"...so get your stupid, f@#&ing rope!"

Great line from a great movie: the Boondock Saints!

Anywho, I thought that today I would give a little insight on my daily life here in Togo as well as some of the things that make living here much more, well less difficult.

Asside from the 5 and 6am wake up calls from the monastics, my alarm goes off roughly 4 times between 6 and 7 a.m. before I finally crawl out from under my mosquito net. I only really pay attention to one "alarm" really, and that is the morning breakfast bell that usually goes off sometime between 7:15 and 8 am. And this is of course assuming that it is not a Tuesday or Thursday morning due to the fact that I have class at 7am. For these days I pay attention to my 6:50 am alarm and end up running the quarter of a mile or so to the school with the rest of the students who don't want to be late! I look at it as bonding time! (more on school in a little bit)

Breakfast, which I catch the tail end of after my two 7 am classes, usually consists of a baguette, coffe/tea, and for lack of knowing the french spelling of the word - porrage. I usually have a couple of bowls, as this has been one of the most difficult things for me to get used to. And no I am not referring to waking up, which my college roommates can attest to...my room was described as an orchestra of alarms in college as hearing that it took roughly 10 of them to actually get me out of bed in the late-morning, early afternoon. But back to the food, I regard breakfast as the most important meal of the day so I generally eat a ton of food in quantity and variety. The kitchen here lacks both. So I do what I can, and eat as much as I can while making sure that the monks and other lay staff get their fill as well. Luckily for me, the big breakfast thing is typically an American cultural phenomenon that isn't seen throughout almost all of Europe and most of Africa = more porrage for me! You'll also be surprised to hear that this is typically the best meal of the day.

After breakfast, if I have already taught my class, I have a few hours of free time that I usually spend studying French, preparing lesson plans, or attempting to grade the partially done homework or quizzes from class. And on Saturdays (generally) I do my laundry, which as you probably know by now takes almost the entire morning. So much for sleeping in, watching cartoons/ESPN Gameday and getting prepped for the college football games. After that period of free time comes my favorite prayer of the day, which lasts for roughly 10 minutes and is followed closely by lunch. Yippee! Except not really. Colin and I have a little rule of thumb that works 100% of the time, if the plate is flat you're getting fat! That basically means that there is a flat platter that usually holds spagetti, couscous (the food so nice they named it twice!), or a fruit salad; so basically these are the best meals for Colin and I that are served here because we are accustomed to the food and we know what the nutritional value of everything is. That last part is important because, if we decide to play soccer or workout (push-ups, pull-ups, curling buckets/bottles of water, running, yoga - for me) we need to be certain that there will be enough nutrients in a meal to replenish our bodies. We have made the mistake before of overdoing it somewhat in that aspect and have ended up with that feeling of weakness where your muscles just feel like their are vibrating under your skin trying to eak out every last bit of energy before they go into failure. And I am not talking muscle fatigue, we are way past that point here. This is full blown muscle failure, not to scare anyone, but there have been points where I couldn't walk in a straight line from the monastery to supper. I could barely lift my feet off the ground to the extent that I tripped over just about every rock in the road. It was a pretty pathetic site, and needless to say I slept like a rock that night. (btw this happened a few weaks ago, so I am perfectly fine now

So yeah, lunch is typically this mushy corn based doughy stuff with la sauce, which is some combination of green beans, meager portions of fish if any, and spices. And that is typically the dinner meal as well. There are two exceptions to this meal, one being better and the other worse. The better of the two is the traditional Togolese food "Fufu," which is pounded yams and some other form of sauce that includes some type of meat in slightly larger portions that the fish. This stuff is pretty good, and I had the fortune of eating a spectacular meal at the house of one of the monk's sisters, which included some home-made and not mass produced Fufu! The third meal is cooked yams, which taste like they have been freeze-dried ro dehighdrated (sp), covered in yet again some kind of sauce. If anyone has ever completed the "Saltine Challenge" (eating 10 saltine crackers in under a minute without anything to drink, then I dare you to try this! It literally sucks the spit out of your mouth, forcing you to drink copious amounts of water.

Oh, sidenote: from drinking all of that water during the meals, I end up waking up at 3:45 every morning having to piss, my God if there was one thing that I wish I could control better, it would be my blatter. That early morning wake up call and proceding walk to the mosquito filled, unlit and unpowered latrine; followed by the return trip to my bed where I have to lie in the darkness listening to the mosquitos, who followed me back, hover above me is one of the most annoying things in the world! Luckily, I am usually too tired to care and can fall asleep quickly, but there are some nights where that is definitely not the case! On that note, thank God for the Red Cross and their Permanet Mousauito Nets! I wake up each morning to find a plethera of dead little critters lying on the net above me, talk about a reality check!

Back to the daily life... After lunch I have some more free time which is usually spent once again studying or grading or talking with Colin. However, recently I have been accompanying some of the monks, and one in particular, on walks around the area to visit family members and most importantly work on my French! Those walks do an amazing amount for my comprehension and are also a great way for me to experience Togolese life! (more to come on this in future posts)

Mid-afternoon free time is proceeded by playing soccer or working out and then by mass, dinner, and night prayer before hitting the hey. And yes Br. Paul I am still going to mass! But I do generally skip night prayer as it has only just recently started (generator and electricity problems) and I tend to use that time wisely charging my ipod (essential for falling asleep in the bush), working with my photos and writing a little. I also tend to spend that time explaining what I am doing to most of the passers-by as almost all of them have never before seen a laptop, let alone a camera that connects to one!

Ok, time for the things that make living a little less complicated...
First off, the rope! I bought a 50ft section of 1/4inch rope before I left thinking that I could find something to use it for and it definitely turned out to be one of the best buys of the trip! Not only did the illuminescent rope mark my bags, but it also provided me with a clothesline, a closet/room divider (pictured at right), and a way for me to hang my Nebraska flag!
Second: duct tape (thank you Mrs. Whit!), I couldn't even begin to describe how many different things I have used this for. Breifly some of them are making weights, fixing my tripod and fixing my cheap soccer shoes)
Third: the crank/self-powerd flash light (Mrs. Whit once again). No power means that there are no lights, and when I am not stationary or don't want to walk around with a candle (all of the time) I have my rechargeable flashlight! So while the monks are constantly buying baterries, I am cranking away!
Fourth: the ipod, this is the sole thing that allows me to sleep somewhat peacefully at night and give me a little dose of the outside world during the day. I love my music!
Fith and finally: My (other) Bible - the College Football magazine, this keeps me going on those tough days and gives me a reason to pay attention to the time and day as well as keep me grounded somewhat as to who I am! I would have gone totally insane without this, and Colin will attest to that! I can't describe in words how important it is to have something like this that reminds you of who you are when you are so far away from everything else that subliminally reinforces that for you (i.e. friends/family). If you have seen Inception, this would be somewhat similar to the token that signifies the reality of a state of mind!

Ok, this was a long post so there wont be anymore this week. However I did get a ton of new photos up yesterday. And I spent a large majority of the day trying to upload a video from the tribal dance and think I have found a way to do it, so it should be up by next week!

African Rain...

So African thunderstorms are completely different than anything I have ever experienced before. I mean, I experienced rain beyond my wildest dreams in Ireland, but the stuff here overshadows that like a mid '90s Nebraska O-Lineman over, well just about everyone who had the balls to line up in front of him! The storms contain so much RAW power. It is ridiculous actually. The other night was a spectacular display of lightning for about 2 hours before a massive storm swept through Agbang. And I mean MASSIVE, this thing lasted until just now (roughly 3 p.m.). And the thunder? my gosh it shook the foundation of the monastery (which I am glad to say is pictured on the right - new photos!). And the French word for thunder is tonnair. It just sounds cool! Something else that I found surpising, might just be me but nonetheless, the word for lightning is éclat, and the phrase for it is l'éclat de tonnair. I thought it just a little strange that the lightning when translated litterally belonged to the thunder, because technically speaking it is the other way around!

