Just a quick note

I have no photos to post this time since I think I left them on my laptop - I did have some nice ones from Tanzania of giraffes, zebras and monkeys - will maybe post next time but by then they would be old news.  I went to Tanzania in late September for a continuing medical education conference that the Peace Corps has annually for the medical officers.  They tend to be in interesting places but the conference itself is very time consuming with little time off so you can really only enjoy the place if you are staying for longer which I couldn't do this year since I'm going to be away for a month in November.  But it would have been a great place to stay longer with access to the Serengetti, the Ngorongoro crater and Killimanjaro.  Some other time, I hope.  I did get to go on a minisafari close to the hotel (it was in Arusha) and see some pretty great giraffes, etc.

I'm very much anticipating coming home in 11 days - have a dentist appointment and will be visiting as many people as I can along with stocking up on things I can't get here (or at least can't get easily).  There are no department stores in Lome so if you need something like a picture frame, a piece of luggage for a laptop or a sports bra (all of which I'm going to get in the US) it's kind of hard to know where to start.  There's a store called Champion which is Lome's answer to Walmart (as we all say) but really it's a very poor substitute - it had a lot of some things (like all kinds of liquor and lots of household goods) but not much of other things you might want.  It's easy to buy a bra in Lome - women sell them from piles on the tops of their heads - but they are all the same kind with molded cups in every imaginable color.  And how do they get tried on?  I have no idea.  I guess you just hope it fits...

So I'll be in Washington for a training of new medical officers that takes place over 3 weeks and I'll be home for a bit before and after.  I'll also be spending a weekend in Boston and another one in Chicago so it will be a pretty busy trip but I can't wait!

It's gotten very hot here again particularly at midday which is keeping me in my house as much as possible since it's always very comfortable there.  It's tolerable outside in the morning before the sun gets too high.  I've actually started running a few days a week - something I would have never imagined I'd do and I can't say I really like it but it does feel kind of good - but I have to go very early before it gets hot but after the sun comes up.  There's maybe a half an hour that's good for that.  Mostly I'm swimming late in the day at the ambassador's pool which is really great as always.  It's still pretty nice in the evening - there's often a bit of a breeze so that sitting outside can be quite pleasant.  There's been a little rain this week which is good because it's been way too dry here.  My yard was frying till I finally figured out how to connect my hoses so they'd reach the front (I have to admit I didn't really try to figure it out till the grass was completely dead looking) but now it looks a lot better.  I found another gardener (my previous one got sick and stopped coming) who is doing an excellent job.  Looking forward to those cool autumn days in NY and DC...

We got a memo in the office yesterday which I found quite funny.  It was about emergency procedures in the office.  There was a part about what to do if there was a bomb threat which was that everyone should start looking around their area for anything suspicious and then tell the security officer or the general manager if we see anything.  It just underscored so many things that are different here - there is no bomb squad that you could call so you just have to make do with what you have.  I'm not even sure to what extent you could call the police and expect a response.  I'm sure that procedure isn't Peace Corps sanctioned so I'm waiting to see if it gets revised since generally you would expect to evacuate the premises.  But then what?  Who's going to determine if the office is safe?  Who would defuse a bomb if there was one?  I have no idea...

And another thing - the whole length of the dirt road that runs outside the PC office was dug up by the Chinese (they are all over this continent digging things up, I think) to a depth of about 15 feet.  A concrete gutter was laid in the bottom and then it was all covered up again in sand.  The road cuts the neighborhood in 2 and the contruction has made travel very difficult.  Additionally, large piles of sand have been left in the roads that intersect this road so that walking around the neighborhood is like walking on a beach.  Supposedly, the road will be paved in 2 YEARS!  So meanwhile, we're in a beach-like setting for that time.  In the US we would be complaining, we would be wanting information.  But in Togo there's no one to complain to nor can you get information most of the time.  You really do have to just go with the flow.  It's hard to learn to do that for me.  I spend pointless time being angry about things I can't control.  But it is a lesson...

