Could I commute to Accra from here?

Its been a few days now, and I feel that I've gotten settled in a bit. I live in a quartier called Avenoue, which is on the outskirts of Lome. Lome itself is separated by a long...(erm, maybe 'lagoonish-thing' describes it) 'lagoonish-thing' that divides it into basically downtown and the suburbs. Something near 900,000 people call this place home and like it or not, it is where the vast majority of business is done in Togo. Compared to Accra in Ghana (the "Golden City" as Ive heard it called), or even Coutenou in Benin, Lome is (so I hear) not as beautiful or developed, but is still not without its own charms. It smells like salt water and motor oil and even has a cool night every now and again. If Accra is NYC, then Lome is kinda like the Trenton of West Africa.





Here Is my house. I live in a compound with another family, who stay in the larger house across from mine. I have, by all accounts, a huge house for a volunteer and it has been a task trying to furnish it.

Lookit that porch - PC must have known I was southern -- When I buy some rocking chairs, it is ON.

There are lots of other rooms, but they're boring and empty. Can anyone fit a few mattresses into a flat rate box?




This is Sami. Hes 4, from visiting from Burkina. I have never heard a kid who talked so much. I have never met a kid I wanted to hear talk so much, at that - his French is immaculate.


The main avenue of Avenoue (ha).

Well, there ya go. I promise to return with something that will incite a little more emotion, but until then, welcome to my home.

Capital Calculus

Being that I have been posted and already spent a week in the grand city of Lomé, I have taken it upon myself to find the hangouts, the best stores, the marché mamas with the best deals, the coldest beers and the best restaurants throughout the city. Our entire stage has been here since Wednesday morning and I have diligently given the low down on the happening locales. For 5 days now I have been batting .1000, giving excellent directions, haggling taxi prices and pegging the best hookah and schwarma in the Maritime region. For our last night here, I felt that I should take a few folks out to one of the busier parts of town, to sit outside, sip some drinks and enjoy a few fire roasted brochettes (skewered meat – don't ask what kind of meat, I don't know, nor do I want to know). It was a perfect night, clear sky, bright stars, crisp and breezy, the glowing avenues full of potential. We embarked after a moderate dinner at the flophouse, renting a taxi to the center of town to a little etablissment know around here as Capital Brochettes. The restaurant sits across from a hopping night club and the flickering neon and staccato rhythms of bad Nigerian hip-hop were floating their way across the divided highway to the plastic lawn furniture holding the dozens of locals all enjoying a similar evening. We rolled up like hollywood, grabbing a table at the back corner of the sandy pavilion and ordered a round of drinks and a few brochettes for the group to munch on. It didn't take long before we were trading quips and stories and having quite a grand time.



I feel confident here that you have the clairvoyance to divine that something was soon to happen to shake things up a bit. I have had 3 of the greatest days of my life back-to-back-to-back, but I shant be writing about those here. Believe me when I say that no one likes to hear about your successes, so grab a snack, turn up the Metallica and come on back for a petite rant on customer service Africaine.
The first portent to send things amiss was the manifestation of a platter of an odd creamy salad, with two small pieces of baguette. Granted, I had ordered 'salade' when I could've ordered 'legumes' but considering I ordered 4 brochettes avec salade et baguette, along with some plantains frites, I figured it was pretty self-explanatory.

30 brochettes later, I am now confident in saying that it was not, in fact, self explanatory.



I was, at one time a comp sci major down in sunny Charleston. I'm pretty good with computers, but when sitting beside cute girls in calculus class, I am incredibly bad at calculus. As it turns out, you need to pass the calculus classes to then take more calculus classes so you can get a piece of paper that permits you to be an even bigger nerd, so, knowing when to bow out gracefully, I became a business major. That being said, I am no math whiz. So when we were given 30 brochettes, I figured, hey, I must have ordered something like 4 plates of brochettes as opposed to 4 brochettes. We laugh, shake heads begrudgingly and loosen our belts. It has since occurred to me that even at 4 plates of brochettes, 30 is only divisible by 4 if fractions are involved, and, after double checking, I'm positive we had no fractional skewers.

Also of interest was the platter of soggy, fat, sweet bananas that seemed to have fallen in a vat of grease and been taken out almost immediately. I may not have been born a francophone, but I know what a 'plantain frite' is, and soggy they are not.

Still, as I alluded to, my week has been phenomenal, I have just gotten paid and I am feeling generous. Bring it on, universe, pile on the soggy fruit, you can't ruin my evening.

Even if the bill is for over 15,000 CFA. 15 thousand CFA.

