A Cool Holiday

France may just be the best place to be if you are feeling nauseous.  You may say with such delicious food and wine, and so many things to see and do? You want to be nauseous there?  Well, I’m talking about its ability to make you feel all better.  Thanks to differences in health care you can walk into a pharmacy ask for something to fix your stomach and, ba-da-bing, you have in your hand the medication they give to Chemo patients to fight their nausea.  One of these bad boys and you are ready to eat and do everything.  You can live like you are dying of that cancer that you no longer feel nauseous from, and with so much to see and eat, Paris may be just the place to do it.

I met up with Matt in Paris for one week of holiday from life here in Togo.  I must say I had a pretty good time and I think Matt did too, but I am still convinced he may have been experiencing a bit of a high and euphoria from those French drugs.

Of course one perk of leaving the equator is the weather.  For the week, Paris was a pleasant forty-something degrees during the day and thirties at night.  I was able to snuggle under blankets, wear warm clothes, and walk around throughout the day without sweating to death.  It was wonderful to wander through the city and explore without feeling like you are going to die of dehydration and sun poisoning. A nice warm hand to hold is not too bad either.

Being the wanderers we are, we walked all over the city seeing many of the typical touristy sites and exploring neighborhoods.  For lunch we tried to decide between the dozens of nearly identical cafes we passed and started thinking about what we would be doing for dinner even before we had lunch.  Of course the food was delicious and an apple crumble, with a topping that may have been a stick of butter, got us to come back for more.  I wish I could have more of this French food back in Togo, but without many of the ingredient like real butter or cheese I’m out of luck and can’t even make them for myself. 

As convinced of how delicious the food is, I am equally convinced that every table in Paris wobbles.  Hardly a problem for the average person a wobbly table can be fixed with a sliver of cardboard, but, put in the hands of one such as myself, a wobbly table is dangerous.  I will jar the table the precise moment you are trying to pour yourself a glass of wine or pick up a utensil, and I will enjoy it, then I will accidently do it again.

Together Matt and I saw weapons, bones, towers, and pigeons fighting over hotdogs and much more.  I finally was able to get clean and stay that way for longer than ten seconds and I got to see Matt after seven months of being apart.  Spending time in Paris made the idea of coming back to humidity and dirt feel extremely difficult, but it’s good to be back, getting a bear hug welcome home from my landlord’s wife and sitting propped in front of my fan listening to my tiny neighbor wail away.  Ah, Togo.

I’ll miss Paris, and even though I may be sweaty and covered in dust, I can’t imagine starting the New Year anywhere but here. Souhaitant une bonne et heureuse année pour tous.

Amenities

I have running water and electricity sort of…  It didn’t take me long to get over my disappointment of having electricity and running water.  Sure, I wanted to be in some small village somewhere getting the real Peace Corps experience, but the convenience of amenities like electricity and water cannot be denied and I’m grateful to have them when I do.

Sometimes though, it’s not about having it at all, but consistently having it.  And my water and electricity pretty consistently go off.  The best is when my power goes off in the middle of cooking dinner—I really like playing with boiling water and hot pans in the dark.  I also like having my water go off in the middle of a shower.  There are of course solutions to these problems, flashlights and bucket showers can go a long way, but if you aren’t prepared for it you can find yourself standing soapy in the dark.  Some people have said that in certain ways the people who never have running water or electricity have it a little easier because they are prepared for it and we spoiled people get stuck scrambling.

Back home in the US the only time the power goes off is from a major event like a big storm or some sort of accident.  The power or water being off for a few days is a news worthy event, not so much here.  Along with some grumbling, in the US the power going out was always noted by the need to reset the digital clocks, and I’m very glad I don’t have an alarm clock here that gets plugged in or I would be resetting the clock a few times each day and would only occasionally be woken up in time for work.

There are times when the power goes out for days at a time (providing an excuse for romantic candle-lit dinners) but mostly the power goes out for 15 to 30 minute intervals.  There is no apparent trigger and I really don’t understand why it goes off, or really why it comes back on.  While there is an audible sigh from my neighbors as their TVs click off and the whole city falls silent, there is no real complaining or calls made to the utility company, we’re in Togo, the power goes off sometimes, we are lucky to have it when we do.

Not having water can be a little more difficult than when the power is out.  I can have water fetched for me from somewhere else in town, but without water I cannot live.  So, I keep a big garbage can filled with water just in case the next time I go to wash my hands all the faucet does is gurgle a bit. 

I never really had to deal with these things in the States, things were much more consistent.  Living here teaches you to roll with it.  You can’t really be guaranteed anything, but with a little preparation and a deep breath it isn’t such a problem.  Give it some time, soon enough you’ll be enjoying the blare of your neighbors’ music and wishing the power would just go back off.