As you can probably tell I am in high spirits today! Not only am I in Kara a day before I normally come in (aka football scores come in to Agbang a day early :) I was able to talk to my mom and dad for the first time since I've been here! I don't count the first experience where I got about 10 words in over a crappy transmition. This was the first real conversation that took place, and surprisingly it didn't really hit me until I sat down for an amazing lunch with one of the monks at his sister's house. It actually, for the first time since I have been here, hold your breath ladies and gentleman, brought me to tears. It was pretty hard to hold them back in the presence of other people, but I managed to do it. And looking back reflecting on it, I don't know what was more astonishing, that this was the first time that I have almost cried in over, actually I have no idea how long, or that I talked to my parents and little bro!

Ok enough sappy stuff, I haven't...correction, I have had the time to prepare a few more blog updates, but lacked electricity so I was not able to use the time I had for that purpose. However, I did manage to get this written and also was able to upload some long overdue pictures! There should be a decent variety of things ranging from my room to the monastery, dining area, church, to a couple of football matches (one from Lomé and the other from the school here in Agbang)! Some of the pictures are my experiments with different artistic and photographic expressions so I hope you like them!

Adios... until tomorrow!

Oh and the Huskers stats looked pretty pathetic against the JACKRABBITS, so someone send an email to Bo for me expressing a desire to see some better numbers on both sides of the ball in 2 weeks against K State! That same person can also send an email to Mac down at UT with "haha" written as the subject line!

First Day of School!

Lundi...

School started today! Lucky me, I had to be up at 6 and at the school at 6:45. Good thing I had the bells to help wake me up. Colin and I made it there on time and ready to find out our schedules. But to our surprise the headmaster had yet to arrive and he wouldn’t for another hour. So we spent our time sitting there listening to the other professors rearranging the schedule board so that everyone had a favourable class listing. It took about 2 hours, and all of it was spent sitting there on our part. But we did come away with an accurate idea of when we were teaching and to whom. I have the 5em class (roughly our 4^th/5^th graders) and Colin has the grade above mine (in the American system). My French is somewhat more advanced than his, so we decided that it would be best if I took the less developed English speakers.

School also didn’t exactly start today either. It was supposed to, but no one showed up the previous week to clean the schoolyard or building, so the students spent the day doing that while Colin and I ventured off into Kara. We ended up taking a taxi moto in thinking that it would be best if we didn’t rely on the monks for our every need. Besides, all we wanted to do was check the sports scores and send out a few emails. It was hardly anything worth disrupting another schedule for. And Johanas, one of my favorite monks here (I will do bios and a brief description of all in time), was very happy to hear that we were going out on our own. This was more because he wanted us to be able to experience it and he knew it would be a learning experience for us. It was the whole "Give a man a fish, or teach a man to fish" mentality, of which I would prefer to learn how to fish!

However, another monk who had some alterior motives and did not think that we were ready to undertake a task such as this escorted us to the spot where we picked up the moto and then asked us to buy him some phone credits. (this was all after he turned down a cheap car ride with some local workers in our name). We agreed and were off.

Once in Kara, we spent a good long while gazing at the football scores, blogging, and sending out emails. We also decided that we needed to eat since we were missing lunch. So we trucked it a mile or two to the café where we had eaten on the day of our little tour. There was a supermarche located next door and the food was pretty good. We got lost and wound up near the Palais du Congres before regaining our bearings and making it to the restaurant.

We ate and bought our supplies, toiletries mostly, and found our zman (moto driver) to take us back to Agbang. We also stopped to pick up the phone credits before heading out of the city.

We made it back in time for dinner and after a bit of confusion between Colin and myself decided that we would indeed give the monk the telephone credits. I also made a point, politely, to say that we were friends and appreciated all he had done for us, but not to expect us to be buying him things in the future. Friendship should not come at the cost of material goods, and we do not have enough money to support his needs along with ours, regardless of what anyone thinks. After a moment of awkwardness, he said ok and we talked for a little while before I left to go and prepare my teaching lesson for the next day.

*There is some background info that I have chosen to leave out regarding some of the monks and “office politics” at the monastery. It is also important to remember that there is a group chemistry and mentality for every living community and this is a very natural and commonplace occurance. Colin and I have made a point that we are new to this place, and anything that may be present between any of the monks is not something that we want to get into. We have a clean slate with everyone and plan to keep it that way. With that said, it isn't difficult to see when one is being taken advantage or in a sticky situation. Now that Colin and I are more observant to this, it is easier to stay clear of any potential problems.

Rainy Weekend

Samedi…

 I made it in to Kara today, sent out a few brief emails, updated my blog a little, and most importantly checked football scores from the week before and some of the then current scores. I also had one of the wildest moto rides back to the monastery, which was described in a previous post.

Dimanche…

The rain from Saturday spilled into today and continued almost all day. I spent good long while reading a photography book and thinking about the previous day’s football games that had not been played by the time I had left Kara. It was killing me. I wanted to know how badly the Huskers had beaten up on Idaho and who had won some of the more important games of the day. *Special thanks to all of you who have been keeping me in the loop with the Huskers, it is much appreciated! I also sat through another 45 minute homily, but this time I had some rather entertaining friends in the form of relatives to one of my new favorite monks here. Not to say that the homily wasn’t interesting, I actually understood the first part pretty well, but then the padre lost me as I got hung up on a word I didn’t know. That’s when I lost focus. Oh well, I have another 34 Sundays to get it right!

Oh What a NIght!

Vendredi…

It was a typical day in Agbang, I was washing my clothes minding my own business when out of nowhere Boniface appears. He was with the chief of the village of Agbang! Apparently I was invited to a tribal dance and welcoming ceremony! Sweet! Nothing else of major note happened that day as it was mostly spent waiting for clothes to dry and for the dance to start.

We took a packed car ride down yet another washed out road to the nearby village and made our way through the crowd to the chief’s hut (insert typical African hut here). And once inside we saw why it was the chiefs – there was a throne. Kid you not, a brightly and sloppily painted throne, but a throne nonetheless. It was awesome! We sat and ate some what I think was chicken and sheep while drinking the l’Eau Rouge (red water), which was a local wine alcohol with a seemingly high alcohol content. It was interesting but, at the time I was more interested in the dance going on outside!

We eventually made our way out  and were given front-row seats to the tribal ring of people and watched in amazement the mixture of traditional garbs with hints of modernization move in front of us to the sound of clanging metal and leather drums. SPECTACULAR! The girls and one of the priests from the monastery was there as well. And to my surprise he made his way to the centre of the ring and started dancing in that “hey look at me” type of dance, somewhat waving his arms and bouncing back-and-forth. He then motioned for Colin to go out with him, and to my surprise he did! Well I couldn’t let them have all the fun so I jumped in as well to a large roar from the village crowd. Talk about a stirring experience. We eventually made our way back out and watched some more when it started to rain. I was told to go inside to stay dry, but I politely ignored the request. I was mesmerized. There was no way in Hell I was missing this!

I actually brought my rain coat with me, but gave it to one of the little girls to wear. And as soon as I did that, another session of dancing started. This time one of the official dancers invited Colin, the girls and myself in. I took it as a sign. I started dancing like one of the tribesmen. I thought that that first roar of approval was loud, Holy Buckets was I wrong! I was even lucky enough to have the chief come out and place a 100 Franc piece on my cheek, which is a sign of approval and payment for services rendered from the dancers. Not to gloat, but WOW!

Once the dance had finished we went inside to drink our gift from the chief, which happened to be more beer and red water. More alcohol. Thank God I am Irish! Colin had tough time, he was trashed by this point and had to keep politely denying more drinks. Me? I’m a tank, bring it on!

After finishing off the gifts, we went back outside to partake in the communal drinking of red water. At this point we were also allowed to try and ring one of the dancer’s instruments – a double-sided shovel head with a metal ring around the thumb. The shovel dealio is also attached by a string around the wrist so that it can hang freely. One then raises the arm and lowers the hand at the same time so as to hit the shovel-thing with the metal ring. This was the maker of that clanging sound. I got on my first try…”boom baked biscuits.”

I also made a few friends in the form of some smaller children who were more than happy to make my acquaintance. Eventually it was time to leave and we bid our farewells to the chief and the elders and made our way back to the monastery and stumbled to our way to bed. We missed mass Br. Paul, I hope you can forgive me for this one!

