she's back!

ck!Hello everyone!! My sincere apologies for not updating my blog since December. I will try my best to sum up the last two and a half months without boring you all to tears.
So December started off kind of slow as I was just getting used to the new city, new people, lack of training friends, new house, etc. As I am in a pretty central city in Togo, I did see a lot of volunteers who have to come into town to do banking, shopping, and internet. That was really nice since work was really slow when I first arrived.

Then Christmas and New Years came and went before I knew it. I spent Christmas here at my house with a few of my volunteer friends. We made dinner, listened to Christmas music, had a white elephant gift exchange, and I tried not to miss my family. I then spent New Years with a couple of my good friends here which was pretty fun. All in all, I was just really glad when the holidays were over. They were definitely not as bad as I had anticipated, but I still really missed being around friends and family in Texas. I guess it became ever more apparent to me how great my family and family traditions are, and how it didn’t really ever feel like the holidays without that.

In January things started to pick up a little bit. My Togolese counterpart and I have been planning a lot of activities that are going really well. I have started working with a womens’ group, an after school club, and I recently began teaching! The first day of teaching was pretty terrifying, but it went much better than I anticipated it would. I am teaching a class called Life Skills. The curriculum consists of a wide variety of topics ranging from Self Confidence, to Good Communication skills, to Reproductive Health, and then I teach how to effectively apply that knowledge to their lives. I guess I never realized how much of these things I was taught throughout school without knowing it. The teaching methods here are so different from those of the United States and these topics are not usually covered throughout the school system. So, it’s pretty fun getting to introduce these new subjects to my four middle school classes.

As far as daily life goes, I have pretty much settled into a routine. I get up every day sometime between 6:00 and 6:30 and make my breakfast: one egg omlette with tomatoes, onions, and bell peppers, and a cup of instant starbucks espresso (thank you so much to all of you who have sent me those…they are the reason I wake up in the morning). Then I go over my list of things to do for the day: some examples would be teaching class, going to the post office, going to the internet, going to talk to the NGO that I work with, leading club, meeting with various people…you get the idea. I also plan what I am going to make for dinner so that I can get what I need at the market while I’m out. There is a pretty consistent selection of vegetables here which is awesome, so I usually cook something with a lot of veggies. So, my day will then consist of whatever is on the list, and sometimes a friend will come through for lunch or to stay the night which is always fun. At night I listen to the BBC or music while I cook. Then I will usually read for a couple of hours and go to bed.

I am continuously amazed at how normal things here have become to me. It’s only when I talk to someone from home and relate a seemingly normal story to them that I can see that my life here is actually very different from what I was used to five months ago. I will give an example. About two weeks ago, I was leaving another village, and waiting for the normal transport for trips here…the bush taxi. So I show up at the taxi station and tell the five men who just seem to be milling about that I need to get in a car to Sokode. They mumble something in the local language that I can’t understand (side note: there are an infinite amount of local languages here, so while I am trying my hardest to learn Kotokoli, the local language spoken where I am, it becomes completely useless if I travel one hour to the north, south, east, or west). So they then tell me the price and that I am the ninth person so we still have to wait for six more to fill the car so we can leave.

So, three hours later I am sitting in the car thinking we are getting ready to leave when I hear a loud popping sound (kind of like a firework) come from under the driver’s seat. Of course we all have to get back out of the car while they take apart the front seat to figure out what the deal is. Another forty five minutes pass and they say everything is good and we can leave. Oh, and while we were waiting for them to fix it, approximately five more people have shown up that will also be getting into the car on top of the fifteen passengers we already had.

I got in the car quickly so that I could snag the window seat which is crucial when there is no air conditioning in a car filled to the brim with people. I immediately turn to see who I am going to be squished up against when a woman slides over. Someone then passes her three giant bags of yams which she has to put on her lap and then one more bag comes over. Naturally she has no room for this final bag so she just places it on my lap. I look in the bag and sure enough there is a chicken in it staring up at me panting. So, I spent the entire hour and a half ride in this burning hot car filled with about twenty five people with this chicken on my lap that kept jumping out of its sack and onto my feet.

This all seemed very normal to me at the time, as this is not an uncommon occurrence here. In fact it is very common. There was nothing strange about this situation. It only occurred to me when I was talking to Jaclyn on the phone that I have gotten really used to some very funny things here in Togo. I truly think that the most important quality for volunteers to have is a sense of humor. I find myself laughing constantly, but if I couldn’t laugh at things like this I think my life as a volunteer in Togo would be infinitely more difficult.

So, that being said, I am really happy here. Yes, I get frustrated, confused, sad pretty often, but I think all in all I am doing pretty well. I still love hearing from everyone at home. Your letters, phone calls, and emails are always so exciting for me as I feel kind of disconnected. I promise to update my blog more frequently again now that the computer issues have been straightened out. If you all have any questions or things you would like to hear about, I am open to topic suggestions. And for those of you (if there are any) who are still reading this, I congratulate you on getting through that painfully long post.