Two Buddies and a Photo-bomber

 In earlier posts I discussed my favorite little guy, Dieu-Donné, the very close runner-up, Gilbert. They both like to come lean on my lap, and they will shove away whoever tries to join them. One day, they were there together. I kept reminding them to be nice to each other, so they started pretend-fighting. It was very cute, so I decided to take their picture. Sam, who has an uncanny ability to spot the very best toy in the pile and get to it first every single day, is also quite good at noticing a camera. He came up to join the picture. (he's in the center) I was not feeling mean enough to send him away. Hence, the title of this post and the picture that accompanies it.

An Anti-climactic Last Day

 

Tata, Dela, and the five children who came to school today

I thought that it would be a tearful day, but I was wrong. Today, the last day of kindergarten, was much like any other and I was almost happy to leave!

Cultural differences struck again as I realized this was the last day. The Togolese government website says that July 15 is the last day of school, so I expected to be leaving the children still in school. Instead, Tata informed me--and them--on Friday that they should come Monday (today) for the last day of school. The kids were overjoyed that the year would be over and most of them started summer vacation early and stayed home today. As you can see in the picture above, only five of them came.

Tata and the other teachers were busy correcting papers from last week's "compositions," the final exams. So all the kids were playing. The five little ones and I stayed in their room for a while. I entertained them by showing them pictures and videos of class throughout the school year. Then I suggested we go sit outside to watch the other children playing. It was a move with mixed success. The kids and I enjoyed being out in the cooler air (me) and more active play (them). But when Dela arrived with the refreshments for a little party, we suddenly had a few uninvited guests--the younger brothers and sisters (not yet in school) who had come with their older siblings. I felt terrible for making them leave, but we didn't have enough for the whole school, so I told them it was just for the kindergarten kids.

They had Cheese Balls and KoolAid for a snack. Then I called each one to my side so that I could take a selfie with them and told them that I was proud of them for learning ____ this year. I gave them a little gift bag, assembled with the help of US church friends and my sister. Then we left. Tata took all the other gift bags to distribute to the others. She says they will come next week.  I don't quite get that, but we'll see!

A sample gift bag. Each one contained 8 crayons (I think!), 2 pieces of chalk, a coloring book, a little French phrase book to color and a Bible story book.

My kitchen, part 2

 Just to report that I have finally got the kitchen cabinets returned to their position on the wall! That was one of Saturday's accomplishments.

In the early weeks of my residence in this house, I arrived home one afternoon to find that the upper kitchen cabinets had fallen off the wall. I was grateful that nothing was broken and that the fall occurred when I was out. I am sure it made a horrendous noise.

I told Hammer and Dela and asked them to get in touch with a carpenter or handyman to put them back up. They sent Patrick over to move them out of the way for me; he put them outside the kitchen door, which you can see to the left of the photo.

As for the carpenter, there were building projects going on at the mission--the meeting place for the congregation in the "sad village," the kindergarten room, etc. One of the regulars got angry and quit coming to church. So I kept putting off asking about it, because I knew that others were busy. 

Then the rainy season started. Although we had covered up the cabinets a bit, they still got rained on a few times. So I finally asked again this past week for them to call someone to come put the cupboards back on the wall.

Saturday morning, Patrick's "master" (he is doing an apprenticeship) came over with Yaovi. He looked at the cabinets, declared them ruined, and said did I want to replace them with glass ones. I opted for wood, so he was out of there--his specialty is glass work. Yaovi left with him and returned with another handyman. Only the back of the cabinets--the flimsy wood that is at the wall--was totally ruined. They replaced that. Yaovi washed them and then they hung them back on the wall. Total cost:  8300 CFA. At the current exchange rate of 650 CFA to the dollar, that makes 12.76 USD. The cabinets look as if they have suffered a bit from their outdoor life, but I am happy to have them back up.

An Interesting Day

 Wednesday, May 25, was not quite the usual Wednesday, which made it a very interesting day overall.

The day began as usual, but the doorbell rang a bit before 6:30 a.m. I wasn't quite dressed, so hollered, "J'arrive!" as I grabbed my t-shirt to put on and my purse with the front door keys. I thought that it was probably the guy from the Internet service or one of his employees. I recently found out that the 5 to 10 young men sitting in front of my house were, indeed, using my WiFi. I'm not sure how they got the password, but I have been calling the service office to get help to change it. Unfortunately, it was not Sharif or one of his employees, but a woman who looked quite surprised to see me. She said she was looking for a lady. I asked, "What lady?" and she replied one who sold oil. I told her that I didn't know, so she left.

