the living situation

My room chez ma famille is relatively large. I like it just fine except for the spiders and insects that like to hang on the walls and the few bed bugs I suspect I’m sharing a bed with. Can’t complain though. The outhouse, or latrine, hasn’t been terrible to use—it’s very clean considering it’s an outhouse. As far as showers go, I’ve actually enjoyed taking bucket showers. Except for one time when I took one at night and a fatty preying mantis decided to come in and hang out, which I did not appreciate at all.

il faut manger!

My meals here have been yum so far. I’ve eaten a lot (and I mean A LOT) of bread, rice, and pasta, along with different kinds of sauces (mostly tomato based), vegetables (mostly green beans and cabbage), and fruit (mostly oranges, bananas, and pineapple). My favorite meal has been rice with peanut sauce. Yum yum. I absolutely love carbs but I don’t think I’m exerting the energy I should be to justify eating them so often. Plus their portions are huge. I need to make a habit of running in the mornings. I’ve gone a couple times and it’s been nice but I just have to get up so dang early to do it. As far as cooking goes, I’m just a little worried about having to cook for myself. Though the PC gives us a good amount of equipment, one of them is not a microwave. Which I guess is fine since I don’t think I’d be able to find lean pockets or garden burgers at the marche anyways. I think the food I miss the most right now is cheese. I’ve only had it once and it just isn’t the same.

geography, weather, and bugs

A little bit about Togo geography… the closest region along the coast is Maritime, north of it is the plateau region, then centrale, then kara, then savane. Agou Akoumawou is in the plateau region—which I thought meant would provide us with less humidity than Lome, proportionate to the heat, but unfortunately that is not the case. It feels way hotter and just as humid, less the cool ocean breeze. And there’s a lot more bugs. Particularly spiders. C’est dommage. I've come to accept the fact that I'm going to permanently itch for the next two years.

faire-ing la conaissance de ma famille hôte

Getting to meet my host famille was amazing. When we got to Agou Akoumawou, we were greeted with music and dancing, and food. During the dancing part, there was a young man who was super animated and all over the dancing. He turned out to be my host brother in an extended kind of way which has been way cool. His name is George (funny thing… I thought his name was Josh until pretty recently when I saw his name written. I feel bad for calling him a name not his own, but in my defense, he looks way more like a Josh than a George, plus even now it still sounds like people call him Josh) He’s 23 years old. I saw George and Francoise (my host sister who is 16) a lot at the beginning but now I just see them every once in a while which is too bad. It took me a little bit (as in just a few days ago) to figure out the family situation because I initially thought that they were my host mom and dad’s kids but it turns out George is their nephew and Francoise is just a family friend who both live in different houses. Figuring out family relations has been somewhat difficult for a lot of us. In my compound is my host mom and dad with their two little boys (7 and 4yrs old) and a little girl (3 months), as well as a Peace Corps secretary named Monsieur Jean. My family has been tres super. They have been very patient with me as I try to practice my French and have been great about teaching my a little of the local language, ewe. Anyone I try to speak ewe with around here gets a kick out of me trying. I am going to start learning it in a more formal setting next week since I will be using ewe at my post (more about this later).

lomé-tion orienta-tion

Orientation in Lome was fabulous for the most part. It was a little tiring at times and I definitely did not like living out of suit cases, especially since me and personal organization don’t get along too well sometimes, but I was able to sneak in a few naps and did not end up losing anything. At least not anything I’ve noticed so far. Lome is a very beautiful city although, similar to Mexico, it has its fair share of crazy drivers and pollution. Other notable differences from the US are that the houses are cement based and there aren’t many paved streets. I wish I could upload des photos, but I think that’s going to have to wait till later. Lome has a fairly active night life. We arrived on a Saturday night and the streets were hoppin’ with people. I went out twice with PCVs and other PCTs to a couple different bars. It was fun. The best part was getting to talk to and getting to know some great people.

and don’t call me shirley!

The airplane rides were wonderful considering we got here safe and sound. Sleeping was a little bit of a challenge, especially on the first plane, but in retrospect, it was great getting to talk to fellow PCTs (PC Trainees) and playing around with the monitor each seat had. The monitors had games, movies, TV shows, news casts, cartoons, music, etc. Another really chouette chose that happened was that on our flight from NY to Paris, there was a lady sitting a few seats away from me who had been a PCV in the 70s. Get this—in Togo! She was as excited and surprised that she was in a plane full of future Togo PCVs as we were to meet her. It was a good sign.
I feel like I should make a quick note about the actual planes we were on since I know some of you ;) really like planes. Ummm… they were big and amazing. Who wouldn’t be amazed by a huge chunk of metal that can fly, right?! I wish I could say more about them, but that’s really all I know.

finally updating

Hello! It’s been amazing getting to experience the culture here in Togo, I feel like I’ve already learned so much in the short amount of time I’ve been here. I’m really looking forward to the next two years. This whole Girl’s Education and Empowerment thing is pretty sweet.

Getting connected to the internet is harder than I thought it was going to be so I’ve been in Togo for almost a month and I’m just now able to post an update. Alors, there’s a whole lot I would love to share with everyone. The last (and first) time I was able to get online about a week ago, I wasn’t able to figure out how to post what I had written before my time on the computer was up. I have been using a friend’s computer to type updates which means I have a lot to post, so for the sake of organization I am going to break it up and do a series of posts.