Frozen In Time

Where has the time gone?  Back in the States Thanksgiving is already approaching. This means I’ve been in Togo for nearly six months, but it hardly feels like it.  Being a native Upstate New Yorker I am in the habit of marking the passage of time with the change of the seasons.  Back in New York there is little subtlety to each part of the year; our winters are cold and snowy, our summers hot (relatively) and our autumn filled with colors.

Here though, we really only have two seasons, wet and dry.  To an outsider, however, in spite of the fact it does rain more at one part of the year than the other, it’s just HOT all the time.  I feel like I am perpetually trapped in summertime.  A summertime that keeps getting hotter (thank you approaching dry season…).

I’m pretty sure I have been sucked into an episode of the Twilight Zone.  Being so connected to those in the U.S., so that I have gotten pictures of the snows that are falling, I feel like it should be getting cold here.  In New York, summer is really only two months (three if it extends a little into June and September) so by season logic there is no way I have been here longer than two-three months—six is far out of the realm of possibility.  It’s like I keep being told that time is passing and I can feel it passing but I keep waking up to relive the same summer over and over again.

I know for other people around the world who grow up and live in tropical climates this is normal, but it is freaking me out a little.  I miss my seasons… I like being cold and I like being able to feel what time of the year it is.  I’m sure soon enough I’ll learn to differentiate as I do in the States but for now…  “There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Togo Zone.”

 **Cue Twilight Zone theme music… da-na-na-na  da-na-na-na