the world is spinning

Its mango season.  Again.  

I was riding out of Nampoch this morning when Kodjo flagged me down.  He said his wife is having contractions.  She was walking around trying to see if they were real or not.

(update: its a boy)

If you want to know something of my current state of mind, know this.  I am switching between “Spancil Hill” by the Dubliners and the Dropkick Murphys’ rendition of the same song, “Fairmont Hill.”

Fruit in the States generally sucks.  Except for apples.  And grapes.  I was thinking about this when we were eating pineapple for breakfast at this Rasta place in Cape Coast.  The pineapple he served us, while lightly bouncing to a reggae beat, was pale white.  About the same shade as my stomach.  Bit into it and the flavor explosion on my tongue about took my head off.  It tasted like how you hope every pinna colada you’ve ordered will taste.  It tasted like how that ¼ of a golden pineapple sitting in a plastic tube in Meijer’s looks like it should taste.  It tasted like Rasta guy had just biked over to the Garden of Eden and picked it.  It was that good. Like the bananas that I wax vocal about.  Coconuts?  Speak not to me of those hairy uniformly sanitized things piled in Kroger’s like so many discarded Rocky Mountain Oysters.  Speak to me instead of those fuzzy little balls of goodness whose meat whispers to my mouth secrets of nature.  Give me an avocado sprinkled with salt, pepper, some lemon juice, and I will show you manna.  Last night N’tido gave me some ungrafted mangos.  Little things more string and seed than pulp, but containing more flavor than any two of those nerfball-sized, insipid mangos that grace your produce section.  Give me a fruit that tries to choke the life out of my taste buds, I don’t care what it looks like.  

Ive been watching American TV again since I was in Ghana and downloaded the 3^rd season of the Walking Dead.  I am, in my old age, or maybe in my isolation, somewhat surprised by the level of violence that permeates American TV.  Sure, I expect splattered brains on HBO shows, but on network TV?  What I find more interesting, however, is the ongoing, hypocritical Puritanism on the same shows towards sex.  Everyone (almost) has sex.  Not everyone joins biker gangs and beats up their rivals.  TV shows are rarely merely entertainment, usually they have some societal/cultural message they explore.  This is what makes good TV shows interesting. The violence in these shows suggests that America, as a culture, is more comfortable working through societal issues via the medium of fantasy violence.  That’s kind of scary.  Which kill more people, guns or boobs?  

Its been raining a lot recently.  Kadar took me down to D’s last weekend.  I was surprised how green Mt. Bassar was compared to my house.  Last Tuesday night a massive storm came through.  It soaked everything pretty well.  On my way into town this morning, I passed a lot of people out planting corn and other stuff.  

There is a natural gas shortage in Togo for some reason.  My egg sammie guy is down to his last tank.  Literally the next day after he told me about the gas shortage, D called me to say her gas tank was out.  We started a massive search to find someplace that had full tanks.  Bassar, no.  Kabou, no.  Sokode. nope.  Kara, maybe. . . nope, just kidding.  Not for a month.  Luckily, Kadar remembered that he’d bought a tank for his girlfriend in Kabou that she didn’t use, so we took that to D.  

I think that Nighan is pregnant. Again. 

My new favorite breakfast is spaghetti au gras with a hotdog omelet on top. or a calabash of tchapka

Another sign that rainy season is picking up is that a lot of people are walking around my village with plasters stuck to their faces.  Pasting together injuries from moto accidents on muddy roads. 

Something I’ve been thinking, from my weekly meander on Facebook, is the claim that guns are part of an “American” way of life.  I’ve just been wondering—how much time a year does the average American spend playing with his/her guns?  Couple hours a week? A month? A year?  A gun supplies what percentage of the average American’s yearly caloric intake?  25%? 10%? 1%?  I grew up with guns and I have a hard time seeing how my way of life would significantly change at all if strict gun control policies were enacted.  I certainly wouldn’t starve, or be somehow less “American.”

