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Daily life
The everyday things that I take for granted as "normal" in Canada, are not necessarily normal at all in Togo. There are some cultural differences between Togo and Canada that I like to call "glaring subtleties". These are the difference that are obvious to Kathleen and I, but that a tourist might not see. This section explores those differences.

These people have strong backs.

The funny thing about sweeping that becomes immediately apparent is that the Togolese sweep EVERYTHING. They will sweep the indoor floors of course, and the outdoor floors just as often. Then they will sweep the walls and maybe the tables.

So far it's not so weird, just obsessive. Next, they will sweep the road in front of their store. This wouldn't be too too weird, except that often the road is a DIRT ROAD, yes, they sweep dirt roads.

The other day at work somebody was sweeping the grass on the front lawn. I don't know HOW a broom grabs anything in the grass... But then again, what do I know, I'm just a Yovo.

Monday October 20 2003
How to wash your clothes in over an hour and a half
So, let's assume it's obvious that there are no washing machines here. What is not so obvious then, is how do clothes become clean? My only clue to this process was from a scene in the film far and away, when a prim and proper lady is forced to immigrate to the not-yet-united states. She gently scrubs clothes on a washboard, then the people around her look at her laughingly at her incredible ineptitude, and show her how to wash her clothes with authority.

We do not even use washboards here. Here at hotel Agbeviade, we head up to the roof where it is often scorching hot, bring up a few basins to fill with water, and a few little bags of Klin washing detergent.

The general process for each item of clothing is as follows:
Turn the clothing inside out

1. Soak the clothes in detergent water
2. Apply detergent to the area of the clothing to be cleaned.
3. Rub vigorously the piece of clothing with itself, held firmly between the two fists, until that area is clean.
4. Repeat for each key area of the article of clothing until the article of clothing is clean.
5. Wring dry
6. Rinse in water
7. Wring dry
8. Hang
9. Repeat

This probably takes about 5 minutes per item of clothing. I’ll let you do the math on the weekly time required to wash clothes, but keep in mind that it is often necessary to change clothes halfway through the day because it is so hot!

Now, there is a proper way to wash each type of clothing. For shirts, you first clean the collar, then the pits, then do a general once over of the whole shirt.

For pants, first do the ends of the pant legs, then the waistband, then a general once over of the whole pair of pants.

For underwear, well, I'm not really sure what the proper way is to do underwear. They never really emphasized the importance of a specific procedure for washing underwear... and I think it might be because they don't use underwear! Read the next journal entry entitled “Boxers or Briefs or nothing at all!” for more details on that.

Africans wash while standing next to the basin with their legs straight, leaning over the basin. They can hold this position for what seems like forever! Being the weak Yovo that I am, I grab a chair. Every time I wash my clothes, one of the ladies around helps me. The first time I tried to wash my clothes, they laughed and laughed and my incredible ineptitude. They just ended up washing all my clothes for me. The next time I attempted, they were impressed with how much I had improved. None the less, after I finished what I thought had been a quality job in washing (I would finish one article in the time it took them to do two), they would then take it and wash it again anyway! Apparently the ladies are humouring me by allowing me to try and wash my clothes. One day, I will sneak to the roof under the cover of darkness and wash my clothes all by myself ...one day... one day.

1. It is so hot out, that sometimes underwear can get rather sweaty, wet, and uncomfortable. This really brings into question the whole purpose of underwear. Assuming that one has his bowels in proper order (which can indeed be an assumption when it comes to African food), then I think the primary purpose of underwear is comfort... at least I think so, I had never really though about it before. Therefore, if underwear which is supposed to give comfort causes discomfort, the solution is obvious.
2. Underwear has little benefit per dollar spent.
3. When you have to go to the bathroom, it's easier to do without underwear. This is particularly true if you feel like just going anywhere in the city. I see somebody peeing in some random location a few times a week; this seems to alarm no one.
4. If you happen to accidentally pee where somebody usually sells their fruits in the market and the property owner spots you, it is to your advantage to be able to finish up as fast as possible and run away! (This is a true story by the way)
5. At 5 minutes to wash per piece of underwear per day, not wearing underwear saves over half an hour every week!

After seeing these reasons written down, I think I just convinced myself to throw all of my underwear away. I think I'm going to do that right away.

1. A beer cooler.
2. A little store (by "store" I mean that she is selling these things right off of her head) of bathroom necessities.
3. A lunch bar.
4. 4 tubs of coal stacked on top of each other.
5. A stack of 50 EGGS!
6. Multiple logs about 3 meters long.
7. A sheet of 8 foot x 4 foot plywood, while riding a bicycle.

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When I was staying in Accra Ghana with Fofo, his room was in a complex with another 8 people or so. EVERY morning at 6 (or earlier), one of the guys in the complex would start his day with some tunes. But of course, he would play it full blast, from 6am-9am. You know how fast you'd have everybody within half a kilometre breaking down your door if you were in Canada? Even if I AM awake at 6am, I certainly don't feel like listening to P.Diddy at full blast. It's just ridiculous.

