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.