Not too much is going on over here. I am trying to get a trip lined up to Benin to go on a Safari, but we'll see how that turns out. I was informed that I need a visa, but I don't exactly want to run down to Lomé to pick one up for a single day in the country. HOpefully there are some nice boarder guards.
Other than that, life goes on. I am out of American food and am planning on stocking up on anythng I can fit in my pack in Kara today. The water hauling is taking its toll on my metabolism and the monastery food just isn't cutting it.
In other news, the Flyers are the best team in the NHL, Nebraska basketball might double its win total from last lear and maybe even make a postseason appearance, the SuperBowl should be a hard hitting old-school brawl. It should make for a decent start to the new month.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Headstrong
The water is still out and my shoulders couldn’t take carrying water anymore so I had to use my head, literally. I switched off between a 20 and 25L jug full of water precariously balancing it on my head for the mini trek from the pump to the garden. I have no idea how the people here can do that day in and day out. And they don’t need to use their hands. I was straining with both of mine to keep the darn thing from falling off and breaking, releasing the precious liquid on a worthless patch of dirt. The water tower doesn’t seam to want to be fixed either so its looking like I am going to have my work cut out for me for a little while.
Oh and I saw a scorpion today. It was just a little guy, but his stinger definitely worked. I was studying it on the wall during my English class when one of my students picked up the blackboard eraser and held it close to the scorpion’s head and the little bugger sprang at it with lightning speed. I reacted almost as quickly with my shoe on him.
Oh and I saw a scorpion today. It was just a little guy, but his stinger definitely worked. I was studying it on the wall during my English class when one of my students picked up the blackboard eraser and held it close to the scorpion’s head and the little bugger sprang at it with lightning speed. I reacted almost as quickly with my shoe on him.
Tired as a dog
So the water cut out…again. Normally I wouldn’t be too worried about it considering my only water needs are a half bucket of the stuff to shower with (as I say to hell with the toilets, the woods are cleaner). But yesterday was Sunday meaning that the garden was only watered sparsely at night due to the whole take off the holy day thing, which absolutely drives me berserk when it comes to finding something to do. So in order to save my green beans, tomatoes, and pimon I had to haul the water bucket by bucket the nice little quarter of a mile stretch between the garden and the pump. It wasn’t very fun.
I also got a soccer game in, which was awesome and far too long overdue. And then I slept my way through mass and dinner. Everyone was joking about how tired I was, I gave a hint of a smile passed everyone on my way to my room taking consolation in knowing that I’ll have the last laugh when the little workhorse flies off into the night sky leaving no one to fill his hoofs for another 6 months.
I also got a soccer game in, which was awesome and far too long overdue. And then I slept my way through mass and dinner. Everyone was joking about how tired I was, I gave a hint of a smile passed everyone on my way to my room taking consolation in knowing that I’ll have the last laugh when the little workhorse flies off into the night sky leaving no one to fill his hoofs for another 6 months.
Défelé
I was offered an opportunity to drive an hour into the mountains for a mass on Sunday by the prior. Not being one to willingly miss out on an opportunity to change things up a bit on the typically low-key weekends, I obliged. My response was followed up with, “Ok good, we’re leaving at 5h30.” FML. I was assured that we would just be going for the mass and then returning promptly after lunch, which gave me some comfort in knowing that I wouldn’t be spending the entire day on the road. I wasn’t expecting to completely follow the schedule that was given to me, but I was definitely not expecting the events that occurred.
The 5h25 wake up call on the 5th alarm that I set the night before wasn’t as rough as it could have been, but it sure wasn’t fun either. Groggy Greg climbed into the van with the Archbishop and the prior for the two-hour ride during which I dozed in and out of sleep while listening to my music. We arrived, had a bare bones breakfast of leftover porridge and then made our way to the little chapel. I managed to find a seat among the hundreds of people gathered to see the 5 marriages, yes 5 marriages. I spent the next four hours hunched over on a wooden bench scrunched between a rather large woman and a little girl who was in danger of falling off throughout the ceremony. It was not how I envisioned spending my Sunday morning. It wouldn’t have been as bad had there not been ten eager cameramen (most using 35mm film cameras out of the 70s, one with a video camera out of the mid-90s, and one with a newer video camera and a stage light). Between being blinded by the stage light being shown in my face every time he passed by to get a shot of the crowd and having my view blocked from the other 9 guys I got glimpses of the action.
After the mass, I stood awkwardly outside of the chapel greeting anyone who came up to me while waiting for my two chaperones. We meandered our way back to the curator’s house all the while thinking ‘eat and leave.’ We got back and eventually started eating while the wedding parties made their way to the house before the separate celebrations started at all corners of the town. The food was pretty good, but the lack of people willing to talk to the white guy that no one had ever seen before made it for a rather solitary meal. I did grab the attention of a little girl whom the archbishop made sit next to him, but that didn't last too long. I even picked up on some not so happy thoughts from some of the brides who weren’t too thrilled about the white stranger getting served first with the nicer dishware while they were stuck with the plastic fill-ins. The ensuing eye contact would’ve turned a lesser man to stone.
After eating my fill and sitting/watching the feasting I was delighted to see Bernard (the prior) motion that we were leaving. Yes! I can still salvage some of the day for personal use! Nope. We ended up driving to three of the newlyweds’ parties and subsequently having to turn down food each one on account of not having any room for more. Up until the third one, we had been giving lifts to random people and some of the other celebrants of the ceremony. Upon leaving the third house however, it was just the three of us. Finally, we can go back to Agbang; except, wait, we are driving North not South. Damn. We made a stop at a house about 25 minutes North of Défelé to say hi to some family friends. Afterwards we were Southbound, finally. But this time we took a right and headed West. We stopped at a convent, chatted for another half hour and then drove one of the sisters to another convent on the other side of this little town where we sat and chatted for another half hour. At least at the second place there was some popcorn (of all things wonderful to find in an African village). At this point it was already 5 o’clock and I had given up all hope of getting back in time to do anything I had planned. By then I was hoping to make it back in time for supper.
We finally got on the road and started the journey back to Kara. I wish I could say that the journey was uneventful, but alas we were stopped at a blockade (the likes of which I had never seen in Togo). Apparently all traffic was grounded between a town a hair south of Défelé and Kara. We were initially told to go back to the end of a 2-mile line of cars and trucks before finagling our way to the front by saying that we had an archbishop and a prior in the group. We waited for about 20 minutes and then coerced our way past the blockade saying that we were going to let the bishop wait in the comfort of a parish house not far away. We took back roads to another small town not too far away only to find out that the passage to the main road was blocked off here too. Apparently January 24th is the anniversary of the death of the former president who died in a plane crash. I couldn’t tell you what was going on to commemorate it, but the president went cruising by with his brigade of followers. After the main part of the caravan had passed, Bernard snuck into the tail end of the pack giving us a free road at high speeds for a little while before turning off of the presidential route. We made it back in the nick of time for supper and then I proceeded to pass out hoping that my I would sleepwalk and do all of the work that I had wanted to do earlier.
The 5h25 wake up call on the 5th alarm that I set the night before wasn’t as rough as it could have been, but it sure wasn’t fun either. Groggy Greg climbed into the van with the Archbishop and the prior for the two-hour ride during which I dozed in and out of sleep while listening to my music. We arrived, had a bare bones breakfast of leftover porridge and then made our way to the little chapel. I managed to find a seat among the hundreds of people gathered to see the 5 marriages, yes 5 marriages. I spent the next four hours hunched over on a wooden bench scrunched between a rather large woman and a little girl who was in danger of falling off throughout the ceremony. It was not how I envisioned spending my Sunday morning. It wouldn’t have been as bad had there not been ten eager cameramen (most using 35mm film cameras out of the 70s, one with a video camera out of the mid-90s, and one with a newer video camera and a stage light). Between being blinded by the stage light being shown in my face every time he passed by to get a shot of the crowd and having my view blocked from the other 9 guys I got glimpses of the action.
After the mass, I stood awkwardly outside of the chapel greeting anyone who came up to me while waiting for my two chaperones. We meandered our way back to the curator’s house all the while thinking ‘eat and leave.’ We got back and eventually started eating while the wedding parties made their way to the house before the separate celebrations started at all corners of the town. The food was pretty good, but the lack of people willing to talk to the white guy that no one had ever seen before made it for a rather solitary meal. I did grab the attention of a little girl whom the archbishop made sit next to him, but that didn't last too long. I even picked up on some not so happy thoughts from some of the brides who weren’t too thrilled about the white stranger getting served first with the nicer dishware while they were stuck with the plastic fill-ins. The ensuing eye contact would’ve turned a lesser man to stone.
After eating my fill and sitting/watching the feasting I was delighted to see Bernard (the prior) motion that we were leaving. Yes! I can still salvage some of the day for personal use! Nope. We ended up driving to three of the newlyweds’ parties and subsequently having to turn down food each one on account of not having any room for more. Up until the third one, we had been giving lifts to random people and some of the other celebrants of the ceremony. Upon leaving the third house however, it was just the three of us. Finally, we can go back to Agbang; except, wait, we are driving North not South. Damn. We made a stop at a house about 25 minutes North of Défelé to say hi to some family friends. Afterwards we were Southbound, finally. But this time we took a right and headed West. We stopped at a convent, chatted for another half hour and then drove one of the sisters to another convent on the other side of this little town where we sat and chatted for another half hour. At least at the second place there was some popcorn (of all things wonderful to find in an African village). At this point it was already 5 o’clock and I had given up all hope of getting back in time to do anything I had planned. By then I was hoping to make it back in time for supper.
We finally got on the road and started the journey back to Kara. I wish I could say that the journey was uneventful, but alas we were stopped at a blockade (the likes of which I had never seen in Togo). Apparently all traffic was grounded between a town a hair south of Défelé and Kara. We were initially told to go back to the end of a 2-mile line of cars and trucks before finagling our way to the front by saying that we had an archbishop and a prior in the group. We waited for about 20 minutes and then coerced our way past the blockade saying that we were going to let the bishop wait in the comfort of a parish house not far away. We took back roads to another small town not too far away only to find out that the passage to the main road was blocked off here too. Apparently January 24th is the anniversary of the death of the former president who died in a plane crash. I couldn’t tell you what was going on to commemorate it, but the president went cruising by with his brigade of followers. After the main part of the caravan had passed, Bernard snuck into the tail end of the pack giving us a free road at high speeds for a little while before turning off of the presidential route. We made it back in the nick of time for supper and then I proceeded to pass out hoping that my I would sleepwalk and do all of the work that I had wanted to do earlier.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Books (revision)
I have finished. Rolled through that one in just under 3 days having started it at 11 o’clock on Saturday night (hoping for a quick solution for sleep) and had finished tonight a shade before that same time. The Pillars of the Earth was a little more interesting than I had initially thought upon looking at the cover (insert choice axiom). But it settled down into an easy read and gave me something to do with my weekend and free time that would have no doubt been spent playing solitary card games. It was predictable at times, exciting at others, and at times fun to read – I must admit. The one thing that the book had going for it was that it appealed to one of my greater interests in that of Medieval History. Not that I spent 5 months earning my minor in that same subfield less than a 30 minute plane ride from where the story took place or anything. My subtle distain for English and Welshmen flared a little bit at points, but what more can be said for someone who had Irish professors. I haven’t completely changed my view on books as I would be blind not to realize that I am not in my element in the first place and it would not be unlike me to do things that I don’t normally do when I am not there. But reading this one felt, satisfying.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Teeth...
were given to us for a reason. My dislike of the food here is fairly well known, but despite that I still sit down willingly and suffer through the meals, wishing that we could just say prayer and I could get the heck out of there. I have come to almost dread meal time, especially when the prior is around for lunch. As he is always moving around, he ues the time to socialize with the other wealthier visitors or the bishop (whom I have slowly grown to dislike after getting to know him better). The sitting still in a chair at a table full of monks with the taste of mush, and peanut sauce with green beans fresh in my mouth listening to big-bellied laughs at ecclesiastical and clerical jokes isn’t exactly my idea of fun. Today had been particularly non-welcoming to me at meal time. Both times we had pate, which I have come to despise. When it is made right and has a solid form to it, I can stand it. But today it was pure mush with the cook having used too much water for the amount of cornflower. It was like eating mashed potatoes and green beans smothered in a peanut gravy that may sound appetizing as I am finding out writing this, but the reality is starkly different than the Thanksgivingish meal. All I could think about was ‘give me some damn food that I can sink my teeth into! it was more difficult for me to eat this meal with teeth as there was nothing to chew. a teething baby would have taken more pleasure in this meal than I am’. I can’t wait to sink my teeth into a nice juicy steak the likes of which have never before been seen here.
Santé
My health has returned although I feel like writing about it is going to re-curse my body. I also feel as clean as a whistle as taking a week’s worth of whatever the heck it was that killed the worms and an anti-diarrheal pretty much gutted my system. And for that I am eternally grateful. I managed to scream through 2 rolls of toilet paper during the first three days and in my shame, I have been using newspaper since (the opposite sides of the huskers articles do the dirty work to avoid disgracing the team). This isn’t the first time, but it’s not much worse than the stuff they give you and this one preserves some of my dignity as I don’t think I could muster asking for a 3rd roll in the same week – less than a week.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Resolution
I guess it’s only fair to have a(nother) New Years as seeing that Christmas came late. I was happy to see all of the sports articles and was surprised to see a novel, and not just a novel, a big one, for me at least. So in honor of New Years and the resolutions that I don’t believe in I am going to give it a try. In realizing how much of a hypocrite I will be in finding that I may actually like it and also in remembering a recent post about my view on books, you’ll see that I have not taken this decision lightly. But in understanding that I can only play so many hands of solitaire or FreeCell before getting bored it will be a welcome change of routine if not merely something to occupy my copious amounts of time. So here you go (previously non-liked) BOOKS, this is your chance.
In terms of the other gifts, suffice it to say that I have the most amazing friends and family. I will briefly comment on the monkey towel that was sent to me by Eric? The monkey head sewn on top of the towel with a slot for my head so that I can wear it around like a cape is hysterical! The only thing is I am a little frightened to wear it around like that with my hands in the little paw-slots because frankly it only covers down to my bellybutton. I don’t think the monks would see the humor in me running down the hall to the shower dressed like a monkey from head to navel with nothing below.
