A Few Photos

Sometimes I get all caught up being funny and edgy, that I forget to actually write anything of actual merit. This idea is a derivative from a night of drinking cold-ish beers around a molded plastic table down at the Yovo support group's regular watering hole, Le Prestige. It was the average night of poignant culturally offensive jokes deftly interwoven with subversive political commentary, when I noticed that if I were to compress everything I say within a day, I could squeeze all valuable nuggets of info into about two sentences.

Now don't think Im turning soft on you - far from it - maybe its just time for some perspective into the life of a transient pessimist. Inherent entertainment value, you ask? Ill give it 4/10, but if you are reading this, you either really like me, or you're my mother (Love you, mom), so you'll cherish it regardless.

Ive been stewing slowly for the past 6 weeks in a small-ish mountain town called Agou-Akoumawou. This is where it looks like on a map -
This is what it looks like from the top of Mount Agou, the highest point in Togo, 1000m above the sea.

Here is some of my Togolese family - Maman wakes up every morning around 4am and starts frying Kanami (fried fish). My first memories of Africa will be forever entwined with the sound of bad techno and speaking in tongues ('praisethalawd' and woezolo - 'welcome' in ewe - sound damn close) from the neighbors radio and the smell of coconut oil crackling outside my window.

(you know, Im an IT guy, and I still cant figure out how to position these pictures acceptably - bah)

And here's a Swedish Fish Sandwich juxtaposed on top of an Arab. Call it post-modern if you will.


Stay a little longer and I might just make a joke about a Polack. Keep it tuned here-

Absolutes are for Winners

7.12.08

The danger with using absolute statements is that sooner or later you are going to box yourself in by your own (probably spontaneous) outbursts. If you, like me, are prone to random acts of jumping, squirming, running, eating, screaming, wandering and cussing, every few bits you see something that warrants a 'best', a 'greatest', a 'loudest'. Every now and again, you just need a really good 'evaaar' to really nail it home. If any of you reading this have known me for longer than say, 3 minutes, then you know how comforting it is to have me along with you at all times of the day - Why, thank you Matt, this probably is the most delicious meal I have ever prepared. You know, now that you mention it, this IS the nicest drive Ive taken between my house and Piggly Wiggly. Well actually, I was thinking of giving it away, but damn, you're right - the 87 Nissan Sentra is the best thing thats ever come out of Japan. Yes, I do love waffles - Big time.

Now obviously, I must keep a cache of retractions handy for every now and again, like that time "the hottest girl I had ever seen" walked past, followed soon thereafter by the CofC women's volleyball squad - (actually, that one hasn't bothered me too much) Seriously though, I had bigger fish to fry at that moment. (Best. mistake. EVER.) Here in Togo, where something like a hot dog, or, hell, a hot shower, is enough to amaze, I understand that the scale has been a bit skewed for me. I know that Im not actually going to jump on the next sharp object I find if I have to eat one more yam. I know that Im not quite as scary as the screams of the enfants who see the giant white devil (we call that a 'yovo' in these here parts) would lead you to believe. I am pretty sure that if I threw something down the latrine, something would probably knock on my door in the middle of the night and try to give it back to me. (That could vie for the coolest thing ever, just to let you know.) So, here in Togo, amidst all this relativity, Im going to do as the guy at an internet cafe told me when I asked if the connection worked 'bien' ('c'est togo-bien, monsieur') and try and keep my absolutes relative -

The 4 hours of biking today over the Nyogbo-Kpalime dirt road that falls somewhere between this- and this -

was the most exhausting thing I have ever done (in Togo). The lunch I had was the most amazing thing I have ever eaten in my life (in Togo). The Shower I had after getting home was the most amazing cold-water-outdoor-bucket-shower I have ever had the incalculable pleasure of taking (in Togo). The yams I had for dinner didn't turn me suicidal (yet). Today was one of the most satisfying days I have ever had (in Togo). The banana split I had after lunch was singularly the best banana split I have ever had in my whole frigging life (EVER).




Bokabalo, mes amis--

The Lome Vay-Kay

When you become sick in a foreign land, everything becomes suspect - the food you eat, the water you drink, the bed you sleep in and the people you talk to. You find yourself eating less, wondering how long you can go without food, just in case you eat something that may not agree with you. You peer through bottled water as if you could see the guilty party floating between the molecules, waiting to curl up in your stomach. You go to sleep early and wake late, hoping to avoid as much social interaction as possible. You sniff things and poke things and taste things and give the raised eyebrow to just about everything you come in contact with. You find yourself saying things like 'hey, it could be worse' and 'at least Im not...' then cursing yourself when it -A) becomes worse and B) you find that you, in fact, are.

So, here I sit in the med unit in Lome, nursing my tropical virus with candy bars and lukewarm cokes while saying things involving worse situations and glass half full analogies and I can't help but feel like a bit of a criminal. Sure, 104 degree temperatures and losing your guts from both ends 12 times a day sounds like a pain, but there's something about the internet and hot showers that makes it seem like I won out on this deal.... revenez vites mes amis....

If Magritte were here, he'd do it too...