At dinner that night, I decided to throw the girls a curveball. They had previously been sitting with the younger girls closer to Colin and I, so we decided to sit in such a fashion that we cut off one of the older girls from the rest of the group. It worked! My plan, isolated one of the girls enough from the other group that she didn’t have to worry about choosing to talk to us over her sisters, she had no choice – talk to us or not at all. It may seem mean, but the move was made with the best of intentions. We were curious as to who they were and why they were here. It actually sparked a friendship in which we figured out at that the three older girls were actually students at the University of Lomé and were up in Agbang because their father was a friend of the monastery and sent them there for a vacation. After dinner I was also invited to play UNO with them until God knows what hour, probably only 23h or 24h, but it seemed later. And sadly, as fate would have it our new friends were leaving at 5h the next morning to return to Lomé. I said my goodbyes right then and there.

Some quick notes on the dance (one of the girls took actual notes and I am currently waiting for her to email me them)… But from what I remember it is a coming of age dance that signifies the final right of passage into manhood and only happens once every 5 years!

What a night!

Wheeling and Dealing

The next few days were spent wondering around the monastery trying to pick up any hint of an idea of what we were supposed to be doing at the time if anything and trying to make our stay a little more exciting. Being that the prior (Bernard) and the former prior (Boniface) had not come up to Kara with us, we really had no idea as to who was in charge if anyone. Our “boss” so to speak is Fr. Benoit, but he was sick for our first few days at the monastery and we didn’t see him until Wed or Thurs. When we did finally meet him his answers were somewhat more satisfying than those that we had been receiving. But we were still somewhat unclear about what we should be doing until that time. The answer as we later found out was, drum role please…nothing. We had no obligations to anyone or anything until school started. Nice. Except not really.

For those of you who know me, I acclimate myself fairly quickly to a situation and if I become comfortable enough I have been known to cause a little well-humored mischief. Well I am not acclimated yet and nowhere near comfortable enough to do anything like that on purpose, but I still manage to find myself in certain situations that could be interpreted as causing a raucous. I’ll explain…

So the water here is freezing, and since there is no power there is no running water. AKA It’s not like I’m telling you to walk a half a mile to the well to fill up a bucket of water, yeah well you kinda are. Colin and I were unawares of this for the better part of a week. We also had no idea (but gradually gained an inkling) that the monks each have their own bucket. Again, we were not told or presented any of this information. In fact life seemed to go on around us without much attention given to us at all with the exception of the very common and brief “Bonjour, ca va?” Well we had been using some of the half-filled buckets in the shower rooms, which I think were meant for us or to flush the toilets (still not sure on that). Either way we used them, and the water was cold, and it was unpleasant, but we were clean; I think. It just so happens that one day after playing soccer for the better part of the morning, I returned to my room to find a large metal pail filled with water placed closely to my stoop in the sunlight. “Boom roasted!” I thought. Warm shower here I come. Since no one had used the bucket for over half of the day (very uncommon), I consulted Colin and decided that it was up for grabs. Nope!

I later found out, as it was raining and I was helping to fill buckets from the dripping shingles that the bucket belonged to one of the monks (Mathieu, who turned 44 on the 22nd; and I am happy to say that we are now great friends) who was working out in the fields that day. He wasn’t too happy to say the least. He explained to me in very rapid French, about the bucket situation (that everyone had their own), and stormed off to take a cold shower. I didn’t use all of the warmish water, but the rainwater diluted it somewhat making it slightly cooler. This is the point in the story where I about lost it – internally. I was so confused as to what was going on around me, what I should(n’t) be doing, who I should talk to (other than Colin, who was dealing with his own issues – not serious, but everything gets amplified in an unfamiliar place), and whether or not I had made the right decision in coming here.

Meanwhile, Colin was doing his laundry in a bucket labeled “Poubelle” (trash can for all of you non-French speakers) when Fr. Benoit saw him and became deeply distraught over the fact that we had not been given buckets yet and that we had been largely left in the dark as to the inner-workings of the Monastery. Along with realizing that his clothes probably weren’t that clean, Colin was having a difficult time dealing with the language barrier. My French was/is somewhat more advanced than his, and being an English major who had never had a problem communicating on a very deep and thoughtful level was difficult for him as it would be for anyone in our shoes.

Alas we received our buckets, but were thrown for a loop when other monks began using ours for their needs, which we were fine with so long as they were returned. Mine wasn’t. It was being kept in someone’s room and as it turns out, he had three buckets! This place is crazy. But we soon realized that unless a bucket was full of water, being filled, or being kept in a room, it was up for grabs. Now we know, and it took us just under a week to figure it out!

We were also dealing with feelings of isolation, being so far away from any major city or other people remotely our age. Lomé was nice because we were at a monastic site, but still had the freedoms afforded to us by the city and some of our friends. Agbang is different. More than 25 km from Kara, it is a 30 min ride in and up until this point we thought of ourselves as burdens to whomever was chosen to take us in. (this is no longer the case, I am happy to say)! We were also still dealing with the very major issue of getting used to the food and its drastic effects on our internal systems. Let’s just say that we have been working on both ends of the spectrum on that one.

Aside from wondering about those more pressing issues, Colin and I played a lot of football in front of the abbey. This provided quite a bit of entertainment to some of the monks and local workers who are in the process of building the guesthouse. We also spent a ton of time just wondering around the woods and the monastery.

Upon finishing this post it is extremely important to remember that Colin and I are ultimately having the time of our lives here. Any issue that we have dealt with has been both an opportunity to learn and reflect upon our current situation. Things are going well. And part of that is due to the fact that I have someone to confide in, Colin, who is also experiencing some of the same problems. I could not imagine having to deal with and resolve many of these issues without his aid.

Also some of you have expressed interest in participating in a program like the one that I am in, and I am doing my best to paint a very lucid picture that is representative of my experience, which is to say that not everything is going to be sugar-coated. You’ll thank me when you are prepared for some of the same trials as opposed to experiencing them ignorant and blind of the goings-on.

Karà

Lundi…

I woke up with the bells again in a pool of my own sweat; at least I am getting acclimated to the point that the sweat doesn’t really bother me. But it's still kind of gross to think about.

Colin and I found a monk who was willing to drive us in to Kara to by a soccer ball, some cheap soccer shoes, and a yoga mat (for me). We did, but also ended up getting ourselves a nice tour of Kara, which lasted a little longer than we wanted it to. We wanted to get back and kick the ball around a bit! As it turns out, it is relatively expensive for the monks to drive a van into Kara so they make a day out of it and try to get as much use out of the trip as possible. Some of the notable places that we saw during our nice little tour were the hospital, where I declined an invitation to watch a woman in labor, the SOS children’s orphanage (where I am at presently), the Palais du Congres de Kara, and the president of Togo’s house (looking down from the mountainside next to it).

We made it back in time for an hour or so of daylight and decided to play some cards with Mathieu and Erico before heading to mass, dinner, and finally our rooms where we read/wrote a little and finally went to bed.

Rude Awakenings

Dimanche…

Normally thunderstorms don’t wake me and are very soothing for me to fall asleep to. Not here. This African superstorm (or at least seemed like a superstorm) woke me up at 4 in the morning and kept me up for an hour. Just when I was about to fall asleep, something else surprised the heck out of me and also made me wonder what I had gotten myself into – a bell. One very large and centrally located bell in the middle of the monastery started ringing at 5 a.m., and then again at 5:15, 5:30, 6, and 6:30. Good God how many times can they ring the damn thing. I get it; you are expert bell ringers now let me SLEEP! I later found out that the bells were respectively a wake –up call, lectio devina, preparation for morning prayer, and morning prayer. There was also a bell at 7:30 for breakfast, that was the one bell I was happy to hear considering that I had thought that I had slept through breakfast.

Just before that last bell, I found Colin in the room next to me and contemplated whether or not we had in fact slept through the most important meal of the day (for Americans). I also took a little bit of time to take some pictures of the dew/leftover rain on some of the flowers outside of my door.