Today is Friday - the half day that is the payoff for the long hours Monday through Thursday so I'm heading home now.  I hope I'll see some of you soon.

Back from Kpalime

So Pat is gone now and I'm back to my very quiet life (not that life with Pat was noisy but we were pretty busy, it seems).  He took lots of pictures this summer so all of these are his.  This is a large toad in our yard.  Our yard is looking pretty good but it's another dry season and everything is in danger of frying so I'm going to be out there watering pretty regularly.  We had a gardener but he hasn't been around lately - need to get another one.

Before he left, though, we took one last weekend trip out of Lome to Kpalime, a lovely town in the mountainous region of Togo that's about 2 hours north of Lome.  We actually didn't stay in Kpalime (although it is a nice town with good places to stay and to eat) but went a little east to Kuma to see an organic coffee grower who works with one of the Volunteers.  He took us on a tour of the plantation where we saw coffee growing - it's berries about the size of cranberries than turn red or yellow when they are ripe.  The trees are only about 15 feet tall at the tallest.  These ones are organically grown and raised in the shade (which makes the coffee better somehow).  When the berries are ripe, they are dried for about a week and then roasted.  At Kuma Coffee, they roast them over wood fires in big pans that are placed on small terracotta stoves in a little thatch roof structure.

We spent the night in Kuma at a very nice little inn called Auberge Nectar - nice big, clean room.  The food wasn't too good, though.  When you get chicken in Togo it's quite a gamble - it can be so tough as to be inedible (as mine was) but it always comes with a side of rice or spaghetti or frites and those are usually pretty good.  Right outside our window we saw bananas growing and  learned that that large pendulous flower will drop off when the bananas are ready to be picked.

This is a few of the mist-covered hills next to the auberge.

The next morning we took a walk with the brother of Aurelia, my coworker.  Actually, David is her cousin but, considering we just randomly ran into him, it was still pretty amazing.  It turns out that she grew up in the house right next to the auberge.  David told us a lot about the tropical plants we saw on our walk, including their traditional medical uses.  He chose 3 different plants at various points during our walk and used them to paint a butterfly on my arm in orange, red and yellow.  It didn't come off for 3 days despite repeated exposure to water.

This area is noted for its many butterflies.

Here he used the scraping sof the inside of a pod.

We walked around in what seemed like circles past various settlements though they might have all been the same town.  That's David in the middle.

A European (I think he was Swiss) man used to live in Kuma and he painted on many of the doors and wooden window shutters.

After our walk around Kuma we drove another 2 hours to the Danyi plateau which is another beautiful mountainous area.  Unfortunately, it was pouring rain.  We spent the night at a monastery that is noted for making fruit syrups and jams and also is known as a place to stay.  We found out you're supposed to call a month in advance, but they took pity on us and let us stay after we told them we were a married couple.  For about $10 we had a room (decent but simple - after all it is a monastery), dinner and breakfast.   We toured around the grounds where they grow coffee, various kinds of fruit and peppercorns.  We stayed for the church service on Sunday morning which was a Catholic mass in French and Ewe with a definite African feel to it.  A chorus of girls sang accompanied by drums and a cowbell and danced to the alter with the offering.

Right after Pat left, I went to the midservice conference for the Volunteers.  A year into their service, they all get together at a training site about 1/3 of the way up the country and have various workshops some of which I helped with.  So I was there from Tuesday till Friday (yesterday).  It's nice to be back in Lome and have a long weekend.  I start school again on Tuesday (health economics) and in 3 weeks I'm going to Tanzania for a week of continuing medical education - should be interesting as I'll get to see a little bit of east Africa and meet a bunch of other PCMOs (Peace Corps medical officers) - both Americans and HCNs (host country nationals).  I would be missing everyone (particularly Pat) right about now but I'll be in New York at the end of October before I spend 3 weeks at yet another training in Washington.  It seems like it's all just around the corner and I'm going to be busy with work till then as we're getting a new group of trainees in 2 weeks.

