Togo = Developed

Winning the War on Development since 2008

We're approaching the end here at Determined to Tan. It's been a long, hot, long, itchy, uncomfortable, dirty, hot, long couple of years and in just a few short days I wont have the right to bitch quite as much anymore. However, fearing a lack of comedic material that may ensue I've decided to spite my good fortune and bitch even more when I get back to the states. Do what you love, love what you do.

In any case, I did it! I got this place up and running! Togo is developed! Time to get the hell out! In truncated form, because I'm over my novella phase, here are 11 things I sure thought were swell - because prime numbers are just better. With pictures, so you'll actually have a reason to keep reading.

11. Coiffeur 'Wait and See', the worst haircut of my young life-

10. Finding a zoo in Lome-

9. Afternoons at my local bar. (This is my hundredth novel finished in country--)

8. Receiving my third, absolutely legal, concurrent American passport. Its gotta be some kind of record--

7. Accra - I think this one is self-explanatory

6. Steven's Visit

5. Falling into the Latrine

4. Arriving in Sierra Leone and boating to Freetown from the airport

3. Getting hit by a moto and getting a free vacation to South Africa

2. Rayan and I taking a 10 hour moto trek through the Togolese brush, up a mountain in Benin and crossing back over in one day.

1. Leaving! Saturday, May 22nd its official!

Down on the coast, we say that the second happiest day in a man's life is the day he buys a boat. The happiest day in his life is when he sells it. That's a bit of what its like - I'm glad I came, I had a blast and abused every privilege there was, but even gladder to be getting the hell out! Now, off to find a few cheesecakes and a hot shower.

This picture serves no purpose. But damn, thems a lot of chickens.

The Best Medicine

There are just some stories that can only be truly related in person. You need inflection, you need gesticulation, you need good solid cursing. A few stiff drinks don't hurt, either. If you are reading this, know that you are going to ask me to tell you this one again, in person. This could be the defining point in my life. Get comfortable.

I traveled last weekend, from Friday to Monday, visiting friends and Togolese family during a 4 day journey to say my goodbyes before I leave next week. My final stop-over was in Dzigbe, the highest village in Togo, right beneath the peak of Mount Agou, the same village I stayed in for 3 days in December of 2008. Christina and some friends had visited while I was in South Africa and she promised to bring me back for one last visit before I left. We passed a pleasant evening full of grain alcohol, mashed tubers and scuttering cockroaches to awake to a cool Monday morning. The morning passed in a normal fashion - light breakfast, hiking (what they call 'walking' here) to say hello to friends and family, and a scary end-of-days thunderstorm that detained us until about noon and then a large lunch.

Pretty routine, so far, yeah? But good, now we're caught up.

Now, take stock of what you are doing right now. Sitting at work, at home, maybe drinking a cup of coffee, maybe listening to some music, maybe a Kenny G Christmas record from 1989, maybe thinking about how nice it would be if him and Yo Yo Ma would just go ahead and make out already. Now imagine if, 10 minutes from now you were transported somewhere deep, dark, smelly, you were covered in shit, surrounded by huge, satan-worshiping, radioactive, mutant roaches - and you had to poop really quite badly. Hard to fathom?

After lunch, I felt nature creeping up on me, and decided to saunter down the path to the little shack covering the 3 ft wide pit we used as a toilet. Upon my approach, I imagine the tired, neglected latrine had something of an existential crisis. Faced with the prospect of staying a latrine for the rest of its days, a sad looking affair, all wood and rusty sheet metal erected over a large hole spanned by 10 or so pieces of wood, with no chance of an independent career change, it saw, in me, a way out. Or down, I suppose, depending on where you're standing. Giving up the ghost in the most monumental latrine-fashion imaginable, as I stepped in the entire floor gave way and sent me into a head long dive straight the fuck down.


I'm going to give you a second here. Take a breath. Unbeknownst to me, I now hear that this is a nightmare scenario for many people.


Standing up, I tried to take stock of the situation in the calmest way possible. Lucky for me, mountain people in Togo don't really use latrines - they're partial to rocks in the woods for their dirty work. I find drowning in a 7ft pool of liquid shit quite an undignified way to die. Unfortunately for me however, I was still AT THE BOTTOM OF A 10FT DEEP LATRINE WADING IN A FOOT OF PISS AND SHIT. Roaches and, oddly enough, crickets - huge 3in long black old testament looking fuckers- were running around everywhere and crawling all over me. Little built-to-scale-models of Mount Doom were sticking their peaks out through the liquid on the floor, I had no network coverage that deep in the ground, it smelled like a rotting goat, and I still had to poop really bad. Thinking about it logically, I knew the first thing that I needed to do.

I dropped trou and took a dump.

That taken care of, I stood up and noticed that there was still one giardia-yellowed board spanning the width of the pit, all that was left of the floor. Knowing that it would be my only way out, I gave a flat-footed jump an olympian would have been proud of and latched on, hoping that it wouldn't give way (the sick sucking noise that my shoes made when leaving the floor of shit gave a certain je ne sais quoi to the whole affair). Looking left and right, I used small grooves in the latrine walls as toeholds, each one harboring a dozen or more nightmare insects that crunched and squirted underfoot, and clambored my way to the top of that shit-streaked board.

I laid there for a moment, looking at the overcast sky, the wind rushing over the various liquids covering my body, cooling me as if I had just stepped out of a hot shower, and I began to laugh. Hysterical, maniacal, uncontrollable laughter that started deep in my gut and erupted out in rolling ululations that shook the slim board that was still underneath me.

Cause hey, what else is there to do?

