Daily life in Togo

It is very hot in Togo and the humidity level is very high. I am very happy that we have a tap in the bathroom for our bucket showers, since the cold water feels so good after a hot day. We have a modern closet, but we have to fill a bucket for flushing. We are 'bucketing' every day!
Not all people have water in their houses; they have to buy some water at water wells or water stations all over Lome; you see women carrying huge buckets with water on their heads.
Electricity is on most of the time, but it happens regularly that we loose power for a couple of hours, never in the morning or evening though, only in the afternoon so far.
In the morning we have a baguette with either peanut butter or butter and nescafe. Lunch and dinner consists of pasta, cous cous or yams and a sauce with some fish or meat and a few veggies. Avocados are sometimes part of the diet as well. At the little stalls on the street we buy mangoes and there are really good as are the pineapples.

Lome used to be a beautiful city and was called 'little Paris', but that was a long time ago. The standard of living has been going down since decades for political reasons and that is showing. Only a few main streets and the boulevard are paved, the rest is just sand. I feel that I am walking on the beach the whole time: wet sand after a thunder shower and loose sand at other times. We do our best to get the sand out of our beds! There are not many street lights, so after dark it is quite dark apart from some lights coming from a bar or another little business. There is also no regular waste collection in Lome, so people simply throw their household waste out in the streets.

There are two ways of transportation we have tried so far: by moto or scooter and a taxi.
The moto is the cheapest way and they are everywhere; you just hop on the back of a scooter and off you go. The scooter is also used by PDH to visit clients at home, school or hospital. The ride can be bumpy, since you ride on the sand almost all the time. The other way is by taxi; the cheapest taxis are the ones you share with many others, but you can also rent the taxi by the hour. That is what we have been doing with other volunteers, we combine shopping in a supermarket, getting cash out of the ATM at one of the few banks where you can get cash, or go to the Immigration Office. At one time the driver wanted a Togolese woman to leave the taxi so we could have that taxi, but fortunately we could prevent that from happening; that would have been so embarrassing.
People drive on all sides of the road; left, right and in the middle; it all depends on the condition of the road. Sometimes only a small area of the road can be used, especially after a heavy thunder shower, so everyone has to use that little path and it does not matter which direction you are coming from. For bad drivers they do very well!

Last thursday we had to bring our passport to the Immigration office and we had to go back the next day to pick it up. You only hope that they don't lose your passport, since the office seems a chaos and you do not get a receipt at all for leaving your passport at their office. Files are being hold together with big rubber bands randomly stored at shelves lining the walls. Friday afternoon our passport was ready and passports were grouped by country. We have to go back one more time to extend our visa.

Yesterday all international volunteers, together with Eloulou from PDH went on a day trip to Kpalime, a town a little over an hour drive from Lome and we did it the Togo way. At first we took a moto to go to the 'hub'; within 5 minutes we had 6 motos lined up to take us their and at the hub we hired a taxi: 4 people went in the back seat and 2 on the one front seat. The driver did fortunately not share seat. Kpalime is a nice town and the area is hilly. On Saturdays the big market is being held and it is very colorful: people are dressed in beautiful colored cloths and their wares are carefully grouped. That can be colorful too: huge bowls filled with chili peppers, avocados, legumes and loads of fish and flies. Unfortunately we cannot upload the pictures right now, due to the slow Internet connection.