Back from Iceland

And boy was it great!  Everything that Togo isn't so it made for a perfect vacation from my point of view.  Gorgeous weather everyday except for a brief period of rain one afternoon when we were driving (with only one windshield wiper as a bird actually hit the windshield in the dark and broke the wiper somehow - I didn't think it was possible to hit a bird but it is).  I got to actually wear sweatshirts for the first time in 7 1/2 months.  Hardly any people.  Very tranquil and restful even with all the driving.  Good roads even when they weren't paved.   Delicious food once we got over the sticker shock.  It's expensive (which Togo is not) but you get what you pay for and sometimes in Togo you can't get it no matter what you're willing to pay.  I did get a really bad sunburn on my nose because it was light out 20 hours/day and I've avoided that the whole time in Togo.  So Iceland is a beautiful and remote place.  We drove around the Ring Road counterclockwise so that we ended up in the most touristy part at the end of the trip.

This is a glacier (part of the biggest glacier in Europe) and the tiny black dots are people walking on it.  We didn't do that ourselves but the sight of it was amazing.  We had been to Glacier National Park a few years ago which was very beautiful but the glaciers there are like icecubes compared to this baby.

The landscape in Iceland goes from looking like the moon (barren as can be) to being emerald green like this photo.  That's a tiny cottage dwarfed by the cliffs above.  The rock formations are endlessly amazing.  And there are so many waterfalls (big long ones from the cliffs above) that you get jaded after a while.

Here they all are.  We traveled around in a large minivan and did quite a bit of driving which is typical for a vacation for us.  Everyone handled it pretty well.  The kids played B for Botticelli for most of the letters of the alphabet and watched old Seinfeld episodes and slept.  This is a picture of a glacial lake that has icebergs in it.

This is me at a geothermal field.  The gases are sulphurous, hence, the face.  Iceland's energy is also entirely geothermal.

We took a walk/hike (depending on your viewpoint) above this little village in the Westfjords area.

Near Humavik in mid northern Iceland.

Walking around an crater made by a volcano near Myvatin.

A thermal pool near Myvatin.  We loved these thermal pools - warm in the cool air.

A puffin.  They are adorable when they take off to fly with their orange feet dragging behind.  They're more graceful in the water, I hear. 

A basalt mountain - the columns are like ones we saw in Northern Ireland.  Puffins nest in the grass above.

The Blue Lagoon early on Sunday morning before anyone was in the pool yet.

This is a picture from the more north western part of Iceland which is mostly fjords.  Just spectacular.

So visit Iceland by all means.  We intend to go back and spend more time sometime not too far in the future.

Now I'm back in Togo and it's kind of like I never left but it was great to have a break that really seemed like a break.

More life in Togo

Me in my office taken by my coworker the other day.  I spend a lot of time at my desk in front of a computer monitor.  Patients don't come into the office all that much although I do all the physicals which are done at midservice (at one year in Togo) and when the volunteers leave.  The rest of the time much of what we do is over the phone - assessing and telling the volunteers what to do to take care of themselves.  When they are really sick (and not to far away) we will tell them to come into the office sometimes, particularly to get lab work done.  But often they are managed over the phone.  It's kind of an interesting skill to develop - you have to imagine what you are looking at from the volunteer's description so you learn to ask very pointed questions that help you do that.