10 Ghanaian nights

D and I just took a vacation to Ghana.  These are some of my thoughts about it.  Describing my trip day by day would be boring for both you and me.  Especially since some days all we did was lay in air conditioned hotel rooms while we played around on fast Wi-Fi and debated which restaurants we were going to try next. 

We spent a couple nights in Kumasi, the former capitol of the Asante kingdom, many more nights in Cape Coast, former trading town and seat of the British Gold Coast administration, and a couple in Accra.  I went to a movie in a real movie theater for the first time in like 3 years.  And we ate real mexican food.  These were both amazing.

How to compare Ghana to Togo?  Or rather Lome to Accra?  In Lome there are sandy roads.  In Accra there are billboards advertising, and stores selling, iphone 5s and those new laptops that are half tablet.  And no sandy roads that I saw. 

Over the course of my Peace Corps service I have, on occasion, found myself thinking about slavery, and the slave trade, that used to be endemic to this area.  My area in Togo is on the border of what used to be the Asante kingdom and was probably once rife with slave raiders. This might actually be why the Konkumba developed a reputation as being really good with bows, but that’s beside the point.  Anyway, when we went to Ghana we went to the Cape Coast and Elamina castles—two prominent slave trading fortresses on the coast where the British, Portuguese, Swedes, and Dutch discovered that there was more wealth to be found in humans on the Gold Coast than from minerals.  The dank dungeons under Cape Coast castle are one of the creepiest places I have ever been in my life.  Something like 2 million africans are estimated to have passed through, either living or dead, the castle, including Michele Obama’s ancestors.  Slightly less dark, but even more soul-chilling are the “condemned” cells, where rebellious slaves were chained up in the dark, without food or water, until they died as a warning to others.   

It was interesting going to Kumasi and seeing the seat of the Asante kingdom, which, at during its heyday, had a population comparable to that of the US at the same time.  Togo doesn’t have history like that.  But the juxtaposition between Kumasi and Cape Coast is cool.   

The power goes out in Ghana too, just like in Togo.  This similarity could be due to the fact that Togo buys a lot of its power from Ghana.

The food in Ghana is awesome. We ate a lot of good vegetarian food, as well as the odd cheeseburger, well at least I did.  The food in Cape Coast was great.  There is this string of little vegetarian Rasta eateries there. Awesome food.  We also got some seafood pizzas to satisfy D’s lobster craving. 

I think I have mentioned before about hanging out with lots of Volunteers eventually stresses me out.  Ghana, at least where we were, is crawling with tourists and expats.  This took me awhile to adjust to.  I found myself wanting to whisper when we went to restaurants with bunches of loud british tourists near us. 

Ghana where you can walk down nice roads but you gotta watch out to keep from falling into the stinking gutter along those roads.

This being said, one of the coolest things that happened to us involved an expat.  We were eating out our final night in Accra at a pizza place. We’d gotten a bottle of a nice shiraz with our seafood pizza.  There was this expat guy sitting facing us.  I’d noticed him when we sat down, but I didn’t think anything about it.  Anyway, we were engaged in an animated discussion about Shakespeare when this expat dropped a card on our table on his way out.  Basically, the card said “enjoy the wine.” Our waitress came over looking bemused and said that he’d paid for our wine—it actually cost as much as our pizza.  She was really bemused when we told her we had no idea who he was.  Finally she decided “oh, he must know your father.”  Sure.  But, it was really cool. 

Another cool thing we did was to visit this national park near Cape Coast.  This park's claim to fame is an suspended walkway above the forest canopy.  This walkway is 30-40 meters above the ground is suspended between trees.  The trees much taller. Once I got over the swaying walkway--it is basically aluminum planks suspended in netting-- I was amazed.  Being 100+ feet in the air didnt really bother me too much because you cant really see the ground through the canopy.  That park is one of the few remaining bit of old growth forest in Ghana.  The place must have been incredible before before it was logged off.