After breakfast, Colin and I wondered around trying to get a lay of the land and trying to find random things to fix up our rooms (the main one being a dust rag). While tracking down those supplies I made the acquaintance of a bright-eyed kid named Erico and his friend Mathieu. They were working for the monastery over the course of summer vacation. They ended up following me around at a distance until I finally asked if they wanted to play a game of cards. Of course they did, who wouldn’t want to play with a brand new deck of American playing cards (thanks to the Whitakers). They tried teaching me one of their games, which I picked up on rather quickly and then I tried teaching them huit Americans. It went fairly well, but I can safely say that they are now expert players!

After cards it was time for mass, yes Br. Paul, I am still going to mass and you’ll be happy to know that I attend more prayer/mass services than a majority of the monks! And that was after they told me that I wasn’t a monk and was not expected to follow the schedule of the monks’ prayer times. Anywho, the homily for the mass was roughly 45 minutes long and spoken in rapid French using many words that were unfamiliar to me. I daydreamed a little. I mostly thought about how in the world I was going to be able to understand any of what he was saying after only 9 months (I am getting better at it as you will later read).

After mass came supper, with the 5 sisters who again said nothing to us, but did stare at us for a better part of the meal. And whenever we caught them in the act, they quickly looked away and pretended to be busy eating. Psch girls. It got began to get dark throughout the course of the meal so Colin and I decided to skip night prayer in order to read in the remaining daylight and then by candlelight for a while before calling it a night.

Point of notification, it gets dark here around 7 p.m. and so everything afterwards is dark with the exception of night prayer and/or mass during which the small generator is turned on. Neither Colin nor myself have been able to figure out which nights have which service and we are fairly certain that some of the monks don’t know either as we seem to always get a roundabout answer. We are still trying to figure it out, but may be close to the solution!

Physics of a Car Crash

Samedi…

We finally found out that we were going to Kara today…along with 7 other people…in a 9 person van. FML. I thought distance driving in the states was rough. Try having 5 teenage girls, 2 older women, a buddy, and a driver who speaks a very harsh form of Afrikaana French sit in a 9 person van, traveling roughly 10 hours (I know this isn’t a measurement of distance, but there was literally no way to calculate km on this trip) over pothole-filled paved/dirt roads, while swerving past other vehicles and around switchbacks in the mountains. We stopped once for a beer break (kid you not, our driver was thirsty), once to take a piss on the side of the road, twice to let off the two older women (separate locations), and once more in Kara for dinner.

Now its time for the definition of awkward. Colin and I sat a dinner table in the black of night, next to our driver who said nothing more than a few words in response to any question, and across from 5 girls (who we later found out were sisters) who said next to nothing the entire night. Needless to say it was a fast dinner, but not fast enough. Our driver somehow pounded down two more beers. And these aren’t your typical American brews. This is craft Togolese beer (Aweyoo), which is a mild 6.2% contained in a .62 liter glass bottle. Uh oh. I was surprised he made it back to the van and now he was going to drive us even further off of the beaten path?

Oh btw, there was an oil spill on the mountainside just outside of Kara. At the bottom, no less than 10 minutes before we reached it, a large tanker skidded off and flipped over the roadside. I think it also managed to clip another less damaged truck heading up. We skidded our way up the side of the mountain clinging to our seats every-time the van lost control and hydroplaned on the oil. Also about 2 hours before this Colin and I saw the result of the physics/chemistry of a car heading 80kph in one direction with a lorry heading 80 kph in the other direction. No beuno. Immediately after that, I saw Colin (sitting in the middle of the middle seat, aka nothing in front of him but the windshield) reach over for his seatbelt with a fixed gaze on the accident. Priceless.

Back to the present time of the past. We were back in the van and cruising up another mountain side, this time on a washed out dirt road. We followed said dirt road for close to 30 minutes before coming to a clearing with a large fortress-like building. We had arrived. And upon walking through the large main door, we realized that there was no electricity and that the generator was out. Time to get out the flashlights! We made it to our rooms, rejoiced at having made it to our destination alive, curled up in a ball of sweat under the mosquito net, and went to sleep.

Food and Pictures

Vendredi…

Today, I decided to accompany JB (imagine a French speaking version of Eddie Murphy and you’ve nailed this guy to the T), Charlotte, and one other monk who’s name evades me, to the market. I was assured that we would be no more than an hour or so on account of we had to be back by 13h for lunch. I also had an agenda with Colin for the afternoon that I didn’t want to miss. We made it to the market were JB and Charlotte left to the car to go buy some food items leaving me with the other guy in the car. We ended up driving around for a little while (by driving I mean moving less than 1 mph while honking at market-goers to get out of the way) before finding a decent parking place. We waited there and chatted, it was a great chance for me to work on my French, for close to an hour before setting out to find our very chatty and friendly friends. We eventually found them with more bags than they could carry and helped them back to the car before departing for another market. How much food did they need to buy? We waited patiently in the car for another hour before deciding to call them and say that we would meet them back at the house. Whew, it was close to 14h30 before we made it back. Colin filled me in that lunch was nothing more than croissants and a single pain au chocolate and that all three left in the box were essentially mine. So I scarffed those down and got ready to set out with Colin.

We were almost out the main door when, JB called us from the kitchen asking if we were ready for lunch! OH shit. I had just filled myself with what I thought was lunch and now I had to sit down in a polite manner to a second lunch no less than five minutes later. Not only that, he thought that Colin and I were starving not having eaten since breakfast more than 4 hours earlier so he made an extra large batch of couscous (one of the fluffiest and most filling types of rice). I wanted to cry.

Colin and I ate all that we could muster in a very polite manner and then bolted out the door as fast as we could with our over laden stomachs. We wanted to make it to a cyber café to check some email and update our statuses online before heading to a soccer match with Kassim and Raouf. I also had to go to the BTC in order to pull out a considerable sum of money since I was not (and still am not) certain of whether or not my Visa would work in Kara.

We ran our errands quickly, feeling as though we were pros at hailing motos and getting around, before heading out to the terrain du foot. The match was just about to begin when we arrived already sweating and panting from our previous errands (it is very stressful to try and compress 2 hours worth of work on a computer into 30 min on our current internet connections). I decided that I was going to sit this match out in order to use it as a photo-taking opportunity in which I took over 800 photos! Thank God for digital cameras. Of the 800, I think I ended up with roughly 10 quality keepers, which will also be up online in time.

The match, which was played in the street this time since all the other terrains had been claimed for the evening, ended when it was too dark to see the ball. We were unaware of this as the other match had a 90 minute time limit as do most matches. So naturally we got caught up in the game and didn’t realize that we were late for the evening mass. Oops! Honest mistake Br. Paul, I swear! Also, since it was a feast day (St. Gregory of all people) we had mass that the morning, which means that you don’t have to cut off my stipend…yet. J

So, yes we made it back towards the end of mass, cleaned up and made it to the garage (the chapel isn’t big enough for large celebrations so mass and supper were held in the garage) just in time for the food to be served! Some timing huh? As it happened, I had just taken my Malaria pill, but forgot to swallow some water afterwards and developed a very severe case of heartburn/acid reflux/hiccups, whatever you will and couldn’t eat for close to an hour. And sadly by this time most of the other people had finished their meals. Luckily for me, Colin and Pierre-Paul managed to save me some food, which wasn’t much more than an over-glorified salad, but still good nonetheless. I was thankful for it and also for my new friends who showed an amazing amount of concern for my health and well-being.

Current Update and Togoville (continuation of previous events)

So all is still well in Togo. I feel as though it is Christmas since it is the first day that I have used a computer in over a week, all of my sports teams are doing well (shout out to the Twins and Huskers!), my ipod is being charged, and life is good!

This past week has been fairly slow going, but life is becoming a little more settled than it was over the course of the first two weeks in Agbang. School is proving to be a little more difficult than I had initially thought. Not only am I teaching English in French speaking West Africa, I am teaching it in French to villiage children who know just slightly more French than I do! Also, my kids names are Tchalim, Pakpabia, Wenegue, Foussani, Gnabina, and Pelinliwa. Those are just their first names, and you thought that having two "Mathews" in the classroom was difficult. Asside from teaching my four 55minute classes per week, the days are filled with doing Yoga, reading, studying French, talking with Colin and the other Monks, and trying to occupy my copious ammounts of time. 