Ten minutes after she left, the doorbell rang again. It was a man who had driven up on a motorcycle. He said he was looking for his sister. I asked if she had been here a few minutes ago and, receiving an affirmative response, sent him off in her direction.

Later, while I was at breakfast, it occurred to me that perhaps the woman was looking for Dela. She sells all sorts of things, and I thought I remembered oil being one of them. I asked Dela if she thought the woman was looking for her, but she denied it. She doesn’t sell oil, just oil drums. So it is a mystery. Truth be told, I wondered at the time, if it were some sort of scam or effort to get into my house. My recent WiFi discovery has rendered me suspicious of everyone!

At school I found a very small class . . . and no teacher! Since I arrived before 8:00, when the day officially begins, I was not surprised that Tata was not in the classroom. But time kept moving and she still didn’t come. The children began to get restless, but they eventually amused themselves by taking turns counting the bâtonnets—the little sticks used in math class. When they completed that activity, I pointed to the letters and numbers on the board that they know and asked individuals to identify them.

After an hour of them being seated, I decided to let them move a bit, so we left the classroom to review the observations of modes of transport that they had been doing in the past two or three weeks. We walked over to my car. Actually, we “flew,” at the suggestion of Eliakim, sticking out our arms and pretending to be airplanes. They had remembered the car vocabulary fairly well. Once we had gone through all the words, we “flew” to a motorcycle and reviewed that vocabulary. Final stop in our voyage: a bicycle so that we could go over those words. Then we returned home--the classroom.

During our flights around the school yard, I caught a glimpse of Tata in one of the elementary school classrooms and then understood her absence. The lower grades (1-5, I think; maybe just 1-4) are taking exams this week and she was helping with that. Solving the mystery did little to reduce my anxiety, though. Time for snack was approaching, but I didn’t think the children had paid for it yet. I asked them and collected money from two of the twelve who had come that day. Two more of them said that their older siblings had their money. Usually there are at least ten students who buy their morning snack at school. When the young man came to find out how many meals to bring, I did not know what to answer. Fortunately, I saw the teacher walking toward the room, so I asked him to wait until she got there. She straightened everything out and gave him an accurate count.

After snack is normally play time, and on Wednesdays I usually leave to go to the middle school for French class. Tata told me to go; she said she would send some older girls to watch the kids for the rest of the morning.

The next interesting part of the day occurred when I stopped by the house to see if anybody needed a ride to prayer meeting. It starts at 5:00, but the family likes to go early, so I leave my house at 4:30. As I got out of my car to go into Hammer’s compound, I encountered some of our elementary school girls on their way home from their last exam. We stopped and talked a bit. They told me that the exams had gone well and that they had done good work. It was a good moment: one of those in which I feel a part of the community here.

Only Sena was still at home to need a ride, but we passed one of the girls from church as she was walking, so stopped to pick her up as well. When we got to the compound, we found Ruth (another church and school girl) standing by the mango tree throwing things at it. She confessed that she had been trying to bring down some mangos by throwing her shoes at them, and now one of her shoes was stuck in the tree. She and Sena used a long bamboo pole to try to dislodge the shoe. I even helped, thinking that my height would bring the pole closer to the shoe. Finally, Sena just climbed the tree and shook the branches where the shoe was. Eventually it fell down.

Shortly afterward Tabitha arrived. She heard the story of the shoe, I think, and, when Yaovi and Meda arrived, called their attention to the mangos that Ruth had been trying to harvest. Yaovi got the pole and dislodged a few of them. They were quickly picked up by Ruth, Ema, and Meda. The pictures in this post are of that mango gathering. You can only see the pole—it’s to the left of the photo—and not Yaovi. But you can see the others watching and waiting to catch the falling mangos.

I thought it was a perfect ending to a most interesting day.

It Brought Tears to My Eyes

 

Tata does a good job at talking to the children about the Lord. We sing “Stand Up And Shout It,” my contribution to their religious education, frequently. We sometimes have prayer time for sick classmates. She also will remind them that to be a friend of Jesus means acting in a way that He would like. Most recently she has reminded them that they need to thank God for the food that they eat. She taught them a song:

               Merci, Seigneur

               Merci pour ce repas

               Merci, Seigneur

               Alleluia, Amen!

