Some Everyday Things

Wake up. Breakfast. Beans. This morning. Every morning. The only food I can still say I enjoy. Not that I dislike anything here. It’s just that after awhile, you become indifferent. Food is sustenance, flavor’s a luxury. The Peace Corps: The only two years of your life when you crave black eyed peas at 6am.

I walk down the street one hundred meters to “the bean lady.” 30 cents worth. If I’m starving, 40 cents. All along the way I greet people walking down the street, sweeping, sitting outside on their step. People bath behind cheaply made outdoor wooden showers. Motorcycles speed by, goats scatter. Bonjour! Ca va? Orou! Kla Kla les? Greetings are important here. When I run to people I have to answer a series of questions. How are you? And the house? And the health? And the maison? And your day? And your trip?

I finish breakfast. I return home. Noku Nyaro. Sometimes around mid-morning, a small army of children gather on my porch. If I have forgotten to lock my screen door, sometimes they come inside while I’m laying down. I hear them tip toeing around my front room looking for balloons, milk candy, or magazines. Their favorite activity? Flipping through old Economists and ripping out the little cardboard subscription cards inside. They love them. I can’t explain why. Most of the time I’m happy to have them. They are entertaining. I know some of their names. Maddie. Claire, Adilene. Mostly western names only pronounced with such thick accents you wouldn’t recognize them. (My two year old neighbor’s name is Joshua, pronounced zjay-zjoo-way) Sometimes they want to do laundry for me. I happily oblige to give them my dirty clothes in exchange for a couple cents and a red balloon. But sometimes I have to yell at them to go home. Moku Nyaro!

One recent morning, My friend James and I go on a long hike. We lose ourselves in the mountains. We run into local farmers and women on their way to the nearest market. We drink palm wine from an old oil can given to us by a local hunter. It’s awful. We stumble upon a few creeks, a few fuulani huts (nomadic herdsmen of West Africa), even a few cocoa trees, where we eat the sweet milky colored pulp inside. Everyone wants to know where we are going? Aloku Fin? We tell them no where in particular, just a morning pleasure hike. They look at us strangely. Americans are so bazaar. It starts to get really hot. We take our shirts off. 20 minutes later we are sunburned. Oh yeah, we live on the equator. Whoops.

Lunch. James and I each and some pates with okra sauce, which when prepared becomes the exact consistency of snot (so much so that Peace Corps volunteers around Africa know it simply as “snot sauce”). Pates is corn mush, the most similar in the states would probably be palenta. When I got to Togo I hated it, but lie I said, now I’m just indifferent. We both have about five bananas each. Located about 17 kilometers east of me deeper in the mountains, James’ village is the self-described banana capital of Togo, where forty cents will buy you about thirty bananas. (He once claimed to have eaten 52 bananas in three days).

The afternoon usually is repos, which is like a mexican siesta. Basically the whole country stops working from Noon to 2:30. I often spend this time trying to determine if my house is hotter than my front porch, than lie down on the concrete and sweat through my clothes for about an hour. I might also visit my village boutique which is probably is stocked better than one would think for a small African village. I can buy bungee cords, cookies, laundry detergent, talcum powder, boxed wine, machetes, coffee, batteries, flashlights, noodles, rice, candy, lighters, and even old dusty bottles of champagne which my friends and I regrettably bought on my birthday. Walking home from the boutique I can cut through the market place, which is open every Tuesday, or stick to the roads. The road is raised higher up than the homes, making me feel like a model on a runway, on display to the people of my village as I walk. People call out my name. Well not my name exactly but something like it. Laura, Sara, Ally (the three volunteers before me), Yovo (the Ewe word for white person), Anasara (the Kabye word for white person), Warerani (the Akebou word for white person), le blanche (the French word for white person), L’Americain, Mon frere, mon ami, monsieur, or else something that sounds like it starts with a g that could possibly be my name. Some kids are able to say Grant (remember to roll the r and put a u in between the a and n. Grrrraunt!). Most just say Grraaaaauuuuuuu, holding the u until they run of breath.

If my friend James happens to be in village, we, of course, always remember to play Frisbee out on my village soccer field. We always time it right when school lets out so hundreds of kids trudge home across the field and stop and gape out the mystifying orange disc which seems to hover above the Earth. James and I routinely whip thirty yard tosses to each other while Togolese kids pick it up and, in all throwing manners, like a shot put, like a baseball, like a javelin, chuck it three feet before it tumbles end over end to the ground. Some times in front of them, some times behind them. This would probably go on all night if we don’t eventually confiscate it and tell them they must go home. We yell them we will play the same game tomorrow. Yokou soso!

The evening arrives. I sit outside in my courtyard embracing the cool breeze. I eat with my neighbors, fufu, I’ve talked about this before, negatively. But my hatred again grew to indifference, but has recently grown again to enjoyment. I love it now. Nata fue! This is evidenced by a recent basketball sized- bowl my friends and I finished and swore had to be some kind of a record. It really is pretty good. Which I guess goes to show that the more you eat something, eventually you learn to accept it.

Sometimes after dinner l’infirmiere plays European soccer games on his t.v. out in front of his house. He has a satellite and a generator and charges ten cents entry to watch the match. There I sit huddled under a blue tarp squinting to make out the players on the tiny screen, hearing the steady hum of the generator, cheering for whichever team has an African on it. Although, Peace Corps Volunteers never forget their allegiance to their country, which got us in trouble once in our regional capital, Atakpame. The United States was playing Brazil, and as we walked into the bar chanting, U-S-A, U-S-A, all the Togolese men coincidentally became Brazil fans, cheering for Ronaldo, and shushing us with each goal against The States. After some brief cross-room smack talk, we realized we were on Togolese turf, and exited quietly when the U.S. blew a second half lead.

And I probably go to bed earlier than most eight year olds in the States, 8:00 to 8:30, maybe later if in the city. I lay in bed, anxious from my malaria medication, unable to fall asleep. Insomnia. Something I live with most nights here. But it’s better than malaria, most things are, so I continue to take my meds and deal with the side effects. After awhile, I fall asleep.