something under my bed is growling

I am sick of traveling.

Two weeks ago, I was in Pagala as a trainer for the 2010 stage's Mid Service Conference.  Last week I was in Tsevie designing the syllabus for the incoming EAFS stage.  This week I am in Kara learning how to do this country-wide bed net survey.

Coming up from Tsevie was interesting.  We were about 15k out of Tsevie going north when the traffic stopped.  We got out and walked up to see what the problem was.  A Voltic (bottled water) truck went off a bridge and a crane truck was trying to pull it out.  The problem was that the crane was blocking the bridge. Of the only north-south paved road in Togo.  They moved the crane eventually so we could get by.

Being back in Tsevie was seriously weird.  Being back in Gbatope was weirder.  I hadn't been back since I swore in.  The place has changed a lot.  New marche.  Electricity.  The road still sucks and there was an accident on death curve.  Blood all over the road.  One guy's knee looked destroyed.  There were three charcoal circles on the road, so who knows what that means . . .

Anyway.  I saw a lot of my language teachers from stage.  Aisha gave me a big hug.  She's responsible for most of the french that I know.  I went with Alex one night to eat with my (our) host family during stage.  My host mamma about tackled me.  Daniel 2 knows enough french to talk to me now.  It only took me 4 hours in the bush taxi ride down to remember their family name.  ah well.  It was nice seeing people again.  Being in Gbatope and knowing enough french to figure out what is going on is a bizarre feeling.

Then it rained and Tsevie turned into a swamp.  And I wanted to go home back up north.

The thing growling under my bed was a kitten eating a small bat.

 Its finally happened.  Technology has passed me by.  What the hell is an "ultrabook"?  I was looking at laptops online last night (found a place with fast wifi in Kara) and I ran across them. 

 All of this traveling and stuff is stressful.  I like being in village. Its (mostly) peaceful there.  If I'm gone for a week, my garden goes to hell.  My house gets dirty.  I can't keep tabs on projects in village (i dont even want to know about the status of our rabbit project) and i feel generally out of touch with everything.  Is N'Tido going to CPN to keep tabs on her pregnancy?  Are the girls practicing football during the vacation?  Etc etc.

It doesnt help that i think im developing insomnia

fast wifi and hot showers are things of beauty.  A/C is a siren.  it sounds cool (haha pun!), but it screws you up in the end.

i promise this is the last blog post with a kitten reference in the title for awhile  

Togolese Health Care, or, A Very Long Post

I spent a lot of time this week in the Togolese healthcare system.  Most of this was intentional. 

Like Ive said ad nauseum, one of the things I like about Peace Corps is the fact that I don’t know whats going on happen on any given day.  Last Monday was no exception . . .

I think I mentioned that N’tido is pregnant.  I took her into the Kouka hospital last Monday to get her blood work done.  To get there, I called my friend Richard, he’s a zedman, to come get us.

We got to Kouka, and I realized that I actually had no clue what was going on in the hospital, luckily Richard did.  He parked his moto and led the way in like he owned the place.  This was kind of funny given his penchant for wearing big floppy hats.  Richard knew the sage femme (midwife—actually the title of the nurse who runs the maternal care ward).  She got N’tido set up with all the tests that she needed right away.  Richard took us to the laboratory, helped me pay, etc.  It occurred to me that while he was helping us in the hospital, he wasn’t taking clients anywhere.

Since we had to wait until after repos for the results, I took N’tido out to lunch at Kouka’s only cafeteria.  I’m pretty sure it might have been the first time she’d been somewhere where you sit down and people bring you food.  I discovered that I can definitely use a fork better than her.  And I can drink pop out of a bottle. These, plus typing, are probably the only things I can do better than she can.  Anyway, it was interesting.  N’tido spent most of the day being overwhelmed by everything I think. 

We went back to the hospital after repos. And had to wait for the lab to finish N’tido’s blood work.  When it was done, we took her health booklet with the results to the sage femme.  Turns out N’tido is B neg.  Until Monday, I had no idea that this is a problem for women who want to have babies.  