Election-Fever Pt. 2

So, elections have finished here, and, in a shocking turn of events, Faure Essozinma Gnassingbe came from way behind late in the tallying to once again take his place as the noble and fearless leader of the proud and powerful nation of Togo. Seriously. We had no clue he was going to take it away again. (*cough* thats a bloody lie *cough*) But, please, can anything else possibly be expected from the benevolent 'fils du terroir', the one man who's love for the country runs deep, but who's EU-aid-lined pockets run even deeper. Lets be real, if you have an infinite amount of money to spend, you're going to win. All you have to do is hand out free stuff. Faure's face is EVERYWHERE in the country. Seriously, do you have any idea how many free t-shirts, hats, fans, pencils, posters, stickers, calendar-pens (those neat pens that have a calendar that rolls out of them. hey you know you'd use them if you were here!), scrunchies, swatches, flags, berets, and cash bribes were given out over the past 3 months? I've heard rumours of large trucks filled with sodabi just going up and down the country getting everyone drunk for free. Who wouldn't vote for this guy?

Higher, Longer, Stronger. Yeah, I bet he tells that to all the girls.

You know, I was going to post pictures of some other candidates and talk about the shit-ton of people who didn't vote for Faure, but do you have any idea how many pull-out-calendar-pens the opposition candidates gave me?

Answer: 0

Hey, UFC, losing is for losers! You Suck! I bet you don't even know how to use a calendar-pen! SUCK IT!

so, you know what? Fuck those guys. Screw them and their pretentious 'rallies' and 'marches' and 'demonstrations' and 'freedom frites' - all of their screaming and anger and un-cool, un-pen-giving fundraisers. My vote is with this guy--

A true gangster can write a letter and check the date. AT THE SAME TIME.

Actually, I would've voted for this guy, but he told me he was too busy to run for president. What with the funny-stick dance routine and all.

Goin all the way in 2015

So, to the meat of it, what was it like here during elections? Pretty damn boring. The general paranoia that was instilled after the last elections still exists, but nothing happened this time around. People got edgy around the time they started announcing election results, but apart from that, no one that I know really seemed to care. In the words of my land-lady, "Nothing will change no matter who wins. They're all thieves." Damn, where's the love Togo? Where's the love...

This image would be so much more poignant unfurling from the inside of a pen.

Election-Fever Pt. 1

I'm sure that all of you are up-to-date on your political leaders of insignificant West African countries and their impossible to pronounce names, but seeing as a few days ago Togo had their presidential elections, I'll take a moment to refresh your memories. Everyone, I'd like to introduce you to Eyadema Gnassingbe, Togo's 3rd president (read: effectively the only one that's ever been), holding concurrent records for Africa's longest-running dictatorship, and snazziest porteur of blue suede since the King himself.

Everyone, Papa Gnas

Papa Gnas' 38 year "reign of terror" was marked by an almost casual brutality, slapstick incompetence and incredible 70s haute-couture-

The couch is 100% baby seal hide

I have it on good word that Eyadema had 50 wives and sired over 200 children cause, hey, what the hell else is there to do when bathing in Channel #5, laughing at the United Nations, and dumping bodies of political dissenters out of helicopters gets old? Eyadema took power in a coup d'etat back in '68 and could just never be bothered to leave. Upon his death in 2005, turmoil ensued in Togo, with his son (go figure) rising up in the vacuum of power. Baby Faure shouldn't have technically by which I mean legally been the guy that took over the presidency, but hey, first come first serve, bitches.

It is important to point out that the Gnassingbe's come from the North of the country. They are Kabye. The assassinated president in 68 was from the South of the country. He was Ewe. The entire army is Kabye. Most of the ministers are Kabye. Back in the day scholarships went not to the kids who won the scholarships, but to Kabye kids. However, the Ewe are the most numerous and, some say, more economically powerful just by their numbers. So, there in a nutshell is where problems arise here.

The mighty 'whatyoutalkinboutwillisasaurus' (Papa Gnas was one of the last 'political dinosaurs' to finally kick the bucket in Africa)

That was quick and entertaining, right? So now we come to elections a few days ago - pt. 2 coming up!

Intergration My Ass

The central principle of the Peace Corps doctrine, our modus operandi of sorts, is 'cultural integration' - the idea that to institute lasting, sustainable (they frigging love that word) development, we have to integrate ourselves into the local communities in which we live so as to be more than your run-of-the-mill development worker - we have to be one with the community - we have to become one of those who we serve. And believe me, granola women line up around the corner for this tripe. It doesn't matter whether I believe in it, or even whether it works, the first thing I'm doing when I get back to the states is buying an industrial sized box of extra-large condoms (yeah, thats right) and flying straight to Seattle to hang out at vegan coffee shops -

"why, is that a cruelty-free fair-trade organic quoinoa-cocoa and wheat germ mochachino you have there? Well here are some pictures of me with African children. Well, yes, Destini with an 'i', I think we would make beautiful offspring."

Easy as shooting baby seals in a cage.

However, the truth of the matter is that I could live here for 1000 years wearing nothing but pagne while sucking down sodabi every morning between brisk bouts of beating my wife for not wanting to bear my 12th child and going to see the local voodoo wizard to inflict my enemies with AIDS, but I'll still just be the Yovo. How can I be so sure? Lets say the truth comes from the mouths of babes -

The true face of terror

Children will always be terrified of me here. Like, petrified-from-fear-can't-even-scream sort of terrified. Parents can't get enough of this - they actually carry their terrified infants to me just to watch them freak out. This is always a great reminder of how knee-deep in the community I am here.

