So the funding for the health clinic is all set, and it barely took a month. Thanks to everybody who donated to our project! My contact in DC tells me that the money is on its way and that we should be able to pick it up at the bank within the next couple of weeks. The groupement has started painting the building already, and we've established an 11-person management committee (with representatives from all the villages that will benefit from the clinic) to work with the nurse and midwife and monitor the finances of the clinic. Once we get the money from Lome, we can start ordering supplies, many of which the nurse tells me will only take a few days to arrive. I'll be posting some pictures of the clinic once everything is installed.
Joe's community garden project has expanded with the creation of several new beds, and lettuce is selling like crazy. Our neighbor says the carrots should be ready in a week or two, so we'll try our hand at selling that, too. We've been discussing the possibility of digging a well on the garden property to make watering easier, but we're just in the talking stage for that so far.
What other news? We've gotten over (well, mostly) what volunteers call the "mid-service crisis," which hits between the year in Togo and the year in village marks (anywhere between June and August) and often involves intense periods of frustration, anger, depression, or all three. Our crises were exacerbated by several of our good friends from our stage ET-ing (early terminating), getting med-sepped (medically separated back to the States), or getting ad-sepped (administratively separated, for doing something against the ol' PC rules), which has been harder to deal with than I would have expected. I didn't really expect to make such good friends, I guess, and we've taken their departures as best we can.
On a brighter note, we're looking forward to the holiday season and are debating whether we should spend Christmas in village or on a petite vacation in Ghana with one of our good friends who's still here. Will post more updates soon, so in the meantime, enjoy a couple of random "Around Lome" pictures!