I also realized that I am coming up on the end of my 4th week in Africa on Thursday! It's strange to think that I have been here for that long, but the weeks are flying by! It's even stranger to think that because sometimes the days just won't end! Not that this is a bad thing, but the food selection is somewhat monotonous and while filling, there are generally not enough nutrients/calories in a meal to keep up with my energy level. I have already lost 2 pant sizes in my almost 4 weeks making that belt that I bought one of the best pre-trip investments! Yes, Eric it is that same belt that you tried oh so desperately to convince me not to buy!

And a little bit of humore before I continue on with my recanting of past events, yesterday the 21st of September was my sister's (Natalie) birthday (Happy Belated Birthday!) and also one of the monk's birthdays as well. He was turnign 44, double my age as I pointed out to him. He was stunned! He and another monk were under the impression that Colin and I were oh roughly 30 years old!!! They couldn't believe that they were, as they pointed out to us while giggling like little children, old enough to be our parents had they been married at our ages!

Jeudi...

Today, we found out that there was a trip to the village after which the country was named, Togoville.

After a nice hour and half van ride past the shipping yards and industrial sites, the group reached a boat landing, where to my surprise we had to use a boat! And this wasn’t your traditional; well I guess technically it was more traditional than the boats that I am used to, but  it was a large wooden gondola with a guy who stood in back and used a 20 ft. pole to propel us across a lake? (couldn’t tell if it was a lake or a bay). Talk about a job, geeze. The ride took about 30 minutes with the wind at our backs, long enough for me to snap some choice photos of fishermen passing by.

Once at the town we walked around and saw a few of the sites, what few there were. There was a nice little chapel an outdoor amphitheater type church with a huge mural of Mary ascending from the lake (picture to come soon), a little tradition-African gift shop, a Fufu bar (traditional Togolese food consisting of sheep, pate, and a type of peppery stew), a market (which was closed, market day is Tuesday in Togo), and a small convent/retreat center on the outskirts of town. Overall it was a nice experience and a decent view of village life as opposed to the “large” bustling city of Lomé.

On the boat ride back we crossed paths with a little boy who was what one would call a boat-to-boat salesman. He was steering around this large boat by himself trying to sell coconuts! And, naturally our driver wanted some to take home, but insisted that since we were heading into the wind that he not slow down. This was quite entertaining for us in the boat and proved to be an excellent photo-taking opportunity! This kid, who was no more than 12, was trying to keep pace with us into the wind and was doing so with little control over his boat. Essentially he had to sacrifice his speed in order to regain control, only to lose it again when he tried to speed up! After about 20 minutes of this back-and-forth driving, he managed to catch up to the boat full of chuckling onlookers. He didn’t seem to mind, and actually looked like he enjoyed all of the attention. Narcissist.

The rest of the day was rather uneventful when you discount the fact that our driver blew out a tire on the drive back to Lomé. Luckily for us, the streets by the shipyards are full of motos and moto shops waiting to take advantage of stranded passers-by who are in need of a lift or a quick repair. So after a half an hour of sitting by the window having every living soul who walked by stare at me, we were on our way back to a cold shower and a yummy meal of leftover lunch (I will have a separate post regarding food as soon as my little tale is caught up to present time)!

Also a little humor for the night that actually made Colin and I laugh for the better part of an hour  while trying to fall asleep – Bernard (the prior of the abbey) was sleeping in the room next too us, and being that we had the windows open to create some airflow we could hear everything going outside. Well we were almost asleep when I decided to make the comment that sleeping in a room next to Fr. Bernard was like sleeping next to a Vuvuzela. Yes I did. We still joke about it to this day, but oh man was it true; I don’t know what kept us up longer – laughing at the joke or the noise from the next room! (the joke was also made lightheartedly and was not ill-intentioned)

And Greg said let there be POWER!...

...and there was no power. Well thought I'd give it a shot, but alas the monastery is still without power. I am writing this from the cyber-café in Karà on the 13th of September, but you will not see it until the 17th. Basically this is just to inform everyone that I am working as hard as I can to get up to date on the blog because it is difficult to remember everything that is happing along with everything that has happened in the past. I feel like I al living in a parallel dimension and it's driving me insane!

In other news I just convinced Facebook that I am in fact in Africa, so that will also be a way to contact me if you so deseire. And as I have been asked by a few people, the Husker flag is flying high in Togo! And while I have had some success in describing College Football to some of the monks here, I feel that I have failed my team in explaining the mascot... *Conversation with a monk (paraphrased)* So here is my team (showing him the page on NU in my magazine) and their mascots/emblem are the Cornhuskers! "What's that,"  he asks me. So I try to explain to him in French what a Cornhusker is and said that they probably don't have a word for it in French. He told me they did, it was "servant". I got him to revise it to "servant of the corn," but it just doesn't do the team jsutice!

Thought I would share that with you in hopes that by the time you read it I will have had time to put up a few more scheduled posts! But if not, GO HUSKERS beat them Huskies!! Oh and I may have found a way to wathc the Texas game online, BOOYAH!

La Vie à la Cellule Monastique

Macredi...
The first night at the Cellule Monastique was pretty pleasant actually, once you take away the lack of ventilation in our room making it a concrete sweatbox meant to house one person, but currently having two.
The morning was thouroughly more interesting than the night! First, I figured that doing laundry would be greatly in my best interest for making new friends of the monks and for personal cleanliness. I would probably have changed my thinking drastically once I realized that laundry consisted of 1 tub full of soapy water, 1 tub full of not so soapy water, 1 tub full of “clean” water, and a clothesline. I’ll let you fill in the details, just add about 2½ hours to them.
After marveling at how much work I had just done to wash my very limited clothing selection, (3 plain colored shirts, a pair of pants, 3 pairs of boxers, 3 pairs of socks, a pair of shorts, my soccer shorts/shirt, and my towel – that’s 54 clothing combinations not including the soccer stuff or towel, and I don’t care if you can’t tell if I am wearing the same thing as the day before because there is a definite difference!) I helped prepare lunch. I wanted to pick up some cooking skills and see how things were made so that I could diversify my oven pizza/ pasta/ and egg sandwich cooking skills. Turns out I was only looked at as a workhorse for them, I chopped garlic and peeled carrots for an hour on a little wooden stool while using an old rusty knife. I guess the master chef dream is going to have to wait.
Lunch came and went as fast as any of the other meals, and before we knew it Colin and I were at Kassim’s house where we played some Crazy Americans and attempted to teach Texas Hold’em to the kids of age there. FAIL. They can stick to their primmative ways of shuffling cards (the poker style is completely revolutionary for them) and Crazy Americans. Oh and I bought a tailored outfit in the market earlier that week and Kassim picked it up from the tailor for me so I tried that on. It looked sweet, but I looked about as out of place as a Penguin in Hawaii in it! Also, while I was at the house, I took out my camera and took a ton of pictures of Kassim’s little siblings and other relatives. I would say that some of the pictures are the best ones that I have ever taken.
We ended up getting so caught up in everything at the house that we were late to mass back at the Cellule. Oops. Better to be late and noticed than to not be noticed at all. I’ll argue that one with some of you, and you know who you are, later. After mass came dinner, which I also helped to prepare in my very menial and chore-like fashion. There I happened to have the opportunity to meet a candidate of the Agbang Monastery named Pierre-Paul, who is a couple of years older than Colin and I. But it was nice to have someone who was a little more, how would you say it, like us around to talk to. We chatted for a while and then returned to the concrete inferno to blog before going to bed.

The Essence of Etiquette

Jeudi


I woke up really well rested this morning and ready to roll. Colin and I couldn’t wait to meet the Zachari’s daughter. Well as fortune would have it, he showed up about a half an hour before he said he would! The only problem was that I was taking my dreadfully cold wake-up shower so I wasn’t fully dressed and ready to go for a little bit. And when I was ready he had just found Este (his little girl) who had wandered off and gotten lost. But imagine my surprise when I saw a little whimpering 4 year-old with the cutest braids, instead of a 14 year old that I was expecting! Looks like I still need some work in the numbers category.