Salone for the Holidays

Peace Corps Sierra Leone entered the country in 1962 and left with the onset of war in 1994. It has been 15 years since the last volunteer was active in the country and so it goes without saying that when the first person in the airport after my arrival asked me without provocation "Are you Peace Corps?" I was close to shocked. When the second person I ran into - the lady checking luggage for contraband asked the same question the moment she saw me, I began to feel like I was in the middle of a pre-meditated gag. But, no, I was to run into this same question time and time again during my two weeks in Salone and it never lost its shock-value. My first day in Freetown I ran into a 60 year old woman who wanted to show me her certificates from all of the "Peace and Reconciliation" trainings she had been to that had been put together by PC volunteers. She still had the flimsy paper certificates framed and hanging after 20 years. Still not making this up.

The Cotton Tree, Downtown Freetown. The building to the left of the tree was the PC office and the embassy many years ago.

I had just left the border of nowhere and was heading directly to the middle when we ran across a police checkpoint (just a man at a shack with a rope pulled across the road). They were being quite exacting, searching bags and checking IDs of the 2 other motos stopped with us. The cop approached me and, I swear on my mother's life this is no exagerration, he asked me 'are you Peace Corps?', I of course said yes, and he slapped me on the back and then gave me a huge smile and let me go on without as much as glancing at my papers.

I arrived at Shenge (go on, try to find it on a map) after another tortuous hour on a suicidal moto-driver's back seat down what appeared to be a dried stream-bed (that's called a road here).

At least I went in dry season

I had the number of a Reverend in Shenge, given to me by the head of the Moto station in border-of-nowhere Moyamba. When Reverend Moses (and come on, really what else should he be named?) asked what I did, I meekly posited 'Peace Corps', fearing a kiss on the lips or something, but all they did was give me the old PC house that the previous 15 or so volunteers lived at when they were posted there (honest, had no clue) and then asked me to beg PC Admin to put another volunteer there. Everyone in this village spoke beautiful english because they were all taught by American PC vols. And now that they were grown adults, their children spoke great english. I'll tell you, I've just avoided asking the question 'do we do any good here' as PC, because A) I didnt think the answer would justify our existence and B) I was having too much fun to care. But now, after setting foot in a country that hasn't seen us in over a decade and seeing the actual effect that we've had, I feel quite good.

I flew to Sierra alone, didn't know a soul or anything about the lay of the land and had the most fortuitous, serendipidous, pleasant vacation I've ever taken - Peace Corps is coming back to SL in June and I was able to meet up with the acting Admin officer who is putting the program together. He took me out for lunch and then handed me a key - it was the key to the country director's 3bdrm apartment overlooking greater freetown - since the country director has yet to arrive, the AO thought it would be nice to let me stay there - big screens, leather couches, a sauna - add to that the miles and miles of deserted beaches and accomodating Saloneans who wanted nothing more than for me to understand that their country was peaceful and that they love visitors, and I can assure you that I was living it up over the holidays - I hope everyone out there had just as great a time.

*I had to take all the photos from the net because my camera went walk-around with someone else as I was flying back from Sierra Leone - me and cameras aren't having much luck lately --

I Spy Something Red

I woke up this morning with a start - the heavy breathing, instantly cognizant type of start where you aren't going back to sleep for a long time, if ever, and something ridiculous is going on in your head. I ate Indian food last night. I didn't drink. I swam in the pool all day and was exhausted (living in paradise is taxing). Nothing done to keep me awake. But, in any case, I woke up thinking about minibottles. As a quick reminder, in 2005 SC was the last state in the nation to legalize 'free-pour' (SC is the only state in the nation that needs a technical term for pouring alcohol from a bottle - wow) - eschewing the airplane mini-bottles for the accepted set-up found in all 49 other states and a few territories.

A Bartender's worst nightmare

Now, I'm sure any of you from outside the Palmetto State are thinking this is a no-brainer, right? Well, actually, no, because you see, by changing the law that forced restaurants to serve alcohol in mini-bottles, you were hitting someone in the wallet - namely the makers of the bottles themselves. So, in true political fashion, the manufacturers (who didn't even live in the state) hired a couple of lobbyists who fought like mad to keep mini-bottles in. Their argument? That if we changed to free-pour, someone was going to get a weaker drink. Seriously, that was it. And you know what? It almost worked.

You see, mini-bottles have a regulated 1.7 ounces of alcohol per bottle. No fibbing possible. So, as the lobbyists logic goes, if, on the free-pour system and bartender likes you, you'll get more, if not, then less. This was their tactic. Scare the locals into paralysis on the logic that sometime, somewhere, someone was going to get an unfair deal. They, of course, never mentioned the fact that drink costs would drop, the huge reduction in waste, or the benefit to the bars and restaurants that would result due to the tax structure. Nor did anyone bring to mind the impossiblity of making, say, a Long Island Ice Tea with mini bottles - $15 dollars for a drink in rural South Carolina? Yeah, that pleased a lot of folks. I'm glad to report that today we drink out of big bottles like big boys and girls.

Not Scary

So, why exactly was I thinking about mini-bottles before dawn? Because it came to me that mini bottles are like privatized healthcare. I see a strong resemblance between the mini-bottle lobbyists and private insurance lobbyists - shove enough fear down the everyman's throat - spit enough hellfire and brimstone to the most demoralized American demographic, and there might be a shot at keeping things the way they are. And whats the #1 sure-fire way to make any mother-loving, hard-working American recoil in disgust? THE RED SCARE.

Hey, that looks like fun...

Now listen, I'm not much of a polictically charged person. I like low taxes and grilling on weekends like any other guy. But I am positive that healthcare can be done better in the states. I don't have any proof - I'm not an expert and I don't have an over-estimated sense of righteousness that comes from watching 24 hour news stations. I can't regurgitate facts or percentages. I just, in the most American of stereotypes, feel it. I don't trust a company whose only way of making money is either A) Raising Premiums or B) Denying Claims. And I sure as hell don't trust people whose best argument is based on fearmongering and paranoia. Listen to Matt, here, everyone - NO ONE on Capitol Hill has their thumb on a direct line to God or Allah, or the All-Being, or the Borg. No one is getting assimilated. They all are just as clueless as us, maybe with just one large difference - their health-care is free.

