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.

Im a Badass

I am aware that possibly no one will have any idea what these are about, but Im putting 'em up anyway - from Street Fighter 3. Undeniable proof of my near deity-like power. And you guys thought my college education was going to waste!

Standards and Practices

How do you judge someone's worth? (and yes, I'm quite aware of the painful cliché that is starting a discourse with a nebulous, quasi-rhetorical question. eat me.) Is everyone worth the same as everyone else? If my five beans are black and your five beans are white are they equal to each other? (The black beans are bigger, the white beans look great in flannel, it cancels out) I'm sure all of you reading would say yes, one human life is just as valuable as another, but then again, most of you are white American Christians, so that needs to be taken with a large crunchy bit of sea-salt. Our WASP-y world view leaves room for plenty of conscience-free judgment. We have newer cars and larger houses, pristine lawns and ridiculous business cards. Even our ironically oft-trumpeted modesty more often than not just ends up being a sickening version of sycophantic vanity tailored for the religious crowd. Even those that never ended up with the women, money, or fame have their own hat tricks when it comes to self-evaluation (read: self-inflation) – we call em 'scruples' -

Scruples

they may not be rich, but by god, they always stayed true to themselves and a man's word is worth all the money in the world. (Actually, its not, thats stupid as hell, but some people need this kind of crap to sleep at night) Tied up in all of that are multitudinous ways to judge someones value. Now me, I come from the deep south - I like my tea sweet and my women sweeter. I have a cute accent and know how to say yes sir and yes ma'am. Down where I'm from we identify with the hard-working farm boy, the every-man, the Joe Plumbers out there. We even have a word for everyone that doesn't belong with us – 'elite'. If you are too rich, too educated, too worldly, or in general can in any fashion make us feel inadequate, you should go-back-to-where-you-came-from-right-the-fuck-now-and-
dont-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out. We will in no way vote for someone smarter, more charismatic or better qualified than us for any position of power in what has to be one of the most brilliant failures of common sense, ever.

To get back on track, what do we use every day to silently judge someone's value in relation to us? Well, for starters there's money. Everyone loves money, right? Leaving the states over a year ago, lots of people balked at the idea of coming here because I could have just stayed in the states and made money. (As a quick aside, do you know what the US has? Answer: Everything.)

Exhibit A: Everything

And looked at from across the pond, we make absolute jack nill – what could you do with $250 a month? Not a lot, thats what. However, conversely, we live like gods here, being paid around 10 times what Kossi Q. Publique makes here in a month. Still with me? Lets look at education – the vast majority of us here have a simple bachelors degree, what has become in the states more a rite of passage than an accomplishment. Everyone goes to college, and it means absolutely nothing anymore – so, again, from the states, no big deal – we've proved we can fill in bubbles with #2 pencils in between hangovers and frisbee-golf. Yet here, we are looked at as 'professionals', 'experts', and 'consultants' – folks here fight their whole lives to get a degree from a university that would be laughed at on any other continent. What about the importance of your job? I've seen women who stalk lawyer bars and med-school libraries to try and find a rich man. We call that a 'pre-wed' degree. Viewed from the states it looks like we sit around and suck on the massive US taxpayer-teat, whereas here we all know the truth – were promoting cultural exchange and building capacity. Its almost like saving babies and being productive, just different.

Me, last Tuesday

Well, the whole point of my diatribe today is that I've hit another wall here. Peace Corps has plenty of people across the board who would like to see it disbanded – they argue its a bloated, unproductive, nigh-useless organization. Peace Corps, in beautiful shades of Darwinian self-preservation, argues the exact opposite – we A) have a major impact on a grass-roots level where other organizations don't reach and B) we promote better understanding of American peoples and culture throughout the world while enriching our own lives. Even though I'm a miserable curr 99% of the time, I have to agree that we do work in places where other groups don't go, and we have a much more lasting effect. However I'm starting to put some pieces into place in my head and some bits aren't adding up. And it all comes back to value and worth.

Now, hypothetically lets say my name is Marcus and I work for a completely fictitious organization called the Corps of Peace. I'm a surgeon working in a developing nation getting paid next to nothing, my opportunity cost just for being out of the US alone damn near able to pay off the country's external debt. Now I am contractually bound by CP to take medicines that will prevent various ailments found where I'm working. I have known that from the first day I set foot in the country that were I to ever not take the meds, I would be sent home. Fair enough, right? Well now lets say that I am very sick for two days and can keep no food or liquids down. Hey, it happens. The unfortunate corollary to this is that I can't take meds for two days until I can start to hold anything in my stomach. Then, lo and behold, hot damn, I get the sickness that the meds were there to prevent in that very two day window when my immune system was already beaten up. Where do you think this is going? Im going to get released because I didn't take my meds, right? Right?

Actually, no. What I'm doing in the country far outweighs the silly fact that I threw up two days of meds out of over a year's worth and then got sick. It's unfortunate, but it would be such a waste to send me home and leave all of my work here unfinished. And why would I be kept in country after I technically broke regs? Because I am worth more than the inconvenience of a bit of medical treatment and maybe a stern talking to about what to do the next time I'm losing the lining of my stomach to the rich African soil. Lesson learned, I go back to work doing what I came to do. But, that is the Corps of Peace and we are the Peace Corps, and let me tell you, its not just the name thats different – we're actually serious when we say we will kick you out. Whether intentional or not, you broke contract. We're bad ass, and we will punish you. Now go back to the land of cheesecake and bacon and think hard about what you did while you take a hot shower.

That'll teach em

Is it because we aren't worth forgiving a technicality? Or is it because what we do here really isn't worth as much as I'm making it out to be. Hmmm.... Maybe I should ask some of the PC big-dogs, the folks that have worked here for decades and have their retirements and 401ks coming soon, if they would pay me out of their own pocket for what I'm doing. Those dedicated people who, over the years, have seen what good PC can do and believes in it 100%, enough so to devote their lives working for the organization - I wonder if they would write me a personal check. I'm beginning to guess no. I wonder if any of us would be worth it...