In terms of the other gifts, suffice it to say that I have the most amazing friends and family. I will briefly comment on the monkey towel that was sent to me by Eric? The monkey head sewn on top of the towel with a slot for my head so that I can wear it around like a cape is hysterical! The only thing is I am a little frightened to wear it around like that with my hands in the little paw-slots because frankly it only covers down to my bellybutton. I don’t think the monks would see the humor in me running down the hall to the shower dressed like a monkey from head to navel with nothing below.
Reluctance
I am somewhat reluctant to write today as I am tired from frolicking in the winter wonderland that is January in Togo. I guess I should start from the beginning.
Yesterday was a good day. It started out like any other, rolling out of bed at the clanging of the breakfast bell. Breakfast, which has recently switched from corn soup to steamed yams (bigtime downgrade), was better than normal as the presence of bread at least gave me some reconciliation that my favorite meal of the day wasn’t going to leave a sour taste in my mouth that was oh so used to the sweets. I then did a quick bout of laundry taking advantage of the unusually timed running of the generator to play some music while I worked. Ok I didn’t just play it I practically blared it, as much as is possible from my computer. There weren’t too many people around at the time and I am not shy about using the nonconfrontational style here to my advantage.
After laundry I sat down in my room and stared at my desk before decided to play a few hands of solitaire and FreeCell (old school fashion with the cards as someone didn’t like my music and cut the power). I then received a knock on my door saying that we were having fufu for lunch and they needed help pounding the yams. I jumped at the opportunity to get some kind of physical activity in and dashed off. I saw the UNESCO group who barely blinked at the sight of some random white guy walking around. I pounded fufu for as long as my nolongerleatherskinned hands could take, turning down every offer to take over and becoming more defiant each time as I was the only one receiving the offers. The fact that it was the lazy and uneducated aspirant who was constantly asking me only aggravated me more to the point where I was ready to knock him in the jaw with the mashing baton if he came near me again and blame it on losing my grip. I finally succumbed to the fact that my hands were now raw with blisters and realizing that there was nothing there to prove and I wasn’t rowing that there was no point in completely shredding my hands over a bowl of pounded yams. I saw Blaise make his way over and tossed him the baton, spurning the ones who had been trying to cater to me. I don’t treat anyone differently based on their color and I command the same of anyone I interact with. Treat me with any sign of difference and you’ll get a swift kick in the ass before being afforded the opportunity of watching me doing what it is that you thought I couldn’t.
After Lunch I made my way back to my room where to my surprise the electricity was back on. I figured I had nothing better to do so I watched one of my legally backed up for personal use movies. If you’ve never heard of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” snag it off of Netflix and start watching. At about the climax of the movie my phone started ringing. My dad called about 5 hours earlier than I expected, which I was hoping for as I had other plans made for the night. I had a great talk about anything and everything I could think of at the time. It was nice to not have to stop and explain my words, attempting different pronunciations in trying to hit upon the West African version of the same word. English is meant to be spoken fast I have determined, as are most languages. And I am thankful to not have started off a conversation with “thank you” (the first time I heard that one I was stopped dead in my tracks, skipped by it and probably came off as incredibly rude when talking to the armed guard in Accra, but seriously? Who starts a conversation with “thank you?”) which people are taught here along with the always present “hi, how are you, fine thanks,” monotony that has been etched into people’s minds, and (although it would be difficult to replicate for a phone call) “I am coming” as a form of saying “I will be right back.” If I have one pet peeve here it is that. In French you say “J’arrive” to say I will be arriving soon, I have arrived, or I am arriving – in context, “I will be right back”. But here they are taught to say “I am coming.” Christian says it all the time in Kara when we are sitting down and he has to run out of the room to go help someone. NO you are not coming, you are leaving, you will be coming back. The proper term is I will be right back.
Anywho the talk was good, but the credits cut out on us right at the end. Almost no sooner than I had clicked continue, I heard a knockin’ at my door. Who on earth could it be? I opened the door to find the man in red himself (minus the red, and the reindeer, and the snow, and rosy red cheeks, and the white beard, and the boots, and the whip, and the bells, and the sleigh, and the elves, and the bag, and the blue eyes)! Santa is black! And his sleigh is really a 2009 Sanya Motorcycle, black. But I was like no shit, this is actually happening. I saw 3 boxes in the ledge outside my door and was greeted by one of the monks, Nikolas, who is always happy to see me since he lives in Kara and we haven’t fallen into the mundane daily greeting routine. He took off as quick as he showed up always having things to do and as far as I could tell he made the special trip down from the north pole just for me. My initial reaction was, my god how did Natalie afford a box this big (as the other two and hers were expected to arrive around the same time). Turns out I am still waiting on that box, but Mom Mom you will be happy to know that someone upstairs has an eye on the USPS because that box somehow made it up from South Africa generally unscathed save the chocolate covered pretzels, which have been reduced to chocolate covered bags with pretzels inside in the African heat.
I had another reaction, but this was to the third person who found his way to be standing outside of my room when the boxes showed up (I think is was a right place, right time kinda deal). It was the lazy aspirant who still owes me money from a moto ride about a month back. He had huge eyes seeing me take the boxes (after bidding farewell to Nik) and said knowing that I prefer French (even though he speaks less than Colin) to his native version of English “On va partager?” I shot him a look that said like hell, gave him a cheerful “nope” and closed the door with my foot.
So yes today was a good day and I have been frolicking in my private winter wonderland for the past day and a half.
Yesterday was a good day. It started out like any other, rolling out of bed at the clanging of the breakfast bell. Breakfast, which has recently switched from corn soup to steamed yams (bigtime downgrade), was better than normal as the presence of bread at least gave me some reconciliation that my favorite meal of the day wasn’t going to leave a sour taste in my mouth that was oh so used to the sweets. I then did a quick bout of laundry taking advantage of the unusually timed running of the generator to play some music while I worked. Ok I didn’t just play it I practically blared it, as much as is possible from my computer. There weren’t too many people around at the time and I am not shy about using the nonconfrontational style here to my advantage.
After laundry I sat down in my room and stared at my desk before decided to play a few hands of solitaire and FreeCell (old school fashion with the cards as someone didn’t like my music and cut the power). I then received a knock on my door saying that we were having fufu for lunch and they needed help pounding the yams. I jumped at the opportunity to get some kind of physical activity in and dashed off. I saw the UNESCO group who barely blinked at the sight of some random white guy walking around. I pounded fufu for as long as my nolongerleatherskinned hands could take, turning down every offer to take over and becoming more defiant each time as I was the only one receiving the offers. The fact that it was the lazy and uneducated aspirant who was constantly asking me only aggravated me more to the point where I was ready to knock him in the jaw with the mashing baton if he came near me again and blame it on losing my grip. I finally succumbed to the fact that my hands were now raw with blisters and realizing that there was nothing there to prove and I wasn’t rowing that there was no point in completely shredding my hands over a bowl of pounded yams. I saw Blaise make his way over and tossed him the baton, spurning the ones who had been trying to cater to me. I don’t treat anyone differently based on their color and I command the same of anyone I interact with. Treat me with any sign of difference and you’ll get a swift kick in the ass before being afforded the opportunity of watching me doing what it is that you thought I couldn’t.
After Lunch I made my way back to my room where to my surprise the electricity was back on. I figured I had nothing better to do so I watched one of my legally backed up for personal use movies. If you’ve never heard of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” snag it off of Netflix and start watching. At about the climax of the movie my phone started ringing. My dad called about 5 hours earlier than I expected, which I was hoping for as I had other plans made for the night. I had a great talk about anything and everything I could think of at the time. It was nice to not have to stop and explain my words, attempting different pronunciations in trying to hit upon the West African version of the same word. English is meant to be spoken fast I have determined, as are most languages. And I am thankful to not have started off a conversation with “thank you” (the first time I heard that one I was stopped dead in my tracks, skipped by it and probably came off as incredibly rude when talking to the armed guard in Accra, but seriously? Who starts a conversation with “thank you?”) which people are taught here along with the always present “hi, how are you, fine thanks,” monotony that has been etched into people’s minds, and (although it would be difficult to replicate for a phone call) “I am coming” as a form of saying “I will be right back.” If I have one pet peeve here it is that. In French you say “J’arrive” to say I will be arriving soon, I have arrived, or I am arriving – in context, “I will be right back”. But here they are taught to say “I am coming.” Christian says it all the time in Kara when we are sitting down and he has to run out of the room to go help someone. NO you are not coming, you are leaving, you will be coming back. The proper term is I will be right back.
Anywho the talk was good, but the credits cut out on us right at the end. Almost no sooner than I had clicked continue, I heard a knockin’ at my door. Who on earth could it be? I opened the door to find the man in red himself (minus the red, and the reindeer, and the snow, and rosy red cheeks, and the white beard, and the boots, and the whip, and the bells, and the sleigh, and the elves, and the bag, and the blue eyes)! Santa is black! And his sleigh is really a 2009 Sanya Motorcycle, black. But I was like no shit, this is actually happening. I saw 3 boxes in the ledge outside my door and was greeted by one of the monks, Nikolas, who is always happy to see me since he lives in Kara and we haven’t fallen into the mundane daily greeting routine. He took off as quick as he showed up always having things to do and as far as I could tell he made the special trip down from the north pole just for me. My initial reaction was, my god how did Natalie afford a box this big (as the other two and hers were expected to arrive around the same time). Turns out I am still waiting on that box, but Mom Mom you will be happy to know that someone upstairs has an eye on the USPS because that box somehow made it up from South Africa generally unscathed save the chocolate covered pretzels, which have been reduced to chocolate covered bags with pretzels inside in the African heat.
I had another reaction, but this was to the third person who found his way to be standing outside of my room when the boxes showed up (I think is was a right place, right time kinda deal). It was the lazy aspirant who still owes me money from a moto ride about a month back. He had huge eyes seeing me take the boxes (after bidding farewell to Nik) and said knowing that I prefer French (even though he speaks less than Colin) to his native version of English “On va partager?” I shot him a look that said like hell, gave him a cheerful “nope” and closed the door with my foot.
So yes today was a good day and I have been frolicking in my private winter wonderland for the past day and a half.
Hair
There was a UNESCO caravan that made it’s way to the monastery today, with what I think was a Peace Corps worker in a white girl. Apparantly they want to set up a one day clinic to help malnourished children in the area. That’s all fine and dandy, I just hope they have a system for keeping up on looking after the kids once the supply of miracle vitamin pills runs out. As long as they keep up with it, power to them. But if this is a one stop shop, hand out, pack up and go home operation the children would probably be better off without it.
I saw part of a documentary (came out this year) on Swaziland during one of my first trips to Christian’s house in Kara. Two things stuck with me. The first was the princess saying that she had a dream from God about it raining in a region where it traditionally hadn’t rained, it came true, and the people who converted to Christianity and believed in Jesus were cured of Aids. Something’s gotta give. The other, was the president (who is female and was dressed out of 19th C England) chronicaled, fascinatingly, how the freedom that had crept its way into a rather close-minded societal structure has lead to that society having widespread HIV/AIDS outbreaks and poverty and that all of the aid and donations that have been given has been more harmful than helpful. She ended with our children grow up wanting this freedom that the outside world offers, the receive it and they only bring back disaster.
I am not saying that UNESCO is going to bring disaster to Togo, but unforeseen consequences of poor preparation/planning can be pretty magnanimous.
Anywho, the girl had really long, blonde hair and one of the strands ended up on a cup or plate that Blaise was going to use at dinner. I picked it up and looked at it like a child looks at a worm for the first time. He then nudged Johanas and they both stared at it in awe wondering what the hell it was. I laughed at the sight, during the silent dinner, and asked what they were looking at. “I don’t know.” I told them it was hair from the girl who visited earlier, to which they were unaware. But the look on their faces was priceless when I told them what it was. It would be worth noting that black people’s hair is spongy, curly and doesn’t fall out very often (could be due to the fact that all men have shaved or shortly buzzed hair as do girls and only well to do women have long hair, which I wont even bother describing).
I saw part of a documentary (came out this year) on Swaziland during one of my first trips to Christian’s house in Kara. Two things stuck with me. The first was the princess saying that she had a dream from God about it raining in a region where it traditionally hadn’t rained, it came true, and the people who converted to Christianity and believed in Jesus were cured of Aids. Something’s gotta give. The other, was the president (who is female and was dressed out of 19th C England) chronicaled, fascinatingly, how the freedom that had crept its way into a rather close-minded societal structure has lead to that society having widespread HIV/AIDS outbreaks and poverty and that all of the aid and donations that have been given has been more harmful than helpful. She ended with our children grow up wanting this freedom that the outside world offers, the receive it and they only bring back disaster.
I am not saying that UNESCO is going to bring disaster to Togo, but unforeseen consequences of poor preparation/planning can be pretty magnanimous.
Anywho, the girl had really long, blonde hair and one of the strands ended up on a cup or plate that Blaise was going to use at dinner. I picked it up and looked at it like a child looks at a worm for the first time. He then nudged Johanas and they both stared at it in awe wondering what the hell it was. I laughed at the sight, during the silent dinner, and asked what they were looking at. “I don’t know.” I told them it was hair from the girl who visited earlier, to which they were unaware. But the look on their faces was priceless when I told them what it was. It would be worth noting that black people’s hair is spongy, curly and doesn’t fall out very often (could be due to the fact that all men have shaved or shortly buzzed hair as do girls and only well to do women have long hair, which I wont even bother describing).
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Back to the Grind
The worms are still there. Life goes on, although it is rather unsettling listening to WWIII going on inside of me. The booms and mini explosions due to godknowswhat are psyching me out a little bit.
On that note, I went in to teach my class today (at 11h00 on Friday). As a little background, a week ago (Friday) I gave my students a 10-line letter homework assignment to prep them for a pen pal program that I am currently working on. They came in on Tuesday morning saying that they were either sick, didn’t know how to write, and didn’t know what to write. I doubled the assignment, wrote it all on the board and gave them until our next class on Thursday (little did I know that the 13th is a national holiday, but I was bedridden and didn’t miss a beat on skipping class for the day off). I walked into my class today to find two of them starting the assignment and one of them thinking she had it finished with 5 lines. I got the typical “I am sick” excuse. I flipped…”you’re sick? Ok, what do you have? ‘a headache and yesterday I had a stomach ache from some bad soy cheese’ Oh that’s too bad, I have a headache, I have a cough, my asthma is acting up from the dust, I have worms, I am suffering from mal-nourishment due to 3rd world cuisine and I am here in class and not bitching about it; deal with it.” They were waiting for the sympathetic Greg to come out, make a joke or two and start teaching. He was out picking daisies. They all got 0s and the original assignment reassigned for the 3rd time.