Anyway, N’tido had to go back to the hospital on Tuesday for more tests.  I went home.  Richard met her the next morning and walked her through the rest of the tests.  No HIV.  2 parasites/infections.  Bag full of medication and vitamins.  

We had to go back to the hospital Friday with the dad to see the sage femme again.  The sage femme sat N’tido down and was like ‘you need to thank daniel for making you come in here because if he hadnt you wouldn’t have known that you are B neg and you would have had your baby at home and it might have died and people would have said it was sorcery.’  

This was after she asked N’tido if the baby was moving yet and N’tido was like “I don’t know.”  D does a lot with family planning and pregnant women in Bina and she often tells me that she’s amazed by how much women here don’t know about their bodies.  I didn’t know what she meant until I watched the sage femme explain to N’tido how it feels when one’s baby is kicking.  

I thanked Richard profusely on several occasions for his help.  Seriously, US hospitals are bad enough.  Imagine one that’s dimly lit and doesn’t have huge signs over everything.  Or helpful maps for guys whose only experience with pregnant women was about 20 years ago.  Richard was like “you came to help Togolese, and you are doing more for N’tido than her ‘boyfriend’ is, so it’s the least I can do.”  

Actually, the boyfriend is kind of in trouble.  My host dad told me that the guy came by several months ago wanting to “marry” N’tido.  Petit was like ‘no, she’s a student. Don’t touch her.’  Oops.  Getting a female student pregnant is apparently not good.  The guy has to pay for all of her medical bills and stuff now.  I can’t really muster up any sympathy for him.  

Richard and I had another hospital experience yesterday.  He was taking me to Bassar.  We were on the nice Kabou-Bassar road when a moto directly in front of us stopped in the middle of the lane with a flat tire.  Many people don’t get the concept of pulling off on the side of the road when their vehicle breaks down, probably because shoulders are rare, or are part of the road.  Anyway, there was an old woman on the back of the moto.  Her son told her to get off.  Without looking behind them.  I was spaced out looking at the landscape. Richard didn’t notice that they’d stopped dead.  Then we flashed by and something caught the toe of my chaco and wrenched my foot.  

We turned around to see what happened.  The woman had climbed down off the moto and was hopping around on the road, trying to walk it off.  Drizzling blood everywhere.  The skin on her calf had torn.  It was crumpled up like when you push a tablecloth on a hardwood table.  In this case, the table was her calf muscle. 3-4 inch tear. The woman was going into mild shock as we tied my handkerchief around her leg to slow down the bleeding.  Then we went to the hospital in Bassar.  

I hope Im never bleeding to death and need urgent care in Togo cause Richard had to buy all the surgical supplies and medicine before anything happened apart from a doctor looking at the injury.  D was in Bassar and came to hang out with me while we waited for the woman to get stitched up.  In Togo, if you cause an accident, you pay the medical bills.  Richard was out like 8 mille before the afternoon was over.  His profit margin for the trip would have been about 1.5 mille, depending on gas prices.  I felt bad for him.  He was really upset about the accident, which wasn’t entirely his fault.  I asked him about that, and he was like “yeah the guy stopped in the middle of the road and told his mother to get off.  It was stupid.  But if I’d brought it up we would have spent a lot of time arguing about it.  Me paying for it all was much faster.”  

Personal profile: Richard

Richard is a zedman; he makes his living driving people around on his moto.  He’s really good at it too.  Zedding here takes a degree of nerve (or stupidity in some cases), good depth perception, excellent reflexes, a large degree of skill, and luck.  Richard is the president of one of the two zedmen syndicates in Kouka, a fact I use to my advantage when I negotiate prices (“over charge me? Let’s call your president . . .”).  He’s one of the more, um, stocky togolese that I know.  I rarely see him without his big, gap-toothed smile.  He’s the kind of guy who has friends everywhere because that’s just the way he is; he’s happy to see everyone.  Richard knows everyone from the Catholic nuns, to the doctors in the hospital to the gendarmes. It helps that he speaks at least 5 different languages.  Once, a Fulani herdsman pushed his cattle across the road in front of us when we were going back to Nampoch.  Richard got mad, which he usually only does when someone blocks the road and about causes an accident.  He flipped out, stopped after we dodged the cattle, and cycled through a repertoire of languages until he found one the guy understood. 

