Very Late Holiday Wishes

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!
Yes, I know, I’m almost a month late. Oops…I’m sorry. Nevertheless, I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday season. I was able to get a few e-mails out around New Years-time, but not to everyone, so I apologize. Luckily, I was able to spend Christmas with other volunteers, celebrating in the most American way that Togo could allow. Despite the lack of snow, family, and hot cocoa, I was hell bent on having a Christmas tree, but unfortunately couldn’t find one in time so we had to make do with a string of lights duck taped to the wall in the (roughly) the shape of a tree. And of course underneath that glorious attempt at a tree, we placed gifts for eachother. We did a White Elephant Pagne Exchange, wrapped, in true Togo-style, in black saches.
[For those who are unfamiliar with "pagne," it is a type of printed cloth that is bought in pieces (usually 1-3 pagnes) that can be used for a variety of purposes, especially clothing (women generally just wrap the piece around their waist as a skirt). And the black saches are really a symbol of the Togolese versitility when it comes to taking things "to go." (haha…) The Togolese use black plastic bags for EVERYTHING. If you go to the market and buy something, it ALWAYS comes in a black plastic baggie. If you buy food on the street, the woman will put the food directly into the bag, regardless of what it is—bananas, fried plaintains, rice, beans, spaghetti, sauce, salad… Which sounds bizarre (not to mention unsanitary), but it’s actually kind of handy because if you get rice and sauce, all you have to do is shake the bag around to mix it up, same with salads and the dressing (which is always mayonnaise mixed with oil or vingar)—Togolese Shake-N-Bake…sorta…minus the baking…]

Anyways— we made a big Christmas dinner, brushetta, salad, coconut chicken over rice, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, and to finish it off, an APPLE PIE, made by myself and Emily. The apple pie was quite a feat considering we didn’t have an oven. For baking, we used a Dutch Oven, which is comprised of a large pot, that you pre-heat by putting it over a stove with a lid. When it’s good and hot, you place whatever you’re baking (like for example, an apple pie) inside, and suspend it off the bottom of the pan, as not to burn the bottom. Then you just leave it in there to bake, as if it was a regular oven. Where did we get apples, you ask? From a can…sent from the United States. Mmmm…

New Years: New Years was also quite different but celebrated, nonetheless. For New Years Eve, I went out with Sylvestre (a boy that lives in my compound). We went to a big hotel that was gorgeous and overlooked the whole city because it sits half way up the mountain. There was music blaring and what appeared to be an awesome site for a raging New Years Party. Only thing missing were all the people. We happened to be 2 of the few people there. He explained later that on New Years Eve, everyone goes to church to pray. I explained, in America, we go to the bars to drink… Overall, the evening was very anti-climatic…no ball dropped, noone cheered or kissed or blew on noise-makers… I also found out later that Togolese do party; they spend the following 3-4 days partying in fact. The next morning, I went with my homologue, Clementine, to see her brother. As I walked in the compound, there were several boys standing outside, working on something. Not really concerned with what they were doing, I walked up and greeted the group. Then, as they began speaking local language to Clementine, I tuned out and looked more closely at what they were doing. They were cleaning something it looked like…something black…then, wait a minute, are those legs?? Oh, yep—that’s a dead, headless, charburned goat…that must be dinner later. I spent the rest of the day eating, drinking, and dancing at my host fathers’ farm in a village outside the city. On that day, I took my new meat-eating habit to a whole new level because this time I didn’t have ANY clue what I was eating…but I was pretty sure it was some type of entrails. For those of you who don’t know, before coming to Togo, I was NOT a fan of meat. I strictly ate chicken, turkey, and fish, anything else gave me the heebie jeebies. Yuk. Chicken and turkey even grossed me out sometimes, but I knew I wasn’t disciplined enough to have a healthy diet if I cut out ALL meat products so I dealt with it. However, I was forced, reluctantly, to change that as soon as I came to post. It is rude to refuse food that is given to you, therefore everytime a hunk of meat was thrust at me (and one way to show that you care about a person in Togolese culture is to give them impossible amounts of food), I choked it down. This New Years was no different. There were several courses to the first meal and I was instructed to eat each and every course. The food was delicious but the thought of what it was nearly put me over the edge. I had to keep pretending I was eating a noodle when I think it was really part of the intestine or a piece of very dark cheese when I think it was actually liver… Thinking back, I ate an amazing amount of food that day. I hope that means they like me…

Anyways…this is getting very long so I think I’ll wrap it up. You’ll notice that I’m actually using proper punctuation and grammar (or as proper as I know how without Megan proofreading). That’s because I now have a COMPUTER that I’m using to write this blog entry. Mom and Dad very generously bought and sent a computer as a christmas gift!! (THANKS AGAIN!!!! J ) However, I don’t have internet at my house or anything, I really just needed the computer to help in writing papers for school and blogs for you all of course. So, while this doesn’t mean that I will be online more now I will just try to update my blog more often since I can write at home and just take them to the cyber café to post them.

Again, I hope that everyone had a wonderful and safe holiday season. I’d love to hear about your holidays as well!!

Much love,
-k