I never thought that I would miss bad roads until I went to Ghana.  Ghanaians drive like accidents are something that happen to other people.  Always.  Despite evidence to the contrary.  West Africans generally view the future as something that may or may not happen later, as opposed to something that could be a certainty.   Accidents on Togolese roads are usually turned over/burned out vans and trucks, or old cars.  Ghanaian accidents involve newer cars in head on collisions.  On one curve I counted 3 wrecked cars in as many kilometers.  We went by signs saying “slow down! 4 people died here!” In Togo, speed limit postings are something to aspire to.  In Ghana they are like crappy Christmas tree ornaments that you hang up out of sentimental value and pretend like they don’t exist.  Passing is considered to be a civic duty.  Tailgating is patriotic. Crumpled wrecks along the road are the remains of drivers who did not pass enough.  Lanes are something you share, grudgingly.  Ghanaian drivers wear seat belts.  But these not viewed as restraining devices.  Rather they are a divine commandment from God Herself saying that He will not allow harm to befall the wearer.  Every little town on a main road deploys a legion of car-sized speed bumps to arrest the progress of blistering traffic.  The only other thing drivers stop for are police check points. Of which there is a surfeit.  One driver we had yelled at other drivers for not going through roundabouts right—then he tailgated people at 130 kph before he passed them and then cut them off.   

The vacation was really fun, but I am glad to be home again.  Here, I have my secret language, I know how much stuff is supposed to cost, and people treat me as an oddity, not as a tourist.

But, go to Ghana some day. Seriously.

through a glass darkly

I am in Ghana right now.  But this post is not overtly about my trip.  You will probably read that above this post if i get around to writing it any time soon.

It is election  season in Togo. I keep getting text messages on my phone telling me that registering to vote is my civic duty. Legislative elections were slated to be held sometime last year, but the government has been postponing them.  Now, however, there is a country-wide drive to register voters in anticipation of the elections in a couple months.  So, in Nampoch, the canton, not just the village, this looks like a couple of people setting up shop in the primary school with a computer and a generator.  I was surprised by their set-up.  a new Dell computer (well, i'm typing this on a 3-year old netbook, so it looked new to me), a webcam, photo screen, and printer.  The registration equipment came from the Congo.  They fill out each person's biographical information, take her picture, and print out his registration card on the spot.  It takes about 7 a person, with one computer, in a canton with a population of maybe 5 thousand+ people.  the people entering the data didnt know how to touch-type.

Petite got dressed up to go Monday afternoon.  He wore one of his best polo shirts and a pair of khaki pants I'd given him.  I went with him to check out the process.  We got there and I snooped around while he got his card filled out.  It was kind of weird seeing this old woman from my quarter sitting between a webcam and photo screen. It was also neat to see how many women were there registering to vote.  Anyway, there was a line to fill out the registration forms.  Petite jumped that somehow.  Then he came inside.  There was a line of about 8 people waiting to get their cards issued.  He points at me and is like "my friend is in a hurry, I'm going next."  everyone gave him crap for it, but it worked.  We were out of there in about 20 minutes. 

I asked Petite why everyone has to get new voter ID cards--their old ones were issued in 2007.  He shrugged and said he didnt know.

I realized that I have been here for going on 3 years and i still see everything like looking through a dark glass. I see the shape of reality, but not the details

I just finished watching Oliver Stone's documentary "The untold history of the United States" or something like that.  biased obviously but really well done.  thought provoking.  humbling.  it should be required watching.

This documentary shows the US, in part, how the rest of the world sees it.  Us.  I am forever surprised that people are as welcoming of Americans in some parts of the world as they are.  They certainly have reason not to be sometimes.  I've had people come up to me wearing bin Ladin t-shirts, his face superimposed over a picture of the burning twin towers.  Ive had people ask me why the US killed Qaddafi, ect.  These are not a reflection of me as an american but rather of an engrained perception of the United State resulting from its relationship with the post-colonial world since the beginning 20th century.  As a representative of the US abroad, I have nothing to demonstrate any inherent goodness of my country in the face of its own hubris and post-colonial imperialism/domination except for my own smile and actions.  This is a good part of the genius of the Peace Corps.  Here, i am the glass.