 

Richard calls me “ton-ton Daniel” – uncle Daniel—half out of respect, half out of affection.  I’m not sure when we became friends.  He’d been one of the regular drivers for other Volunteers in the area until I, according to Karen once, “appropriated” him. Now, when he comes to my house on Fridays, my mama gives him a calabash of tchakpa.  He helps me when I do sensibilizations, especially the ones on gender equality; he’s really into that, especially since his daughter was born.  Today is actually her first birthday.  He’s planning a big party for her.  This is interesting because, 1, parties are expensive, and 2, Togolese usually don’t keep track of the exact day when their kids are born.  Richard is also probably one of the few strictly monogamous Togolese men that I know. Watching him and his wife interact is really funny because they are a lot alike—same build, same sense of humor, same iridescent smile.  They are devout Catholics.  Sometimes, Richard has to hurry to get back to Kouka to make it to choir practice at the church.  He responds to the universal “comment ca va?” with “good, thanks to God.”  He’s one of those people you can trust implicitly.  He’s one of those genuinely good people who you occasionally meet in life.  

Last time I was in Lome, I found a bottle of barbeque sauce for 1,750 cfa.  Best. Buy. Ever.  It makes everything taste better.  Barbeque sauce and rice?  Lunch of champions.  I think I even put it on pate once.  Of course, I might just have missed the sultry taste of high fructose corn syrup. . .

Last Sunday I was in the Kouka marche when a Togolese ‘hissed’ me down.  My usual reaction to this when Im having a less than good day, like last Sunday, is somewhat assholish.  However, before I could say much, the guy was like “are you Peace Corps?” In English. Brain reset.  

Turns out, he is the ‘brother’ of a RPVC who was in Bassar 25ish years ago.  Greg was at the Kouka marche with his friend Andy, another Bassar RPVC, and Andy’s Bassari-American wife, their son, and other Togolese relatives.  After running their son back to Bry’s for a pit stop, his stomach wasn’t acclimated to Togolese food yet, I spent a very pleasant afternoon swapping stories with a pair of 50 something RPCVs who love Togo so much that they come back every couple of years to visit and do projects.  

D and I had actually run into Anna, Andy’s Bassari wife, in Bassar the week before.  It was interesting to be in the marche with someone who could yell at people in Bassar then joke about it in English.  Andy went back to the States after completing 3 years of service and took her, and her young son, with him.  It was a refreshing experience because many PCVs get worn down and disillusioned with Togo by the end of 2 years—“I need to get out of here.  This country is stealing my soul.” That isn’t how I feel about Togo; its good to be around Americans who share my love for this place. 

I kick a kitten at least twice a day. Unintentionally. Whenever I walk through my house I have a furry escort running around my feet.

Nighan has started to bring stuff in for them to eat.  The following scenario happens probably once a day—Daniel is laying on his bed reading.  Becomes aware of ferocious growling under his bed.  Becomes inquisitive.  Investigates with flashlight.  See’s lone kitten straddling a lizard twice its size, chewing on its head, and growling at the world.  Kitten is too little to actually do more than tear pieces off, but that doesn’t stop it.  Repeat 4 times until Nighan finishes the thing off. 

I am craving Sprite right now

When I got back from Kouka on Monday I left my phone and my Nook out on my little table while I went to garden.  When I came back, I discovered that David decided that my phone and a bucket of water needed to be united.  I took it to a repair guy in Kouka, but its still messed up.  David has almost signal handedly cured me of ever wanting to procreate.

