Yesterday marked the one year
anniversary of my arrival here in Togo.
Since my arrival here much has changed and I want to share some of the
changes that have occurred between when I first got here and now.
Eighty degrees is cold. When I first arrived the heat killed me. The first few nights we spent in Lomé I
hardly slept because I was too hot. As a
native Northerner I never thought I could ever get used to the heat. Of course I still get hot, but the other day
I was feeling distinctively cold and when I looked at my thermometer it was a
whopping 82 degrees.
I feel naked wearing anything that
exposes my knees. Like a typical young
American, back in the States during the summer I wore shorts and skirts that
fell above my knees. I rarely had a
second thought about having my knees exposed in an everyday casual setting, but
here I never wear anything that doesn’t fall below my knee. I have one dress that is below my knee, but
as a result of slit positioning, if it is windy they skirt will slightly rise
to or above my knee and I am constantly pulling my dress down. Even with my fellow Americans, wearing shorts
feels bizarre. Being anywhere in public and having my knees exposed I feel like
I am walking around in my underwear.
If it’s not spicy it’s not
food. I ate some spicy things and had no
problem tolerating them when I was back home, but my more typical daily cuisine
usually didn’t include hot peppers (“piment”).
Now, even when I am cooking for myself, nearly all my food must be
spicy. I add piment to everything. As ubiquitous as salt normally is to bring
out flavor in a dish, for me, piment is in everything.
Waking up at 7am is sleeping
in. I have never been a morning person;
I much prefer spending most of my waking hours at night. At the beginning of my time here it was much
the same; I needed an alarm clock to get up for my morning lessons and
meetings, but now anything much later than 5:30am is sleeping late. Part of this is that my neighbors somehow
manage to wake up just before the sun begins to rise around 4:30am and they
make a fair amount of noise or play music early in the morning. Everything here seems to get going earlier
than back home. Businesses open around
7:30am instead of 9am and having an early morning meeting is not out of normal. In some ways I hope the habit of waking up
early continues when I return home so that heading to work at 9am doesn’t feel
so much like torture.
This is by no means an exhaustive
list of how things have changed since I have been here but they are some of the
most apparent. I still have a year here
and plenty of time to settle even more into my Togo life ways. I am interested to see what the next year has
in store.
