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.