I don’t know what it is about the landscape here, but I am always noticing new stuff.  Like the other day I was biking into Kouka on the back road, and I realized that, from this one hill, I could see the mountains of Kabou, and, barely, of Bassar.  Then, a couple days later, I realized I could see the Kabou mountains from just outside of Nampoch.  Which makes sense cause they are the biggest thing in like 30 miles, but its still weird that I never noticed them before.  

Ive been watching the TV series the Walking Dead this past week, and I feel compelled to comment on it.  First of all, the people in it are stupid.  If the world was overrun by zombies, and there were abandon tanks everywhere, well . . .  I'd be learning how to drive a tank.  Secondly, one of the driving "apocalyptic" factors in the show seems to be the collapse of Western civilization, epitomized by the lack of hot showers.  Oh, the humanity.  The apocalypse is characterized by a lack of creature comforts.  Ugh.  Third, this reinforces the general lack of hope in the show.  D and I were talking about it today and she made a comment about zombies embodying "mindless evil."  This was my missing link, so to speak.  Civilization collapses, you can die any given day from something mindless and horrible, and you dont have hot showers.  This paradigm doesnt really resonate with me in Africa.  Look up Buruli ulcers (seriously, I just saw a poster about them in the Bassar hospital, i dont know what they are) and tell me about mindless and terrible.  Lack of western civilization has nothing to do with lack of hope in humanity or the world.  Finally, a zombie apocalypse is a stupid concept-- they will all die of starvation anyway. stop whining.  

that being said, i'll probably keep watching the show because apocalypse is interesting.

Thunderstorms are roiling across the horizon, gotta run.

Kittens Tombu too

My two great accomplishments for today are:

1. taking Ntido to the dispansaire for pre-natal counseling and

2. popping a big tombu maggot out of the tail of one of my kittens.

There is something satisfying about popping tombu maggots out of dogs/cats.  its almost as satisfying as watching them squirm around on cold concrete people you step on them. 

The other morning I walked out of my house to see papa scooping the brains out of a goat skull with his finger and eating them.  his response to the apparently incredulous look on my face? "C'est doux!"

So yeah, Ntido is pregnant.  I thought she was about 2-3 months ago.  then village rumor picked it up about 3 weeks ago. i hate being right sometimes.  Anyway, I tried talking to Ntido about it.  No good. D came out last week though, and had a good talk with her about about stuff.  So I feel better. It sucks being a guy Volunteer sometimes because half the population is too shy or doesn't speak french well enough to talk me.

The dispansaires, e.g. local/village/rural health clinics, have decent pre-natal counseling and infant health programs.  this is especially true with the dispansaire in Nampoch because it is run by Sisters from the Catholic Mission in Guerin-Kouka. 

I have a lot of respect for the Catholics here.  they do a lot of good work in Togo, especially in the arenas of health and education.  i'd never be a monastic, but you have to have a Lot of respect for people who dedicate their lives to making their corner of the world a better place.

D and I went in to talk to the Sister who comes out to the Nampoch dispansaire to find out when their CPN is, well D did all the talking cause she works with dispansaires, I just went along cause I knew the way. Anyway, the Sister was really nice and professional.  Unwed, pregnant teen mothers are sort of a fact of life here.

On my way into town today, I biked past an army ant mound, one of like 50.  This one was different cause it had a 15-ish centimeter long dead viper on it.  Poetic justice.

I refuse to say anything about the recent elections in the US, especially since it could get me fired.

