Il Faut Laiser

As I lay down to write this entry (from my bed—not yet the café), I can’t seem to focus on my task of detailing all that is Togo to you. I’m rather convinced I’ve chipped the enamel of one of my molars and I just can’t stop inspecting it with my cell phone flashlight and mirror.

This time it was the salt…probably pulled straight from the sea, for all I know, it was only 100 franc (a quarter) for a big bag resembling what one sprinkles on their driveway in winter. Usually the culprit is a stray rock in the local rice, or a dried bean in whatever (today there was one in my crushed red pepper).

I’m not too worried about it, though; you can go crazy overanalyzing your health here, flipping through the pages of your peace corps issued health literature every night. I’m making a concerted effort to avoid that…besides, I think dental work beyond cleanings gets you a trip to Senegal, and I’ve heard Dakar is lovely this time of year.

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At present, my first few months at post are moving along quite leisurely. Eventually I’ll start reporting back news of how I’m saving the environment of Togo and so forth, but for now I’m more occupied with seemingly small projects. I’ve been working a lot on my garden: hiring some kids to clear the dead brush and buying my own coupe-coupe (West African French for machete) and a big hoe, which works as a shovel, rake and incidentally a hammer. In fact, it is apparently quite out of the ordinary to see a white man weaving through the crowd at the big weekly market with such hardware. I don’t know why no one believed me when I told them that I was a farmer.

The garden itself is coming along quite nicely, though I’ve been diligently trying to select which trees and plants I want cut and which I want left for nitrogen-fixing, live fencing and so on and that has been taking up quite a bit of time. I’m also trying to avoid burning the dead brush covering the land (for the betterment of the soil)which is a revolutionary concept for my neighbors who burn the bush quite regularly in order to clear land but also prevent larger fires (which doesn’t work but I’ll save that for now). My land has a nice stand of banana trees which I’ll be able to harvest and an area with some sugar cane that I’ll cut back a bit to build a sort of thatch roofed, pup-tent shaped gazebo where I can set up my hammock. All in all, the privacy and natural setting of my garden is a wonderful change from my rather bustling compound.

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Two quick updates as I post this from the internet café:
-First, I did partially nick my tooth on that salt, but I wouldn’t call it a chip. Regardless, my next purchase at the marché will be a good sifter!
-Second, I just was able to pick up some big packages here in my regional capital and want to thank those who sent items! A special thank you to my mother for sending meat from home, summer sausage, jerky and any other pork/beef/expensive meat that I can have sent from home blows people’s minds here. I try and tell them about the preservatives that we have in our food that make month long voyages possible, but I soon found out that preservatif apparently means condom in French. People, needles to say, were rather curious about Americans putting condoms in food…

J