Not Real

But either way, I'm not worried - I've got my long-term plan figured out. When I get so old that I become a burden, I'll just kill somebody. At least then I'll get nationalized round-the-clock care with free health benefits. I guess only criminals deserve the dirty commie-run free health care.

Motorcycle Diaries

I can't say that it hurt all that much. In fact, pain hasn't really been a factor in all of this. It's been more time and inconvenience, and above all, money. The sheer amount of money that has been spent on me in the past few weeks is (at least to me, who's perspective is admittedly a bit skewed) staggering. In short, crossing the street in front of my quartier a week or so ago, a motorcycle hit me and sent me on an all expenses paid vacation to South Africa. I didn't even see him coming. Just one minute I was standing, and the next minute I wasn't. The law of mass tonnage in action, me on the receiving end. I got some pretty nice gashes and chipped my left tibia. While I made out lucky with a pretty minor set of wounds, PC was worried about a bone infection (which I didn't even know could happen), so a few days later I was in a hired car going straight to the airport in Accra. I was flown first class because, as I was told, I needed "room for my leg" and spent 8 hours gorging on wine and caviar (not an exaggeration - the ticket cost over $4000USD, you'd better believe I abused those stewardesses) (and, hey, since you're here, fun fact - 'stewardesses' is the longest word in English that you type solely with the left hand).

Yeah, well, you should see the other guy. Yes, that's a bath robe.

Fast forward a week later and I'm in the lap of luxury. In exchange for a couple hours of surgery I've got hot showers, tea and sherry in my room, A/C, personal drivers, heaps and heaps of bacon for breakfast, $20/day per diem (!!! more than double what I make in Togo), malls, restaurants, movie theaters, and great wine. I'm here with a few other invalids from across Africa and we are having a blast.

Pretoria, The City of Jacarandas. Known in PC circles as Paradise.

Pretoria is, seriously, as pretty as these photos (which I stole from the net.. the doc here dropped my camera on the first day and broke it. He doesn't know that, but what am I supposed to say - "thanks for saving my leg and all, but really, you're gonna need to replace that"?). There are a few euro-centric idiosycracies I've run into - driving on the other (read: wrong) side of the road, silly English (a local bakery was promoting "ass. butter danishes" the other day. Taxis here have signs that read "please don't bang the door". You know it's funny!), and hardly concealed racism. I'm going to go out on a tiny limb here and say this is probably the most racist place I've ever spent any time in. And I'm from Laurens, folks - that's saying a lot. The Boers (read: Whitey) all speak Afrikaans, which I've heard called a child's version of dutch, it's degrees of separation consisting of dropping all gender, most conjugations, using ridiculous vocabulary (foregoing all of the wonderfully colorful dutch cuss words), sounding even more disgusting than Dutch when spoken, and being even easier to make fun of than Flemish, Dutch's other bastard relative.

But, even being back in the 1st world gets old after a while. There's only so much you can eat, so many movies you can watch, only so low that the A/C can go before you get cold and want to go outside. So, it's been fun and hopefully I'll be back in Togo by Monday. I've got a bit of work and healing to do before I head out to Sierra Leone on the 14th :) So don't feel sorry for me, I've been recommending that all of my friends go play in traffic - the righteous scars I'll have are only the tip of the perk-iceberg.

English 101

During last week's visa-trip to Accra, a small bit of bile I had been carrying around in my inner monologue of hatred since I had arrived here was added to in copious amounts and is now, not without a certain relief, overflowing onto these only-so-recently angel white pages. The cible of my ire today is what seems so charming and provincial to the first time visitor to post-colonized West Africa – the version of language you hear here. In case you missed your pre-requisite 2 seconds of African history, it goes a little something like this – many years before the invention of olympic curling and dance-offs, the only way for a country to flex nuts was a good old-fashioned subjugation – thusly, bored white people (namely Brits and Frenchies*) banged their heads together and decided to go slaughter some folks who had the one thing they still lacked - melanin.

*but then, lets not forget the Germans, Italians, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, or the bastard-whipping-boy-of-Europe, The Belgians, who turned out to be the most sadistic fuckers on the continent. With their entire national identity based on chocolate, waffles, and regularly servicing both France and Holland orally, they instantly took a shine to the idea of being at the top of the food chain, even if only in asshole-of-the-asshole-of-the-world, The African Congo. They added an almost zealous fervor to their slaughtering and slave-herding that their big brothers in Europe never seemed to grasp.

Seriously, Belgium, where's the bad?

While theories differ on what drove lesser European nations to colonize the dark continent, it is commonly accepted that the English were trying to escape from their cuisine, while the French were trying to escape the French (“for God so loved the world, he created France. To prove his sense of humour, he created the French.”). When asked for comment on exactly why England was laying claim to vast swaths of the African coastline through bloody and dictatorial means, The King of England went on record by saying, “'cause hey, fuck 'em.” Fast-forward a few hundred years and a few imaginary lines drawn on a map irrespective of language, tribe or religion, and you have the celebrity-philanthropist-wet-dream-cluster-fuck that is today West Africa. And, just to make sure the ungrateful natives wouldn't forget who descended upon them like the hand of god and laid the five-finger bitch slap of colonization across their broad, black asses, the whites left them with decent roads, inferiority complexes and western languages. Europe: 1 Africa: 0.