I've reached this weird point in my service. Its time to start handing off national projects that Ive been working on.  Most national projects, like committees, publications, etc, have a year-long term.  Last month we finished up our last issue of Farm to Market and passed that off to the new editing team.  Then, last weekend, I went up to Dapaong to take part in the transition meeting for the new Food Security Committee.  I was one of the founding members of the committee; its kind of weird passing it on to new people, but in a good way.  Normally, I guess, it wouldnt be that big of a deal because I'd be getting reading to COS.  Since I am planning on being here for another year or so this feels like my mid-service point instead of the beginning of the end. 

i like the feel of real books, but i like trees and being able to have 100+ books with me on my nook.  conflicted.

there's something about kittens

as i write this, Bry's recently ex-kitten is purring on my chest.  Bry has been gone for a couple of days and her cat misses attention

how many Togolese does it take to kill a 7 inch snake?  As many as can find big sticks

when is a Togolese convinced that a snake is actually dead?  one word-- hamburger.

seriously, i watched a snake killing the other day and this one woman refused to accept that that the thing  was dead even though its head was mush

a snake-killing gave rise to one of the best ethnic cracks Ive heard in Togo.  I was drinking tchakpa with a friend of mine who is a primary school director.  Across the road from us, a couple of guys found a snake in a roll of thatch and beat it with sticks bigger than they were.  They brought it over for the director and me to examine.  A cluster of jumpy kids hovered over my shoulder.  Every time the snake twitched, they jumped.  Anyway, I was like "so are you going to eat this?" cause konkumba eat everything except for crocodiles.  The director was like no.  but then he was like "but if this was chez Lamba, the kids would already have it skinned and over a fire."  this was hilarious.  Lamba live across the river.  they and konkumba dont get along very well.

i found out that this weed that ive been pulling out of my garden by the armfull is actually edible.  I was at the nampoch marche with my friend a couple nights ago and I tried it. he was like "its konkumba salad"

since my nook decharged the other night, ive been watching this TV show-- "homeland."  its pretty good.  good acting, psychological and stuff.  i cant get into the plot though.  I feel detached from the terrorists-want-to-attack-the-us-and-we-have-to-stop-them motif.

since i promised kittens  . . .

 

they are cute. highly adorable. and do all kinds of kitten things.  like crap all over my my house.

it is funny to watch them when Ninghan brings in a lizard (often bigger than they are) and they try to eat it. 

last night i was sitting on my porch when Ninghan ran across the compound and jumped up on a 5 ft wall.  then she snatched a mouse out of one of the thatched roofs

then she took it inside for the munchkins to play with

having 4 kittens, ive decided, is a lot like having a kid.  they crap everywhere, yowl a lot, and keep you up all night

another thing that bothered me about "homeland" was that i couldnt recognize any of the cars in it

fyi- the kittens arent naturally pink.  the trim in my house is red, and the paint rubs off (it also scrubs off the floor along with kitten crap). 

continuing on the poop vein, Jacques drug me over to another compound yesterday afternoon to drink tchakpa.  there was this kid, maybe 2-3 asleep on a mat.  we sat there drinking.  he peed himself and woke up.  his mom brought over a bowl of rice to eat, and yelled at him to wash his hand first. they ate.  then he got up.  stood there looking at me-- and crapped on the ground.  plop plop plop.  his sister didn't even blink. she went and got some sorgham heads and scrapped it up. i tried not to read anything into this

ive been waging war on ants this week.  since it started raining, ant hives, colonies, whatever, periodically swarm.  there is this one kind of big brown ant that seems to prefer to live in concrete/mud brick walls- like my house.  i go around the outside of my house every couple of days and spray their holes.  im afraid of their burrows opening up on the inside of my house sometime.  that would be miserable

the same stuff that i used on ants, and that makes me afraid of 6-foot tall mutant ants/cockroaches coming to murder me in my sleep, is the same stuff that my friend Djabab sprays on his plow cattle to kill tumbu flies

village rumor has it that my oldest host sister, N'tido, is pregnant.  A fact that ive been hoping was my imagination for the past 2 months.  Ugh. 

existential speculations or life in Togo

I was in Kouka the other day talking to someone on the street when this guy walked past me wearing a skin-tight University of Wisconsin-Platteville tshirt.  its a small world

I dont think that god wanted me to come home from Lome.  D and I spent some quality time on the ride up from Atakpame sitting along the road in Blitta while the brake line in our bush taxi was repaired.  At least they caught it while we were stopped . . .
The next day, I called Richard at 830 to come pick me up from bina.  Then i called him at 11 something- he said that his moto was broken en route.  He finally got there about 1600 and we left.  Then I spent 2.5 hours in Manga with Jenn while he fixed a flat . . . and finally got home at like 2130.  . . .