After introductions and thank-you’s, Zachari helped us pay for the hotel and was told by Felix to tell the owner to give us a good price, which he did. And we thought we were getting reimbursed by the monastery for some if not all of it, so it was a great price! Yeah, still waiting on the monks… We then proceeded to take a few pictures with Este and Zachari (look right) before catching a ride with Jean-Baptiste to the Cellule Monastique, our new home for the next 4 days.

JB gave us a key to the fortresslike compound that included a little hut-looking building surrounded by a garden, a large central house, a goldsmith shop, and a smaller apartment-like building, which is where our room was. It wasn’t too shabby of a room, much simpler than the hotel. There was one large bed with rock solid pillows a mosquito net, two chairs a desk and one light. Oh and it was a freaking sweatbox, even with the windows open.

Once we were all moved in, we headed to the embassy (we knew it was open thanks to our previous visit) so that I could register in case of a civil crisis within the country. YOU’RE WELCOME MOM! We were able, thanks to the glory of the US Passports, skip the meandering line of visa applications and make it into the security room. We passed through and made it into the embassy where there was a surprising lack of order, but after receiving some attention I filled out my form and was on my merry way. That is, until I heard my phone ringing in the security room (we had to leave all bags, cameras, and phones behind). The security guard told me that I forgot to turn off my phone (yeah obviously since it was ringing, but in my defense he told Colin and I was nowhere near him when he said it). But I answered it because it was JB our guide for the day and I didn’t want to keep him waiting. Well I got yelled at for answering my phone inside the security room and told to go outside, which I was doing anyways. I gave the guard a polite smile, held up my phone and said in a very American accent “Yeah, I get it.” I mean, I am sorry for being ignorant at times, but you would think that an American in an American embassy would get a little more respect. I am sorry that I forgot to turn off my phone, but seriously take a chill pill dude. What is a poor volunteer in a third world country going to do to his own embassy with a $20 cell-phone in a security room nonetheless? I am sure that had the embassy been staffed with marines and not some outsourced (in the true spirit of American business) to some Togolese security agency, I would have had a much more light-hearted chat with the guards.
Moving right along and skipping the more minute details of the day, Colin and I were invited to dine at the house of a friend of the monastery’s. Now think of the African-American general in the Hunt for the Red October and that is exactly who this guy is! Crazy. Some of the monks, Colin and myself took part in cocktail hour and chatted for a little while. During which the olderman’s son and daughter (older and both fluent in English) talked with Colin (mostly in English) and I (mostly in French) about their experiences learning English in a foreign land. It was pretty cool to see the results of some hard work in the language department, albeit they had been in New York and London respectively for the better part of 12 years!
After swapping tales of language frustration, we made our way to the dinner table. Now back at SJU during the two-week BVC retreat we had an etiquette dinner where, to the chagrin of Br. Paul I instinctively questioned (some jokingly and others more seriously and thoughtfully) just about every rule that he made. One that I did not question was that of waiting for the host to sit down before one seats himself* down. Well I couldn’t tell, but I would assume that most of the monks and novices at that dinner probably thought that when given that sort of situation I would be the one of the group of BV’s to screw up. I don’t know how they got that Idea. For the most part the kid sitting at the table with the mohawk had been very well behaved over the course of those two weeks! Sorry to disappoint, but it was Colin (sorry dude) who attempted to rewrite the rulebook. But have no fear, SuperG is here! Yes, I saved him from making that grave mistake, by at first whispering and practically talking in a normal voice loud enough for the entire table to hear me, “pas encore, pas encore!” He was halfway seated by the time he caught on to me…and the rest of the table awkwardly staring at him with a few of the monks chuckling at the two floundering white kids who could barely communicate with them let alone one another!
Interestingly enough, at dinner I managed to find out that patron of the monastery somehow managed to be presented with the key to the city of Lincoln! Go figure, he had lost it over the course of the past 20 odd years since it was given to him, but somehow in his tribally decorated, grandiose house I don’t think it bothered him too much. Also this guy, at the end of the meal said to his wife, “Donne-moi mon petit oiseau.” I almost burst out laughing when to my surprise she handed him a little plastic bird that picked up toothpicks with its beak! It was priceless.

Clothes and Donations...

Mardi…


Every time I turn a corner in Lomé, I see someone in an amazingly colorful outfit. After asking multiple people, some who spoke a little English, I figured out that there was no tribal significance to any of the colors and it would be kosher if I was seen wearing one around, not to say that it wouldn’t be strange or anything like that, but at least I wouldn’t be putting myself in harms way by unsuspectingly offending some dude who has it in for white people! So I bought some fabric and took it to a tailor, who happened to be a friend of Kassim’s (friend’s get discounts on the overall price)! And on a side-note, they don’t measure inseems in Africa, just the outseem and the circumference of your thigh…good thing I don’t have thunder thighs or I would have been walking straight out of a MC Hammer music video!

After meeting with the tailor we went downtown so that I could get some money from the national development bank because it seems to be the place that has an ATM that will accept my card. Then we walked around for a while, and passed by the Grand Marche and le Place de l’Independence on our way to a better cyber café than the one we had been using. This one even had skype! And although it took me the entire hour we were there to try and purchase credits so that I could call home, I finally managed to get my order to go through and was able to call my mom! It was slightly relieving being able to talk to her, but after an hour of frantically trying to buy credits and find a pair of headphones with a working microphone and then having to listen to my mom hold back the tears on the other end of the line as I was hanging up, well it left something to be desired.

However unsatisfied I felt at the time, I quickly forgot about it due to the busy nature of my schedule here. It was slightly difficult for me, transitioning from heavy manual labor at the beginning of the summer, to a complete conservation of energy mode at home, to a slightly less conservative mode that included a lot of what some would call reckless? behavior at the abbey (* no pews were harmed during the retreat, just a window), to doing absolutely nothing but sitting on a plane or in an airport and not being able to fall asleep for 34 hours, to constantly moving and racking my brain for the basic ability to communicate. Needless to say, it’s been a busy past couple of days and I had a soccer match with the locals that afternoon, so I proceeded to pass out as soon as we made it back to the hotel only to wake up just in time to run out the door half dressed so I wouldn’t be late!

I made it to the dirt patch on time only to play the waiting game, but Greg you love the waiting game…not. We sat around waiting for everything to get started only to find out that we had to find a new place to play, which we did, and after about an hour or so of waiting and walking, the match finally got under way! Colin and I both played soccer in high school and intramurals at SJU so we were fairly well informed, but as we would find out we were way out of shape and outmatched in terms of individual skill. These guys were freaking fantastic in terms of their individual abilities, I mean I hope you would be if that’s the only sport you have ever known for 20+ years of your life. But however skilled they were, Colin and I were much more knowledgeable about tactics. We had the team aspect of the game down and could read openings in the defense so as to position ourselves well and act as catalysts for the goal scoring chances. It was pretty sweet.

After the match Colin and I headed towards the restaurant for dinner where we met up with our friend Zachari (the one who chauffeured us around for the first few days). He sent us a text earlier that morning asking us for money to help send his daughter to school. We had some qualms about dealing over the phone so we asked to meet up with him in person, which we did. At dinner, he filled us in on more the details about his 4 year old daughter was going to a private school that was expensive by Togolese standards and the family had spent all the money that they could afford and had nothing left over for supplies and transportation for her. Colin and I talked it over and decided that we would conditionally help him out. You see, where all those silly Peace Corps workers go awry is when they publicly give money to an orphan on the street or flaunt the fact that they have money (this is me talking, the one who has a DSLR and sets up his tripod in the middle of a spice market). But it is difficult to walk by a kid who is presumed to be starving or an old man with broken bones and disfigured body parts and not give them a “quick fix.” To do so, would be in my eyes, detrimental to them and to society. Yes, it would help them in the very short term, but what about when that donation falls short, or the one after that? Are you going to be responsible for the wellbeing of that person/family? And what about the countless others? Why (if you did choose to help) did you choose this person who might night need it as much as the next? And what of the mindset that you put that person in? Should they be allowed to fall under the impression that simply asking for money is a way of supporting a family? Well at least for me, I would rather accept the feeling of responsibility/misplaced guilt and use that to help an organization that is better equipped to deal with people on an individual basis. Back to Zachari.