That catches us up to just about last week, where my hatred for an as-till-now innocuous word boiled over and made me go get drunk. This word, one of my new scapegoats for all of my problems here is, drumroll please, – Somehow. Now, I know you were expecting something much more obvious, but this is the word that makes me grit my teeth every time I hear it. Understand that I'm not a linguist or a lexicographer or even a very good talker of the English language, so I can't exactly tell you how this word is used incorrectly, it's simply that every time I hear it, I know it shouldn't be used that way. Par exemple –

Q: So, I guess you're pretty excited about leaving for your big trip tonight, yeah?
A: (After considerable pause for epic effect) Yes, somehow.

Is this exactly wrong? Couldn't say. Here's another.

Q: Well, you don't speak English perfectly, but you do understand a bit, right?
A: (Again, pensive pause) Somehow.

And its not just the butchery of the word, its the pronounciation. It sounds like some type of Indian greeting with heavy accent on the end – sum-HOW.

While in Ghana, I noticed that ALL the volunteers there have picked up this most annoying of traits – to wit, a text I received from a friend who was late -

Hey, I'm sorry it's taken so long, we just left. I'm still coming, somehow.

...WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?????? (also, that's what she said)

Another annoying habit everyone does here (in French and English) is using the catch-all response, too much. Did you enjoy the party? Too much! Did you like the food? Too much! This can be used in an active sense as well – I like it too much! In French, this becomes the highly abused phrase trop meme – meaning something like 'too much, even' or to express a general 'too muchedness'. I'm not 100% if this is common, proper French, but my bullshit-o-meter doesn't believe it is, so just to be sure I NEVER say it. The word too here loses its connotation signifying an over-abundance and gets denigrated to doing the job that countless number of adjectives could take care of – Is he a good person? Oh, he's too good. How was the trip? Too fun! Would you like to shove a screwdriver through your temples now? Too much!

And one more point of contrition for me here – small. Meaning 'a little bit'. I have to go out small, I'll be right back. I want to play your guitar small. Can you give me small time, I have to make a call. Listen to me well, present and future travelers of Anglophone West Africa - if you come here and say small instead of 'a little bit', it doesn't make you integrated, it just makes you an asshole. You ever known someone who said “ciao” instead of bye or keeps their phone on military time in America just to show they've been to another country and 'oops, I still haven't gotten used to the American system after my trip'? Yeah, you're like that guy – go fall on something sharp.

Well that's it for me today. I gotta tell you, I think I've drained my hate for the day and I feel better....somehow.

Visas from Sierra Leone

ETA: December 2009

Just got back from 3 days in Accra and I am now convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Togo is in all actuality, quite a shit hole. Don't get offended, I still love my little Togo like an abusive father, and the folks here are as nice as they know to be, but the difference just 3 hours away is staggering. What gave me this epiphany? Salsa dancing. I went salsa dancing. True-to-life Latin Quarter salsa dancing. On a Wednesday night. Actually there is salsa dancing somewhere in the city every night of the week, I just happened across one of the best nights to go. Huddled around a glittering deepwater pool in a classy hotel atrium, we all danced to incredible music and ate great food until midnight. The best part was the fact that it was damn near 100% Ghanaian. The white people were the ones who didn't know what the fuck they were doing - and the locals were GOOD. Good like we think of homemade vanilla ice cream on a summer day and sex on a Sunday afternoon. I have been to quite a few salsa clubs in Latin America and these guys were WORLD CLASS. I went expecting something interesting at best, and ended up being completely shocked. I couldn't help but stand there, enthralled, the ebullient smile of a smitten teenager stuck to my face the entire night. Pictures of this exist, but not on my camera - I'll get them soon and put them up, because I really feel like even you in comfy yovo-land would be impressed.

So, it was then I conceded that, yes, Ghana wins. There is a tangible difference in the air when you are in Ghana - you read headlines in one of the 10 different daily newspapers (Togo has 2, who choose their words carefully) of rapists tried and convicted beside restaurant reviews. Sure, the city is ugly as hell and almost as hot, but Ghanaians are proud of their country and think in a worldly fasion, and I can't help but see it through rose-colored shades. I mean, come on, they actually speak a proper language there - here, look at this handy visual aid -

Exhibit A: Countries where French is useful

Exhibit B: Countries where English is useful - HUZZAH!

In other news, work is going well, with my projects starting to wind down - Prosper, my zoo guy is opening a bakery in Kpalime and a Mushroom farm in Lome, and Charles is hawking gadgets across Lome like a true hustler. People are making money, and I feel a bit accomplished. So, all is well there.

This is a normal work-day for Prosper.

After the new year, I'll pretty much be out of here, with only 4 months before our COS (close of service) conference and then just a few after that before I get lost in some other forgotten corner of the globe. Yippee. Heres a random photo to send you home with.

Claude, my favorite kid on my street

Exclusivity

Welcome to the club, bitches

So, yes, I did finally bend to the will of the mighty US Government. Turns out, I'm a coward. So now every time you need your fix of cynicism you're going to have to log in. Cry me a river. This was, logically, simply the next step in my dominance of the blog-o-sphere, where, just as any great restauranteur will tell you, the more popular you get, the more exclusive you become. If you are reading this, you're a part of the club. You're in. You get it. You understand what the hell I mean when I italicize haphazardly.

Exclusivity brings with it a great advantage. I can now say whatever the hell I want. Watch this - to prove my point, my favorite joke--

Q: What's the difference between your mom and a typewriter?
A: Your mom's a whore.

ZING!

Now, I will be posting some work progress here in a few days, but I want to hold off until I gather some really nice photos for everyone, so in lieu of that, I would like to address something that has been brought to my attention recently and ask everyone in the states to kindly SIT THE FUCK DOWN! What the hell is going on over there? I really try to avoid news over here, but Jesus, its made to sound like the US is ripping itself apart - let me tell you, that time you are alluding to where everything was better never existed, no one has any idea what they are talking about, no president gets it right all the time, and you are all still the fattest, richest, most privileged people on the planet! Yes, Obama won the Nobel prize, no, the world is not ending, yes, I do have to buy my homologue a steak dinner now because I didn't believe him when he told me and I made a stupid bet. Now would everyone please just go open a bottle of wine, jump into the sheets with someone nice and calm the fuck down? I swear, I leave you guys for a year or so and it all goes to shit...