 . . . to find bags of rice and gari shredded on my floor and the discovery that the kittens are not as litter trained as I thought.

I think that tumbu flies are best argument both for and against the idea of the world as the product of Intelligent Design.  They are definitely a great argument against the idea of a Loving God who cares about His Creation.  Unless He has singled out dogs as special objects of His divine displeasure. 

I am happy to be home. People in the south, specifically the Ewe, are different than they are up here.  The Ewe are more abrupt than people in the north.  People up here are more laid back and respectful. 

I am still amazed by how fast stuff grows here when it rains.  Including my garden.  My tomatoes are like 2 inches high after 9-ish days.  I found sweet potatoes, some kind of native squash, and marigolds coming up in my garden.  The marigolds are especially exciting.

The kittens are really cute.  They have figured out how to get up on my bed, so now they like to cuddle.  Then I feed them fish and fear for my fingers.  Oh well.

One of my new favorite things to do is to sit out with my family in the evenings and shell peanuts.  The kids can do it really fast; they crack the shells on the pavement and break them open with their fingers.  Adjai can do it with both hands.  I cant do it at all.  Well I can, but I destroy as many peanuts as I shell. So I shell them with 2 hands and sit there and let konkumba swirl around me.

Im kind of amazed by how much I read here.  I read all of Asimov's "Foundation" books.  Now I am working through McMaster-Bjuld's "Vorkosigan" series.  Jenn is re-reading "The Wheel of Time" so I dont feel too bad.

My Facebook feed is full of graduation announcements.  MDs, MAs, PhDs, BAs. . . . its kind of depressing cause that would have been me in a different life.  But, congratulations to all the grads.

The longer I am alive, the more I appreciate, or perhaps discover, all the shades of grey that color life.  For example, child trafficking is a problem here.  The other night Jenn was telling me how she interviewed a zedman who had been "trafficked" at 16.  He went to Nigeria, worked for awhile . . . and came back with a new moto and English.  He has more education and experience than a lot of people in Nampoch now, plus a way to earn a decent living in his moto.  Going to Nigeria worked out for him.
The flip side to this is the guy in Nampoch who, last month, tried to send a junior-high girl to Nigeria.  I cant figure out if she is his daughter or a relation or what.  Anyway, the director of her school noticed she wasnt in class, threatened her brother with beating unless he talked, found out what had happened to her, and called the Minister of Social Affairs, the national one, who happens to be from Kouka.  Within a couple of days, a warrant was issued for this guy's arrest and another warrant was sent after the girl to fetch her back from Nigeria.  Jack, and the rest of my forced marriage committee, take great pleasure in retelling the story of how the gendarmes came and arrested this guy.  He was in prison in Bassar for about a week and a half before he paid his fine and was released.  I have to bite my tongue whenever I see him around village now lest I say something untoward.  The girl is back now too.  Justice was served, the bad guy chastised (apparently his wife had to help him urinate after the gendarmes cuffed him . . .), and the victim returned.

Two instances of child-trafficking, one that benefited the "victim" in the long run, one that was basically a kidnapping.  The latter case makes my skin crawl; the former case makes it hard for me to universally condemn something that I found easy to trash before.  I could argue that, here, 16 is basically adulthood so the zedman wasnt really a "child" when he was trafficked.  I think that works.  I think it explains the discrepancy.  The age of consent, 18, in the US is an arbitrary rule that has become a socially relative fact.  It hardly works here where the concept of "childhood" is abbreviated at best and in no way resembles that culturally mandated period of societal dis-responsibility in the US.  The 10-12 year old girls I saw working in the fields as I biked in today bear witness to that.  They contribute directly to their family's well-being at the sake of their own education.  I find it easy to condemn people who dont send their children to school, but what about when its the choice between education and hunger?  A preteen girl torn from her home and shipped to Nigeria is tragic.  But what about when she comes back fluent in English, like the woman I met in Bina a month ago?  Still as tragic? Yes. Maybe.  I dont know.  Shades of gray.