Furthermore, in Togo, I think that there are only 3 songs that are ever played. Every morning when I am having my breakfast, I hear the exact same 10 minute long song. If I head into town I hear it again on the side of the road, and again on the way out of town. In Canada I think songs get overplayed and killed probably in 1-2 month cycles and there are at least 15 songs being overplayed at any given time. I have been listening to the same 3 songs for 4 months! But, that's what people like!

(Also of note, Ghana seems obsessed with Queen).

So let's say that you are in town and have to pee-pee, but don't feel like doing "la pee-pee African". Well, if you're in a restaurant you can sometimes convince them to let you use their facilities. However, people don't ask "is there a washroom I can use?" they ask "Where can I urinate?". Hey, no need to beat around the bush!

Tuesday January 27 2004
Appearances
The Togolese won't hold back on commenting about what you look like. For me personally, if I spend a good chunk of the day outside, with the heat, dust, and pollution my forehead has been having the bad habit of forming a few zits on a regular basis. Well, almost every Togolese that I know personally who I greet points out that I have a few new red dots on my forehead. They usually think that it's a few mosquito bites, so I play along and say yes, it was mosquitoes.

Another example, among the Peace Corps volunteers, one of them was known by the Togolese as "the fat one", and would say this right in front of here. Now, they didn't mean anything malicious about this, they were just saying what they saw. In fact, it was quite the opposite of a compliment.

For any diet crazy women out there, the there is some proof that beauty is in the eye of the beholder here in Togo. Two characteristics that are considered beautiful in women in Togo are:

• Hairy legs
• Chubbiness

One female white person tells me that quite a few times, when it's been a month or so since she has seen a Togolese man, they will say something like this;

"Oh, tu es un peu plus mince de la dernier fois que je t'ai vue... Ce n'est pas grave".

Which means,

"Oh, you’ve lost some weight since the last time I saw you? Hrmm, I guess that's ok, you're still pretty."

Or, she will get complimented if she has since put on some weight. She even had a debate with one man over the correlation between weight and beauty; the man just could not bring himself to understand why we think that thin is in!

That being said, to demonstrate just how culturally programmed we are at times, she still can't bring herself to walk around with hairy legs and shaves them regularly :P

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This is a young man performing a skit about voodo and curing malaria. It was in Ewe, so I didn't understand a thing, but the crowd just loved it. The Togolese really like drama, and it seems like they can improvise a very long play/skit without too much trouble.

One thing we have noticed is that they laugh when there is tragedy. Somebody might be telling you about the injustice faced by women are made to walk naked down a public street during a "womanhood initiation" ceremony, what all the boys on the side of the road jeer and make fun of them. During this discourse, they will be laughing the whole time as though it's the most hilarious thing ever...

... But it's not because they think it's funny. They really do think it's unjust. So why do they laugh?

I think it might be because there is so much suffering, pain and death here, that all you can do to deal with it is laugh. It's kind of strange.

Another thing is that the most of the Togolese have absolutely NO sense of sarcasm. This makes for some very awkward moments. Just imagine a sarcastic joke, where you say exactly the opposite of what you mean... And then instead of laughing with you, the other person stops and says "why do you think that?" Then you have to explain that you don't think that... "Then why did you say it"... OY!

In another instance, I was filming an opening ceremony for the "roll back Malaria" program that Vivre-Mieux has just started. There were probably about 300 people there. I was walking around, getting different angles of the speaker, moving my way around the room and making my way back to my chair.

When I got back to my chair during the speech, I had to back down into it without looking because I was trying to film the whole time. As a result, when I tried to sit down into it I stumbled a little bit, and made a small noise. The entire crowd erupted with a very disproportionate amount of noise, and took about a minute to be quite again! I wasn't laughter, just everybody decided to talk about it instead of listen to the speech. I wasn't like I fell out of my chair or anything; I just stumbled a little bit. Getting people to be quite again was like trying to get kids in an auditorium to be quite after somebody lets out a really loud fart. I saw this as being incredibly impolite of the crowd towards the speaker, and that their response was very unbalanced.

Later on, as more speeches were being given, a rooster and a hen marched their way into the middle of speech circle. They were just walking around, doing their thing, right in front of everybody. Of course, I thought this was hilarious. Where else but in Africa could you be giving the official launch to a big program, and have chickens just walk right into the middle of it

Rooster walking into the center stage of a formal ceremony... nobody even notices.

The strange thing was, nobody else even seemed to notice that they were there. In Canada, if two chickens walked into the middle of a circle, everybody would be whispering to each other talking about the chickens instead of listening to the speaker. But to the Africans, it was like they weren't even there!

Eventually the rooster started crowing... And still... Nobody flinched.

After enough crowing, one of the village chiefs started throwing stones at the rooster to encourage him to get lost, but nobody seemed to really care. It was just the way things are!

Panaromic shot of the audience or Vivre-Mieux's "roll back malaria" program. Click on the photo to see the bigger image. Notice the set of village chiefs on the right wearing crown made of felt, styrophoam and gold spraypaint.

So I stumble a little bit and the place can't keep quite, but a rooster runs into the crowd during a speech and starts cock-a-doodle-doing and nobody bats an eye? What's up with that?!

Only in Africa.

Sometimes... We're just different.

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