One thing I am most looking forward to back in the States is getting a new computer.  I think that there are now smart phones with more processing power than this thing.  They can at least run simultaneous apps.

The biggest adjustment that I have had to make in Ghana, apart from speaking English all the time, is to the number of expats and tourists here.  they make me nervous.  I am used to being unobtrusively prominent and to having my own secret language.

house building

Bliki's wife and her new double improved cook stove.  she didnt want to be photographed looking like this, but I told her she looks good.

kiss me, I'm irish

Yesterday I ate dog and cat.  Not together, but on the same day.  This must be some kind of milestone.  For those of you engaged in the eternal cats vs dogs debate, cat meat is better.  Just this side of succulent. But dog stews really well and makes a wonderful broth. So it goes.

I just did something I never thought I would do—I biked into kouka after 1100.  During hot season.  To be fair, it is mostly overcast today, which is why movement outside of shade is possible.

I am typing this on my new keyboard.  it is silicon and rolls up into a bundle about the size of my fist.  it is really cool.  and nice to be able to use my own computer again.  

An ongoing mystery for me has, today, been solved.  Kids in villages lacking latrines, like mine, tend to crap just outside the house, or on the refuse piles between houses, or anywhere for that matter.  I have often walked out of my house to see a toddler popping a squat on my neighbor's little refuse hill.  One can judge consistency, it seems, from a distance.  Their older siblings and parents go into the teak groves to do their business.  Anyway, given the number of kids running around, and given the general lack of their leavings, I always wondered were kid poop went.  Today, I found out.  An elementary solution that should really have occurred to me earlier.  I was at someone’s house helping build an improved cook stove when I looked over the wall into the long-lashed eyes of a sow who was happily munching away on a pile of golden kid crap.  Pigs are almost as prevalent as kids. Mystery solved.  I’m never eating pork again.

I’ve been occupying the waning days of my Peace Corps service in village by waging a one-person campaign for improved cook stoves.  The traditional Togolese cooking method is to set a pot on 3 rocks with a fire underneath.  Not only is this horribly inefficient in terms of heat wastage but kids and animals can fall into the fire.  So, we encourage people to build improved cook stoves.  We mix up a bunch of clay, sand, and straw and build a wall around the traditional 3-rock design enclosing it and cut slots in the sides for chimneys.  This traps heat and thus reduces wood usage by at least a third.  Kids cannot fall into it, unless they are highly unlucky and highly talented.  Finally, improved cook stoves look pretty.  Women love them.  We build them a little shelf next to the stove so they can put stuff on it.  When I teach people how to build them I usually do one myself, then I make the people watching me do the others.  That way women learn how to do it and are confident enough to do it themselves.  Men tend to look at improved cook stoves as an income generating activity.

A friend of mine was walking home Sunday night and stepped on a snake. It bit him. Not that it did it much could cause my friend clobbered it.  I guess it wasnt a really dangerous snake cause he went to a traditional healer instead of to the hospital.  Petite said he’s back home now, recovering.  A Fulani in Kpolobal, a village just north of me didnt have the same luck.  He died the other day from a snake bite.  Kodjo told me that someone nearby killed a big viper last week. “We ate it.  It was good.”  Karma.

I am at the point where I will start trading my unborn children for 7 uninterrupted hours of sleep.

I was wandering around the marche Sunday (st. Patricks day) when I heard someone yelling my name.  This is usual on marche days as I am much more visible to my friends than they are to me.  This one was one of my zed friends; he waved me over to say hi.  When I got up to him I did a double take.  He was wearing a “Kiss me I’m Irish” Labette Blue tshirt.  I had to ask him if he had any clue what it meant.  He had no idea and was somewhat bemused at my enthusiasm over his shirt.  We went to a nearby tchouk stand where I explained to him what his shirt meant over a calabash.  Everyone thought it was pretty funny.  

Its kind of amazing the shirts/jerseys you can find here.  If I had a dollar for every time I saw a Dwight Howard Magic jersey or a Lebron James Cavaliers jersey or a Randy Moss Patriots jersey I’d be rich. 