"Tu aime bien le togo-jeen, hein?" My African brother, Antoine, was looking at me with a grin lying somewhere a few steps across the line to mischievous. I had only shot a passing glance at the collection of unmarked bottles sitting on the table by the front door, but soon found myself being pushed towards the mystery liquids. Each bottle had obviously been used for another purpose earlier in their lives, their peeling labels displaying 'scotch' or 'Chinese plum wine' now guarding something very obviously something else. These are the things we are warned about long before we step foot in a foreign country - our training classes have topics like 'cultural awareness', 'dysentery' and, from time to time, 'unmarked liquids you most definitely shouldn't drink even though we know you're going to anyway' - I happened to like that group exercise quite a bit. Flakes of peppers or roots or berries sometimes flowed out of the bottles as shots were being poured, the sediment from each bottle giving only the slightest hint as to what had been fermenting there in the tropical heat. I stood with my companions around the table, the table that sat under the dangling fluorescent light that hung outside the sheet that acts as the front door of the house, the house that sat 5 minutes from the training center where I have classes everyday, which is an hour and a half from Lome by taxi, which itself is half a world away from anyone reading this. I stood there, a world away from some and 5 minutes from others, beside Togolese neighbors and family, a glass of something that looked deceptively like paint thinner and smelled a bit like kerosene in my hand. Murmurs in the local patois of Ewe and French floated between us as we continued to pour glasses for everyone, the occasional smile thrown my way followed by the word 'togogin'. "Tu aime bien le togo-jeen, hein?" I wasn't very sure if I liked it or not - as surprising as it sounds, I'm not that used to ingesting equatorial bathtub wine, but it was as good a time as any to find out. As the last glass found its place, we all poured a bit on the ground for les ancestres and then threw back one of the many unforgettable life experiences that I've found here.

Come to find out, I sleep like a baby after four good life experiences.

Reppin the Penguin

So Im working in Small Enterprise Development, focusing on IT work. One of my main interests is open-source implementation in developing areas. Can you imagine my excitement when I looked across the terminal in the Philly airport and saw the two hippest Little-Linux-Laptops on the planet -- the OLPC (one laptop per child) and the Asus EEEPC -- chilling on the laps of two fellow volunteers? And all the n3rds rejoiced. amen.

The humid West African air hits you like a brick when stepping from within the confines of the stale recirculated air of a plane. It invades your nostrils and pores, adhering your clothes to you body and filling you with an instant largesse that only mojitos and naps seem to be able to combat. The smells are those of a warm summer night and something falling on the over-ripe side of 'pleasantly sweet'. I was taken back to Managua as I surveyed the green landscape and tropical trees waving my way into their country, the smells and urban planning of Lome seeming deceptively familiar. I find Togo beautiful in the way you look at an old barn or the rusted shell of your first car. The poverty is so apparent as to be comforting, the half completed or half-razed shells of buildings so frequent as to be reassuring. The sandy streets and shuffling citizens tell me 'look here, this is the way things have been. Come see how the world really lives.' Lome lies on the coast, the center of town situated no more than a few clicks from the Ghanese border. A few paved roads act as arteries for the sidestreets and communities, all tied together by the beach road running parallel to the shore. It is hot here, and humid, but no more so than a balmy summer day in South Carolina. In an effort to send us off with a thorough grounding in West African economics, the welcoming commitee that greeted us at the hostel (current PCVs) have shown us the many ways to purchase many types of local beers, all falling in at well under a dollar. I must say, its taken me quite a lot of studying, but Im beginning to get the idea.

The group I arrived with are mostly young, green, college grads, here out of a vague sense of social consciousness and white guilt - I cant say Im any different. There are a few professionals in the group, and we have all meshed well and are progressing on towards what Im sure will soon seem like an extended family. Our staging starts tomorrow, when we leave for Agou, to the north, where we will meet our host families and move into what will be our homes for the next 3 months. We are all re-packing after our few days here, ready to begin what we all started so many months back.

As I stared at the sky last night, the moon shining through a few murky clouds, something resounded inside of me, saying 'yes, this is where you should be. yes, your intuition is right. yes, your journey has only started.' So I sat and stared and let myself be enveloped in the magic of the sights, sounds, smells, coincidence, surprise and interrelatedness of it all. Then I stood, brushed myself off, grabbed my bags and walked through the gate. Welcome to Africa.

In a post-apocalyptic future, where true heroes stand tall and lead the battle against the cyborg armies, we will all wear this mustache.


Standing valiantly, defying the tyrannical metal rule and all good taste, this warrior from the future waited diligently by us as a new plane was found to replace our cancelled flight. I found it odd he wouldnt simply take off in his rocket-car, but I wasn't about to ask him about it - dude is bad.

Arrived in Philly 6 hours late, but was able to catch the end of orientation and meet my other volunteers. The night was filled with cheesesteaks, dive bars, and brotherly love. Let me tell you, folks here are serious about their cheesesteaks, their dive bars, and their paper, rock, scissors. I hear its how they'll fight wars in the future. Paper covers rock, chump.


Right, off to the future - Togo tomorrow.