Now, almost three weeks later, I have established a daily routine. In the morning, the roosters have a crowing competition around 4:30am, where they usually wake me up. I go back to sleep after their 10 minute-long saga. Mind you, this does not mean that the roosters don't also cry whenever they feel like. Sometimes, there is this heart-breaking and also really spooky crying noise in the night coming from the neighbour's new puppy. The people here buy dogs for guarding the house. Trust me, if you came across a dog on the road, the way they look, your first instinct is to ask "does it have rabies?" instead of reaching out your hand to pet it. Between the roosters and the neighbours starting their day at 5 am, I drift in and out of sleep. Around here you hear everything because there are no windows, as we understand it. Only a screen and shutters cover the windows, so I can hear the neighbours talking, sweeping, and cooking outside every morning.
When I actually get up around 6:15am, I do some yoga, and then take a shower with my trusty bucket. The yoga warms me up nicely for the cold shower--the mornings here are pretty cool. I'm spoiled in term of food here. My Togolese maman--Felicite makes the best food ever! Breakfast is ready on the table by the time I make my way to the dining room around 7am. For breakfast I have a few different meals. Sometimes I have this drink called 'Boullie' that consists of boiled unbleached flour, milk, and sugar--it's pretty thick and I can't think of an equivalent Canadian drink. This comes with bread (the bread is sold on the streets fresh and really good) and sometimes an omelette. Other times I have tea with bread and mango jam. And sometimes I have leftovers from last night's dinner. I eat by myself because the girls have already left for school by this time and Ernest (papa) is still sleeping. Maman is on a diet and doesn't eat breakfast.On my 15-minute walk to work, I pass by many free-roaming chickens with or without babies, little goats, and the occasional duck. People here do not feed their chickens. They open the courtyard doors in the morning to let the animals out; the little creatures then look for food to eat all day; then, the animals come back home by themselves at night. Then, eventually, they are eaten. My family luckily does not have chickens roaming (this is very good for my bird phobia). They have a cage for chickens that they buy for eating. People kill their own meat here, except the larger animals like goats and cows which they buy from the butcher in the market. Even, Bobo, the littlest sister at 8 years old, has already killed a chicken herself. I haven't yet witnessed a chicken being killed. Also, I'm not averse to the idea of having to kill the meat you eat yourself. First of all, one can see if the chicken was weirdly deformed or diseased- looking in order to prevent eating a sick animal. But most importantly, if one eats meat, one should know and see how a living creature died for you to be able to eat and be nourished. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a vegetarian and I do eat the meat that comes frozen in the supermarket in Canada, but I think people here value and appreciate the chickens, goats, etc. and the meat they eat here a lot more. There is no waste: the meat, the cartilage, and even the bone marrow are eaten. But I digress.
So, I walk on the edge of the paved road because there is less dust when the 'motos' or 'dzemi-jons' (sounds like a variation of demi-john to me), as they call the moped here, pass me by two
fingers width. The motos are pretty much the taxis here. There are people who pass by me and say "bonjour" and I salute back. On the side of the road there are everything from restaurants, fruit stands, popcorn poppers, to hairdresser (there are a lot!). Because of a few foreign organizations that started to train people in hairdressing back in the days as a means to create more skilled workers, most of the women who have no education train hairdressing and safe up money to open little hairdressing shacks. There are also a lot of tailors due to similar (originally) foreign training programs.When I get to work, I've saluted about 20 people and have been called 'yovo' and 'chinoise' a few times by kids. 'Yovo' meaning 'white,' which is a bit weird for me because I'm not white. My Caucasian friends here say that no matter how long they've been here, be it a few months or even a year, they still cannot get used to the 'yovo' name and they are not at ease when walking down the streets because of the harassment. I suppose it would be like yelling "hey white! how s'it going!" For me, the situation is less disturbing, which I attribute to my childhood in Germany. There, I was used to people being curious about or discriminating towards me because I looked different. In my school of kids ranging from grade 5 to 13, two kids and I were the only non-Caucasians. So, I feel fairly comfortable sticking out like a sore thumb here in Togo and have pretty thick skin for the discrimination as well.
At Vivre Mieux, I work from 8am until noon, when I leave to eat lunch at home. For lunch I've had fufu, pate (both sticky lumps of pummelled potato, maize, or flour) eaten with different sauces that have different combinations of some of the following ingredients: died fish, chicken, mutton, hot peppers, ground palm nuts, peanuts, green beans, a local spinach-y plant, tomato, zucchini, and onions. I also get couscous, spaghetti, and fries (plantain, potato, or sweet potato). For dessert there is always fruit. The pineapple here is organic (well, everything here is organic. . .) and is amazing! After lunch, people usually take a nap. Except for youngest one, Bobo, who is a crazy energizer bunny. She'll jump around, act dramatic, or will do her homework in the afternoon. After napping a bit--I usually really need it after a night of rooster drama-- I go back to work for 3pm. Just half an hour before the sunsets, at 5:30pm I leave work. Sometimes, I go to hang out with my friend Jean-Marc, a New Yorker who is part of the American Peacecorps here. He lives by himself in a villa, has about 6-8 wild cats--they live, have babies, and die, so he's never sure how many there are. He's been here for a year and is leaving in another--he can't wait to go home. When I go home in the dark (which means after 6pm) I use a little flashlight in order not to trip over the rocky-sandy paths. There is no street lighting but very safe to walk in general before 10 - 11 pm. I have dinner with the family, chat a bit, take a bucket shower (so essential!) and go to sleep around 10pm usually. There is not much of nightlife here since people get up so early and it's pretty hard to navigate in the dark. The heat makes everything a lot more energy consuming, too. So, after a day's work, I'm pretty beat. So that was my lengthy account of an usual day in my life.
On the weekends, it's a lot more fun. I've been to an international dirt-bike competition, which was held here in Kpalime. It was really weird to see competitors race through the streets in their shiny, colourful uniforms with sponsors like Fox and Sony on their backs and their crazy dirt bikes. It was very out of place; probably equivalent to seeing a giant while elephant on the streets in Canada. Last weekend I was in Lome, the capital for the U.S. Marine Ball. I was a bit weirded out by the fact that it was a marine ball at first, but once I found out that there were only 5 marines, I relaxed a bit. It was really fun and I made a bunch of new friends. It was in a chi-chi hotel with air conditioning (!!) and an open bar. The entire U.S. embassy was there with a bunch of Peacecorps volunteers and a few marines, who are in Togo to protect the embassy.
All in all, the need to feel 'normal', in a pre-Togo sense, has gone away. I suppose the paradigm shift from Canadian to Togolese is almost done. The new 'normal' is gradually sinking in and I'm beginning to forget what the old 'normal' feels like. When I'm writing this email it is already becoming difficult to see Togo through a Canadian lens. Things here are becoming matter of fact rather than strange, and I'm finding it effortful to notice the differences between Togo and Canada.
No comments:
Post a Comment