Pat has been here over a month and we're getting ready to go to Iceland the day after tomorrow.  After worrying about all the arrangements and what could go wrong (it's different leaving from Togo somehow), I've reached a state of peace and am looking forward to what should be the opposite of Togo.  Although Togo is pretty nice right now - temperatures mostly in the 80s with a nice breeze a lot of the time.  I would have never guess that Togo would be a great place to be in July and August from how it was in March, April and May.
Pat has been having a really good time getting out and about in Lome in a way I've never done.  He goes running many mornings and sees a lot of the city that way.  He also strikes up quite a bit of conversations with random people on the street.  He has found pick-up basketball games to play in and has played soccer and basketball for Peace Corps teams comprised of a mixture of staff and volunteers (and some tangentially related people - boyfriends, siblings, etc. - who are good at the game being played).
He and I have been playing tennis at the ambassador's - it really is kind of like our private club - a tennis court and a pool mostly just for us.  My tennis is not good but it's not as bad as I would have thought it would be and we're basically just doing it for fun.  It will be hard for him to leave but we're not thinking about that right now.
So life goes on in Togo - the ups and the downs.  Some days I really like it and other days it just seems so dysfunctional it's maddening.  You really have to learn to go with the flow in a place like this.  It's not like things have to be done all in a rush but, as a dedicated New Yorker, it's hard for me to get out of that mentality that everything should work and run on time.  They're digging up the road outside of our office (which is dirt) and we've heard they're going to replace it with dirt to let it settle for 2 YEARS before they pave it.  It's so hard for me to conceptualize living like that for that length of time but I'll be gone before it's done, apparently.
So next time, pictures of Iceland.

More travels

Hopefully, this little video will work for readers.  Pat (who arrived safely on June 28) and I took a road trip through northern Togo to get to northern Benin (the country due east of Togo) which has 2 wildlife preserves.  We drove through this town (among others) called Bafilo and decided to film it as we went through.  It's a pretty typical view of a large town on the Rue National (the main north-south road of Togo).

This is the large putddle that forms when it rains outside the Peace Corps office (you can see the round logo on the wall on the left).  The road is being fixed but we've heard it will be 2 years till they actually pave it so we aren't holding our breath.

Hippos!  We saw these, crocodiles, baboons, monkeys, cheetahs, elephants, several kinds of antelope and many beautiful and amazing birds in the park Pendjari in Benin where we spend the long July 4th weekend. Our drive to get there took 2 days and the night before we actually entered the park we woke with a bat inside our mosquito netting (so now we're getting the series of 5 rabies shots which luckily are cheap and available here in Lome) but it was all completely worth it for the amazing wildlife we saw.  We stayed one night at the hotel in the park and there were only 2 other people staying (who I knew because they were volunteers).  The rainy season is the off season here apparently but it only rained for about 40 minutes of our stay and having the park to ourselves (with our guide who was amazingly sharp-eyed) was fantastic.

Instead of taking the border crossing we took on the way to the park, we took a more northern one since we were stopping in the town of Kante to visit a volunteer.  Much of Togo is kind of low scrubland and not all that attractive but around Kante it's more hilly and, at this time of year, very green, so it was a very pretty drive.  As you can see here the dirt roads are all reddish and since we drove with the windows opened (to get a nice breeze and see better since the car windows are tinted very dark) we and the inside of the care ended up with a fine red dust all over us which took several showers to remove.  It's still hot midday but much better than in March-May.  This backroad border crossing didn't have an actual place where you get your passport stamped.  The road from Benin to it was good (this is a picture of it) but once we got to Togo we ended up on a very badly rutted road and even got a flat tire in the middle of nowhere.  We had a spare but it had no air in it.  Fortunately, many people stopped to see if they could help including a guy on a moto (motorcycle) who took our tire to Kante (about 30 minutes away), got it filled with air and brought it back to us.  We were very grateful and relieved and off to Kante ourselves soon after.

More of northern Togo/Benin - really very pretty at this time of year - a nice break from Lome.

So Pat is playing soccer this afternoon for a pickup Peace Corps team consisting of staff and volunteers -not sure who they're playing but it should be pretty interesting to watch.  Other than that he has been very busy at my house while I'm working making a garden, a compost pile and rearranging the furniture so it's a lot more attractive.  He's got some kind of nesting gene I don't have obviously because I'd never really noticed that the living room could be so much more comfortable done differently.  I'm working on 2 summer courses online to finish my MPH degree that I started 10 years ago (glad there's no apparent limitation on how long you can take for this!) which I could finish before I get done here although I think there might be a course that I need to stream video for and that's not possible here in Togo (yet.  You never know, though, with technology).  They are keeping me very busy this month but I'll be done just in time to go to Iceland on vacation - I can't imagine anywhere more different than this.

