I visited on my trip upcountry.  They are weaving long strips of fabric that then are sewn together to make cloth that's used for clothing and other things.  All kinds of interesting fabrics woven, printed, dyed and embroidered are available here.  I'm planning to go the Grande Marche (the BIG market) this weekend and try to buy some more batik cloth to get another dress made.  I still owe you a photo of the first dress which I will post next time. 

Also a photo from the trip up north.  This is from the village of one of the volunteers.  Grain is stored in these interesting mud structures.  This was a small village of about 300 people that we took a walking tour of with the volunteer.  Many of the people in this village and other villages up north live in mud houses that are round with thatched rooves like these.

Life is proceeding for me here.  I'm getting more comfortable with my duties (which include many more administrative procedures and paperwork than I've been used to, not surprisingly since I'm now working for a large governmental organization).  I'm getting to know many more of the volunteers and enjoying that a lot. 
Aurelia and I will be traveling next Monday and Tuesday to the Kpalime region, which is supposed to be relatively mountainous and a good area for hiking, to visit the new volunteers there as well as a hospital that is run by an American groups of Baptists.  It will be a relief to speak to people in English about medical care.
I'm working hard on the French but speaking it is still pretty difficult as I'm still thinking of what I'd like to say in English and then groping for French words that I don't know. 

So it's Friday again - a half day - and I'm planning to go swimming later today.  Tonight I'm going to watch the Big Liebowski in French (with no subtitles).  My French teacher recently asked me to complete a sentence in French about something that made me laugh and I mentioned the Big Liebowski, of all things.  She had no idea what I was talking about so I explained to her about the Coen brothers (all in French, mind you).

I think I'm about to start playing mah jongg as I found a few women in the book group who expressed an interest.  I'm hoping they enjoy it and don't find it too aggravating to learn (I told them there's a learning curve).