Sans Frigo

Like many volunteers here in Togo I live my life without a refrigerator (frigo).  Being lucky enough to have electricity I could choose to invest in a fridge, but in addition to the cost of even a small fridge being more than two months of my total living allowance (that would mean no eating for a bit) and a severely increased electricity bill, I would have to figure out how to get the fridge from Lomé to my house, which would consist of taking it on and off a minimum of three bush taxis—a feat I’m just not ready for yet.

Life without a refrigerator has been in some ways easier than I may have originally thought.  I come from a family where some members refrigerate nearly everything.  With peanut butter and bread in the fridge (cough grandma cough) and everything having labeled with “refrigerate after opening” the idea of living without a fridge seemed impossible.

Of course I have given up many things by living with out a fridge like cold milk, fresh meat, yogurt, and for the most part, leftovers, but I still eat many things I thought I wouldn’t be able to have in a life sans frigo.

You can find many things on my shelves that in the States would have always been in the refrigerator.  I have my jam, margarine, mustard, ketchup, soy sauce, cheese, fish, milk, eggs, and mayonnaise all out at room temperature and if room temperature didn’t happen to be 34°C (93ish°F) I think I could get away with even more.  And for the record I have never been sick yet since being here in Togo.

It is true that my cheese is Vache Qui Rit (Laughing Cow), my fish is smoked, and I must drink my milk the day I open it (or I drink milk powder), but while not the fanciest foods, there are an incredible number of products that don’t need to be refrigerated.  Volunteers have gotten some laughs asking for cured meats and hard cheeses or other products like Velveeta, babybel, Oscar Mayer fully cooked bacon, chicken and tuna packets, and other seemingly random goods that are expensive or you just can’t find here.

There are of course drawbacks of not having a fridge, like not having leftovers (though I have risked it and eaten some things the next day).  Everything goes moldy here extremely fast.  It’s hot and humid and I guess to be expected, but I buy things like carrots and if I don’t eat them in under a few days they start to go bad.  I can only really buy veggies once a week, on Friday market day, and by Tuesday they are gone or bad.  Saving produce is probably one of the things for which I most wish I had a fridge.  A cold drink every now and then would be nice too. 

I may end up caving in and buying myself a fridge to save my veggies, but for now I’m doing just fine.  It is amazing how much we refrigerate in the US that really doesn’t need it, but it is true that a fridge can really make things last much much longer and not having a moldy surprise after just a few days, will one day make a refrigerator a welcomed appliance in my kitchen

The Jewelry Makes the Woman

From infancy girls and boys are marked different by jewelry.  All baby girls’ ears are pierced, boys’ are not.  While this little fact comes in handy when doing baby weighing and guessing which one was which, this identification is very persistent and you are not really female unless you wear earrings.

Coming to Togo I didn’t know what I was expecting and the logical thing seemed to not bring much jewelry at all.  I guess it was some silly idea that I didn’t want to draw attention to myself even with cheap fake jewelry that someone might mistake for being of value, but now I wish I had brought more with me.  My two pairs of earrings, now one thanks to my clumsiness, are sufficient, but I wear them every day and it is only time until I wear them out or lose them.  

I remember the first time I dared to leave my house without my earrings in, OK more like I forgot to put them in; my host mother was a little shocked and with a worried voice asked what had happened to my earrings.  At the time I assumed she was just concerned that I had lost them seeing as how jewelry can be valuable.

A second time I didn’t wear my earrings in public, a midwife, whom I had just met, reached over and grabbed my earlobe, “hmm, just checking.  Why are you not wearing your earrings?”  I don’t know... I didn’t feel like it? I forgot? They were making me uncomfortable? There are plenty of reasons why on a perfectly normal day I might not wear them, but apparently this is somewhat unacceptable. 

Just this last week a male colleague of mine did exactly the same thing.  In the middle of a conversation about a project we are working on he reached over and grabbed my ear.  “Women wear earrings, why are you not wearing any?”  Considering this conversation was happening in my own courtyard after I had been woken up from a nap I assumed that it would be OK not to be wearing my jewelry, I guess not.

Can they not see my long hair, my dress, or my female form?  Are earrings really needed to let them know I’m not a man in disguise?  Yes, in the US earrings are stereotypically a female adornment, but rarely is a woman’s identity specifically focused on her ears.  Unlike in America, in Togo there are extremely few to no men with pierced ears.  I am so used to seeing body adornments on both men in women, in both the US and my National Geographic version of Africa; I am surprised to find piercings only on the ears and only on women.  It’s a practice I’ve had to get used to in order to be integrated in my community and it has taken effort, even now I find my hands subconsciously wandering to my ears, just checking…yup, no worries, female today.