 

The children (most of them, anyway) close their eyes and hold their right hand over their meal as they sing. Some of them will add a final word to the song: “Mangez!” (Eat!) So, although they have learned the prayer, some of them may not have their hearts truly in it as they sing.

Last week (Friday, May 20), Dieu-donné had to wait a few minutes for his sister to bring his morning snack. The others had already sung/prayed and begun eating. His sister finally arrived (I, of course, was getting indignant at the thought that one of the little ones had to wait, so it seemed like a long time!) and delivered the plate to him. Donné took the bowl and returned to his chair. He closed his eyes, held his hand in the air and sang the prayer song. It brought tears to my eyes!

Lord, may those little ones remember the lessons that Tata gives them about You and Your love for them. May the words which they sing now stick with them and take on their full meaning as they get older.

A Missed Photo Op

 

One of the interesting things about the culture here is the here-and -now way of life. Please note, this is based on my observations and experience, which is not extensive. And remember that I spend more time with school children than with grown-ups! Let me explain what I mean by that. When Dela and I give our English classes to the elementary school, we meet outside. The children bring their school benches from the classroom to the area under the mango trees, where it is cool. Despite the fact that they have performed that action every week, they never seem to remember how to arrange the benches. Every week, we have them create two rows, with two or three benches facing forward and another one or two on each side perpendicular to the middle ones, so that it is somewhat of a U shape. They have to be told every time where to put the benches. I have heard that adults tend to call a repairman when something breaks rather than do the preventative maintenance; they buy only a few cellphone or electric credits at a time or buy the cheapest version of an item, such as a toilet seat (see my early post, "Joy in the Little Things"), knowing that they will have to replace it soon. Part of that is economics, of course. However, from hearing Hammer talk, the idea of putting money aside for the future has to be taught frequently.

Last week (Thursday, May 19) I witnessed another example of living in the moment. Workers are at the mission compound to repair or replace the roof. One might expect a roofer to have a ladder to take to any jobsite. Perhaps this one does but it isn’t tall enough. For whatever reason, before work on the roof began, the workers built a ladder.

I was able to watch a bit, because the kindergarteners were observing my car. This is the third mode of transportation they have talked about in the past couple of weeks. First they observed a bicycle. They looked at it while Tata told them what the parts were in French.  They even learned a little poem that names some of those parts. A few days later, they observed a motorcycle. And yesterday it was my car. I have to say I have learned some new vocabulary. I wouldn’t have known what to call the muffler on a motorcycle.

Since I always park by the church, we were close to the ladder building process. It was only yesterday evening that I realized that I missed an opportunity for some good pictures. Today I saw the ladder in action and was able to take a picture. You get to see the finished product below. So sorry I missed the opportunity for an interesting shot yesterday!

My Kitchen

 As I have mentioned previously, I take breakfast and lunch at Dela's house, so I don't do much in the way of cooking. This weekend is quite young, and I've already cooked twice! By cooking, this time anyway, I mean heating up something to eat.

I took an almost instant dislike to my kitchen. It did not present itself well during my first visit to the house. There was evidence of mice visitors; the countertop was broken on one corner; and under the sink was a breeding spot for mildew: you can feel the moist heat immediately upon opening the door. After living here for four and half months now, I am still not enamored of the room, but I do tolerate it better. After all, I have to go in there at least once a day to get cold water. 

Kitchen before moving in

That is, indeed, my usual purpose on entering: to get water, a soda, or some cookies or crackers to snack on. Consuming those items means that I use dishes, so I am forced to wash dishes every couple of days. The dirty items are few: a couple of plates and glasses, perhaps a spoon or fork, and my water bottle. The process takes a bit longer than you might imagine though.

Step 1:  heat water. Although people here seem not to mind using cold water to wash dishes, I just can't get past the habit of having hot water. So I put a pot of water on the stove. One extra complication:  the air from the living room fan causes the flames on the gas stove to flicker more than I would like. In order to avoid a blow out and potential gas leak, I turn off the fan before I light the stove.