I think I was more frustrated at the fact that I caught them in the act and then they tried to hide it or explain it. I was great at working the system in college and the improv/impromptu gene passed down from dear old dad sure helped, but when I got caught doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing or working on something that should’ve been finished long before the time that I was working on it - man you just gotta lay down the cards and take it. There is no getting around getting caught red-handed. I mean sure the brunt of the force isn’t too bad if you’re not the only one, but you keep your trap shut, take it, apologize, and learn from the mistake (generally show up 20 minutes late to class with a finished assignment and use one of 50 prepped excuses that all have plausible, implausible if you’ve got the balls for it, back stories – and in all honesty the truth is the best excuse, and great professors who have been around the block can see it in the eyes – the words mean nothing to them. ¬°cough, practice).
This all comes back to corporal punishment. Other teachers use it. I don’t. There are better ways of rewarding and punishing behavior, but I think this institution is about a century or so behind Skinner and Pavlov. So my forward way of thinking and positive psychology doesn’t quite work in an equilateral African country bent on tapping behavior/grades into children. I am seen as the easy going, ‘his punishments are better than being hit with a stick’, candy giving white guy. It’s difficult being thrown into a positive punishment society and trying to implement a positive reinforcement ideology. Add in that I only interact with 4 kids for 4 hours per week in the school setting and, well it would take a lot more time than I am going to spend here to do that. But I am getting a very real experience of what life on the other side of the fence is like.
At the onset of my deciding to major in Psychology I told my advisor that I wanted to focus on 2 things, Sports and Cross-Cultural. There is one course on each and I took neither. I played sports and studied the psychology behind it all in my own time and I have traveled and studied it in my own time. I may not know the “scientific” names of the theories, but oh man have I seen them in action. And all I can say for it is that if life were supposed to be a textbook, God would have made everyone blind and written it in Brail.
On that note, I went in to teach my class today (at 11h00 on Friday). As a little background, a week ago (Friday) I gave my students a 10-line letter homework assignment to prep them for a pen pal program that I am currently working on. They came in on Tuesday morning saying that they were either sick, didn’t know how to write, and didn’t know what to write. I doubled the assignment, wrote it all on the board and gave them until our next class on Thursday (little did I know that the 13th is a national holiday, but I was bedridden and didn’t miss a beat on skipping class for the day off). I walked into my class today to find two of them starting the assignment and one of them thinking she had it finished with 5 lines. I got the typical “I am sick” excuse. I flipped…”you’re sick? Ok, what do you have? ‘a headache and yesterday I had a stomach ache from some bad soy cheese’ Oh that’s too bad, I have a headache, I have a cough, my asthma is acting up from the dust, I have worms, I am suffering from mal-nourishment due to 3rd world cuisine and I am here in class and not bitching about it; deal with it.” They were waiting for the sympathetic Greg to come out, make a joke or two and start teaching. He was out picking daisies. They all got 0s and the original assignment reassigned for the 3rd time.
I think I was more frustrated at the fact that I caught them in the act and then they tried to hide it or explain it. I was great at working the system in college and the improv/impromptu gene passed down from dear old dad sure helped, but when I got caught doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing or working on something that should’ve been finished long before the time that I was working on it - man you just gotta lay down the cards and take it. There is no getting around getting caught red-handed. I mean sure the brunt of the force isn’t too bad if you’re not the only one, but you keep your trap shut, take it, apologize, and learn from the mistake (generally show up 20 minutes late to class with a finished assignment and use one of 50 prepped excuses that all have plausible, implausible if you’ve got the balls for it, back stories – and in all honesty the truth is the best excuse, and great professors who have been around the block can see it in the eyes – the words mean nothing to them. ¬°cough, practice).
This all comes back to corporal punishment. Other teachers use it. I don’t. There are better ways of rewarding and punishing behavior, but I think this institution is about a century or so behind Skinner and Pavlov. So my forward way of thinking and positive psychology doesn’t quite work in an equilateral African country bent on tapping behavior/grades into children. I am seen as the easy going, ‘his punishments are better than being hit with a stick’, candy giving white guy. It’s difficult being thrown into a positive punishment society and trying to implement a positive reinforcement ideology. Add in that I only interact with 4 kids for 4 hours per week in the school setting and, well it would take a lot more time than I am going to spend here to do that. But I am getting a very real experience of what life on the other side of the fence is like.
At the onset of my deciding to major in Psychology I told my advisor that I wanted to focus on 2 things, Sports and Cross-Cultural. There is one course on each and I took neither. I played sports and studied the psychology behind it all in my own time and I have traveled and studied it in my own time. I may not know the “scientific” names of the theories, but oh man have I seen them in action. And all I can say for it is that if life were supposed to be a textbook, God would have made everyone blind and written it in Brail.
College football
is over. Auburn controversially won the national championship, although I am happy that a more balanced team put the lid on a high scoring, defense-to-the wind mentality (tough to say because I love the Ducks, butcha gotta play the game like it was meant to be played). If I had my druthers TCU would be the national champion as they were the most impressive team week in and week out.
Other than that, I would give the season a C+ rating. The controversy over rules violations across the board was pathetic and the fact that the NCAA can’t seem to get a grasp on it is worse. We are finally starting to see what happens when teams schedule weak non-conference games and their actual conference has a down year. Michigan State had an outstanding year on paper at 11-2, but they are no better than a Top 25 team. Ohio St had one quality win all year coming against Arkansas. Iowa tanked at the end of the year due to injuries and Penn St. was in an off year. Wisconsin was by far and away the only proven Big 10 team coming into bowl season. The SEC was loaded and was hands down the best conference in the league this year. The Pac 10 had two top 5 times and might as well just drop the states of Washington and Arizona and half of the teams from California off the docket for next year. Colorado has a great a shot at finishing in the upper half of the league for a change. The Big East should drop football and stick to basketball. The Big 12 was an enigma and a much tougher conference than people will give it credit for after the bowl season. Had it been the SEC that went through a season like the Big 12, the papers would be calling it the best conference by far and away – all of the teams were too good and beat up on each other. Somehow, NU managed to finish 20th in the AP poll falling a miraculous 1 spot after the bowl loss. For as much as the press has disliked Nebraska since the early 2000s, they sure did give us a little credit this year. The ACC is making strides, but will drop off a little next year with player losses. They are far from the powerhouse conference that they were a decade ago. The MWC was the class of the non-AQ this year having more bowl teams than the PAC 10 (or the same if USC wasn’t on probation). Boise State is still over-rated as is Nevada. (ranked 15th come bowl season having beaten two teams with a winning record – Boise St (due to b2b botched field-goals by BSU) and Fresno State who had a whopping 7 wins (6 of them were against the bottom of the MWC and WAC). please don’t dell me that this is even a Top 20 worthy team) Both very good teams, but the strength of schedule just isn’t there. Being the biggest, baddest fish in the pond means squat when the pond consists of Nevada, Idaho, New Mexico, Hawaii, and the dregs of Louisiana/California. The CUSA played some of the most exciting football that no one saw. Good teams with high-powered offenses centered around difficult schemes with defenses to match and there was no high-profile controversy surrounding any one program. The MAC disappointed, but not much can be expected from the BIG 10’s little brother. Asside from Florida Atlantic having a chance to knock Texas out of bowl contention or Western Kentucky snapping an incredible losing streak, nothing of note really happened in the Sun Belt. And last but not least, the Independents. Army made it back to a bowl, Navy showed that the triple option still has a place in football, and Notre Dame was 8 points away from an 11 win season with a new coach and unproven leaders.
The scenery change next year will have a big impact on the football landscape as the Big 10 becomes the Big 12 and visa versa. The MWC loses its top 3 traditional powers to the Big East and Independents, but gains the cream of the crop out of the WAC (wahoo). The Pac 10 picks up a team that probably is no more closer to the Pacific Coast than TCU is to that of the Atlantic. But hey, the way college football works these days, this is normal. No longer does playing in January mean that you are one of the top 10 teams in the nation. No longer is winning seen as a W. It is seen as a statistical nightmare of baseballesk proportions. Winning ugly is basically a loss unless you are in the good graces of the media or hail from the almighty SEC. Playing tough non-conference schedules is about as rare as a consensus Number 1 team. And if the stars align come September, all will be exposed to the entire nation as the NFL lockout will leave College Football in the spotlight. Nothing would be worse for the fate of the bowl system than having the playoff crazy NFL fans clamoring for a playoff in a system that they don’t understand. But for now there is hope. Nebraska changes to the new league and while the schedule may seem daunting it is favorable. Washington loses Jake Locker and the sting from the bowl will carry over into that game. The rest of the non-conference slate should be a cakewalk. Wisconsin will be tough, but will be undergoing some major changes in losing their star quarterback who has been the staple of that team for all but the first year of Bielema’s tenure. Ohio State will be down 6 starters (including their star quarterback) when Nebraska rolls around. Minn sucks. Michigan State loses 95% of their defense in their soon to be drafted middle linebacker. Northwestern saves its big upset for Iowa every year. Penn St. will be tough, but they lost every tough game this year and have some QB controversy. Michigan is getting a new coach and will be changing schemes and working with a team that is unproven in the spotlight. And Iowa loses over half of their defensive starters and their quarterback. Reading between the lines, even with Watson as a coordinator, so long as the Blackshirts do what they have done the past 3 seasons and the offense scores at least a touchdown a game: NU could be looking at a rematch Big 10 championship come December.
Other than that, I would give the season a C+ rating. The controversy over rules violations across the board was pathetic and the fact that the NCAA can’t seem to get a grasp on it is worse. We are finally starting to see what happens when teams schedule weak non-conference games and their actual conference has a down year. Michigan State had an outstanding year on paper at 11-2, but they are no better than a Top 25 team. Ohio St had one quality win all year coming against Arkansas. Iowa tanked at the end of the year due to injuries and Penn St. was in an off year. Wisconsin was by far and away the only proven Big 10 team coming into bowl season. The SEC was loaded and was hands down the best conference in the league this year. The Pac 10 had two top 5 times and might as well just drop the states of Washington and Arizona and half of the teams from California off the docket for next year. Colorado has a great a shot at finishing in the upper half of the league for a change. The Big East should drop football and stick to basketball. The Big 12 was an enigma and a much tougher conference than people will give it credit for after the bowl season. Had it been the SEC that went through a season like the Big 12, the papers would be calling it the best conference by far and away – all of the teams were too good and beat up on each other. Somehow, NU managed to finish 20th in the AP poll falling a miraculous 1 spot after the bowl loss. For as much as the press has disliked Nebraska since the early 2000s, they sure did give us a little credit this year. The ACC is making strides, but will drop off a little next year with player losses. They are far from the powerhouse conference that they were a decade ago. The MWC was the class of the non-AQ this year having more bowl teams than the PAC 10 (or the same if USC wasn’t on probation). Boise State is still over-rated as is Nevada. (ranked 15th come bowl season having beaten two teams with a winning record – Boise St (due to b2b botched field-goals by BSU) and Fresno State who had a whopping 7 wins (6 of them were against the bottom of the MWC and WAC). please don’t dell me that this is even a Top 20 worthy team) Both very good teams, but the strength of schedule just isn’t there. Being the biggest, baddest fish in the pond means squat when the pond consists of Nevada, Idaho, New Mexico, Hawaii, and the dregs of Louisiana/California. The CUSA played some of the most exciting football that no one saw. Good teams with high-powered offenses centered around difficult schemes with defenses to match and there was no high-profile controversy surrounding any one program. The MAC disappointed, but not much can be expected from the BIG 10’s little brother. Asside from Florida Atlantic having a chance to knock Texas out of bowl contention or Western Kentucky snapping an incredible losing streak, nothing of note really happened in the Sun Belt. And last but not least, the Independents. Army made it back to a bowl, Navy showed that the triple option still has a place in football, and Notre Dame was 8 points away from an 11 win season with a new coach and unproven leaders.
The scenery change next year will have a big impact on the football landscape as the Big 10 becomes the Big 12 and visa versa. The MWC loses its top 3 traditional powers to the Big East and Independents, but gains the cream of the crop out of the WAC (wahoo). The Pac 10 picks up a team that probably is no more closer to the Pacific Coast than TCU is to that of the Atlantic. But hey, the way college football works these days, this is normal. No longer does playing in January mean that you are one of the top 10 teams in the nation. No longer is winning seen as a W. It is seen as a statistical nightmare of baseballesk proportions. Winning ugly is basically a loss unless you are in the good graces of the media or hail from the almighty SEC. Playing tough non-conference schedules is about as rare as a consensus Number 1 team. And if the stars align come September, all will be exposed to the entire nation as the NFL lockout will leave College Football in the spotlight. Nothing would be worse for the fate of the bowl system than having the playoff crazy NFL fans clamoring for a playoff in a system that they don’t understand. But for now there is hope. Nebraska changes to the new league and while the schedule may seem daunting it is favorable. Washington loses Jake Locker and the sting from the bowl will carry over into that game. The rest of the non-conference slate should be a cakewalk. Wisconsin will be tough, but will be undergoing some major changes in losing their star quarterback who has been the staple of that team for all but the first year of Bielema’s tenure. Ohio State will be down 6 starters (including their star quarterback) when Nebraska rolls around. Minn sucks. Michigan State loses 95% of their defense in their soon to be drafted middle linebacker. Northwestern saves its big upset for Iowa every year. Penn St. will be tough, but they lost every tough game this year and have some QB controversy. Michigan is getting a new coach and will be changing schemes and working with a team that is unproven in the spotlight. And Iowa loses over half of their defensive starters and their quarterback. Reading between the lines, even with Watson as a coordinator, so long as the Blackshirts do what they have done the past 3 seasons and the offense scores at least a touchdown a game: NU could be looking at a rematch Big 10 championship come December.
School Calendar
I finally found out all of the important school dates including the last day of school – July 9th. Ha, like a snowball’s chance in hell of making it until then.
