End of Stage, Swear-In, and the Beginning of Month Four

When our training (“stage,” to those familiar with the term) started in Agou Nyogbo and Agou Koumawou, time seemed to drag for the first few weeks. Now that we’re finished and have said goodbye to our host families, we’re here in Lomé for our swear-in ceremony, and it seems like we were here just yesterday for our initial orientation. We both agree that our French has improved, and that we’ve learned a lot of really helpful cultural information during our first three months. Our formateurs (technical and language instructors) are some of the best people in the world. They were very patient with our bad (but hopefully much improved now) French throughout our training. We hope we haven’t seen the last of them.

But as wonderful as everyone has been, we’re ready to get to Tabligbo and eat, sleep, drink, and live on our own schedules again! For those of you who are worried about our health (moms!), we’re both just fine, despite some weight loss. As soon as we get to Tabligbo and I can cook my own food, I promise to try to put some weight back onto my husband, whose diminishing frame has caused some alarm here. He worries that people might now confuse him with a certain slender friend of ours with the initials DMN – not to worry, though; I’ll try not to let that happen.

Some of our initial expectations of Africa have changed in the past 11 weeks (gee, what a surprise!). It’s a lot more tropical here and a lot greener than I expected, and our accommodations are a lot more technologically advanced than Joe expected (running water, tile floors, and electricity were not in our list of things to expect!).

Togolese food-wise, I’m a fan of foufou (a big dumpling-like thing that’s made by pounding the crap out of yams) and wagash (a type of fried cheese). Joe seems to be partial to soja (soy that’s fried with sauce). I’ve learned how to make peanut sauce and piment (hot pepper) sauce also. Our Togolese host families had a lot of fun making American-style meals for us with a Togolese spin. We’ve had French toast, garlic bread, pancakes, and spaghetti – all a little different than back home, but good! Things like turkey sandwiches with Sunkist orange pop in a can and strawberry milk are a luxury you can only get in Lomé, but are worth the price once in awhile! Jim Beam is also worth an occasional splurge in Lomé, and I’ve managed to find some tolerable red wine at a couple of “yovo stores.” Lomé is still two hours away from Tabligbo by bush taxi, so we’re not sure how often we’ll get there yet.

Other Togolese news: gas prices have sky-rocketed in Togo (675 CFA per liter last time we checked), 11 bridges in the country have collapsed due to rain and flooding, and both occurrences have made travel throughout the country a lot more difficult and more expensive. The cement shortage has also made for higher prices and had made repairs on bad roads next to impossible. One observation from earlier today: instead of road flares to mark an accident, the people here just tear up big chunks of grass and throw them in the road as a marker for people to watch out!

We hope you’re all having a good summer and doing fun things back in the States. For those who can, please go to Knight’s, have a good steak, and think of us. We’re doing fine, but familiar food seems to dominate our thoughts here! We’ll be back in touch soon!