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December 4, 2003 Nostalgia Reminders of Home I received an email from a dear friend, who wrote to me how much he missed our days back at McGill studying together at the Second Cup. I too miss studying at the Second Cup... Here in Togo there is Nescafe – even though every day I walk by piles and piles of coffee beans that are left out on the ground to dry in the sun before being shipped out! I've spoken with my fellow Canadians, and we all seem to be in that phase of culture shock where the 'honeymoon period' has worn off, reality has struck, and all of us have thought about how nice it would be to just go home for a weekend... you know, go out for a nice meal and dancing with friends, walk in the snow (yes, we actually discussed this...), curl up with a cup of hot chocolate with a movie (a glass of red wine would work too), etc. All with the intention of coming back at the end of the weekend...!! Snow About snow -- Tim's friend sent him a photo of the horribly drizzly November snow... We both looked at it and said: " I hate to admit it, what with palm trees and pineapples surrounding me on the 1st of December, but that snow is making me feel rather nostalgic…” :) This is the sort of understanding that could only be shared with a fellow Canadian. Additionally, in the Globe and Mail (Tim's parents sent it to him -- a few weeks behind once we get to read it!) there was a great photo of a typical Canadian winter scene: someone shovelling their driveway. The article was talking about some issues with the snowplow industry -- definitely a world away for me! Anyway, I cut it out and showed it to some Africans at the office. Their comments ranged from: "Ah bon!"; "Africans could never survive in that!"; "You Canadians are tough! We think Harmattan season is cold!" It made me very proud of being a hardy Canadian girl who loves the snow and is able to ski down a mountain when it's -40 degrees with the windchill.... and who goes back up the lift for another run! Quickie Mart In Lomé there are several large gas stations (eg. Texaco). The stations are built just like the gas station chains in North America and Europe, with the same building, signs, and convenience store attached. I passed by a few on the weekend, and I caught myself feeling nostalgic -- as though just seeing the convenience store comforted me, because it was just like back home. And what made it extra weird was that back in Canada, I have a certain disdain for large brand names and huge stores that are all the same everywhere (the consumer culture that we are); especially the gas companies here, because I know of the exploitation going on in West Africa. Yet I found comfort in seeing these familiar gas stations. It was really weird when I remembered that I am still in Togo.
Santa Claus Yeah, it's hard to believe it's December already. Without the outside cues of snow, busy malls, Christmas music, and horrible weather, the idea of the holidays has kind of escaped me! Although in my mind, it is absolutely impossible that it is Christmas soon, the people around me are gradually getting ready. The kids at my house brought home a blow-up Santa Claus that played music. Who would have thought you could find that at the Kpalimé Marché?! Also, yesterday a 10 year old ran by me wearing a Santa Claus mask. Thus the very loaded image: little black boy wearing a mask of an old caucasian man with a white beard. Kind of along the same lines as black churches full of paintings of a white Jesus... It was funny however-- and one has to wonder how kids can understand and accept the Santa story, when they don't know what snow is nor what the "North Pole" really is; and what exactly are "reindeer" and how does one explain that? My little host-brother and sister don't have a chimney, and knew that nobody can get into the house at night when they lock the front gate. And they didn't quite buy the concept that Papa Noël visits all the kids in the entire world in one night. Not wanting to propogate yet another Western creation into a context where Christmas is a whole different experience (one I can't wait to experience), I didn't bother explaining about the elves... My New Alarm Clock Another thing that some families do is purchase animals that will eventually become Christmas dinner. My family bought a goat this morning – at 6am actually. If you have had that chance to check out Tim’s website, go to his “animals” section and look up “goats/sheep”. Seeing as my brain has managed to block out the crowing rooster at 5am, I have managed to extend my sleeping-in time to 6:30am most days. However, with this new 4-legged addition to my host-family’s compound, I was graciously given the gift of a new alarm clock: a steady and incredibly annoying BAAA-AAAA, that continued until I left for work (no snooze button). It was so crazy and grating, and I just couldn’t believe that this animal, that Tim and I imitate every day we walk outside together (because it’s just so ridiculous sounding), was actually outside my window tied to a tree!! What turned my annoyance into laughter was when I heard the kids imitating it with a sound much like: "BLAAAAAAAGGGHHH". Then I heard René (the father) saying "ooooohhhhhhh! Arrêtes!", and then I heard Chantal in the kitchen imitating the goat herself with a "bbaaaaa". The puppy even began barking in it's weird African-puppy-bark, and i thought "oh no, now the dog and the goat are going to egg each other on...." And the baby is having a grand old time, sitting 2 feet from the goat, watching it chew leaves. I was scared the goat would kick the baby at some point. Chantal just laughed when I told her I was worried... So, it was a rather ridiculous and hilarious morning!! My conclusion on having a goat outside my window: Goats are worse than roosters!!