Ivory Dreams
So I have been following this debacle over to the West since I saw the election results get torn up live on television in Kara. Talk about lucking out on my weekly trip in! Aside from the weekly trip, I don’t receive too much up to date information as it isn’t exactly a pressing or accessible issue in the countryside. I occasionally pick up on some public sentiment, which is generally positive about either president, and try to read as much information as I can on it during my few hours at the cyber café.
The other day I got to thinking…the whole gang-like, guerilla, and street civil war scene is fairly reminiscent of the movie “City of God,” which chronicles the street violence in Rio de Janeiro. In it, a kid gets his sights set on becoming a photographer and to make a long story short ends up receiving a camera and taking the only pictures of the violence going on. He had a monopoly on the story and the rest is history. It’s an amazing film if you don’t mind reading subtitles. Some of you can probably see where I am going with this. But hey I am a stones throw away from this country in a time of national crisis, all of the peace-keepers/foreigners/international media members are being kicked out, I am street smart, and I speak West African French! It’s a match made in heaven – I bribe a few guards at the boarder, sneak into Abidjan by night, shoot some candids, maybe get a pic or two of one of the presidents (maybe even an interview?), make a mad dash for the boarder, sell the pics and make some mula and a name for myself in the photo-journalism world. All entirely possible, but I don’t have a death wish. I may be spontaneous and even reckless at times, but this one’s a little out there.
It would be one hell of a story though.
The other day I got to thinking…the whole gang-like, guerilla, and street civil war scene is fairly reminiscent of the movie “City of God,” which chronicles the street violence in Rio de Janeiro. In it, a kid gets his sights set on becoming a photographer and to make a long story short ends up receiving a camera and taking the only pictures of the violence going on. He had a monopoly on the story and the rest is history. It’s an amazing film if you don’t mind reading subtitles. Some of you can probably see where I am going with this. But hey I am a stones throw away from this country in a time of national crisis, all of the peace-keepers/foreigners/international media members are being kicked out, I am street smart, and I speak West African French! It’s a match made in heaven – I bribe a few guards at the boarder, sneak into Abidjan by night, shoot some candids, maybe get a pic or two of one of the presidents (maybe even an interview?), make a mad dash for the boarder, sell the pics and make some mula and a name for myself in the photo-journalism world. All entirely possible, but I don’t have a death wish. I may be spontaneous and even reckless at times, but this one’s a little out there.
It would be one hell of a story though.
I am turning into a full blown Chemistry experiment.
Upon returning from Kazaboua, I was greeted with a nice little stomach bug. I played it cool for a day and a half thinking that it would work itself out. Also during that time I was taking a daily vitamin pill and occasionally some Tums (for calcium or stomach troubles depending on the day). After that day and a half I started self-medicating thinking that “I’ve had worse and it’s not too bad.” Give another two days for that idea, during which I was pounding Tums and Imodium AD and drinking my weight in water hoping to flush it all out. Yep, that didn’t work so tonight after being doubled over throughout supper I went to see John de la Croix who gave me two things. The first was a not so inspirational story about how his brother had just died two days ago after going to see him about an illness not three days before. He got to see back-to-back funerals. (The story came after I told him that I could wait until he was done eating as he was just starting when everyone else had finished. He said nope, illnesses come first and went on to tell the tale.) I get where he was coming from, but that didn’t help me much in the patient comfort zone. The second was a boatload of medicine including stuff for worms! My stomach bug may in-fact turn out to be a real bug! Cool!
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Busy as a Bee
Mass was supposed to start at 8 in Kazaboua. The bus rolled in at 8h10 to pick up the bishop and I. Mass started and went for a short 2½ hours except this time it was all in Kabiyé. I was ready to leave as soon as I heard the priests greeting. Mass was followed by a few more hours of sitting and making small talk with whoever was around and that was followed by yet another chaotic meal. If anyone is looking for an entrepreneurial business, come here and start a catering/party planning venture – you’ll clean house.
This time after lunch, I was ready to leave and not afraid to push some buttons to get things moving. For one, the were a ton of people who made the 3 hour trek down from Kpizinde and most of them were still here even though their bus had left. I saw things unfolding very poorly for those who were unaware of the situation and I was determined not to be one of them.
Thankfully the bishop and I were staying at the same house so we were paired together in almost every discussion about seating. As it turns out, we were dropped off at the house around 15h00. I sat in the main room ready to go at the push of a button. The curator made his way in from his morning church rounds and we ended up talking about a bunch of random things before I told him that we would be lucky to get back by midnight (I definitely did not want this to be one of those times when I was right). After 3 hours of sitting and waiting I sent the driver (a monk named Grégoire) a text asking if he had dropped us off at the house so that he could finish all of the left over beer from the funeral with the other monks. I was met with a cold stare when he rolled in close to an hour later. And as I expected there were no monks in the bus. They got the short end of the stick this time and as I am writing this on Monday night, they still are not back yet.
I was happy to see, yet slightly curious, some empty space in the bus. Oh by the way, we are picking up 4 more people. We sat 4,4,3 in a made for 9 minivan. I finagled my way into a seat next to a twig of a girl (we took up slightly more than one seat together) and two other fairly thin villagers, which made for a fairly comfortable 4 hour drive back.
We were just past Kara when the Bishop asked about food (about 22h30). There wasn’t any at the monastery for us so we turned around and went back to Kara. I was tired, but I will take food over sleep if I am hungry enough. We made it to the central gas station when disaster struck. My glass bottle of honey, which had been padded between my feet for the entire drive managed (in being moved to let people out) to hit the one oversized bolt in the entire damn bus and shattered. There was honey all over the floor. I said fuck it and followed everyone to the restaurant. We ate, (me in a cranky silence realizing that I was going to have to spend 30 minutes when we got back cleaning as the bus was supposed to leave before I planned on getting up to pick up the monks down in Kazaboua).
Fortune favored me that night as Grégoire said that he would deal with it in the morning. I was uneasy about letting him clean up my mess, but figured that by his watch I would have time to clean it when I woke up. We pulled into the monastery at exactly 0h00 and I scampered off to my room to pass out from exhaustion.
That trip marked the 6th time that I have driven that 300km stretch of road in less than 2 weeks with 4 of those trips being en route to Lomé from Kara or to Kara from Lomé. And to top off the exhaustion, I no longer have my honey. The little things.
This time after lunch, I was ready to leave and not afraid to push some buttons to get things moving. For one, the were a ton of people who made the 3 hour trek down from Kpizinde and most of them were still here even though their bus had left. I saw things unfolding very poorly for those who were unaware of the situation and I was determined not to be one of them.
Thankfully the bishop and I were staying at the same house so we were paired together in almost every discussion about seating. As it turns out, we were dropped off at the house around 15h00. I sat in the main room ready to go at the push of a button. The curator made his way in from his morning church rounds and we ended up talking about a bunch of random things before I told him that we would be lucky to get back by midnight (I definitely did not want this to be one of those times when I was right). After 3 hours of sitting and waiting I sent the driver (a monk named Grégoire) a text asking if he had dropped us off at the house so that he could finish all of the left over beer from the funeral with the other monks. I was met with a cold stare when he rolled in close to an hour later. And as I expected there were no monks in the bus. They got the short end of the stick this time and as I am writing this on Monday night, they still are not back yet.
I was happy to see, yet slightly curious, some empty space in the bus. Oh by the way, we are picking up 4 more people. We sat 4,4,3 in a made for 9 minivan. I finagled my way into a seat next to a twig of a girl (we took up slightly more than one seat together) and two other fairly thin villagers, which made for a fairly comfortable 4 hour drive back.
We were just past Kara when the Bishop asked about food (about 22h30). There wasn’t any at the monastery for us so we turned around and went back to Kara. I was tired, but I will take food over sleep if I am hungry enough. We made it to the central gas station when disaster struck. My glass bottle of honey, which had been padded between my feet for the entire drive managed (in being moved to let people out) to hit the one oversized bolt in the entire damn bus and shattered. There was honey all over the floor. I said fuck it and followed everyone to the restaurant. We ate, (me in a cranky silence realizing that I was going to have to spend 30 minutes when we got back cleaning as the bus was supposed to leave before I planned on getting up to pick up the monks down in Kazaboua).
Fortune favored me that night as Grégoire said that he would deal with it in the morning. I was uneasy about letting him clean up my mess, but figured that by his watch I would have time to clean it when I woke up. We pulled into the monastery at exactly 0h00 and I scampered off to my room to pass out from exhaustion.
That trip marked the 6th time that I have driven that 300km stretch of road in less than 2 weeks with 4 of those trips being en route to Lomé from Kara or to Kara from Lomé. And to top off the exhaustion, I no longer have my honey. The little things.
That little excursion...
turned into a 3 day trip of which 90 percent was spent sitting. I could just feel my muscles wasting away (or what is left of them anyway). The Prior’s mother died in December and “down, spend a night and come back” trip definitely took a little longer than expected.
The morning after the first night spent at the Parish house in the roadside town I got all packed up and ready to roll for the day. The funeral was supposed to start at 9 and as African time would have it we spent the first hour sitting around waiting for everyone to filter their ways into the church. After that came the 3 hour ceremony, which was mostly in Kabiyé (I spent a better part of it daydreaming and wondering when we were going to eat), I spent 1½ hours sitting on a truck fender going through the always awkward “who is this random white kid?” stares by all of the locals and friends of the prior who had yet to meet me. My decision to sit on that truck fender as opposed to walk to the cemetery in a cloud of dust, turned out to be well made. The casketbarrers danced with the dang thing all the way down the road and overshot the cemetery, but decided to dance their way back. Not only that, but there was a hoard of people following them = mass confusion. I figured that seeing a big box get put in the ground was gonna be pretty similar regardless of which part of the world I am in. Plus there were some villagers selling Solja (local soy cheese) and my stomach was eating itself.
Once the procession made its way back to the church more mass confusion set in as there were 500 hungry people. Lucky for me, being white puts me at the table of honor just about everywhere I go. We ate and drank for a little while before I was ready to call it a day. Nap Time. Nope, more like time to find something to do for the next few hours before the bus leaves.
Little did I know – I had ordered a bottle of honey from some order of nuns the week before, but never clearly heard the location of their house – that it was the sisters at Kazaboua who made the honey! Little travelers tip, local honey does a fairly good job at quelling allergies (bees, local pollinators, pick up the plant and dust allergens while pollinating and those in turn get dropped off in the honey a.k.a natural Allegra/Zyrtek/choice of name brand allergy medicine) and it is much cheaper than the alternative. I was approached by one of the sisters holding a liter bottle of the gooey goodness before being escorted by her and some of the monks to the cloister to have a look around. All wonderful, but when the heck are we leaving? Once I got to the house and had a chance to look around I found out that we were spending the night…no problem except that my ride back to the Parish house over 10k away left 3 hours ago. Thank god for Togo being full of moto taxis. The sisters found me one and acted exactly as you expect from some middle aged women who have devoted their lives to serving others “(to the driver and translated) now don’t you go changing the price on him when you get there. (a different nun) And you drive slowly! (another) You make sure he gets back safe! (the previous one) Slowly, slowly, slowly and carefully!...” It went on until I was down the road and out of site. I was giggling, but I am sure the driver was happy to finally get away.
I made it back in time for supper and to the surprise of the Polish curator. And I thought I was the last one to find things out. Luckily there weren’t any other visitors coming that night and my bed was still open. Sleep finally.
The morning after the first night spent at the Parish house in the roadside town I got all packed up and ready to roll for the day. The funeral was supposed to start at 9 and as African time would have it we spent the first hour sitting around waiting for everyone to filter their ways into the church. After that came the 3 hour ceremony, which was mostly in Kabiyé (I spent a better part of it daydreaming and wondering when we were going to eat), I spent 1½ hours sitting on a truck fender going through the always awkward “who is this random white kid?” stares by all of the locals and friends of the prior who had yet to meet me. My decision to sit on that truck fender as opposed to walk to the cemetery in a cloud of dust, turned out to be well made. The casketbarrers danced with the dang thing all the way down the road and overshot the cemetery, but decided to dance their way back. Not only that, but there was a hoard of people following them = mass confusion. I figured that seeing a big box get put in the ground was gonna be pretty similar regardless of which part of the world I am in. Plus there were some villagers selling Solja (local soy cheese) and my stomach was eating itself.
Once the procession made its way back to the church more mass confusion set in as there were 500 hungry people. Lucky for me, being white puts me at the table of honor just about everywhere I go. We ate and drank for a little while before I was ready to call it a day. Nap Time. Nope, more like time to find something to do for the next few hours before the bus leaves.
Little did I know – I had ordered a bottle of honey from some order of nuns the week before, but never clearly heard the location of their house – that it was the sisters at Kazaboua who made the honey! Little travelers tip, local honey does a fairly good job at quelling allergies (bees, local pollinators, pick up the plant and dust allergens while pollinating and those in turn get dropped off in the honey a.k.a natural Allegra/Zyrtek/choice of name brand allergy medicine) and it is much cheaper than the alternative. I was approached by one of the sisters holding a liter bottle of the gooey goodness before being escorted by her and some of the monks to the cloister to have a look around. All wonderful, but when the heck are we leaving? Once I got to the house and had a chance to look around I found out that we were spending the night…no problem except that my ride back to the Parish house over 10k away left 3 hours ago. Thank god for Togo being full of moto taxis. The sisters found me one and acted exactly as you expect from some middle aged women who have devoted their lives to serving others “(to the driver and translated) now don’t you go changing the price on him when you get there. (a different nun) And you drive slowly! (another) You make sure he gets back safe! (the previous one) Slowly, slowly, slowly and carefully!...” It went on until I was down the road and out of site. I was giggling, but I am sure the driver was happy to finally get away.
I made it back in time for supper and to the surprise of the Polish curator. And I thought I was the last one to find things out. Luckily there weren’t any other visitors coming that night and my bed was still open. Sleep finally.
Grades
My students got their 1st Trimester grades back the other day. They weren’t too good across the board. But English was near the top of the list if not at the top for all but one student. And while they could have done better, I felt somewhat relieved seeing that something I was doing was catching on. And now that I know where the grade comes from, I know exactly how to circumvent the system. It would be doing my kids a disservice, but I could train them to ace every single exam. The only problem with that is that they wouldn’t be able to speak English once it was all said and done (a.k.a. that’s what was happening before I started teaching). Like I stated earlier, I am more interested in thinking that regurgitating. You can ask anyone who speaks English in West Africa “How are you?” and they will respond “Fine, thanks,” without fail. Fuck that man, what if you’re not feeling fine or better than fine? Language is more important than people make it out to be in this part of the world.