So in that vein, here's to a new, unleashed Determined to Tan - now with more fucks per sentence (fps) than any other reputable news source on the planet.

Customer Service

Coming from the west, we are bred to have an overly-developed sense of service and quality. This can be one of the main contributors to the fact that outside of our borders Americans can be perceived as demanding, boorish, uncultured oafs. Sure, the French are snobs, Germans androids, Dutch druggies and Brits drunkards, but those are all in their own way, sort of endearing. Our customarily accepted belief that the customer is always right and we pay only when we are satisfied is not quite held to the same gold standard throughout the rest of the world, Togo standing apart as a brilliantly blazing bastion of ever-augmenting apathy in the wide world of falling standards. This holds true regardless of the type of service rendered – if you enter someone’s establishment, your money instantly becomes their money. Lets see some examples –

Taxis – It is of absolutely no use asking if a driver actually knows the location of your destination. He will lie through his teeth to make sure that you get into his taxi, and then once he drives around for 20 minutes he will be forced into the position of having to ask other taxi drivers for directions, who, a priori, will lie to your driver. You will eventually arrive after an obscene amount of time and wrong stops, where forthwith the driver will demand through equal levels of wild gesticulation and banal excuses that you should pay him more than you agreed upon, because, mon frere, gas is expensive.

General services – Someone wash your clothes for you but rip holes in three of your shirts? C’est l’Afrique, monsieur. Fix your shoes and now they are more uncomfortable than before? C’est bien fait! Buy absolutely anything at the marché and have it break a few hours later? Du bon qualité. Anyone remember Coiffure Wait-and-See? A hair-cut this incredible doesn’t have to only be a one-time occurrence! Simply ask any street barber if they have ever cut white-hair before – if they swear on their mother’s grave that they have, you can be absolutely assured that you will receive an as-of-yet un-fathomable act of styling prestidigitation, destined to win you fame with your friends and rejection from the opposite sex! That’ll be 200CFA, monsieur.

There was a monetary exchange involved with this

Restaurants – This one goes without mentioning. Let’s not forget the Brochette Fiasco of Fall ’08. Now that was way back and my French was still a bit shaky, so I simply chalked it up to yovo-error on my part. However, well into my 2nd year here, I am now convinced beyond any reconciliation that the majority of servers who wait on you here are either idiots or just incredibly malicious, paying the white man back for colonization, one eff-ed up order at a time. Honestly, all the evidence I’ve seen points strongly to the short-bus hypothesis. Take, for example, the countless number of times I’ve been to the local cafeteria across the street from my house. I order the exact same thing every time – an egg sandwich with two eggs, mayonnaise, onions, and tomatoes. That’s 4 ingredients for anyone not following too closely – I swear on my life it is NEVER right. N-E-V-E-R. It’s especially tiring when I’m there alone and they bring me 2 sandwiches with one egg a piece. Or, my personal favorite - me, Steven, and Rayan ordering coffee at a nice-ish restaurant here. We asked the waitress if the coffee was filtered or instant – to which she assured us it was real, filtered coffee and then went on to tell us about how she makes it fresh every morning and that she herself won’t even touch the instant stuff. Satisfied, we ordered three cups. You want to take a guess at what she brought out 10 minutes later?

3 CUPS OF TEA.

I couldn't make this stuff up...


So, this leads me back to dinner two nights ago with friends Joe and Bree who were about to leave for a nice European vacation. We went to one of the nicer restaurants in Lomé, where we ordered a steak and 2 pork chops and were promptly served 3 steaks. When we sent it back (which was an absolute first for me here, by the way), instead of actually making the order right, they decided to tell us that, no, we were wrong, the blood-red flanks of charred cow in front of us were, actually, pork chops. Silly yovos….

The bastards tried to call security on us when we left without paying. Thankfully the owner arrived right as we were getting heated. What did he say? A man who’s been in the restaurant business for over 15 years and is used to the idea of customer service? And I quote - “Pork chops shouldn’t look like that.” We took the bottle of wine with us.

Yeah, whatever...

NO ONE CARES

Based on a True Story

So, why would I use a public space such as this to criminalize myself? You’d think that theoretically, with the entire world having access to my writings, I would find it in my best interest to talk about what an impact I’m having here and how much good I’m doing. Hell, this can be read by future employers, girlfriends, girlfriends’ parents, senators, parole officers, etc. Why would I make myself look like such a dick all the time? Well, there’s a long answer, and a short answer – I’ll give you both since you obviously have the time, but, in the name of brevity, just in the off-case you do actually have something more pressing to attend to, the short is this –

Eat me, I can write whatever the hell I want.

Now that that’s settled, run along and get that kettle you left boiling on the stove. For those of you with a more flexible schedule, we’re gonna dig deep and root around in the psyche of everyone’s favorite adorable emigrant southerner.

First of all, maybe I was never too clear about this, but this is ENTERTAINMENT, people. I’m not fact checking and quoting reliable sources – in fact, there is so little ‘fact’ floating around on this blog that the only thing of value you could realistically think of doing with it is maybe, I don’t know, start a hunt for WMDs (zing!). No, seriously, though, real life is pretty damn boring – you wake up, you go to work, you go to sleep, maybe you cuss a few times along the way cause someone cut you off on the interstate – snooze fest – who the hell wants to read about that?