I was biking into Kouka sunday and listening to music as I am wont to do.  Arriving in town, I decided to see what the rest of the world was saying.  I pull Metallica out of my ear in the middle of a little kid shrieking "yovo yovo anasara bonbon!"

mountain views

I call your attention, dear reader, to the February 2013 issue of National Geographic.  Specifically to two articles.  One is titled “The Healing Power of Venom” the other, “Africa’s Passion for Soccer.”  I especially like the Editor’s Note on page 4 where he compares black mambas to rattlesnakes: “I grew up with rattlesnakes, but a mamba makes a rattlesnake seem like an earthworm by comparison.” 

The real interest in “The Healing Power of Venom” is, for me, the pictures.  Check them out.  Most of the snakes, or their near relatives, the article mentions, with the exception of sea snakes, are found here.  

National Geographic demonstrates its American roots in the title of the article “Africa’s Passion for Soccer.”  Most of the authors refer to it as football.  It is a short piece about the popularity of football in Africa.  Its centerpiece is a montage of homemade footballs.  I like the article because it mentions Togo, many of the places mentioned I have been to or are near me, and it accurately, if somewhat patronizingly, depicts football in Africa.  This article could have been written about the scene any day of the week outside my window.  

Track pads do not handle dripping sweat very well  

 This morning d and I hiked up the triangle mountain across from Binaparba.  A cellular company is building an antenna array about halfway up the mountain.  So they have laid a nice road up to the site.  It was a nice walk.  We got up to the plateau as the sun was rising over mt Bassar (Bina is on the west side of it).  We could see Binaparba, tucked up against the bulk of the mountain, along with its sister villages.  Teak forests look like gray-green squares.  Yam fields like something out of a sci-fi movie landscape.  It has rained here a couple of times in the past 2 weeks, so the mountains and the landscape have a new green tinge to them.  We could see the mountains of Kabou, still only half visible in the morning mist.  Off to the west we saw the mountains around Bangali, Dimori, and Bapure.  

Saturday morning I biked into Kouka on a quest for some antibiotics.  I dropped my lit picot on my toe Wed morning.  Basically ripped the skin off of the corner of it.  By Saturday, it hurt bad enough that I knew it was infected. Antibiotics, especially amoxicillin, are readily available here.  Women sell them with other drugs in the marches all the time.  I do not, however, really trust antibiotic packets that have probably been sitting out in the sun for the past month.  So I went to the pharmacy.  The pharmacist had voyaged to Kara.  Next I went to the hospital, first stopping to say hi to the director.  The hospital pharmacy was out.  Then I went to the catholic monastery (nunnery?).  It was only the second time I’d been back there.  The magnolia trees were blossoming.  It was verdant and quiet.  I wandered around until someone, the gardener I think, asked me what I wanted.  A woman came out, unlocked their pharmacy, and I got drugs.  My toe feels much better now.  

I have read that one function of memory is selective amnesia.  Rather, our brains tend to block out, or selectively edit, memories of bad/hard/stressful times. I find this especially true here.  I remember hot seasons past for example.  I remember dripping sweat, drugging myself to sleep, etc.  But the prickle of heat rash, the dehydration headaches, the strong desire to be any place but the pressure cooker that is my house, all seems new but familiar.  Once it happens, I remember it happening, but I realize that I have forgotten how it actually feels.  Since this is my third hot season I felt well equipped to handle it.  And I am.  Intellectually.  I forgot, however, about the creeping insanity that nibbles the edges of your consciousness as hot season progresses.  I forgot about how the chronic lack of sleep erodes my temper and my patience.  I forgot how the inability to escape, short of going to Kara and a/c, the stifling, pervasive, gagging heat corrupts my self-control, warps my temperament, and turns my brain into a swirling crock of steaming shit.  

It poured yesterday afternoon.  A big thunderstorm came over the mountain and it rained for about 2 hours.  Then, last night, d’s neighbor told me that lightening killed his “grand frere”.  what do you say?  besides the standard "du courage"

How do you know when a bush taxi is full?  Its never full.  You can always cram in more people.