We are social beings, are we not? If we lose the ability to socialize in a meaningful way what does that reduce us to? My kids not only are learning how to think, they are also scoring better on the regional exams for English than they are in other subjects. Take that LB.
We are social beings, are we not? If we lose the ability to socialize in a meaningful way what does that reduce us to? My kids not only are learning how to think, they are also scoring better on the regional exams for English than they are in other subjects. Take that LB.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Life goes on
I took a nice little excursion today. Had I known that it was going to be a three hour drive where 8 people were crammed into 2 rows of a van I might have reconsidered. Had I known that we were driving halfway to Lomé I would have said “no” flat out. This marks the 5th time that I have made it halfway between Kara and Lomé in less than 2 weeks. I was hoping that the last time that I saw this town and road would be on my trip to the airport. That didn’t happen, but there is a silver lining to little road trip in which the monks left me with the bishop at another monastic cellule where I knew absolutely no one (I was furious when I found out as the reason for the trip was to visit the home of the Prior for his mother’s funeral and I had absolutely no choice in the matter). There happened to be 2 Polish priests staying here (one who lives here and another who presides in a Kpezinde Parish (close to Agbang, and I have seem him before).
My rage didn’t last too long as I sat down to see a table full of snacky foods and a bottle of scotch placed in front of me followed by beer and then wine at supper. I basically drank my frustration away and am now typing this slightly inebriated. But the food was good as was the conversation, which was nice not having to stop and wait for it to be explained for other people. I was also called courageous by the Polish priest from Pkazinde for coming back after taking Colin to the airport. Call me blind, but I still don’t see where courage comes into play. I am doing exactly what the people from Togo have been doing their entire lives and as far as I can discern what their parents and grandparents had done before them. If they can do it then there is no reason why I can’t. With that said, the Polish priest also said that he knew the menu at the monastery and he was surprised that I had made it this long. He used “catastrophe” as the description of his experience with the food there. So I got that goin for me.
My rage didn’t last too long as I sat down to see a table full of snacky foods and a bottle of scotch placed in front of me followed by beer and then wine at supper. I basically drank my frustration away and am now typing this slightly inebriated. But the food was good as was the conversation, which was nice not having to stop and wait for it to be explained for other people. I was also called courageous by the Polish priest from Pkazinde for coming back after taking Colin to the airport. Call me blind, but I still don’t see where courage comes into play. I am doing exactly what the people from Togo have been doing their entire lives and as far as I can discern what their parents and grandparents had done before them. If they can do it then there is no reason why I can’t. With that said, the Polish priest also said that he knew the menu at the monastery and he was surprised that I had made it this long. He used “catastrophe” as the description of his experience with the food there. So I got that goin for me.
Books
There was hardly anyone around when I returned (as I found out there were only 5 people here for New Years – good call or great call to leave for the New Year?). The people who were around welcomed me back with smiles and a hand in the air signaling that “the other” had left. Yes he is gone. And since my arrival I have completely cleaned and rearranged my room, done all of my laundry, went back to work in the garden, started the 2nd trimester of school, read every single article and finished two magazines that I had hidden away and written this series of blog posts.
I have nothing left to read, save Don Quixote, which I snagged from Colin’s trash pile. But come on Greg, seriously? The closest I ever came to reading an epic like that was watching Wishbone in the 4th grade. In fact I think the only books worth remembering from College that I have read from front to cover haven been historical analyses of international relations ranging from Pre-Medieval Ireland to the Cold War and a few social theory books for a philosophy course. I did make it through “The Republic,” but that was a fluke. Yes, my major was Psychology and no I did not make it through a single textbook cover to cover (I don’t read indexes or acknowledgements ).
One of my favorite lines from a movie is coming to mind…”you know in a few years you’re going to finally do some thinking of your own and you’ll realize two truths; 1) don’t do that (referring to plagiarizing lines from a book) and 2) you dropped $150,000 on an education you could have gotten for $1.50 in late charges from the library.” I may not have read every line of every book, but I can guarantee that I have experienced and remember more of the information from those classes than most. Thinking, not regurgitating is what I am interested in. It’s no wonder why my best marks came on papers and projects as opposed to exams. Spend countless hours until the sun comes up scanning every line hoping to pick up just a little more information that may or may not be on the test or spend countless hours until the sun comes up thinking through and turning a mental maze of experiences and thoughts related to a specific topic into a yellow brick road? Not even a question.
You can know every theory and idea related to a topic, but until you experience it and see it in the living the information isn’t worth the effort. To compare, it is like the ISO machines at the gym. They isolate muscles, which would be great if our body only used single muscles to perform everyday actions. But the truth is that our body works in unison, in muscle groups. You can isolate a muscle as much as you want, but unless the supporting cast of ligaments, joints, secondary muscles, nervous system, and stabilizers are on the same page you aren’t doing anything worthwhile. The machines are safe, reliable, and almost idiotproof. That is reading (save history, sports, and international relations related material), to me. And don’t get me wrong, reading is important (unlike those machines at the gym). It works a different part of my brain and there are benefits to it, which I try to utilize; but for better or worse I take a different approach. I’m the guy who would rather fly to Africa, make mistakes, and have an adventure in learning how to speak French as opposed to hitting the books.
I have nothing left to read, save Don Quixote, which I snagged from Colin’s trash pile. But come on Greg, seriously? The closest I ever came to reading an epic like that was watching Wishbone in the 4th grade. In fact I think the only books worth remembering from College that I have read from front to cover haven been historical analyses of international relations ranging from Pre-Medieval Ireland to the Cold War and a few social theory books for a philosophy course. I did make it through “The Republic,” but that was a fluke. Yes, my major was Psychology and no I did not make it through a single textbook cover to cover (I don’t read indexes or acknowledgements ).
One of my favorite lines from a movie is coming to mind…”you know in a few years you’re going to finally do some thinking of your own and you’ll realize two truths; 1) don’t do that (referring to plagiarizing lines from a book) and 2) you dropped $150,000 on an education you could have gotten for $1.50 in late charges from the library.” I may not have read every line of every book, but I can guarantee that I have experienced and remember more of the information from those classes than most. Thinking, not regurgitating is what I am interested in. It’s no wonder why my best marks came on papers and projects as opposed to exams. Spend countless hours until the sun comes up scanning every line hoping to pick up just a little more information that may or may not be on the test or spend countless hours until the sun comes up thinking through and turning a mental maze of experiences and thoughts related to a specific topic into a yellow brick road? Not even a question.
You can know every theory and idea related to a topic, but until you experience it and see it in the living the information isn’t worth the effort. To compare, it is like the ISO machines at the gym. They isolate muscles, which would be great if our body only used single muscles to perform everyday actions. But the truth is that our body works in unison, in muscle groups. You can isolate a muscle as much as you want, but unless the supporting cast of ligaments, joints, secondary muscles, nervous system, and stabilizers are on the same page you aren’t doing anything worthwhile. The machines are safe, reliable, and almost idiotproof. That is reading (save history, sports, and international relations related material), to me. And don’t get me wrong, reading is important (unlike those machines at the gym). It works a different part of my brain and there are benefits to it, which I try to utilize; but for better or worse I take a different approach. I’m the guy who would rather fly to Africa, make mistakes, and have an adventure in learning how to speak French as opposed to hitting the books.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
The Trip (the events)
Day 1
We woke up at the crack of dawn and booked it to the bus stop where in the traditional African style we stood waiting for an hour while people loaded bags and conversed. Once on the bus I became somewhat concerned about the massif speaker Jerry-rigged beneath my seat. My concerns were met with what I had feared, the blaring of a Nigeria sitcom (bollywood of Africa). My headphones could block out most of the noise if I cranked ‘em, but my ears couldn’t take it and I had to suffer the melting pot of sounds on the unairconditioned 9 hour bus ride. Back in Lomé, Colin and I took a nice trip down memory lane once again (the last time for Colin). All of the monks were happy to see us once again and we spent the night saying goodbyes and swapping stories.
Day 2
The siblings met us at the cellule around 8 and we took a taxi to the boarder, which was a surprisingly short 5 minutes away (yes, I did just measure distance by time and no I am not going to change it). Once across we found a taxi to take us to Accra, not bad for half-a-days work! But it was on that taxi ride where I realized that having two novice travelers who spoke limited (Christian > Judith) English was not exactly going to be worth its weight in gold. I am a fairly streetwise traveler, but there are some things in Africa that go beyond my abilities, mainly being white (I am great at it). Anyone in West Africa who sees you automatically 100 percent of the time thinks money. That is why it is often nice to have a token black dude who knows the real prices on your side and can make the negotiating process a little easier. I was the token black dude this time around and for the entire trip, and my tokenness was working against me the entire time. Luckily it didn’t have any drastic implications other than getting scammed out of some hard earned money, but it sure could’ve been worse.
The taxi dropped us off at the main station even though he told us that he would take us to the hotel of our choosing, he also jacked the price up on having AC in the car after we started driving. Not to worry, a truckload of people ran over to us and tried to grab our bags and help us find a hotel. We worked it down to one person who took Colin’s 65L pack and made our way through the backed up traffic to a downtrodden street with a few budget hotels on it. After deciding that we didn’t like the vibe on the street or in the hotels, we bid farewell to our pack carrier and said that we were going to find a hotel on our own. He tried to get us to pay him and not being a mean person I offered him what I thought was a fair price for his help. He frowned at me and said he needed to eat. I responded “Me to,” and walked away. He jumped after me and grabbed the offered money out of my hand and complimented me saying that I was smart. I grinned, flexed my eyebrows and walked away.
The group finally made its way to a hotel that was in Colin and my price range and had a complimentary breakfast. On top of all of that, we managed to get a walking tour of North Central Accra, which spanned 4 suburbs. I don’t think the siblings were too thrilled with Colin and my idea of “having fun” (a.k.a – having no plan whatsoever of where we are going while searching for the hotels that we had found online, two of which didn’t exist anymore).
Once we dropped our stuff off in the rooms Colin, Christian, and I (Judith wasn’t hungry) went out to eat lupper (lunch/supper). We found a reasonably priced Vietnamese restaurant. With full bellies we headed out to see some of the Accra nightlife, little did I know that trouble lay in waiting. I saw a whole heap of Christmas lights flickering in the distance and said that I wanted to check it out. It turns out that the brightly lit center of the traffic circle dedicated to the first president of Ghana was off limits to non-rifle carrying police officers. Oops. In my defense don’t put up bright flashing lights in a highly visible area if you don’t want people to go there. We got yelled at by an officer on patrol who saw me trying to take a picture of Christian and Colin. He came over and yelled at us, asking us what we were doing and why we didn’t pay attention to the sign saying stay away (when we said there was no sign he pointed to the opposite end of the circle – the entrance that we didn’t come from). During this conversation I had a little tickle me pink moment when he asked me what I was doing. I told him “taking a picture. (him) what are you going to do with it? (me) Look at it?” He had no response, but he didn’t need one. Six more officers sporting semi-automatic rifles showed up behind us. After some rather tense talking we were finally allowed to take our picture and leave. Colin and I didn’t mind the episode too much, but oh man was Christian rattled. We decided that it was enough excitement for the night and went back to the hotel.
Day 3
The siblings woke up at the crack of dawn and were knocking on the door ready to go at 7. Breakfast didn’t start ‘till 8, we told that life on vacation is a little different, to relax a little, and went back to bed. On the second wakening, we got dressed and ready to go for the day, and went to get the other two, before heading off to. When we walked into the room, we actually walked into a little photo shoot as the siblings were taking turns snapping photos of each other holding the landline telephone in different positions. OMG, I rolled my eyes and walked to breakfast (facebook pictures take a slightly different tone in Africa). At breakfast we finalized our plan using a miniature city map that I picked up during our hotel tour. The plan included hitting up every major attraction on the map in Central Accra and the surrounding suburbs by foot. I think we walked close to 35km over the course of the day hitting up markets, the national theatre, the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum, High Street, and two slave trade forts.
At the theatre we managed to get a tour of the building, which included a solo drumming session on the traditional African drums, which were played by the Egyptian soccer team after winning the Cup of Nations. Colin and I loved it. We passed by a few monuments dedicated to presidents, but all were closed and had guards posted outside of them. We made our way past the soccer stadium, which unlike American stadiums is built above ground making it an absolutely massive structure. Across the street from it was the Ceremonial Grounds and Independence Circle, which were pretty cool as well. I tried to convince a guard to let me climb the stairs and sit in the presidential box of the Ceremonial Grounds. He wasn’t having any of it. Next we made our way down a restricted road towards the Cristiansonborg Castle before getting stopped at the entrance by yet another armed guard asking us what we were doing. He told us it was a matter of national security and told us to leave after my response of “We’re tourists and we were told to see the castle!”
Aside from having to take a bathroom break at almost every stop, the Africans weren’t too much of a hassle up until the final market – a traditional African Arts workshop. And this is where naivety and inexperience comes in to play. They had never seen a souvenir shop let alone knew what to do in one. Judith realized she didn’t want/couldn’t buy anything and sat on the step for the better part of an hour. But Christian followed Colin and I around like a puppy asking the price of every item that we looked at. I managed to slip away, but Colin wasn’t so lucky. He had a set of eyes looking over his shoulder at every purchase he made. That experience was put in perspective quickly as an American family came in as we were leaving (a girl with a pink cowboy hat, a little dude with a Yankees cap, a slightly bigger dude who looked like he just came from the skate park, a mom with a camelback, fancy shades and the i’m hot where’s the AC look, and a dad with the high white tube socks, short shorts, and the kicker a traditional safari hat). They were loud and they touched everything – I spoke French with Colin and broken English at the counter to disassociate myself.