Your Life

These are real situations, real scenarios, just incredibly embellished – just like what we learn in school about Pocahontas, Christopher Columbus, The Alamo, The first moon walk, The Civil War (Thats The War of Northern Aggrestion where I come from), The Revolutionary War, Lincoln and Emancipation, etc. - its based on true events, but its been spiced up and moved around and warped a great deal to make it work for us.

Yeah, not true

The rule of numbers comes into play here as well – only interesting things seem to happen when I’m off being free and wild, the one time every few weeks that happens, so of course I’ll write about that and not the weeks of boredom. So, when I talk about drinking from sunup to sundown and doing nothing of value for weeks on end, is there a grain of truth in that? Yeah, sure, I probably had a few beers down by the beach on a Sunday afternoon and woke up late on Monday. So why so obviously overdo it? Follow me to point #2 –

NO ONE CARES. Now please, say that out loud for me. Say it one more time for good measure. Internalize that one, it will serve you for the rest of your days. No matter how interesting my life is, no matter what kind of incredible things I am doing, no matter what kind of massive mental and spiritual changes I undergo from my various travels, it doesn’t matter to anyone. Think about any movie you’ve seen where the square family shows slides from their family rafting trip to dinner guests and everyone is squirming to get out of there – ITS ONLY INTERESTING IF IT HAPPENS TO YOU. If something doesn’t directly involve the ego of the person you are talking to, 99% of the time, their eyes will glaze over after about 5 seconds of you talking about your life. How do you avoid this confectionerisation (Im making it official, Steven!) of the masses’ ocular capacities? Simple – leave ‘em laughing. Also, pictures help – everyone likes a book with pictures. No one wants to hear about the boring computer class I had or the incredible cultural exchange I had buying tomatoes in the market. However, throw in a bit of general rapscallionism, a couple shakes of banditry, and a healthy dollop of villainy and what do you have? You have the much more entertaining story of a 6’4” sunburnt white-man chain smoking his way through aisle after aisle of piss-smelling stalls, carrying a glass of scotch and cussing because he can’t find a proper tomato in this god-forsaken country full of god-forsaken shitty vegetables.

YES!

See? Pulitzer here I come. And still the post goes deeper - Onward to point #3!!!

THE MARTYR COMPLEX. I have read that there are 4 types of people who leave everything they know and move to beat-up parts of the world to do whatever the hell they do there – Mercenaries, Misfits, Missionaries, and The Broken Hearted. I have only been here for round-abouts a year, but I will stand by that one 100%. Each of us are running from something, in our own ways, but most of us no more so than anyone else back home – its just blatantly obvious with us. Everyone has their drug, it just depends on how wisely you pick your poison - cocaine habits, shopping addictions, reality TV, constantly building additions onto your house, these things can be covered up or are seen as relatively normal back chez moi. For us, however, its kinda hard to cover up vanishing for years on end to live in mud huts. I don’t know, I’ve never done cocaine, but I would guess it probably beats the mud huts some of the time, so I can’t judge too harshly. We all fall on the MMMBh scale in some way – some come here to help, some come here thinking they want to help, and some come for lack of a better idea. To this day, I get emails talking about ‘how much good’ Im doing and that I don’t have any idea how many lives I’m touching. I won’t say that’s a complete fallacy, but I want to set the record straight here and for the rest of my life – I AM NOT A DAMN MARTYR!

No.

I am here because I want to be here, because I enjoy what I do, because I’m having a blast, because I find it way more preferable to, I don’t know, being a bank teller (no offense, bank tellers, thank you for all the free suckers). My job here is business advising, which can logically lead to ‘helping’ others, but that’s a happy side-effect - anyone who says helping people is their only goal is most likely lying to you. People do what they WANT to do in EVERY situation, based on what is better for THEM. And, as a side note, I never, ever, EVER want to get lumped in the same category as missionaries here. If that means I go to the other extreme when I talk about my work here, then so be it. I won't delve into my missionary rant here, though - I’ll save that for only the truly initiated.

So there you have it – no longer any need to worry about my mental or liver-al health. And not a moment too soon, either – I’ve got a full day of hugging African children, helping elderly women cross busy streets, facilitating those Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks (again), and at 3 I’ve got my local alchemy group – I’m teaching local artisans how to turn trash they find on the street into gold bullion. And then I’ll probably get drunk.

BUSTED!

Proud board member of the West African Young Professional's Club

UPDATE: Soooooooooo, turns out people read this. People like, A) My mom (see mom, I do read your emails) and B) Relatively powerful, career-ending types of people. So even though I have not been at all forced by the man, I feel I should mention that even though I've got this HUGE disclaimer over here (far right, people, far right------->) and most people really appreciate a good dose of cynical sarcasm, The United States Government was born out of blood and spirit, not satire and wit, so, in clarification, don't worry, put the pens down, no need to write your local congressman! Peace Corps does good! We have fun and change lives all at once! Yes, I did almost break my ass-bone swan diving from my bed which was partially related to a run-in with a bottle of wine, but that could've happened to anyone! Seriously people, don't worry.... maybe one day I'll write something truthful (read: boring) about the kind of work I'm doing.... I don't think it will be a record-breaker or anything, but this is the dark side of being so damn funny.

Things Break

The wine was of a particularly alcoholic sort, the 14% standing out in stern, bold numbers across the back of the bottle. Stellenzicht, a shiraz, brought back to me by Rayan from South Africa. I had never heard of it, but the row of shiny stickers across the front assured me that what I was drinking was a quality bottling, having won some minor awards at some point in the past. Rayan had just spent a fairy tale 2 week vacation at the bottom tip of the continent and brought me back wine, chocolate, and season 5 of The Office. A good friend, indeed. I'm staring at the almost empty bottle right now, slowly sipping the remainder and thinking about how the more alcoholic a wine is, the faster it oxidizes to vinegar. The dregs are pretty tart. Yesterday, the bottle was full and season 5 was unwatched. 11 hours of straight viewing brought me to the season finale, took care of the chocolate, and put a large dent in the wine. I stumbled into bed near midnight and dreamt of characters from The Office.

