Its been a good two weeks. My burned esophageal sphincter finally healed so I can eat and drink without wanting to cry
New malaria medication apparently does that to you if you aren't careful . . .think of heartburn on steroids. It was a really rough 10 days.
One of my favorite things is when I am sitting in a bush taxi and a mom gets in with her toddler/conscious baby in front of me. The kid eventually starts looking around, sees me, or D, and his/her eyes get huge. Then, if its a baby, his/her head flops back. If its a toddler, he/she dives into mommy's chest. Blue eyes really weird kids out, more so than white skin I think.
One kid a couple of weeks ago was nursing-- double fisting a breast-- when I took off my sunglasses and looked him in the eyes. He dropped lunch and stared at me with these jet black eyes. It was pretty cute.
I've been traveling a lot lately. I've slept on a floor more times this month than I've slept in my own bed. It was weird being in my house though, without any cats in it. It feels dead.
Randolf, the flat spider thats as big as my hand and who lives on my bedroom wall above my clothes rack, doesn't snuggle as well as a cat. I threw something at him the other day, but he dodged.
Hot season is here. Sort of. If I take a shower and go to bed I will wake up 8 hours later and not be able to tell if I dried off or not.
Road construction is going really quickly on the kabou/kouka road. Naware looks like a war zone after they widened the road bed and bulldozed a bunch of houses. Manga is this little un-touched oasis that is about to be attacked by bulldozers from both ends. I am kind of surprised at how much it looks like a road construction project in the US.
The Bassar/Sokode road repair job is much different. I would hate to be a Togolese road construction worker. They heat the tar up in 50 gal. barrels and sprinkle it on the roadbed with watering cans. then they toss on sand. they cook the asphalt in these big troughs over wood fires and spread it with shovels and wheelbarrows. the only machinery i've seen is a big roller.
So the other day D and I went out to Badou, a little city in the mountains of south-west Togo near the Ghanian border for my friend John's bday. It was really pretty. Think Tennessee with banana trees. It rained every day we were there too, which was amazing in and of itself. Actually it rained all over Togo last night. That is really strange.
We hiked out to a water fall that was a tourist destination back when Togo had a big tourist industry. It is gorgeous. Like a movie set. See the pictures.
Volunteers crossing the stream. I took this picture standing in it . . .
Baby spiders on the water surface.
Waterfall!
up close.
Me and D under the falls. It felt amazing.