Colin and I conditionally accepted his request for money on the premise that A) it would go towards his daughter’s education (which we believed it would), B) that he didn’t go around telling people that he got money from some rich white people so as to further the stereotype, and C) that we could meet his daughter. We got ‘em all! He thanked us profusely and promised to bring his daughter who we though was 14 to the hotel the next morning.

That night we went on a promenade with Yves and Rauof and then returned to the hotel to play some huit Americans (Crazy 8’s). Yeah I laughed pretty hard at the one too. We then went to back to our rooms, wrote a little bit and listened to some music before finally going to sleep for the last time at the hotel.

Whew!

Present Time...

So I came in to Kara yesterday hoping to uplode a few more days worth of blogs, but the site I was using wasn't cooperating with me so all I essentially got out of my hour in Kara was two extremely frightening moto rides. Both lasted roughly 30min (time it takes to get here from Agbang), with the second one being at night, in the complete dark, on a pothole and flooded dirt road, haeding straight into one of the most awesome lighting displays I have ever seen! Sweet, but scary. And now on to the continuation of my previous experiences...

Dimanche…
Today we woke up ready to rock and roll! We were stoked (not literally) to see Boniface and figure out when we were going to get a ride up to Kara. As it turned out, he was only here to get a visa to visit China and Germany, but couldn’t leave until he got one so he really had no idea when we would be heading up north. SPOILER ALERT: we’re heading back up on Saturday. And as a side note Boniface said that he would pay for breakfast…. Yeah about that, the little angel just ended up shaking hands and blessing everyone in the restaurant. Colin and I followed him out thinking that we didn’t need to pay only to find out later that evening that we had to front a $20 bill for breakfast for 4 (Jean-Baptiste, un moin d’Agbang a mangé avec nous). Jerks.

Anywho we didn’t find that out until later in the afternoon. After breakfast, we walked with Yves and went to his house to meet his family and friends who lived in the same compound. In Lomé there are multiple families or extended families who live within a walled in compound that is basically a large maze of rooms and walkways. For pictures of his petites soeurs et freres wait about a week and then look to the right of this post!

After meeting his family and receiving a very warm welcome, we took a nice 4 mile stroll in the middle of the day, at the hottest hour, when the sun was out, with close to 80% humidity, to the university (and I thought St. John’s was a little out of date, ha* see pictures), the president’s house and the multitude of embassies around it, including the one modern looking building that was practically built like a fortress. Bet you can’t guess who’s embassy that is! I would show you a picture of it, but every time we tried to take a picture of an embassy or important house we were yelled at by security guards with AK-47s. I’m one who’s known to bend the rules a little bit when I feel that I can, but there isn’t exactly a way to bend a bullet around my head when fired at point blank range…As tempting as it was, I did my best not to take pictures although I still don’t know why once can’t take pictures when there are satellites flying around taking pictures and doing exactly what I would have been doing with probably better quality pictures than I would have been taking…You’re welcome Eric! Oh and by the way, we had to bribe a guard to let us into the compound where all of the embassies were. And the worst part of all is that the American embassy was closed because it was Sunday so I couldn’t even register, which was the main reason for going there in the first place. Thanks Yves, that info would’ve been helpful about 3 hours ago! But it was still worthwhile seeing the difference between the rich and poor side of town* ( I’m getting tired of writing see pictures, so whenever you see a * {c’est un etoile} you’ll know what that there is some kind of picture associated with whatever it is that I am talking about)!

After the embassies we took a moto to the other side of town to go to the beach, see the cinema and visit la place d’Independence et des étades municipals.

The beach was packed with people even though it wasn’t sunny when we got there. But as soon as people started to notice my camera, we commanded a lot of attention, including that of one of the horsemen. So, in return for taking a picture and paying a reduced price, I got to ride a horse on the beach. IT WAS AWESOME! Afterwards we walked around a little bit and managed to make it back to the restaurant in time for dinner and just in time to bid farewell to our wonderful patron, Felix.

After dinner we went back into town to the exact same bar that we were at the night before to try and find the Germans (which was also taken into consideration when we went to the University of Lomé because they worked at the university hospital), and one in particular (btw Colin has a girlfriend, so this was mostly my call), but alas it was to no avail and we ended up teaching Yves et Rauof (Yves cousin) the American bar dances.

Lastly, we had one of the scariest moto rides ever on the way back to the restaurant. Imagine, being drunk ( may be easier for some of you than others). Ok now put yourself on the back of a motorized bicycle that is from the 1970’s and could break down at any moment. Make that bike travel 60 km/h down curvy dirt roads filled with potholes and other motos. And let's just pretend that the drivers are racing back to the hotel…or not pretend, that actually happened. Whew, I’m just happy I made it back in one piece; but the mohawk I had from the wind made making it back safe a close second!

First Contact!

Samedi…


Today, after another horrible yet not quite as bad as the night before’s sleep, we woke up promptly thanks to our new cell phones and their accompanying alarms. And I somehow managed to take a shower in the freezing water with mosquitoes waiting at the ready as soon as I stepped out from the sputtering faucet. While refreshing, I can’t say that any of the showers here are enjoyable.

Wide awake and ready for the day, Colin and I walked to the restaurant where we met up with Yves for breakfast and then ended up returning to the hotel to wait for Felix. We were told that he was coming at 11 and well, Yves called us at 12:30 and asked if we wanted to go into town! I figured Felix had our phone and I didn’t know where he was so we went into town! We made it almost to the centre-ville (roughly a mile and half), when we received word that Felix was at the restaurant. Damn, we didn’t even make it to the markets; at least I got some exercise.

We returned to the restaurant and met Felix, who speaks very little English by the way, and talked with him about a bunch of random things. And after a little while we went with him to meet his family! Little did I know that meeting his family entailed sitting in a small room with two very shy children and a cautious mother who speaks less than ten words of English while Felix unpacked and changed. Awkward? Hell yeah! What do you say to someone when you don’t speak their language very well and they don’t speak yours at all? Not to mention there was a little added stress of meeting the family of the guy who was helping us out for our first few days in Lomé. That was probably more of a hindrance than not being fluent in French.

After bidding our farewells we talked with Felix about paying for the hotel and decided that it would be best if we went to try and find Fr. Boniface and the Cellule Monastique. So Zachari took me on a little scavenger hunt and after a little while we ended up finding the house. We managed to talk our way in and after meeting three different people, finally met with Fr. Boniface who to my relief spoke English! SUCCESS!

I found out that he had no idea that we were in Togo or even coming to Togo in the near future. Oops mom, don’t read that! Somehow he never received mine or Colin’s emails with our flight plans and for the past day and a half while we were trying to call his cell-phone, he was using a different number while the one we were calling was charging. A little strange, but that’s life n’est pas? A strange series of happenings that aren’t really explicable unless we try to derive some meaning from them, which can lead us in a multitude of directions ranging from religious explanations to political or self-serving explanations?

After talking with Boniface, we decided that it was best if both Colin and I were there to make decisions so we agreed to meet for breakfast a 9h the next morning. So I returned with the news and told Colin and Felix. Afterwards Colin and I went to a cyber café to send out a few emails, which took Forever, FOrever, FORever, FOREver, FOREVer, FOREVEr, FOREVER! The internet connection is terrible here if you couldn’t tell from my sarcasm. But afterwards we returned to the hotel to get our cameras and went out on a little evening photo shoot, which ended up being completely worthless in terms of taking quality photos for me because I need time to process and create artistic representations of things in real life and translate them into quality photos. But we had a nice chat about our experience so far and ended up walking back to the restaurant for a bite to eat.

We ended up convincing Yves to take us to the centre-ville for a bit of night life action. And as it turns out we ran into group of white girls from Germany! I’d say there were about twenty of them or so who are here in Togo for the next few weeks working at a hospital and going to school. We talked with them for a while before heading back to the hotel for the night.

Making Friends!