Seems a Little Fishy To Me

Today I bought myself a smoked fish.  Normally I stick to a vegetarian diet of rice, beans, and other veggies—yes mom, I get enough protein, don’t worry…beans and rice make a complete protein source—but I guess today I thought I’d spice things up.  I have never before bought or prepared smoked fish and honestly I was at a loss as to what to do with it, unless it is with some cream cheese and bagels, smoked fish doesn’t really find its way onto my plate.

I usually actively avoid the fish area of the market.  Of course it has its fishy smell, but mostly it just seems somehow disturbing and unsafe.  The idea of fish sitting exposed out in the sun on a humid ninety degree day goes against essentially everything I know about food safety.  I suppose being smoked, the fish are of course preserved, but the small crabs and crawfish I see lying out there…the flies…I cannot understand how they aren’t completely spoilt.  Though the only pointers our medical staff gave about it was check for maggots and a smoked fish shouldn’t be squishy, my instincts of self preservation have kept me far away from these aquatic treats. 

On a whim—or maybe a little lapse in sanity—I had a whole smoked fish sitting on my kitchen counter.  Sitting there smelling fishy, peaking out of its little newspaper blanket… I had no idea of how to begin to prepare this fish.  This fish is fish, no special name or flavor, not a delicious salmon filet or tuna steak, just fish.  Of course the internet was the place for answers! but I learned quickly people care much more about smoking the fish than eating it.  There were plenty of links to how to smoke a fish, but very few on how to prepare one that has already been smoked.  With little online inspiration to save me from the fish sitting on my counter, winging it seemed like the best option and that is how I ended up with my tomato curried fish—quite tasty really.

Getting to that point, however, was an adventure.  After staring into my fish friend’s eyes, I made my move; picking up a knife I made to gut the fish, interestingly though I learned that when you cook a fish with its organs still intact you get one solid mass of stuff and the normal techniques just don’t cut it.  Being meticulous, I got rid of every speck of this dark stuff and skinned the fish flicking bits of it across my kitchen with professional skill.  In addition I picked out every bone I could find holding the fish up in different angles of light to make sure I got them all—no choking on fish bones for me!  In the end I had two little filets of fish popped into my pot and voila dinner. 

Cooking dried beans requires a lot of time.  In addition to needing to be soaked, beans use up a lot of my fuel as they sit simmering on my stove for over an hour.  The fish, though, is fish, nothing special.  The extra time of cleaning the fish and the smelly mess I make just doesn’t seem worth the saved fuel.  Maybe I’m just not one for variety; I’ll stick to my beans.

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

A Selling Society

Everyone here is selling something.  I don’t mean this in any deep metaphorical sense, literally everyone is selling something.  On Friday, my market day, you can find everyone you know from work and around town camped out somewhere in the market selling their wares.  I am no longer surprised to have a colleague, such as a nurse or medical assistance, shout hello to me from their stand as I pass though doing my own shopping.  From the farmers, nurses, to my landlord, and my host-family’s uncle—a director at a cement factory, everyone is selling. 

The products they are selling do not tend to be unique.  Few of the products are local or made by anyone selling the goods.  Even much of the food products (in spite of the predominant profession in Togo being farmer) are shipped in from elsewhere.  From speaking with an acquaintance I know that many of these vendors make a weekly pilgrimage down to Lomé to buy whatever random merchandise to resell at our local market and around town.  Some people tend to specialize; you have cloth dealers, those who sell spices, onions, tomatoes, pots and pans, etc. But almost all the products are identical.

I live in a city with one of the largest markets in Togo and you can find most of anything you want.  We have hundreds of people selling goods, but they are all selling exactly the same things.  For the dozen cloth sellers, they all sell the same cloth—probably all from the same supplier.  The same is true with those selling plastic wares and packaged food products.  All these goods come from the same places are of exactly the same quality, and all the same price, the choice isn’t the product, but which of the twenty vendors will you buy it from?

I can find hardly any specialization in the market here.  Few people offer unique products that you can’t easily walk ten feet and buy with someone else.  Maybe I am limited in my capacity to grasp this idea, but if thirty women buy a basket of tomatoes from the same vendor in order to sell them all at the same place, how can anyone really succeed in turning a profit? 

In the US I have on occasion despaired in how much of a service industry country we have become, but I have a greater appreciation for its effectiveness when compared to the system here.  I cannot claim to know all the intricacies of the economic system here, but it just seems inefficient and impractical for the general population.  These local vendors all purchase from the same suppliers in Lomé, padding the pockets of the few people who actually make products (most not from Togo) and sell these goods for a profit of probably only a few cents. 

Just as with the subsistence farming that is the basis of most of the lives of Togolese, this method of reselling goods provides enough to live on but not much else.