The next stick in the road came at the mausoleum where Judith didn’t want to go in because you had to pay. Up until that point we had seen a museum that was still being built and the outsides of a stadium, ceremonial grounds, and a castle as we were turned away from all of them by paramilitary guards with semi-automatic weapons. She sat outside of the mausoleum for another hour waiting for us. Inside the monument and museum were pretty cool. I got a kick out of the guy’s dorm room furniture that had been roped off. I was surprised they weren’t matters of national security and we were even allowed to look at them considering they once belonged to the founder of Pan-Africansim and first president of Ghana. Poor attempt at a joke, but it struck a cord at the time considering our luck at monuments up until that point. In the museum, the following around got to be a little too much for me. Christian was reading the exact same plaques as me for exactly the same amount of time. I started jumping back and fourth across the room, he followed. I started asking him questions about the museum in order to get him to go and find the answer hence leaving me in peace if only for a moment. I realized that it was his first time in an actual museum, but it was as if he thought that the Americans knew exactly which plaques to read and which parts of the exhibit were the most important. In reality I was mostly blankly staring at pictures and artifacts while reflecting on and comparing a timeline of Kwame’s life to an American Foreign relations post WWII course that I took last year. It is part of the ideology here, creativity isn’t fostered and producing results by repeating memorized information is.
After the Mausoleum, we made our way to Usher Fort (the main fort of the slave trade in West Africa). It was closed for the day, kind of. I walked in through a small door and feeling the cool ocean breeze walked up to the edge of a wall and gazed out over the littered beach and graffiitied fort. Colin wasn’t far behind, but he got stopped by a beach bum claiming to be the tour guide. Well he didn’t get stopped, but the siblings did and took him for his word and called Colin over saying that we had to pay to get into the place. They promptly turned around and left leaving Colin there to fork out a steep charge that had more or less left us with. Colin was furious. I was confused. The man came over to me and explained what he claimed to have said to Colin. I took the siblings leaving and the fact that I saw him talk to Colin for a moment as proof of what he was saying. And as seeing that he was mostly charging us to take pictures (seems weird, but the mausoleums had an extra charge on top of the entrance fee to take pictures) I went along with it, puzzled, as I wasn’t taking pictures. As it turns out the price wasn’t negotiated with Colin and he knew nothing about paying other than Christian and Judith saying that it cost money. Once it was all said and done, Colin was out 10 Cedi to a bum, I was upset with myself for not catching the scam sooner and being off my game (to that point I was 2/3 on catching scams), and we were both growing increasingly frustrated at our travel partners.
We walked ahead and fumed when I decided to poke my head in the main entrance of the fort and seeing a guy laying on a bench decided to try and slip in. I would have managed to, but my curiosity about whether or not the man was an officer got me caught. Turns out it was a guard of sorts, but this time I did the negotiating and got both Colin and I into the Alcatraz-like fort for 2 Cedi. The sibs didn’t even bother to enter, even before my seeing the guard. About 20 minutes later after walking through the trashed and run-down place with a water bottle in my hand ready to be swung like a club, we left and headed back to the hotel. It was still to early for Colin and I to eat upon arriving, but Christian and Judith were hungry and didn’t want to spend money at a restaurant so they went and brought some street-side food back to the hotel. Close to 6 o’clock, Colin and I decided after a nice little joint ranting session about how upset we were with Boniface for sending Judith on the trip without asking us, that it was time to go to our previously picked out celebrating spot – a rooftop tilapia joint.
This place was sweet. An entire corner of the roof was devoted to housing a speaker set-up that blared reggae and cool-pop music all night, and on the other end was a full bar and a little tilapia hut. Colin and I both ordered our (2) meals and started celebrating. While waiting for our food, we decided that we should buy the tag-alongs a coke as seeing they don’t drink alcohol and they refused every time we asked them if they wanted anything to drink (we thought they were thinking they would have to pay for it). The cokes came with our next round of beer only to be turned down by Judith (who downed it angrily after Christian said something to her in Kabiyé). Colin and I shot each other a
look…thank god the food arrived and it was delicious. So delicious in fact that we ordered another one! This night was mine and Colin’s. No frustrating situation or person was going to get in the way of our celebrating New Year’s the way that we wanted to. Christian and Judith returned to the hotel shortly thereafter (Christian returned just before midnight). The rest of the night, Colin and I spent drinking, watching the few scattered fireworks, listening to music, eating tilapia, talking, and relaxing. It was awesome.
Day 4
Part of our decision to celebrate as late as we did in the way that we did was that most of the sites worth seeing were closed on the 1st. All that was left for us to see (within walking distance) was a beach, which wasn’t expected to be much after seeing the beaches around the forts. But it was something to see and a place to go. Judith wasn’t up for it and stayed behind. At the very least, it gave Colin and I a chance to walk and talk a little bit with Christian. Along the way we stopped by and saw the cathedral and the International Conference center & government official’s building (both closed and the latter guarded). We walked about 10k out of the city before deciding to cut a street closer to ocean as the main road was inland a few hundred meters. Welcome to the oops, I think I took a wrong turn street. Bordering the ocean was a slum with lots of not-so-welcoming looks to the two white guys and cleanly dressed Togoman. If Christian did any one thing inadvertently wrong on this trip it was bringing the wardrobe that he did (dress slacks, cleanly pressed/vibrant shirts that were always tightly tucked in, and a small camera bag slung over his shoulder). Not that Colin and I didn’t stick out, but one look at him and you instantly knew that he wasn’t from around here. It wasn’t too bothersome, but going back to the getting scammed bit, it along with the acceptance of anything spoken at face value made staying ahead of the game darn near impossible. Back to the beach, we ran into a dead end with no beach. We meandered our way out of the quaint little neighborhood and decided that rather than searching for some random beach that we weren’t going to swim at wasn’t worth the effort and that watching a Premier League (English Football) over a beer would be a better use of our time.
A little ways into our return trek, we decided to ask for the price of a taxi. 4 Cedi? Done deal, we jumped in. On the nice little cruise back to our street we passed by two of the higher-priced hotels that we considered staying at in a worse-case scenario. They didn’t look too stunning as one was still being built and the other was nothing more than a red-brick apartment building. We then realized that for what our hotel cost and offered in terms of services and location, it couldn’t be beat. It even came with a bunch of complimentary white people who happened to be sojourning in Accra at the same time. And with that came the added benefit of having some much less cautious travelers who didn’t bother to hide their valuables in trash cans and a plethora of other hilarious tactics (including, but not limited to… leaving the room at separate times, leaving the lights on, blaring the tv a foot away from the door so that it could be heard over the AC unit, leaving the room in a disorderly state at a quick glance, hiding stuff in the unmade beds, and leaving nothing to chance) that while funny probably prevented us from becoming the target of a break-in. And oh man did it work. While the rest of the white population was running around like chickens with their heads cut off telling everyone in sight to put their valuables in the safe because it’s ‘the only secure place in the building!’ Yeah, ok and I am the president of the United States. The simple truth is that hotel thieves work quickly as they don’t want to get caught red-handed. Anyone who draws attention to themselves (i.e. big bags and lots of them, bright clothing, loud and ‘touristy’ personas, expensive looking clothing or gadgetry that is visible) becomes an immediate target. Keeping your things organized or worse completely packed makes finding valuables or taking everything easy and fast. In other words you’re doing the hard work for them. And in a place where most hotel robberies are first suspected to be inside jobs, the seemingly hard part of getting into the rooms is as easy as using a copied key (which you can make for about a dollar). Instead, be organized and appear to be scatterbrained. Don’t be afraid to pile the trash on your $1000 laptop or leave an unmade bed hiding money or ipods under the sheets. The only person who is ever going to know about it is you (isn’t that the point?) and maybe one or two of your traveling partners. Also, don’t be stupid – keep your passport on you, the last place you want to be is knocking on the door of an embassy in a foreign country with no passport, visa (living permit), visa (credit card), or proof of identification.
That night we all went out to eat, together, but as was typical of our conversations on the trip there was a racial divide. I tried one last time towards the end of the meal to spark a conversation asking what Christian’s favorite part of the trip was. He didn’t understand the question and had to confer with his sister for a minute before answering (my blood started to boil). I got a one-word answer, two including the article. “Ok, what about the museum did you like?” Giggles and a why are you asking me these questions look was the response before he figured out that I was serious. Because Colin and I generously doubled our expenses in order to bring you and your uninvited sister along, that’s why. I gave up after another one word answer and gave a short statement of my own…”Check Please.”
After supper, Colin and I spent the night packing, remembering some of the good times and lamenting on the short trip that was the epitome of the past four months when it came to communication and trying unsuccessfully to escape the grasp and mentality of the monastery.
Day 5
We woke up late (in the traditional style of Greg) went to breakfast. Afterwards Colin and I ran to the bank, since the hotel only took cash, and returned to pay our hotel bill. We then went back to our room, said a fairly short and quick goodbye, and parted ways. Colin’s flight wasn’t until 23h30 that night so he stayed at the hotel for a while before heading off to the airport. I meanwhile grabbed the two noobs and trucked it to the station hoping to find a cheap way to the boarder. I did, but again my beautiful, fair, freckled Irish skin and my two francophone traveling partners didn’t help me out of an obvious overcharge for a trottro (19 passenger minivan) ride to the boarder. Luckily it wasn’t too much, but I wasn’t happy on account of I saw 4 people pay the real price and still couldn’t get the cards to fall my way.
I was cheered up a little bit on the ride when the driver tossed a bag of water at a car that almost hit us while passing a truck in the oncoming lane. The boarder crossing was a piece of cake and I must say that my passport is legit now. I talked briefly with Christian and Judith on the other side. They were staying at the same house as when they came down, but she wanted to go to the market first to get something for her hair. They also wanted to stay in Lomé for a day to print pictures and buy things. I didn’t care for it as I was already staying in Lomé a day longer than I wanted to at the behest of Boniface who was leaving the next morning. I said that I was going to be on the first bus out the next day on account of needing to be free of any burdens and back to school, which started the next day. We bid farewells for the time being and I walked along the beach for a little bit before catching a moto back to my neck of the woods.
Day 6
I saw Boniface for all of 2 minutes before he left and I must say I think he saw right through me. I was happy to see him and was very positive when referring to the trip, but still waters run deep. And I was as deep as the Marina Trench and as clear as a crystal. Thank God for refraction and reflection, all I know is that he could tell that something was wrong but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Nothing more really developed of it as I definitely did not want to pursue it as he was leaving Togo for the foreseeable future and I didn’t want the lasting image of me or the program to be some pissed off white kid who is ready to knock someone’s block off for not being allowed to stick to his travel plans without any unnecessary or unwanted additions. At the very least, I tried. Don’t know if it worked, but there it is.
Earlier that morning I found out that I couldn’t get on a bus until 6 the next morning. Not that I didn’t want to get back to school, but I’m not one to complain for time off if I can’t to do anything about it! I spent the day getting my things in order, bank visits, watching soccer on the tv at the Cellule, checking emails (only reading) and football scores, and sleeping.
Day 7
5am came about 5 hours too early. Everyone says that you have to be on time (not Africa time) for the busses, but you always end up sitting there for 30 minutes before doing anything. I was finally allowed to board and thought that the empty bus was too good to be true. It was, we stopped at 4 more pick-up points to let people on. And every time someone stepped on I crossed my fingers just a little bit tighter that I would have an empty seat when they passed my row. Someone upstairs must have had mercy on my fingers because I did! Well until the final stop where they were allowing people to purchase tickets for the already bought, but still empty seats (scoundrels, I saw a man holding his ticket up on the road and a woman with bags of vegetables and a ticket get passed by on the road). Thankfully I got stuck with a 10 year old kid who was on the edge of his seat the entire time, said nothing, and stared out the window the whole way back. Although there was that mad sprint that he made out the door to take a whiz after he realized the bus had stopped.
I made it back to Kara snatched a moto and cruised back to Agbang before passing out from exhaustion. I had a piece of bread for breakfast and 3 hardboiled eggs as an afternoon snack after forgetting to eat lunch and not eating my typical American-sized breakfast. Trip Over.
We woke up at the crack of dawn and booked it to the bus stop where in the traditional African style we stood waiting for an hour while people loaded bags and conversed. Once on the bus I became somewhat concerned about the massif speaker Jerry-rigged beneath my seat. My concerns were met with what I had feared, the blaring of a Nigeria sitcom (bollywood of Africa). My headphones could block out most of the noise if I cranked ‘em, but my ears couldn’t take it and I had to suffer the melting pot of sounds on the unairconditioned 9 hour bus ride. Back in Lomé, Colin and I took a nice trip down memory lane once again (the last time for Colin). All of the monks were happy to see us once again and we spent the night saying goodbyes and swapping stories.
Day 2
The siblings met us at the cellule around 8 and we took a taxi to the boarder, which was a surprisingly short 5 minutes away (yes, I did just measure distance by time and no I am not going to change it). Once across we found a taxi to take us to Accra, not bad for half-a-days work! But it was on that taxi ride where I realized that having two novice travelers who spoke limited (Christian > Judith) English was not exactly going to be worth its weight in gold. I am a fairly streetwise traveler, but there are some things in Africa that go beyond my abilities, mainly being white (I am great at it). Anyone in West Africa who sees you automatically 100 percent of the time thinks money. That is why it is often nice to have a token black dude who knows the real prices on your side and can make the negotiating process a little easier. I was the token black dude this time around and for the entire trip, and my tokenness was working against me the entire time. Luckily it didn’t have any drastic implications other than getting scammed out of some hard earned money, but it sure could’ve been worse.
The taxi dropped us off at the main station even though he told us that he would take us to the hotel of our choosing, he also jacked the price up on having AC in the car after we started driving. Not to worry, a truckload of people ran over to us and tried to grab our bags and help us find a hotel. We worked it down to one person who took Colin’s 65L pack and made our way through the backed up traffic to a downtrodden street with a few budget hotels on it. After deciding that we didn’t like the vibe on the street or in the hotels, we bid farewell to our pack carrier and said that we were going to find a hotel on our own. He tried to get us to pay him and not being a mean person I offered him what I thought was a fair price for his help. He frowned at me and said he needed to eat. I responded “Me to,” and walked away. He jumped after me and grabbed the offered money out of my hand and complimented me saying that I was smart. I grinned, flexed my eyebrows and walked away.
The group finally made its way to a hotel that was in Colin and my price range and had a complimentary breakfast. On top of all of that, we managed to get a walking tour of North Central Accra, which spanned 4 suburbs. I don’t think the siblings were too thrilled with Colin and my idea of “having fun” (a.k.a – having no plan whatsoever of where we are going while searching for the hotels that we had found online, two of which didn’t exist anymore).