Vendredi…


I finally fell asleep and then woke up promptly at 3 a.m. Thanks jet lag, that’s 10p.m. CST, my prime operating time. It still hasn’t passed yet. And it definitely sucked for the first few days, especially that morning. I didn’t end up getting to back to sleep until the sun came up. It is a good thing that I have had a ton of practice at sleeping in while the sun is coming up. Except this time my sleeping in made me late for breakfast. I ended up waking up to Zachari knocking on our door at 10 a.m. asking us why we weren’t downstairs a half an hour earlier. Oops.

We made our way back to the restaurant where our place at the table was already set and the large thermos full of oats sat waiting to be eaten. Oh and the night before, Colin had some reservations about drinking the water at the restaurant, but I assured him that it was alright to do so (not knowing for sure myself, but I had to comfort the fact that I had already drank a ¼ of the 1½ litre bottle). The water was fine, but for breakfast Colin was still unsure about the water even though nothing bad had happened the night before. We ended up ordering beer. The natives must have thought that we were some of the strangest white folk that they had ever seen.

During breakfast we began to get to know the restaurant staff a little better, our waiter, Kassim, in particular. Remember the description of Zachari? Kassim ou Yves, is the exact opposite. He looks like a scrawny college freshman and has a very soft and high-pitched voice. After talking with him for a little while, Zachari took us to the Centre-Ville to buy phones, sim kartes, and go to the bank, because the Lord knows that we weren’t prepared at all upon arriving the night before. I would think that most people would have had a panic attack had they gone out and tried to do what we did, but that is also the exact reason why it is me sitting here writing to you and not them. That is my style of travel and it works well so long as you know what you’re doing and you remember this one simple piece of advice: it is impossible to get lost (I will explain more later)

Back to the not philosophical stuff. My phone number is 2286019867 so if anyone wants to chat feel free to hit me up! Its free for me to receive calls and I have no idea how much it costs to place a call to Togo. But I do know that Skype is roughly 2 cents a minute with a 5 cent connection fee. After messing around with the phones and being chaufered around by Zachari at the expense of Felix, we went back to the hotel for a bit before meandering around to try and find a cyber café. Once we found one and logged on, we soon realized that we were using 21st century technology and moving at the blazing speed of the early 90’s – talk about frustrating. And to compound that frustration, facebook thought that I was a hacker due to the logging on roughly two continents away from my last known location and made me go through a four-step process that included identifying friends and answering questions. Only, it took about five minutes to load each question and picture and I ended up running out of time before it was completed. I have yet to verify my account.

We went back to the hotel afterward sending a few emails, and ran into a Togolese guy from Toronto and a woman from Missouri. We had a nice little chat and then went off to dinner at the restaurant. They served us the same thing as the night before, except this time with rice instead of fries, and then returned to the bar underneath our hotel, had a beer and went to bed.

Where to begin…

Whew what a week! So briefly before I begin and will inform you that the next couple of posts will be mostly my recounting of what has happened since I last blogged and I will get to the more indepth descriptions of the country, living conditions, etc at a later date. Also, some of these posts were written some time ago and this is the first chance that I have had to put them up! However, I am currently in Kara and have made it to the monastery safe and sound, so all is well.....err well I am well. I'll explain more in the coming weeks!

For starters, I am writing from the comfort of my air-conditioned hotel room and using my laptop with the keyboard that I am accustomed to! Also, I am not paying for time on the computer, which is nice because as I said before it is becoming increasingly difficult to switch from spoken French to written English. And at the cybercafé, I spend a large portion of my time trying to convince Facebook that I am not a hacker in Africa trying to use an account for a guy who lives in Nebraska among other things and also re-translating my thoughts from English to French and back to English. That is to say I think of what I want to write in English, but it comes out in French and I have to correct it so that all of my wonderful readers (achem* you) can understand what I am writing! However you will learn a fair amount of French in reading this blog, because A) it’s good for you, B) some things just sound better in French, and C) sometimes I am just too tired/lazy to change it. But it is pretty neat how the mind can control the transmission of thoughts into spoken word and accommodate to one’s surroundings. Tangent, desolé!




Jeudi Soir…

So Colin and I arrived in Togo close six nights ago. What a rush. We landed and went through customs without any trouble. A few awkward glances from some of the locals, but nothing to write home about ;) But as soon as we walked past the door separating the customs officers and the people waiting for their friends and families who had arrived with us, we realized that we were slightly out of our element. I think I saw three white people and they were on the plane. Well apparently someone else thought that we looked like we had no idea what we were doing, because we were approached by two men, one of whom asked if we were German and then quickly realizing that we were Americans who spoke very little French.

To make a long story short, they let us use their phone to call Felix (the brother of Latevi/Mesmin who happens to work at a hospital in Omaha) and helped us arrange transportation to a hotel. Pause for a minute and imagine this scene: two young white Americans who speak enough French to fill one page of a book between the two of them, having two strange black men (sorry for the negative connotations, but American sentiment isn’t very good towards black men at night {oh yeah it gets dark at 6p.m.) in unfamiliar areas), and getting into a taxi while not knowing or recognizing the destination/how to get there. Scary? Maybe for my mom, who would have killed me had she known that I did this before emailing her that I was alright; but it was exciting for me! We made it to the hotel, got a room, put our stuff down, and rejoiced at the fact that we weren’t mugged or had anything stolen by any one of the random people that we met during the previous hour or so.

But the celebration didn’t last long. We soon realized that we had probably been swindled by some savvy peddlers who were very good at seducing foreigners. We also remembered that we had no way of contacting anyone and no one to rely on for anything that may have had concerns or questions about. And there was no one from the monastery at the airport to meet us like we had expected. While discussing the happenings of the day we were unpacking and I was surprised to see that just about everything that I had in my checked bag was still there…everything but the damn bug spray! Sorry Mrs. Whitaker, but I am sure that some Togolese family is putting it to good use though. They probably need it more than I do if that’s any form of consolation. Bed time? Not even close.

Our unpacking was interrupted by a knock on the door. It was Zachari our new best friend. Think of a typical black guy, add an amazingly deep voice, French, broken English (he knew less English than we knew French, oh boy), some nasally sounds, and a motorcycle (un moto) et voila Zachari! He told us that he was basically the right hand man for Felix and was going to take us to get something to eat. Great, we thought, this Felix dude either is the head of gang and has a henchman or is powerful enough to have an employee wait on us. Either way we were getting food and we got to ride on the back of a moto thorough dirt roads filled with potholes. Yeah you though Omaha had potholes, ha! Give this place a try. And go ahead and add in a few goats, a chicken or two, some heaping piles of trash, broken sewage lines spewing a god-awful stench into the air, a car or two and countless other motos. I felt like I was in MarioKart! Anywho, we make it to this restaurant, that we later found out was owned by Felix (talk about friends in high places!), and were a bit surprised to find that, well lets just say that they don’t like lights in their restaurants. If anything was unnerving that night, it was walking through a pitch black restaurant passing by tables full of French speaking Togolese and seeing nothing but silhouettes and the whites of their eyes when the stopped talking to stare at the two white guys who just walked into the place. Talk about displacement!

At the end of the gauntlet sat a neatly made table, kind of like the light at the end of the tunnel. And almost as soon as we sat down our food was brought to us, compliments of Felix. It was by far, hands down, the best chicken and pomme-frites (French fries) that I have ever had. There was this homemade sauce, which I now have the recipe for, that was absolutely delectable! And you all have to wait at least 9 months to try it! At least you won’t miss what you haven’t had , trust me it’s a good thing because this stuff is literally amazing.

Time for your first official French lesson of the blog! Un pomme is an apple. So why then are French fries referred to as pomme-frites? Well that is an excellent question and interestingly enough I had the same one myself! It is because potatoes are les pommes de la terre, or apples of the earth. Interesting, no?

Chouette, we attempted to converse with the staff and Zachari and after our futile attempts we returned to the hotel and went to sleep… err attempted to sleep. There was an eery feeling of being in a new place with doors that had locks from the 18th century, an AC unit from the ‘70s and mousquitos buzzing around fervently waiting for me to catch some zzz’s.