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.