Once we dropped our stuff off in the rooms Colin, Christian, and I (Judith wasn’t hungry) went out to eat lupper (lunch/supper). We found a reasonably priced Vietnamese restaurant. With full bellies we headed out to see some of the Accra nightlife, little did I know that trouble lay in waiting. I saw a whole heap of Christmas lights flickering in the distance and said that I wanted to check it out. It turns out that the brightly lit center of the traffic circle dedicated to the first president of Ghana was off limits to non-rifle carrying police officers. Oops. In my defense don’t put up bright flashing lights in a highly visible area if you don’t want people to go there. We got yelled at by an officer on patrol who saw me trying to take a picture of Christian and Colin. He came over and yelled at us, asking us what we were doing and why we didn’t pay attention to the sign saying stay away (when we said there was no sign he pointed to the opposite end of the circle – the entrance that we didn’t come from). During this conversation I had a little tickle me pink moment when he asked me what I was doing. I told him “taking a picture. (him) what are you going to do with it? (me) Look at it?” He had no response, but he didn’t need one. Six more officers sporting semi-automatic rifles showed up behind us. After some rather tense talking we were finally allowed to take our picture and leave. Colin and I didn’t mind the episode too much, but oh man was Christian rattled. We decided that it was enough excitement for the night and went back to the hotel.
Day 3
The siblings woke up at the crack of dawn and were knocking on the door ready to go at 7. Breakfast didn’t start ‘till 8, we told that life on vacation is a little different, to relax a little, and went back to bed. On the second wakening, we got dressed and ready to go for the day, and went to get the other two, before heading off to. When we walked into the room, we actually walked into a little photo shoot as the siblings were taking turns snapping photos of each other holding the landline telephone in different positions. OMG, I rolled my eyes and walked to breakfast (facebook pictures take a slightly different tone in Africa). At breakfast we finalized our plan using a miniature city map that I picked up during our hotel tour. The plan included hitting up every major attraction on the map in Central Accra and the surrounding suburbs by foot. I think we walked close to 35km over the course of the day hitting up markets, the national theatre, the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum, High Street, and two slave trade forts.
At the theatre we managed to get a tour of the building, which included a solo drumming session on the traditional African drums, which were played by the Egyptian soccer team after winning the Cup of Nations. Colin and I loved it. We passed by a few monuments dedicated to presidents, but all were closed and had guards posted outside of them. We made our way past the soccer stadium, which unlike American stadiums is built above ground making it an absolutely massive structure. Across the street from it was the Ceremonial Grounds and Independence Circle, which were pretty cool as well. I tried to convince a guard to let me climb the stairs and sit in the presidential box of the Ceremonial Grounds. He wasn’t having any of it. Next we made our way down a restricted road towards the Cristiansonborg Castle before getting stopped at the entrance by yet another armed guard asking us what we were doing. He told us it was a matter of national security and told us to leave after my response of “We’re tourists and we were told to see the castle!”
Aside from having to take a bathroom break at almost every stop, the Africans weren’t too much of a hassle up until the final market – a traditional African Arts workshop. And this is where naivety and inexperience comes in to play. They had never seen a souvenir shop let alone knew what to do in one. Judith realized she didn’t want/couldn’t buy anything and sat on the step for the better part of an hour. But Christian followed Colin and I around like a puppy asking the price of every item that we looked at. I managed to slip away, but Colin wasn’t so lucky. He had a set of eyes looking over his shoulder at every purchase he made. That experience was put in perspective quickly as an American family came in as we were leaving (a girl with a pink cowboy hat, a little dude with a Yankees cap, a slightly bigger dude who looked like he just came from the skate park, a mom with a camelback, fancy shades and the i’m hot where’s the AC look, and a dad with the high white tube socks, short shorts, and the kicker a traditional safari hat). They were loud and they touched everything – I spoke French with Colin and broken English at the counter to disassociate myself.
The next stick in the road came at the mausoleum where Judith didn’t want to go in because you had to pay. Up until that point we had seen a museum that was still being built and the outsides of a stadium, ceremonial grounds, and a castle as we were turned away from all of them by paramilitary guards with semi-automatic weapons. She sat outside of the mausoleum for another hour waiting for us. Inside the monument and museum were pretty cool. I got a kick out of the guy’s dorm room furniture that had been roped off. I was surprised they weren’t matters of national security and we were even allowed to look at them considering they once belonged to the founder of Pan-Africansim and first president of Ghana. Poor attempt at a joke, but it struck a cord at the time considering our luck at monuments up until that point. In the museum, the following around got to be a little too much for me. Christian was reading the exact same plaques as me for exactly the same amount of time. I started jumping back and fourth across the room, he followed. I started asking him questions about the museum in order to get him to go and find the answer hence leaving me in peace if only for a moment. I realized that it was his first time in an actual museum, but it was as if he thought that the Americans knew exactly which plaques to read and which parts of the exhibit were the most important. In reality I was mostly blankly staring at pictures and artifacts while reflecting on and comparing a timeline of Kwame’s life to an American Foreign relations post WWII course that I took last year. It is part of the ideology here, creativity isn’t fostered and producing results by repeating memorized information is.
After the Mausoleum, we made our way to Usher Fort (the main fort of the slave trade in West Africa). It was closed for the day, kind of. I walked in through a small door and feeling the cool ocean breeze walked up to the edge of a wall and gazed out over the littered beach and graffiitied fort. Colin wasn’t far behind, but he got stopped by a beach bum claiming to be the tour guide. Well he didn’t get stopped, but the siblings did and took him for his word and called Colin over saying that we had to pay to get into the place. They promptly turned around and left leaving Colin there to fork out a steep charge that had more or less left us with. Colin was furious. I was confused. The man came over to me and explained what he claimed to have said to Colin. I took the siblings leaving and the fact that I saw him talk to Colin for a moment as proof of what he was saying. And as seeing that he was mostly charging us to take pictures (seems weird, but the mausoleums had an extra charge on top of the entrance fee to take pictures) I went along with it, puzzled, as I wasn’t taking pictures. As it turns out the price wasn’t negotiated with Colin and he knew nothing about paying other than Christian and Judith saying that it cost money. Once it was all said and done, Colin was out 10 Cedi to a bum, I was upset with myself for not catching the scam sooner and being off my game (to that point I was 2/3 on catching scams), and we were both growing increasingly frustrated at our travel partners.
We walked ahead and fumed when I decided to poke my head in the main entrance of the fort and seeing a guy laying on a bench decided to try and slip in. I would have managed to, but my curiosity about whether or not the man was an officer got me caught. Turns out it was a guard of sorts, but this time I did the negotiating and got both Colin and I into the Alcatraz-like fort for 2 Cedi. The sibs didn’t even bother to enter, even before my seeing the guard. About 20 minutes later after walking through the trashed and run-down place with a water bottle in my hand ready to be swung like a club, we left and headed back to the hotel. It was still to early for Colin and I to eat upon arriving, but Christian and Judith were hungry and didn’t want to spend money at a restaurant so they went and brought some street-side food back to the hotel. Close to 6 o’clock, Colin and I decided after a nice little joint ranting session about how upset we were with Boniface for sending Judith on the trip without asking us, that it was time to go to our previously picked out celebrating spot – a rooftop tilapia joint.
This place was sweet. An entire corner of the roof was devoted to housing a speaker set-up that blared reggae and cool-pop music all night, and on the other end was a full bar and a little tilapia hut. Colin and I both ordered our (2) meals and started celebrating. While waiting for our food, we decided that we should buy the tag-alongs a coke as seeing they don’t drink alcohol and they refused every time we asked them if they wanted anything to drink (we thought they were thinking they would have to pay for it). The cokes came with our next round of beer only to be turned down by Judith (who downed it angrily after Christian said something to her in Kabiyé). Colin and I shot each other a
look…thank god the food arrived and it was delicious. So delicious in fact that we ordered another one! This night was mine and Colin’s. No frustrating situation or person was going to get in the way of our celebrating New Year’s the way that we wanted to. Christian and Judith returned to the hotel shortly thereafter (Christian returned just before midnight). The rest of the night, Colin and I spent drinking, watching the few scattered fireworks, listening to music, eating tilapia, talking, and relaxing. It was awesome.
Day 4
Part of our decision to celebrate as late as we did in the way that we did was that most of the sites worth seeing were closed on the 1st. All that was left for us to see (within walking distance) was a beach, which wasn’t expected to be much after seeing the beaches around the forts. But it was something to see and a place to go. Judith wasn’t up for it and stayed behind. At the very least, it gave Colin and I a chance to walk and talk a little bit with Christian. Along the way we stopped by and saw the cathedral and the International Conference center & government official’s building (both closed and the latter guarded). We walked about 10k out of the city before deciding to cut a street closer to ocean as the main road was inland a few hundred meters. Welcome to the oops, I think I took a wrong turn street. Bordering the ocean was a slum with lots of not-so-welcoming looks to the two white guys and cleanly dressed Togoman. If Christian did any one thing inadvertently wrong on this trip it was bringing the wardrobe that he did (dress slacks, cleanly pressed/vibrant shirts that were always tightly tucked in, and a small camera bag slung over his shoulder). Not that Colin and I didn’t stick out, but one look at him and you instantly knew that he wasn’t from around here. It wasn’t too bothersome, but going back to the getting scammed bit, it along with the acceptance of anything spoken at face value made staying ahead of the game darn near impossible. Back to the beach, we ran into a dead end with no beach. We meandered our way out of the quaint little neighborhood and decided that rather than searching for some random beach that we weren’t going to swim at wasn’t worth the effort and that watching a Premier League (English Football) over a beer would be a better use of our time.
A little ways into our return trek, we decided to ask for the price of a taxi. 4 Cedi? Done deal, we jumped in. On the nice little cruise back to our street we passed by two of the higher-priced hotels that we considered staying at in a worse-case scenario. They didn’t look too stunning as one was still being built and the other was nothing more than a red-brick apartment building. We then realized that for what our hotel cost and offered in terms of services and location, it couldn’t be beat. It even came with a bunch of complimentary white people who happened to be sojourning in Accra at the same time. And with that came the added benefit of having some much less cautious travelers who didn’t bother to hide their valuables in trash cans and a plethora of other hilarious tactics (including, but not limited to… leaving the room at separate times, leaving the lights on, blaring the tv a foot away from the door so that it could be heard over the AC unit, leaving the room in a disorderly state at a quick glance, hiding stuff in the unmade beds, and leaving nothing to chance) that while funny probably prevented us from becoming the target of a break-in. And oh man did it work. While the rest of the white population was running around like chickens with their heads cut off telling everyone in sight to put their valuables in the safe because it’s ‘the only secure place in the building!’ Yeah, ok and I am the president of the United States. The simple truth is that hotel thieves work quickly as they don’t want to get caught red-handed. Anyone who draws attention to themselves (i.e. big bags and lots of them, bright clothing, loud and ‘touristy’ personas, expensive looking clothing or gadgetry that is visible) becomes an immediate target. Keeping your things organized or worse completely packed makes finding valuables or taking everything easy and fast. In other words you’re doing the hard work for them. And in a place where most hotel robberies are first suspected to be inside jobs, the seemingly hard part of getting into the rooms is as easy as using a copied key (which you can make for about a dollar). Instead, be organized and appear to be scatterbrained. Don’t be afraid to pile the trash on your $1000 laptop or leave an unmade bed hiding money or ipods under the sheets. The only person who is ever going to know about it is you (isn’t that the point?) and maybe one or two of your traveling partners. Also, don’t be stupid – keep your passport on you, the last place you want to be is knocking on the door of an embassy in a foreign country with no passport, visa (living permit), visa (credit card), or proof of identification.
That night we all went out to eat, together, but as was typical of our conversations on the trip there was a racial divide. I tried one last time towards the end of the meal to spark a conversation asking what Christian’s favorite part of the trip was. He didn’t understand the question and had to confer with his sister for a minute before answering (my blood started to boil). I got a one-word answer, two including the article. “Ok, what about the museum did you like?” Giggles and a why are you asking me these questions look was the response before he figured out that I was serious. Because Colin and I generously doubled our expenses in order to bring you and your uninvited sister along, that’s why. I gave up after another one word answer and gave a short statement of my own…”Check Please.”
After supper, Colin and I spent the night packing, remembering some of the good times and lamenting on the short trip that was the epitome of the past four months when it came to communication and trying unsuccessfully to escape the grasp and mentality of the monastery.
Day 5
We woke up late (in the traditional style of Greg) went to breakfast. Afterwards Colin and I ran to the bank, since the hotel only took cash, and returned to pay our hotel bill. We then went back to our room, said a fairly short and quick goodbye, and parted ways. Colin’s flight wasn’t until 23h30 that night so he stayed at the hotel for a while before heading off to the airport. I meanwhile grabbed the two noobs and trucked it to the station hoping to find a cheap way to the boarder. I did, but again my beautiful, fair, freckled Irish skin and my two francophone traveling partners didn’t help me out of an obvious overcharge for a trottro (19 passenger minivan) ride to the boarder. Luckily it wasn’t too much, but I wasn’t happy on account of I saw 4 people pay the real price and still couldn’t get the cards to fall my way.
I was cheered up a little bit on the ride when the driver tossed a bag of water at a car that almost hit us while passing a truck in the oncoming lane. The boarder crossing was a piece of cake and I must say that my passport is legit now. I talked briefly with Christian and Judith on the other side. They were staying at the same house as when they came down, but she wanted to go to the market first to get something for her hair. They also wanted to stay in Lomé for a day to print pictures and buy things. I didn’t care for it as I was already staying in Lomé a day longer than I wanted to at the behest of Boniface who was leaving the next morning. I said that I was going to be on the first bus out the next day on account of needing to be free of any burdens and back to school, which started the next day. We bid farewells for the time being and I walked along the beach for a little bit before catching a moto back to my neck of the woods.
Day 6
I saw Boniface for all of 2 minutes before he left and I must say I think he saw right through me. I was happy to see him and was very positive when referring to the trip, but still waters run deep. And I was as deep as the Marina Trench and as clear as a crystal. Thank God for refraction and reflection, all I know is that he could tell that something was wrong but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Nothing more really developed of it as I definitely did not want to pursue it as he was leaving Togo for the foreseeable future and I didn’t want the lasting image of me or the program to be some pissed off white kid who is ready to knock someone’s block off for not being allowed to stick to his travel plans without any unnecessary or unwanted additions. At the very least, I tried. Don’t know if it worked, but there it is.
