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.