When I visited Burkina Faso back in 2020, I  got reacquainted with gas stoves. I had grown up with one, but the last few houses I've lived in have had electric. I thought it would be an easy re-adjustment--somewhat like riding a bicycle. But I was wrong. There, I only used the stove to boil water for coffee in the morning. Every time I lit it, I went through at least two matches, and I burned my fingers. The stove here  has an electric "igniter," but it works with varying degrees of success on each burner. Since I can't remember which burners work best and, since the power often goes out in the evenings, I just use a lighter to light the stove. Adjusting the flame to the right height is also tricky. Some of the burners have extremely high flames; some have low. 

Once the water is hot, I pour it into the dishpans. Since they are plastic I run a bit of cold water into them before adding the hot. I don't know if it is vitally necessary to do so, but a melting dishpan would not be fun for me. Sometimes the proportion of heated water to cold water is just right and I'm able to wash the dishes right away. Other evenings I have to wait for the water to cool a bit before I can put my hands in it.

The sink. Note the broken counter top in the bottom left corner of the picture. One of the details that bother me about the kitchen. My stove lighter, oven mitt and hot pads, and pans are on hooks across the top. I use the electric kettle to the right of the sink rarely. The circuit in the kitchen can not handle it and the refrigerator both, so I have to plug it into a living room socket. Even then I have to turn off the fan so that I don't trip the circuit.

I'm a big fan of air drying, so I don't dry the clean wet dishes. But one can not leave them out too long or they start to gather dust. The buffet cupboard in the dining room houses the plates, bowls, and glasses. The silverware sits in  a cup on the dining room table and each piece gets wiped before use.

After the dishes are washed, I face the problem of getting rid of the dishwater. Although I had a plumber check under the sink to make sure that the drain pipes do not leak, I am still a bit leary of using them. (My spell-check is marking the word "leary" as incorrect, so I googled the correct spelling of the word. This is what I learned: Leery is an adjective that means wary or suspicious. Leary is a variant spelling that has not been widely used in 100 years. Tell me:  why is it that I spell it that way?) In order to avoid leakage, I take the dishpans outside and pour them out in the planters or down the outside drain.

          

Two important parts of the kitchen:  the refrigerator with the cold water and sodas and the little plastic cart with the canned goods, cookies, oatmeal, coffee, etc. The cupboard to the left of the pantry cart is filled with water bottles. I buy water to drink because it tastes better than the local water.

My frequent use of the kitchen this weekend has me wondering. Is it growing on me? Or was I just especially hungry? Only time will tell!

David and Sica

 

David and Sica on the first day of school. He still prefers to sit by her.

When I first met David and Sica I thought they must be twins. I learned early on that they both spoke English, because their parents were from Nigeria. What took me longer to learn was that they were only half-brother and sister. Same father, different mothers. It is fairly common here for men to have more than one wife.

David is very protective of Sica. Should any other child decide to take a toy from her, David is there, ready to take it back for her. He does not always demonstrate that kindness himself. One day he took something from Sica--it wasn't a toy, maybe a piece of paper or the top of a pen--and she pitched a royal fit. He refused to return it, and she screamed and kicked her feet for fifteen minutes or so. I was amazed at her endurance. 

Sica and I first bonded after a few weeks of school. She somehow injured her foot at home, and the teacher sent her to the clinic because it was bothering her. They cleaned and bandaged the wound and continued to do so for a couple of weeks. One day Sica's mom came to school so that she could thank the clinic staff for taking care of her daughter. Sica became very unhappy that she didn't get to go back home with her mom and sat and cried. Tata brought her chair over beside mine. As Sica continued to cry, I patted her shoulder and talked quietly with her. The next day, she sat on my lap as frequently as she could. 

She still likes to cuddle with me, but, like all of the older children, not as much as she did previously.

David attracted my attention when he played with the Fisher Price guitar at playtime. He would hold it and strum it, of course, (the battery is dead, so no sound came out) and sing what sounded like "Yeah, yeah, yeah." I sang along with him, which he enjoyed. Nowadays, he comes to me sometimes for help in writing his letters and numbers. 

David is easily distracted, and slow to respond. The tradition here is to stand when you're answering a teacher's question. It takes him what seems to be two or three minutes to prepare to answer. He has usually kicked off his shoes and he has to put them back on and then stand. Then there is a second or two of hesitation and finally he responds. Usually correctly. It takes him a long time to practice writing on his slate and to complete the worksheets. Tata told me early on in the school year that he would probably be repeating next year. 

