Pictures!

I got Picasa on my computer, which is much much better than Flickr. I have lots going up so feel free to look. I'll change the link on the side of my blog, but for now the link is:
http://picasaweb.google.com/bfriedrichs

Yay!

Yes, I'm Alive

And I have a computer! Sarah came to visit and brought me a laptop generously donated from a family friend. Now I can write my blogs sitting in the comfort of my sweltering house. Hot season has descended here with a vengeance. The season before hot season was marked by the Harmattan winds; winds sweeping down from the Sahara, covering everything in a thick layer of dust and making it hazardous to your health to travel in bush taxis with open windows. However, the tradeoff was that the days were hot, but the nights were downright chilly (which, for me, means about 60 degrees). I would wake up wearing every layer I had and hang out in pajama pants and a fleece. One morning while Sarah and I were in Ouidah, Benin, we woke up and the Harmattan was just over. No warning, no memo. I felt a little betrayed. It left without saying goodbye and left in its place oppressive humidity and stifling heat.

However. The weather is not the most interesting thing going on in my life so I guess I should move on to better topics. I’m sorry to all who have been wondering if I’m still alive: I am. January was busy with everything except work. I spent New Year’s Eve in Lome with my friend Aimee, and then headed back to Vogan for New Year’s Day. New Year’s here is a huge deal, much bigger than Christmas. Spirits and parties were somewhat dampened, however, when we were hit with an apocalyptic rainstorm at about 10 in the morning that lasted a solid 2 hours. My compound was so flooded that I had to wade through it in the middle of the storm and bring my neighbor’s puppy upstairs, fearing that he could actually drown. The party I was going to go to got relocated to my terrace, since I’m the only person we know who has a second story. It was subdued and with what I’ve now started to refer to as my normal crowd.

I’m not really sure where the middle weeks of January went. I finally traveled up country to Notse to visit Ashley and to hand off my dog to Jake, a fellow volunteer. I realized after I got a dog that I am a cat person. The kittens I had been caring for at the beginning of my service were miserable at the NGO where they were staying, and everyone kept telling me people were going to steal them and eat them. So I got rid of Mick and took back the kittens. 3 cats in my little apartment officially classifies me as a crazy cat lady. The 3rd week in January, I traveled to Pagala, in the Centrale region of Togo for a Peace Corps training. It was incredible how much more pronounced the Harmattan was up there; I attended morning meetings wrapped in my mohair blanket and pajama pants and then by noon we were all sweating. My nose, my eyes and my throat were all dry and scratchy and my hair was so dry I didn’t wash it once (I was also just kinda lazy and filthy the whole week). The training was really good, because it re-motivated me to get back to post and branch out from my counterpart and find more work. From training I went directly to Lome and picked up SARAH, who flew in to see me for 10 days.

The relief at seeing Sarah overwhelmed me and I got all teary in the airport. So much of my time here is spent with people who don’t really know me, like the Togolese I live with at post, or with volunteers who know the “Peace Corps” me, a version of myself I haven’t been able to completely reconcile with the “America” me. For the first time in 8 months, my best and oldest friend was with me and I was able to be me again. It was so good to have someone from home see first hand what I’m doing here, because no matter how many blogs I write and how many phone calls I get, there’s no way to describe it. I loved that by the 3rd day here, Sarah was ready to punch the kids singing the Yovo song and she had tasted adoway, my favorite Togolese street food. She pounded her own fufu (she wanted to cause she said it sounded dirty) and ate it like a champ, only getting disgusted by it after the fact when looking at pictures. We spent the first few days in Vogan, changing our plans over and over to accommodate both Sarah’s stomach and our hatred of spending time in bush taxis. We finally settled on a day trip to Togoville and then going to Ouidah, a town on the Benin coast where the Portuguese had a slave port and a fort.

After a stressful border crossing and visas bought for 20 bucks, we spent an expensive but really nice day on the beach in Ouidah. We then decided it was too expensive to stay there, so we walked the 4k into town the next afternoon. The path is the same one that was taken by the slaves as they were led out of Africa and onto the slave ships. Ouidah is also the voodoo capital of West Africa, so all along the road are statues to the voodoo kings and random fetish souvenir shops. It was definitely the most touristy spot I’ve been to here and it was a little surreal. The next day we went to the slave museum/voodoo museum/old Portuguese fort and the Temple of the Pythons, where we got to play with live pythons…to my delight and Sarah’s horror. We then caught a bush taxi back to Togo, and I actually got really excited to be going “home”. In Ouidah they don’t speak Ewe and it was strange to be somewhere where I didn’t understand ANYTHING in the local language. The sound of Ewe has become comforting to me now, and I know southern Togo pretty well, so it was really good to be back in my comfort zone. We then spent a couple nights in Lome by the pool at a couple yovo hotels, and I got to take my first hot shower since arriving in country. It was pretty incredible.

After Sarah left I fell into a “I-hate-Togo-this-is-stupid-I-want-to-go-home” mood for a few days. I hated that I didn’t have work and it was hard to watch Sarah get on a plane for America, while I was stuck here and had to go back and face village life. But I’m coming out of it now, and Michel, my counterpart, has been really receptive. I told him I could no longer wait around waiting for work to come to me. So he’s been helping me find things to do. I helped out at baby weighing at my local hospital this morning and I’m (hopefully) starting a health club at the local CEG (middle school). I have at least 1 thing to do each day this week which is a refreshing change. My new goals are as follows:

Register for the GREs
Go to Ghana and rock the GREs and then rock grad school applications
Start learning real French
Learn Ewe (it can’t be THAT hard to pick up a tribal language, right?!)

So, thus is my life right now. I hope this looooooong entry makes up for my absence. I’m now counting down the days till my parents get here for a visit and then I come home for 3 weeks for Kate’s wedding! Mark your calendars now….July 5 to July 29!

Happy Valentine’s Day!