December 8, 2003
Shocked into Christmas
I believe I wrote in one of my first journal entries, that the things that shock me the most here are when I see “Western” things. For example, hearing J-Lo blaring from the speakers of a store near the Kpalimé fruit market, or hanging out with a group of fellow “white” people. I remember seeing a group of “white” tourists, and many of the women were wearing ‘short’ shorts – it struck me that I wasn’t used to seeing that anymore. I also wrote the other day that the idea of Christmas just isn’t entering my head – even though I’ve forced myself to play the 2 Christmas cd’s I brought with me! (I regret not bringing the “Muppet’s Christmas” cd my sister gave me! It would have added to the sense of the bizarre that I feel when I try and get myself into the Christmas spirit!) So I was walking by a bar this afternoon, and in typical Togolese style, the music was BLARING. It wasn’t the noise level that caught my attention, however (that I have managed to ignore; much as I have integrated rooster crowing into my list of habitual sounds to ignore). What jolted me was hearing “Bony-M” singing “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas”!
And let me qualify the hilarity of this even further: when I was about 9 years old, my father came home so excited with a bunch of records that he got on sale (this was at the time when LP’s were losing their popularity, making way for the modern technology of cassettes). One of them was “Bonny-M Christmas”. NONE of us kids liked it. We thought dad was rather ‘lame’ (sorry dad…), and he had to fight the whole family to be able to play it. When he did play it, we all tended to disperse to separate corners of the house… Anyway, to this day, at Christmas, we all groan when dad pulls out the Bonny-M. And today I got a happy and funny reminder of my dad and Christmas back home!
How to Kill a Mouse in Togo
My old roommates will appreciate this little story, seeing as we shared our apartment with what felt like an army of mice one winter. And this was a certain courageous and rather cocky breed of mice that would saunter across the room, with no worries in the world, nice and cozy and warm, hoarding our crumbs and living the high life in our walls. They evaded us for months, and we tried and tested every mouse trap and poison legally sold on the market.
Well, I have since learned that the tried and true method is the best: Use a stick.
Let me explain: Sunday morning I was hoping for a (relatively) quiet morning to sleep-in. Now first of all, “sleeping in” in Togo lasts until about 8 am. Futhermore, “quiet” needs to be understood as one’s ability to block out roosters, chickens, goats, babies, puppies, yelling mothers, and playing children under the age of 9. I have become quite proficient at this skill; however, sometimes I just lie awake in bed laughing at all the craziness going on outside my window! This particular morning there was more racket going on than usual. I forced myself to begin my day, and opening my door I see the children and Kossi (the young man Chantal hires to help her on the weekends) carrying boxes, drawers, baskets, and a bed frame out into the yard of the compound, with Chantal (maman) barking orders like an efficient drill-seargeant. Koncheta (the 9 year old, who is extremely mature in terms of running the house, and who I call my “petite maman”) explained that there was a mouse in the bedroom. So, after emptying the entire contents of the room, they then proceeded to corner the mouse in the bedroom, each taking turns wacking it with a stick. This caused great excitement, and 6 year old Giovani was even running around the house with a very Rambo-like bandana around his head. After about 10 minutes of “battle”, there was silence, and Kossi came out of the room with what was the dead and defeated mouse wrapped in a cloth.
Of course, I have images of me and my roommates emptying the contents of our apartment onto our backyard covered in over a foot of snow, in minus 20 degrees… It must have been a Canadian who invented mouse traps…!
As a little addition, Giovani told me he thought I had a lizard in my room. Let me qualify this as well; for the first month, he and his sister were my best friends in the world, and they do know better than I how things work around here – so I tended to ask them questions that children of that age simply don’t know the answers to! Since I’ve remembered that he is 6, I took this lizard story with a grain of salt. However, as tends to happen here in Togo, other people know a lot more about what is going on than I do. And sure enough, that evening, I saw a teeny-tiny baby lizard crawling on my wall. It was so small – about 5cm max and so cute! I told Giovani he was right; I did have a lizard. Immediately, he was ready to get out the sticks…!