That will be a good thing, I think. He was out of school for nearly two weeks before Spring Break and didn't return until the second week after. During that time his writing skill improved. He is a tad bit faster and his letters are tidier. I believe he is one of those children whose readiness to learn proceeds at a different pace than their chronological age.

Sica has an older brother at the school, Dominique, who walks the children to and from home. He is not a lot older--I think he is in second grade--and seems to be a little slow. One afternoon in the fall, a man came to the house bringing all three children with him. He seemed upset and wanted to speak to Dela. She was in her room on the phone, so it took me a while to get her attention and bring her outside. By that time the man had left, along with the children. While I had thought that he was their father and was upset about something that had happened at school, it turns out that he was just a guy on a motorcycle who had noticed that the kids were lost. He picked them up and brought them to the house, but then got tired of waiting on Dela, so he took them to the police station. Dela had to go there to get the children. I am not sure how the scene played out, but she had to call the teacher to verify who they were and they found someone to take them home. It turns out that David had told Dominique they needed to turn right out of the school gate to get home, even though they live to the left. Tata could not believe that Dominique had believed David. For the next few days, she made sure that there was an even older child to accompany them home. 

Here are more recent photos of the two.

Sica is the girl in the pink sneakers looking back.

David is on the right, pushing the little red and blue vehicle.

A Rain Day

 Here, instead of snow days, there are occasional rain days at school. Today, Friday, May 6, seemed to be one of them--I am not sure, because I did not hang around to see.

According to my phone app, we were supposed to have thunderstorms at 1:00 this afternoon. Otherwise it would be a partly to mostly cloudy day. So, of course, the rain started at 6:00 this morning. It was not a hard rain when I left for breakfast/school, but while I was eating it began to pour. And we had thunder and lightening as well. I finished breakfast in time to get to school before 8:00, but it was still pouring, so I waited for it to slow down, if not stop altogether. 

That took until 8:30. It was still raining, but not in sheets. I considered myself very courageous when I set out, because the road conditions are always a gamble on wet days. I navigated the puddles, mud, bumps, and tire tracks (from previous rains) rather well, I thought, and arrived at school in the usual ten minutes. 

But no one was there! That is not entirely true. The kindergarten building doors were all shut tightly, so I decided not to venture across the yard to check them. But I saw five or six students. No adults at all. In my typical (American? personal?) fashion, I decided not to wait and came home. At noon, I heard some kids walking down the street. Only one of my neighbor kids (that is the group that lives next door and across the street) goes to our school, so I don't know if our school eventually had class or if it was another one.

The weather kept Peter from coming to Vogan from Lomé, so no Ewe lesson today. I am not too sad about that. I find my individual sessions with Peter a stressful experience and am thinking of suspending them.

I worry a bit about the market. Today is Vogan's market day, and many people come to sell and buy. I am sure that the rain did not stop everybody, but it might have stopped some buyers. 

Speaking of buying and selling, there is no flour left in town. I had the last pancake this morning until Dela is able to find some more. That is what I eat most frequently that has flour in it. She also makes meat pies in two different varieties that take flour.

Finishing this up on Saturday morning. The rain continued--until 1:00 p.m.!--so I did not get out at all. Even for a team meeting. We decided to hold it at my house, which was fun.

After everyone left, the power went off. I have a powerful flashlight that I set on the floor when that happens and I noticed that a bug had got in the house. It looked much like a dragonfly as it bounced around the ceiling. Eventually, it hovered closer to the ground and even landed occasionally. On one such landing, I killed it. Within a few seconds, there was another one. And I heard what sounded almost like rain by the front window. When I investigated that noise, I saw nearly 100 of them on the screen. It felt a bit like a scene out of The Birds. I hurriedly grabbed my bug spray and let them have it. It took about five blasts of it to reduce the noise. In hopes of discouraging any further winged visitors, I turned off the flashlight and sat in the dark. Fortunately, the power was restored in just a few minutes and stayed on the rest of the night.

This morning, I was eager to see what impact I had made with the bug spray. I could see five bug corpses stuck to the window, and assumed there would be more outside. There were, as you can see. 

It's all part of the rainy season, and part of the adventure here.