Every time I see a horizon here, I wonder what cool stuff is over it waiting to be discovered.

Another goodbye

When I found out that I was coming to Togo, I spent a month or so checking out current Togo Volunteers' blogs.  One of them, I cant remember which, had a quote to the effect of "PC service is a series of sad goodbyes and anxious hellos."  As in you constantly have to say goodbye to amazing people as they finish their services.  They are sometimes replaced by new people whom you hope will be cool too.  I'm currently in Lome to see Jacqui off-- she was in Karen's stage but she decided to extend for 6 months.  Her post, Bassar, isnt being replaced.  At least not yet.  Her house was awesome; you could stand on her porch and look out at the Bassar mountain.  I have a lot of memories in that house-- I spent last Christmas in the bathroom there, got dumped there, made ravioli there, had a hooded onesie party (don't ask) there, etc.  More importantly though, Jacqui is leaving. A piece of the fabric of PC Togo is leaving.  She's done a lot of great things in her service.  She just finished building a school in a village in the mountains near Bassar for example.  People will remember her, like they remember most Volunteers, for a long time.  Jacqui is probably the best/ classiest dressed Volunteer I know in Togo.  That is saying a lot. Service goes on, but its like a stained glass window just lost a piece.


Anyway.

I was standing in front of my bookshelf the other day looking for something to read when I realized how much stuff by Russian, or Russian-born authors Ive read in Togo.  Asmov's Foundation series, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Rand (I refused to read Atlas Shrugged but the Fountainhead is really good), Pushkin, Boris Akunin, Boris Pasternak,  and some others I cant remember.  I have not read Tolstoy.  I am not sure what this says about me.

One thing I've always found interesting about Togo is the clouds.  I don't know if it has to do with elevation, latitude or what, but clouds here seem to hang lower than they do in the US.  It makes for spectacular thunderstorm viewing.  We were sitting at lunch today and I watched thunderstorms build out east of us, over the ocean and Benin.  They looked like towering flying saucers. The other night there were a couple developing south of Bassar during Jacqui's going away party.  The setting sun turned them into pink towers.  Then the light went out and lighting lit them up from the inside.

Its sort of amazing how much I look forward to coming to Lome just to eat.  Although, now that I think about it, its probably not that amazing considering I consider a bowl of rice covered in hot sauce a meal.  However, Lome does have the best faux pizza in Togo.  And Indian food.  And Vietnamese. And it has Lebanese food. A lot of Lebanese food.  I do not know why there are a lot of Lebanese in Togo, but I am thankful that they are here.  D likes to go to Lebanese places to celebrate her roots.

Speaking of food, I love my region, but the food situation there sucks.  We're entering the "season of famine."  Most of last year's foodstocks are gone, or used for seed.  This year's stuff isn't ready to harvest yet.  The staple food is pate . . . pate . . . and more pate . . .. Bush food ( i feel like there is a word for this but i can't think of what it is) is really popular.  Wild grapes are starting to come in.  Anyway, this is weird because I can drive south for 4 hours down to Atakpame and eat fresh grilled corn and avacados. Its the land of milk and honey -- just because its been raining there for a couple months longer than it has been up north.  oh well.

The rain difference is even noticeable between  Kouka and Bassar, and they are only like 55k apart.  Bassar is obviously greener than Kouka.  The other day, my host dad was like "Rain for Nampoch is just wind.'  Just goes to show that farmers are the same everywhere.  They are always griping about the weather. 