I could buy quite a few plantain trees for quite a bit less than that.

...Touché, universe, touché.

Aching Uterii

I would rather like to avoid most cliches of the blogging culture. I know that no one really cares what I had for breakfast or what happened between David and Sally or my top-ten-lists-of-anything-whatsoever-at-ALL. Seriously, if this ever regresses to the point that I am writing about anything at all remotely related to fashion, politics, or entertainment, I want you to invite me out to lunch and then run me down with your car.

To make sure I don't spend anytime near any of your vehicle's grills anytime soon, I've made it a point to find interesting things to write about. Today, its kids. The Togolese are an absolutely gorgeous bunch of folks and the kids are something altogether spectacular. I don't know if I find most babies ugly, or if its just white American kids who are so hideous, but, in the inimitable words of a good friend, "my uterus aches every time I see a Togolese child."





I won't even go into the women here. My grandparents could be reading this, yeah?

Angry Woodlands Creatures

He spoke first, without looking up.

"You know, I remember the last time I was treated like an eight year old. I didn't appreciate it then, either."

"Yeah, and when was that?" She asked.

He took a quick pull from his cigarette and blew the smoke to the side. He turned and met her gaze with a cocksure grin.

"When I was eight."


...and there is about everything I need to write about our pre-service training (we call that 'stage', pronounced 'stahj'). As of last Thursday, I and the other 30 or so folks I flew out with 3 months ago are now official volunteers. Yippee. Festivities were held at our country director's house, (dressing to the 9's, speaking local language for the ceremony on Togolese national TV, eating brochettes and drinking beer) which was followed by festivities at large in Lome (less ceremony, more beer and stripper pole dancing). So, in a few photos, we had --

The look of success

Ethnic deversity and incredible tailoring

Dancing, dancing, dancing

Funny Faces

Sexy Faces


Asian Faces


More Dancing

And in a stunning surprise appearance, we even had a celebrity or two crash the party --





I think Qaddafi was celebrating the re-establishment of political ties, but hey, I'll take what we get.


Also of interest, the following morning I learned what it feels like to have a pissed-off badger trying to claw its way out of your head through your eyeballs.

And yeah, absolutely, I'd do it all again.


Off to my new home now--

The True African Legacy

From time to time I've fancied myself quite the entrepreneur – so much so that I've been lucky enough to be carted half-way round the globe to pass on my experiences doing things with buzz-worthy names like 'capacity-building' and 'synergistic facilitation'. However, now that my feet are on the ground, its beginning to dawn on me that the bit about me knowing something about business is worth about as much as that tract of swampland I bought out in Nevada – the true entrepreneurs are here, sneaking yams across borders, carting boxes of fresh baked bread to the street corners every morning, using cell phone connections to run back-door internet cafes. Africa's strength lies in its people, in their resilience, in their ability to create jobs where none exist.

The road between Lome (the capital) and Kpalime (the closest city to our staging) is called, pragmatically, the route national. This road connects the capital to the uppermost corner of Togo, at the Burkinabe border, acting as a life-line through the impassable parts of the interior. There are other roads, for sure, and where there aren't roads, there soon will be, but most of these are a bit like a moto-cross rally, and, at worst, something resembling the surface of the moon. 14 of us were coming back up the route national yesterday, having all just finished 8 days visiting our future posts, establishing business contacts, reconnoitering the surroundings, establishing our households, and, in my case, tracking down a stable supply of schwarma. We spent the night at a fellow PCV's, trading stories, grilling au americain, and drinking about 5 too many beers, and were all in various stages of lethargy for the ride back. We jostled along, avoiding livestock and taxis, swerving for potholes and mud deposits from the deluge that started 12 hours earlier and had yet to let up, but never slowing down. Once you step foot in a bush taxi, you go as fast as possible, as much of the time as possible. Sure, taxis flip, but hey, relax - you're gonna die sooner or later anyway. The speed is a necessity, as things here travel more by momentum than locomotion. If you can get something going here (read: if), only a handful of things will ever stop it before its final destination – (most of these fall into the 'aw, shit' category) things like Satan rampaging across the hinterland, sudden chauffeur defenestration, or, as we all found out, unofficial checkpoints consisting of shirtless locals and very big logs. You see, where you or I would see a dull stretch of highway, Africans see a meal ticket. In case you were wondering, there are lots of logs in Africa. Lots. I call it job security.

Cost to move a log in Togo – 50 CFA and up, depending on disposition and skin color -

Sometimes the only difference between capitalism and extortion is what side of the wallet you are on.