(I don’t know if there is any risk to having a baby lizard in one’s room. This information I may have to get from the parents. Who knows, you may see a journal entry in the near future entitled “Battle of the Bedroom: taking back my space from the lizard invasion” …. Or not…!) December 9, 2003 I Can’t Believe I’m COLD in AFRICA !! Yesterday a new season started. It was abrupt as that. In one day, the whole climate here in Kpalimé changed. Harmattan season has begun. The air is dry, and there is a dust in the air that makes the mountains hazy and less visible. There is a beautiful breeze in the air, making the hot sun bearable. After about 5 minutes of enjoying the coolness in the air, I began to feel the secondary effects of the Harmattan wind that I was warned about: dry throat, dry nose, dry sinuses, dry eyes, dry mouth… My mom has a wonderful term for when dentists clean your teeth by spraying a strong jet of water with some sort of solution. She calls it “sandblasting”, because that’s what it feels like. Well, the taste I have in my mouth often, now that Harmattan season is here, is just like after getting my teeth “sandblasted” at the dentist’s. And my lips are puffy and dry, just like after the dentist! It’s the only way I can describe it. Yesterday at noon, my little host-sister Koncheta was wearing a wool sweater! I asked her if she was hot. She said ‘no’, as if wearing a wool sweater in Africa was the most natural thing in the world. I did not understand. Well, today, waking up this morning, it felt so cold that I thought I might be able to see my breath! I understood the wool sweater! It’s really incredible what a huge change occurred in one day. I realize that my feeling cool in the mornings and evenings is relative to the degree of heat and 2 months of steady sweating I’ve experienced so far here in Togo. I think that being a Canadian, there is some internal clock where the moment the weather cools down, I start bracing myself for winter. Logically, I know it is not going to get much cooler than this, but my brain doesn’t seem to know how to process it. It’s sort of like how you feel at the end of August after a super hot summer, and the weather cools down. Out come the jeans and big sweaters when it hits 15 degrees; whereas, at 15 degrees in the spring, out come the shorts and sandals! It is becoming very dry. My measure of “dryness” is my hair. So far, I have loved my hair in Togo. It has been wavy and curly and just loving the humidity. I don’t have to do anything to it. The past few days, it has begun to straighten out – the same look that normally takes me 15 minutes of blow-drying and brushing to accomplish back home! I am a bit wary of how long this nice-hair-phase will last though. My skin is beginning to feel tight, and I’m imagining a lot of dry scalp ahead! Good thing I bought myself some ‘cocoa buttah’ (Giovani literally HOWLED with laughter when he heard me pronounce “cocoa butter”, with the ‘d’ sound instead of ‘t’). Three days ago when I tried it for the first time, I had to get out of bed and take another shower – the cream seemed to block all of my sweat glands, and I was so hot. I did not understand why there were stores full of different types of body lotions in Africa. How could anybody use cream?! It’s just too damn hot here!! Now that the Harmattan wind has blown through, I get it. I am happy that I stocked up on lip-chap before leaving Canada… I have also been warned that taking a shower in the morning could prove to be a very chilly affair. My host-mom was sweet – she said if it’s too cold for me, she could boil some water for me to bathe with. So, this ‘tough Canadian chick’, who can survive -40 degree evenings
in the snow in Canada, is cold in Africa. What an oxymoron! Anyway,
that’s just a little description of the change in seasons going
on. Maybe now with the chilly nights, my Christmas spirit might
kick in! Christmas in Togo Well, Christmas really wasn’t what I expected it to be. Although, nothing here in Africa seems to fit into any preconceived ideas I may have about anything. It’s an exciting (and sometimes trying and nerve-wracking) exercise in letting-go. I don’t know how to explain it. Here in Togo, so much goes on that I don’t really understand. As I am continually learning and re-learning how to trust the people I am close to, I am more able to go with the flow of events as they occur. Usually (but sometimes not) things are explained to me after the fact. Often, even more of the story unfolds weeks and months later. Life here, like the Togolese themselves, reveals itself gradually, over time. The word “patience” has taken on new meaning for me. And actually, my experience here is reflecting the greater mystery of Life itself: there is always something bigger going on than I am aware of. There is a greater Knowledge spinning the wheels of time and fate. There is somebody else that knows more than me, and I do not have to try and control, or fix, it all. What Freedom this is, learning how to Trust and Let Go. Christmas... what's the point?? So, my experience of Christmas in Togo was very different than any I’ve experienced in Canada or France. As the 24 was fast approaching, I was busily and excitedly wrapping presents and cards I had brought from Canada to offer to my friends and adopted-families. I had made plans to spend Christmas in Lomé with Chelsea and Fredeline, two other Canadian Crossroaders, and some other Togolese friends. I was however curious as to how my friends and families in Kpalimé would be celebrating the season. My host-mom Chantal said it would be just like any other day, with her in the kitchen… Others told me that they had no money to celebrate. I also learned that to the Togolese, Christmas really is not that important. The explanation I got was: “well, everyone knows that Christ was not really born on the 25th of December, so why pretend? Why celebrate something that doesn’t exist?” A very logical response. It also shows how yet another notion imported from the North just doesn’t fly that well in Africa. If people do have the money to “fête noel” (a.k.a. “party”), it is much