On the moto again: A saga of traveling in west Kara

Monday, I was in Binaparba, D's village, on my way home from Atakpame.  The trip on Sunday up to Bassar from Atakpame was hell-ish.  The bush taxi from Atakpame to Sokode was ok.  But we had to wait for like 3 hours in Sokode for the Bassar car to leave.  When it did, at like 1900, I was sitting next to a drunk guy who kept passing out on me.  And the driver went extra slow through the mountains, but I digress .  . .

So, Monday morning I called my regular zed-man from Kouka, Richard, to come get me.  Richard and I are good friends, so I call him whenever I can.  Anyway, later on, D and I decided to walk the 4k into Bassar from Bina to meet up with Saye.  I texted Richard to just pick me up in Bassar.  He called me about an hour later, said that his moto was broken, so he'd sent another guy who did not have a cellphone, so I needed to go back to Bina to meet him.  Back in Bina, the zedman showed up at like 1330, no problem, and we left.
The road from Bassar to Kabou is new and paved.  I was spacing out on the moto, listening to music and watching mountains and brooding thunderstorms pass when the back end of the moto started wobbling.  Flat tire. The zedman looked at it, and saw that the valve stem had blown off the inner tube.  He left me along the road while he went back to Bassar to fix it.  I sat there and watched thunderheads build over the mountains to the south.  Then I went and kicked a termite mound for fun.  It hurt my foot. 

The zedman came back and we continued.  We were about 8k out of Kabou, going through the new road construction, when the back of the moto wobbled again.  Same thing.  Only in the middle of nowhere between Kabou and Manga.  The only things in sight were a bridge construction crew and this line of dark clouds.  I had just been ruminating on how it looked like we could outrun this storm to Kouka . . .
I was all for finding the nearest tree and waiting out the storm, but the zedman was like, "we gotta walk to Manga to find a mechanic." Ok.  Then the rain hit.  I, for once, was really glad I had my Peace Corps-issued moto helmet.  Cause the rain was coming sideways.  Then I realized that rain shouldn't be making a "tink" sound when it bounced off my helmet.  This was just after the back of my neck really started stinging.  Pea-sized hail.  As shitty as I felt, I was glad I wasn't my zedman-- I at least had a helmet and a huge pack to protect part of me.  He had nothing. 

So we trudged down the road in the rain, him pushing his moto.  Then the rain stopped, eventually.  And the prefet came up behind us in his Toyota pickup.  He's a nice guy.  He had his driver stop, and I got in the back seat, and got a free ride back to Kouka.  This is roughly analogous to a state governor picking me up in the US.  If the US was the size of West Virginia . . .

Back in Kouka, I dried off, ran errands, and ate lunch/dinner.  The zedman eventually made it back, and came to pick me up at Bry's.  He was like "I just bought a new inner tube and a new tire. We're good now."  So, about 1600 we left for Nampoch.  Just over the bridge, the rear of the moto wobbled . . . we slide and spun around for a bit.  The inner tube blew. Again.  I was like "ok, I'm walking home."  Fortunately, a friend of the zedman passed and took me the rest of the way to Nampoch. 

I usually pay 5 mille for a trip that should take about 1.5 hours.  That day, I left at 1330, got home about 1830, and paid 8 mille cause I felt bad about the zedman blowing 3 inner tubes.

I slept all day the next day.

The kittens are getting big.  I got home and I couldn't figure out why my house smelled bad.  Then I discovered that the kittens figured out the concept of the litter box, they are just too small to get into it  . . .

 Flies bite.  They are more annoying than mosquitoes. 

So our term as the editing team of Farm to Market is finished.  It was fun.  We just finished the last issue in Atakpame this past weekend.  It was kind of a mess cause the Malaria Action Committee was meeting at the transit house at the same time we were so the place was crawling with Volunteers.  But it was good.  Read issues of Farm to Market here.

Seeing people is always nice.  After I am around a lot of Americans, though, I find myself wanting to go hide in village for awhile.