A Year Down With Many Changes

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.