Back in Togo…

After a wondrous three week vacation back home, and a three day decompression period on the beach in Ghana I found myself surpisingly content as I moseyed back into village. I had tentatively planned on a slow transition back-- a couple days in Lome, a couple days in my regional capital—so as to ease slowly back into small town life. It turns out, though, that the lure of my own bed was too strong for me to resist for long, and I soon squeezed myself into a cramped bush taxi and headed to—what is for now—home.

It should be noted that returning to any volunteer house in Togo after an even brief period away is an interesting event…to put it frankly, you never know what kind of new critters have decided to reside/die in your abode.

When I walked into my place the first thing that caught my eye was the tattered remains of seed packets (radishes, tomatoes, beans, moringa, and more) laying all over my small house. On further inspection I found a very interesting collection of half eaten things all over my house…here are just a few examples:

-tube of hydrocortisone cream
-tube of athlete’s foot cream (its precautionary people…)
-pepto bismol tablets
-half the label off a hot sauce bottle
-the plastic cap of a bottle of body powder

The list goes on, but I’ll leave it at that. I soon found the culprit, lying bloated on the ground, surely dying from the cocktail of ointments and plastic it ingested.

After cleaning the scene up it was time for a shower…where I just knew there was going to be something waiting for me. I slowly entered my bathroom, crossing my fingers hoping that there wouldn’t be a mamba waiting there to pounce. The coast appeared to be clear, and I soon relaxed…that’s when I saw it: a dead bat at the bottom of my shower bucket. At least I thought it was dead—the high pitched (but very much audible) screech that filled my bathroom proved otherwise.

I’m still not quite sure why it was in there, or why it couldn’t fly out, but I didn’t let it hang around long enough to ask…soon it was thrown out along with the mouse, and I eased back into the slow, quiet, and hopefully pest free life that I’ve grown so fond of.

It’s good to be back.

J