Earlier that morning I found out that I couldn’t get on a bus until 6 the next morning. Not that I didn’t want to get back to school, but I’m not one to complain for time off if I can’t to do anything about it! I spent the day getting my things in order, bank visits, watching soccer on the tv at the Cellule, checking emails (only reading) and football scores, and sleeping.
Day 7
5am came about 5 hours too early. Everyone says that you have to be on time (not Africa time) for the busses, but you always end up sitting there for 30 minutes before doing anything. I was finally allowed to board and thought that the empty bus was too good to be true. It was, we stopped at 4 more pick-up points to let people on. And every time someone stepped on I crossed my fingers just a little bit tighter that I would have an empty seat when they passed my row. Someone upstairs must have had mercy on my fingers because I did! Well until the final stop where they were allowing people to purchase tickets for the already bought, but still empty seats (scoundrels, I saw a man holding his ticket up on the road and a woman with bags of vegetables and a ticket get passed by on the road). Thankfully I got stuck with a 10 year old kid who was on the edge of his seat the entire time, said nothing, and stared out the window the whole way back. Although there was that mad sprint that he made out the door to take a whiz after he realized the bus had stopped.
I made it back to Kara snatched a moto and cruised back to Agbang before passing out from exhaustion. I had a piece of bread for breakfast and 3 hardboiled eggs as an afternoon snack after forgetting to eat lunch and not eating my typical American-sized breakfast. Trip Over.
The Trip
Colin got all packed up, said his final goodbyes, and we took off for Kara. We made it in safe and sound and didn’t lose a single bag along the way. So far so good. We spent the day hanging out with Christian and running some last minute errands so that we would be ready to roll out for our 6h wake up call. Everything was going as planned, for the first time ever in Africa.
That didn’t last long, Christian told us right before dinner that his sister would be coming to Accra with us. Somewhat confused, Colin and I asked how and why? Not that I have anything against Judith, but for reasons soon to be made clear she wasn’t invited. Apparently Boniface didn’t like the idea that only Christian was going with us and assumed that money was the only reason. He generously forked over 40,000 CFA for her to accompany us. I kept all of the anger and frustration in until we got to Lomé (which was an uneventful trip) and Colin and I were alone at the Cellule. But once we were, I exploded.
1) We found this out from Christian as if we had no choice, not from Boniface. 2) Neither Christian nor Judith have ever left the country let alone traveled for pleasure. 3) They are both extremely sheltered (their parents have steady sources of income, the live in Kara less than a 10 minute walk from the university, they were raised in the traditional Togolese style of complete obedience and propriety, and compared to most of their peers their lives are relatively easy). 4) Judith was given 40,000 CFA = 120 CEDI (half of the hotel bill for the 4 of us) 5) She is a girl and doesn’t walk more than the 1 km to the university at a time.
To clarify, the original plan was for the 3 guys to skimp on meals and take cheap transportation to Accra where we would squeeze into a budget double hotel room, walk everywhere, snag some souvenirs, find a place to celebrate new years, eat some decent food, and relax. We had this thing planned out and budgeted for a week in advance before finding out about the tag-along. We were now and the group dynamics were so incredibly different from what both Colin and I had wanted. The idea was that Colin and I would be the only familiar thing to Christian thus giving him only one option for communication – us. Put his sister in the mix and he feels more comfortable talking in his native languages with her than with us at all. They were like a married couple and I hated it. Not only that, but the only time they engaged us in conversation was to ask when we were going to the market so they could buy things that their friends asked them to purchase or whenever they were asked a question. I now know what my parents felt like in high school – the one word/short phrase responses just about drove me insane. By the end of the trip it literally was silent between the siblings and the whities.
Shortened for my convenience (I started storytelling, it turned into a book, and I didn’t like the negative overtones) their antics included asking to stay in a hostel (nearest one was 5 miles from the center of town a.k.a where all of the interesting stuff is, using the bathroom at just about every stop, not eating meals with us or at the same times, not talking with us, `not spending New Year’s Eve with us, `spending the entire second day in Accra in the hotel room/getting her hair done, constantly asking/stopping to buy things that their friends had given them money for, getting Colin and I scammed, sitting outside of every major attraction that looked like it would cost money/did cost money, and lastly forgetting their passports (that had to pay fines at every major police stop).
Christian for the most part was a good sport and tried to stick to Colin and my plan (we asked them every morning if there was anything they would like to do or change). He came back to the bar after walking Judith back to the hotel on New Years even though he was obviously tired, he also walked the 20km on the 1st with us to try and find a beach (which we never found), and he also came to a bar for a soccer match that Colin and I wanted to catch. And had it been just him with us, things would have been very different.
Judith on the other hand, was exactly what you would expect from a girl who has never left Togo and has only been to Lomé a handful of times. Not that I can blame her, but she was just like a gradeschool girl who had just found her mom’s makeup. First time out of the country on someone else’s dime, living in a hotel (was like the Ritz for them, but more like a truckstop motel for Colin and I) with a huge mirror/telephone/running water. She showered multiple times a day, got her hair done (took 2 hours and cost 1/5 of “her” money), and “lived it up.” Again, I wasn’t mad at her. Hell I would probably have done the same thing had I been her…follow up a 30+ km day of walking with another 20 or go and get a makeover? Not exactly a tough choice for a 24 year-old girl on a free trip. But that is precisely why she was not invited – foresight. Well foresight and money with the emphasis on the former.
That didn’t last long, Christian told us right before dinner that his sister would be coming to Accra with us. Somewhat confused, Colin and I asked how and why? Not that I have anything against Judith, but for reasons soon to be made clear she wasn’t invited. Apparently Boniface didn’t like the idea that only Christian was going with us and assumed that money was the only reason. He generously forked over 40,000 CFA for her to accompany us. I kept all of the anger and frustration in until we got to Lomé (which was an uneventful trip) and Colin and I were alone at the Cellule. But once we were, I exploded.
1) We found this out from Christian as if we had no choice, not from Boniface. 2) Neither Christian nor Judith have ever left the country let alone traveled for pleasure. 3) They are both extremely sheltered (their parents have steady sources of income, the live in Kara less than a 10 minute walk from the university, they were raised in the traditional Togolese style of complete obedience and propriety, and compared to most of their peers their lives are relatively easy). 4) Judith was given 40,000 CFA = 120 CEDI (half of the hotel bill for the 4 of us) 5) She is a girl and doesn’t walk more than the 1 km to the university at a time.
To clarify, the original plan was for the 3 guys to skimp on meals and take cheap transportation to Accra where we would squeeze into a budget double hotel room, walk everywhere, snag some souvenirs, find a place to celebrate new years, eat some decent food, and relax. We had this thing planned out and budgeted for a week in advance before finding out about the tag-along. We were now and the group dynamics were so incredibly different from what both Colin and I had wanted. The idea was that Colin and I would be the only familiar thing to Christian thus giving him only one option for communication – us. Put his sister in the mix and he feels more comfortable talking in his native languages with her than with us at all. They were like a married couple and I hated it. Not only that, but the only time they engaged us in conversation was to ask when we were going to the market so they could buy things that their friends asked them to purchase or whenever they were asked a question. I now know what my parents felt like in high school – the one word/short phrase responses just about drove me insane. By the end of the trip it literally was silent between the siblings and the whities.
Shortened for my convenience (I started storytelling, it turned into a book, and I didn’t like the negative overtones) their antics included asking to stay in a hostel (nearest one was 5 miles from the center of town a.k.a where all of the interesting stuff is, using the bathroom at just about every stop, not eating meals with us or at the same times, not talking with us, `not spending New Year’s Eve with us, `spending the entire second day in Accra in the hotel room/getting her hair done, constantly asking/stopping to buy things that their friends had given them money for, getting Colin and I scammed, sitting outside of every major attraction that looked like it would cost money/did cost money, and lastly forgetting their passports (that had to pay fines at every major police stop).
Christian for the most part was a good sport and tried to stick to Colin and my plan (we asked them every morning if there was anything they would like to do or change). He came back to the bar after walking Judith back to the hotel on New Years even though he was obviously tired, he also walked the 20km on the 1st with us to try and find a beach (which we never found), and he also came to a bar for a soccer match that Colin and I wanted to catch. And had it been just him with us, things would have been very different.
Judith on the other hand, was exactly what you would expect from a girl who has never left Togo and has only been to Lomé a handful of times. Not that I can blame her, but she was just like a gradeschool girl who had just found her mom’s makeup. First time out of the country on someone else’s dime, living in a hotel (was like the Ritz for them, but more like a truckstop motel for Colin and I) with a huge mirror/telephone/running water. She showered multiple times a day, got her hair done (took 2 hours and cost 1/5 of “her” money), and “lived it up.” Again, I wasn’t mad at her. Hell I would probably have done the same thing had I been her…follow up a 30+ km day of walking with another 20 or go and get a makeover? Not exactly a tough choice for a 24 year-old girl on a free trip. But that is precisely why she was not invited – foresight. Well foresight and money with the emphasis on the former.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Water is Back!
(24 hours after previous post) At least I got a little trip down memory lane, but I am definitely happy that there wasn’t a major problem with the water.
Water is Out
My bladder was ready to explode this morning when I finally decided to get out of bed at 6h30. I was to lazy to get up at 4 when I first had to take a piss. I wondered my way down the unusually busy hallway only to find that my bathroom was being used, so I turned around and walked, still in a dazed, half asleep state, to the other end of the monastery. As I was crawling back under my mosquito net I realized that the water didn’t work when I flushed the toilet. Time for the classic case of I will deal with it when I wake up. Well I am awake now and “dealing with it” consists of reverting back to the practices of the first two months I spent here without water – ¼ mile bucket carrying. Good thing I will be in Ghana for the next week!
Kamou
Today felt more like a Christmas celebration than Christmas did. People were running around like crazy, there were a ton of villagers coming and going, there was a special meal at lunch, and there was an entire night of dancing. The regional celebration of Christmas is Kamou (fancy word for party). It takes place on or after Christmas to celebrate what the Western world does on Christmas. In all it was much more festive and cheerful feeling than yesterday when I spent half of the time sleeping or walking around and listening to music.
The highs from the day:
lunch was amazing (frog was the appetizer), I got laughed a by the 9 year old sitting next to me when I asked someone if you could eat the eyes (which you can and I did), that same 9 year-old wouldn’t leave my side for the rest of the night, I danced a few separate times, I ate dog, I managed to receive a name in Kabiyé (Mazama – give thanks), and I ate a piece of cake (first time in almost 6 months).
The low for the day:
Mass lasted 3 hours due to the First Communion, Confirmation, Baptism, Renewal of Vows ceremonies that were integrated into it. And the choir sang a full song after what seemed like almost every word out of the priest’s mouth. Think of a presidential address when people clap after everything that is said. To compound the agony, Colin and I were starving since breakfast was earlier than normal and nothing more than a piece of bread and some tea and mass pushed lunch back until 2 o’clock. It was awful.
The highs from the day:
lunch was amazing (frog was the appetizer), I got laughed a by the 9 year old sitting next to me when I asked someone if you could eat the eyes (which you can and I did), that same 9 year-old wouldn’t leave my side for the rest of the night, I danced a few separate times, I ate dog, I managed to receive a name in Kabiyé (Mazama – give thanks), and I ate a piece of cake (first time in almost 6 months).
The low for the day:
Mass lasted 3 hours due to the First Communion, Confirmation, Baptism, Renewal of Vows ceremonies that were integrated into it. And the choir sang a full song after what seemed like almost every word out of the priest’s mouth. Think of a presidential address when people clap after everything that is said. To compound the agony, Colin and I were starving since breakfast was earlier than normal and nothing more than a piece of bread and some tea and mass pushed lunch back until 2 o’clock. It was awful.
A Christmas to Never Forget
Initially I wrote a long and very intense piece about this day that will never be forgotten. But, I later decided (as you are seeing) not to give too much of the limelight to the negative stuff. In short, this Christmas was the loneliest and one of the longest days that I have ever endured. It started with a bus ride up from Lomé, which didn’t get to the monastery until midnight; followed by Colin receiving a box (mailed almost a week after one that was sent to me); and then a vigil ceremony lasting until 1h30. But I didn’t make it through, I felt more alone during that service than I have ever felt in my life. First Christmas away from the family while everyone else was in Philly? I couldn’t take it and the friends here are just that, not family. I went on a midmorning stroll, skipping out on the drums, dancing, and Tchuc after the vigil. I was out walking around and trying some music therapy until about 4 before slipping past the partygoers and passing out from exhaustion. When I woke up I ate a late breakfast, went to an early mass (at least the chapel was decorated), ate lunch and then spent the rest of the day dozing in and out of a dazed and tired state from all of the running throughout the preceding days. And every time I woke up, it was still December 25th. But aside from the homily at mass and the decent lunch you wouldn’t know it. It was nice not to be completely surrounded by all of the advertisements and rat race mentality, but at the same time I would have traded it all for someone to spend the holiday with. Colin was as close as it got, but his mind, like mine, was elsewhere.
Also there was no snow. I think that added some frustration, but I did have some snow/peanuts window stickies so I guess that nullifies the snow piece. Oh, and I finally found the big dipper in the night sky.
On that walk, I did manage to twist everything together as this Christmas still had a gift in store for me and while it was not wanted, it is definitely appreciated. That gift was, loneliness. As experiential learning has been a cornerstone of my life, I couldn’t turn a blind eye to something that was staring me in the face. I know what loneliness is (and I am not talking about the feeling when you are home alone), I have experienced it, I am living in it, and I am determined to never feel it again. It may sound crazy, but to me this “gift” beats out the shiny new laptop or camera. For someone like me, experience trumps tangibility any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Also there was no snow. I think that added some frustration, but I did have some snow/peanuts window stickies so I guess that nullifies the snow piece. Oh, and I finally found the big dipper in the night sky.
On that walk, I did manage to twist everything together as this Christmas still had a gift in store for me and while it was not wanted, it is definitely appreciated. That gift was, loneliness. As experiential learning has been a cornerstone of my life, I couldn’t turn a blind eye to something that was staring me in the face. I know what loneliness is (and I am not talking about the feeling when you are home alone), I have experienced it, I am living in it, and I am determined to never feel it again. It may sound crazy, but to me this “gift” beats out the shiny new laptop or camera. For someone like me, experience trumps tangibility any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Updates!
My recent travels have kept me from updating the blog on a normal schedule, but you’ll be glad to know that I have been writing about every experience and all will be up by the end of my week (Tuesday). Enjoy.
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