We are told our anti-malaria meds have a few side-effects, most of which are easily manageable, the rest which are a little less manageable. Suicide is a big one, and delirium sits pretty high up there, with minor annoyances, like hair loss, seizures, depression, anxiety attacks, restricted blood flow, loss of libido, itchiness, bed-wetting, and disturbing dreams bringing up the rear. We wouldn't take them if Malaria wasn't such an SOB of a disease. Last night, I was lost in an office complex, hung out with zombie-Jim, and went on a date with Pam. Steve Carrel made an appearance somewhere and I ran someone over with my car. They died. Do I blame the malaria meds? Maybe. Half-way through my dream-date with Pam, I had to take a dream-piss. A bathroom appeared that wasn't really suited for anyone and I ending up pissing all over my pants, which woke me up, because most anytime when I'm dreaming of pissing now, I'm worried about pissing the bed. Its not so much the wet mattress or lack of sleep that bothers me, even though those aren't at all pleasant - its the shame of pissing yourself when you are damn near 30 years old – its a humbling experience.

So, good news is the bed was dry. I was able to piss in my bathroom, which I am positive is one of life's nicer pleasures. The bonus is that in my drunken torpor I remembered where my ukulele strings were, which I had been searching for for months. In the ukulele bag. Where any normal person would keep things like ukulele strings, and for sure, the one place I didn't look. Do I blame the malaria meds? Maybe. I was pleased with myself. Navigating my way back my room I almost felt like dancing, an empty bladder, the satisfaction of solving a super-sleuth mystery and the anticipation of re-stringing my uke eventually leading me to jumping back into bed with a certain gusto. I hopped up, vaulted off the foot-board and, turning in mid-air gave a little shout for joy. A bottle of good wine, season 5, uke strings, and I could sleep as late as I wanted. Things were looking pretty great for Matt.

Now, two things happened when I missed the bed. I broke my iPod, which was resting beside my bed and on which I landed squarely on top of, and I broke my coccyx, which was resting at the base of my spine and was rammed into a solid slab of concrete as I fell 5ft solidly on my ass. I couldn't really move for a long while. It felt like my legs had fallen asleep and were being beaten with sandpaper-covered mallets as they were waking up. If I was a horse someone would have given me the nicest apple they could've found and then shot me in a pasture. So, just to let everyone know, I'm positive that Africa is going to kill me. Do I blame the malaria meds? Maybe. Do I want to leave? Nah.

President's Get to Have All the Fun

Had the opportunity to sneak over to Accra and see President Obama Saturday. He spoke at the airport for about 15 minutes and then took off to be fresh and new in Washington on Sunday. Its not the first time that I've been to a speech of his, but this one was special because A) Im in Peace Corps, which gave us a special place we could stand right up front and B) Its freaking West Africa – All in all I can count about 8 hours of travel and waiting just to see this cat for a few minutes. I was at the border by 6am, greeted by a light drizzle and a street pastor screaming verses at us in Ewe. 10 minutes after 6 the wooden slats that the 'gate' consisted off were slid to the side and a shit-show ensued of people pushing, cussing, and running as quickly as they could to be the first to cheap transport on the Ghanaian side. I was about 15 people back, watching the guards dishing out 5-finger hooker slaps to young guys trying to sneak past them (I could hear the slaps...ouch). Now I've been here a while and I try as much as possible not to abuse the whiteness. I live cheaply, I say Im half Togolese – hell, I've been able to cross the border without doing paperwork just by showing my residence permit, which hardly any whitey has. However, with rain encroaching and my patience waning, I played my trump card - I held my passport straight up in the air and as soon as the guard saw that blue-bound-beauty he pulled me to the front and let me through.

America: 1 Africa: 0

I changed money, found a bus and was on my way in faster time than it normally takes me to fill out paperwork because I showed my passport to any guard blocking my way and looked like I had somewhere to be.

3 hours in the tro brought me to Accra where traffic was horrendous, nearly gridlocked the entire way from the outskirts to downtown. I met up with friends, got the embassy where I finagled a ticket for myself by insisting that Peace Corps volunteers, no matter their country, should be able to go (truthfully it was only for Ghanaian volunteers, but hell, I live closer to Accra than the majority of them). Taxis, buses, lines, waiting, security checks, metal detectors and more lines and I finally got to the tarmac. The tarmac where we waited for another 3 hours until he arrived. With all this time to pass, it was interesting to watch all the official-looking people running around fixing things and arranging everything perfectly for the speech - I watched, I swear to god, the two biggest, meanest looking mofos wearing black suits with guns strapped to their waists spend 20 minutes clipping a tag from on of the flags so it wouldn't show on camera – I expected them to like, drop kick something and bench press the podium - a bit surreal. It was a dramatic scene with Air Force One looming in the distance, more suits running in and out, letting us catch glimpses of the interior. Obama showed up by helicopter from Cape Coast, the old slave fort, said his bit, and then took off. He seemed exhausted, which, considering he'd been in something like 6 time zones in 3 days, is expected. He did praise the PCVs there for all their 'outstanding' work that we are doing. And you know what? He's right - we should be thanked. Im frigging incredible.

Was it worth it? If you've been sticking with me for a while, then you'll know that worth is quite the relative term – however, looking back, yeah, it was worth it – Im always appreciative of a good story. And you know, seeing all that organization and official scurrying-about of everyone almost made me envious of folks with titles and money and power and all that. Almost, you know. Sleeping late on weekdays is still nice, too.