more of a secular celebration. This is the one night of the year that is “for the children”. Kids are allowed to stay out late with their friends. Some people mentioned that this is a time of higher sexual promiscuity for youth, probably due to a festive atmosphere that includes lots of alcohol and limited supervision. I am no expert in this matter, and my Togolese friends disagreed with this theory, arguing that it depends on the children and the parents themselves. So, yet another “generality” of cultural differences put into question. The way I’ve come to understand the holiday season in Togo, is that it is sort of the reverse of what we do in Canada. Christmas Eve is basically “party time”, sort of like our New Year’s Eve celebrations. Conversely, New Years for the Togolese is a time of great significance, meditation, and prayer (if religious), wherein one reflects on the past year and is held accountable for one’s actions. It is a time of renewal and a chance to ‘wipe the slate clean’ for the new year that is about to begin. It is a time for family and community. Christmas: nostalgia...and the reality! I approached Christmas thinking of family and friends, turkey and cranberry sauce, snowflakes and jingle bells. What I got was a ‘Canadian dinner party à la Africaine’, thrown by my friend Chelsea, wherein most of the guests were at least 2 hours late, yet we ate and drank and danced merrily all the same. Then my friend Richard and I hopped in a car (with me not knowing the night’s plans, because I just never am aware of what the plans actually are) and ended up at his Charismatic Baptist Church at 11pm. Here I witnessed prayer and dancing not only at an ‘African intensity’, but ‘Charismatic’ to boot! This was something else! I could not help but be moved by the rhythm of the drums and the clapping and the singing. The music moved everyone along, and there was an energy in the room that ran from the tips of my toes to the top of my head! How incredible is the power of music and dance! At one point the intensity of the people praying bordered on the bizarre. However, I stayed open and meditated, quietly, in my own manner. Watching my thoughts I realized that my whole experience of this church was tweaked by that whisky and wine that I had been freely sipping on most of the evening… (I didn’t think God minded though…!) Then the children did a musical skit of the Nativity. It was so neat to see an African interpretation of the ‘Christmas Story’, done in Ewé! The adults howled as little Mary moaned her labour pains like a true woman, and ordered her husband to find her shelter. It was so unique and really beautiful to see how each culture, and indeed each individual, adapts traditions to suit their needs and worldviews. We all have our own way of connecting to our Source. In community or in the silence of one’s own mind, we all have our own way of understanding, perceiving, giving, receiving, nourishing, healing, forgiving and loving. Whisked away... kinda like Cinderella About halfway through the skit, my friend Richard whisked me away from the church, into a car full of his friends that seemed to have magically appeared without my knowing. (Logically, it all probably happened after a couple of straightforward cell phone calls between friends – yet even these I did not know about!) We ended up on “le Boulevard”, the happening strip in Lomé, at an outside bar. It turns out there was an American (originally from Cameroon) visiting Lomé who had brought some medications to Lonlonyo (Richard’s NGO). As Richard is yet another one of these Africans that has connections all over the place and seems to know everybody in Lomé, he had been called upon to show the guy a good time. What do you mean we're going CLUBBING on Christmas Eve???!!! This ‘good time’ eventually led us to one of Lomé’s biggest night clubs – Le Privilège. When I found this out, I was at first angry – because I thought we had left Chelsea’s Christmas party to go to a nice Christmas service at Church. Now we were going to a night club?? It seemed sacrilegious! (And I’m not one who is too hung up on religious traditions…) I was also tired, overstuffed, missing my family and the snow and the Christmas tree. Here I was stuck with people I didn’t know or really care about on what is for me a magical night of the year, listening to African ‘Zouk’ music blaring from bar stereo speakers turned up too loud for any normal conversation, and not dressed whatsoever to compete with the sexy African mama’s that would be all over the dance floor at the club. The LAST thing I wanted to do was to go out!! And then I just let go and started laughing. I could choose to be miserable and go home alone on Christmas Eve, or stay with someone close to me and see where the rest of the night would take me. ‘Fine, we go dancing then…’; however, I was still resistant, and when I saw the swarms of people waiting to get into the club at 1am, I was relieved because I knew I could then go home and have a quiet night because we obviously weren’t getting in. Yet, I had forgotten that Richard knows ‘everyone in the world… almost’, and after a few words with an important someone, our group of 7 skipped the line and entered the club with ease. This African club was full of Togolese, Lebanese, some Chinese, and some Yovos like me. The music was an awesome mix of West African, Middle Eastern and American. It was interesting to see large groups of men (10-15) dancing together, when back home it is often the ladies shaking their booties and then men casually observing from the bar. And could these people dance! The Lebanese tore up the floor dancing traditionally arm in arm to some Turkish dance music. Certain songs brought to mind my dear friends back home. Their presence was there with me in the same moment that I saw that I am truly accepted and embraced by my new Togolese friends. I can let go Laughing again at my bad mood, and realizing for the zillionth
time since arriving in Togo that “resistance is futile”, I began
to dance, and dance, and laugh, and dance some more.
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