Spring Break Day 1

 Although I treated last week as one of vacation, Spring Break is officially this week. So here is a report on Day 1.

Karen and I returned to the clinic where we received our CoVid boosters. She will be leaving Thursday for Spain for a team meeting with her mission organization. If she has an official Vaccination Card, she will not be required to take a CoVid test before departure. We tried yesterday to download her card so that the lady at the local copy shop could get it printed for her, but to no avail. So we decided to return to the clinic today to see what the issue was and to see about getting mine downloaded as well.

We arrived at the clinic (pictured below) around 10:00 and  explained what we needed to a German lady who was there. She was one of three white women there and I entertained myself trying to figure out what they were doing. It is a government clinic, so it was a bit of a surprise to see them. They all resembled each other:  short hair, glasses, tank tops, shorts, and flip flops. Each sported a wedding ring. I thought they might be nuns due to the hair, though I admit I have never seen a nun in shorts and a tank top. Before we left the clinic, though, three men came in. So that theory was disproved.  Unless the men were priests? But no, they were wearing wedding rings as well.

If you have read previous posts you may recognize this picture. I have used it before. Sorry!!

Fixing Karen's issue was rather simple. She had asked them to use her passport number as her ID number on the card. But a US passport number contains no hyphens, whereas a Togolese ID card number does. So on her first visit to the clinic they had used Dela's ID number on Karen's record. Once Karen entered that number on the website her card came up, complete with the passport number on it. So all she had to do was download it. Which she did. Then she saved a copy in another place on her phone. And she emailed herself a copy.

My issue was more complicated. When I got on the government website to download my card right after getting the shot, I could not get on it even. Again, they had used my passport number as the ID number, but it contained no hyphens. However, the man who had helped Karen was able to get past that. However, a new issue arose once he did.  Since I had my first two doses of the vaccine in the US, the Togolese department of health did not recognize the lot numbers of those doses. Which makes perfect sense. The man is sure that I could still get a card, but told me to come back tomorrow. Which I can not do. Peter is coming to Vogan tomorrow to give me an Ewe lesson. So he said anytime this week. I'll shoot for Wednesday or Thursday. Naturally, since my trip back is in June, it is not as pressing for me as it is for Karen, but I want to get it done as quickly as I possibly can.

From the clinic we drove to the grocery store to do our week's shopping. Then we headed back to Vogan, stopping to have a sandwich on the way out.

I didn't mention earlier that Karen and I had decided yesterday that we would leave at 8:00 this morning. As frequently happens, something came up to slow us down. Just as she was ready to leave, the plumber showed up at Karen's door. She was, indeed, expecting him today, but in the afternoon. To make things more complicated she thought he was coming to fix a drain pipe on her roof, but he had brought materials to build a watering system for her rabbits. That is not high on her priority list as she prepares for her departure later in the week. Anyway, she told them that they would have to come back in the afternoon, to which they agreed. So she arrived at my house about 8:35, complete with the plumbers. We were dropping them off somewhere on the way out of town.

Halfway between Vogan and Lome there is a police roadblock followed by a toll station. Between those two landmarks, Karen's gardener has his shop. As we passed the roadblock, the policeman whistled. Thinking he might be stopping us, Karen slowed down and pulled over and her gardener ran up to the window asking if she had brought his helper's phone charger, which had been left at Karen's house. He said he had texted at 7 this morning to remind her. She had not received the text and did not have the charger, so we went on our way. As a P.S. she discovered that he had sent the text at 9:00 this morning, when we were already on the road.

Because of the plumbers waiting for us, our return trip was a bit more complicated than it would have been normally. We called the plumbers as we left the sandwich shop, telling them where we were and asking if they were going to be where we had dropped them off. Then Karen called someone who is doing some painting for her to see if he needed more paint. So back in the Vogan area we had to watch for the plumbers and pick them up, make a detour to pick up a ladder for them to use, go to a hardware store to buy pipe elbows and paint, and go to the copy shop to see about getting the vaccination card printed. 

I had never been on the street with the hardware store before, so I took a couple of pictures. The top one is the view to my right (I sat in the car); the bottom one is the straight ahead view.

I am home now and have put away my groceries. I'll spend the rest of the evening working on the computer. But Karen has to supervise the plumbers, take the paint to the painter, get duck food, and do some work in her garden before her day is over. I admire the way she immerses herself into life here, but it takes more energy than I have!