Rainy season

It poured rain this morning for about 6 hours - hasn't done that before but rainy season started a few weeks ago and mostly it seems to mean that it's more likely there will be rain (though usually not for very long) and it's noticeable cooler.  My Togolese co-worker recently refered to the weather as being cold and I just stared at her.  I still have worn anything other than short sleeves and I will be surprised if I ever have to here if this is the cooler weather.  But it can be quite pleasant - evenings, in particular, when the sun is down, can be a great time to sit outdoors and have a beer.  This photo is of 4 children walking to church today.  I was coming back from a walk and was nearly home (the man in blue on the right is the guard in front of my door).  Not many people seem to be church goers around here.  I saw large groups of mostly men running when I took my walk this morning before the rain but also saw small family groups dressed up for church.

This photo I took in early February and may have already posted but it fits with the theme of rainy season even though it was actually taken during the dry season as you can see from the brown folliage.  A storm was on the way.  This was in a village about halfway up the country.

This is a particularly cute little restaurant (green on the left) in my neighborhood.  It's just a small freestanding structure (I always wonder about zoning codes in Lome when I see things like this) where someone cooks and serves food.  I like the little half curtain so that the diners have some privacy as they drink their cafe au lait.

This is an amazing outlier of a building near my house.  It's much taller than anything around.  It looks brand new and it's very colorful and, as you can see, it celebrates Obama and even Chicago.  Obama is very popular here - Obama shirts, Obama stores, Obama restaurants.  A few times I've told a Togolese that I'm from America and the next word out of his mouth is Obama.  It makes me wonder what they think he represents or what he is going to do.  Unfortunately our language barrier is too great for a long discussion.

This is a paved road in my neighborhood - not too many of those but this shows actual stores rather than little sidewalk stands which are also very common.  The red store is like a tiny grocery store.  In the green building is a nice little bakery where you can get a baguette for 150 CFA (30 cents).

So why haven't I written is so long?  I don't really know except I haven't had a chance to take many pictures and I don't want to post without them.  I've been pretty busy - a new training group came in a week ago and there was a lot of preparation for that.  The  volunteer group that started in August 2009 is beginning to leave and I have to do all their physical exams - a bit time consuming but now I have the routine of it down pretty well.  I decided to resume my MPH degree program which I was doing on line anyway.  I took a year off when I wasn't sure what my internet would be like in Africa but I've decided I have the time and decent enough service to go back. 

The Peace Corps took back my TV (which was on loan since I arrived) which I had to pay the cable on anyway and I found myself watching a whole lot of junk so now I have a lot more free time which is great so far.  I bought some Seinfeld episodes on DVD at a local tag sale (those happen when expatriates are leaving Lome and they don't want to pack a lot of stuff to take to their next post) so I've been watching those on my laptop (I'm rationing myself).  I've read some great books - I would particularly recommend The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper about growing up privileged in Liberia and then living through the coup in the early 1980's and moving to the US.  I'm still swimming a lot - in fact even more now that I have a car and can get there even if it's going to be dark before I get home. 

I feel pretty comfortable in Lome at this point - it's easy to get around in the car, my French (while deficient) enables me to ask directions and understand the reply, and I really do like my house.  It's comfortable, cool and spacious.  So life is pretty good for me here.  And Patrick (my husband) will be arriving in just a little over 2 weeks so that will be great.

I went to a gathering of Togolese teachers of English this past Friday (I went with a friend who is a trainer of teachers of English as a foreign language) which was really a great experience in that I had the chance to speak at length with local people in English.  It was nice to have the opportunity to talk about things other than Peace Corps work and get the Togolese perspective.  In Togo, English is a required subject in middle school even though there doesn't seem to be much use of it here and I don't get the impression that the Togolese travel much though I guess there is a connection to Ghana.  A fair number of Ghanaians work in Lome and go home every night across the border which is about 1/4 mile away.  And many people here have relatives and other connections with Ghana.

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.