(Kara, Togo) - hello from togo

Hi everyone-mostly people I dont know. I posted the following on another group blog, and was thinking I would post it here too until I realized that I dont know most the people that will read it...but, I am in Togo, and I appreciate interesting stories from everyone else, so here you go anyway. Nice to meet you all.

(just fyi-im living in northern togo, at the foot of a mountain range, in a city called kara, working with an hiv clinic. also spending time in the villages around here in the valley and one up a mountain. the following post is about staying in the mountains when im up there. usually i stay in the city in a house with a shower and a toilet and 8 other people. granted, the toilet in the house doesnt work, but the shower-its one of the greatest things on earth. its often in the 90s here, with NO AC except in the atm machine room and i get HOT so i usually shower twice a day under running water.)

whitney

In the mountains here, the dogs are the sewer service. When you poop (or vomit), they come along and eat it. This has its ups and its downs. It means that when you have to poop in the middle of the night, you dont have to walk too far from the house because it will be gone by morning anyway. This is good because it is SO dark at night when it is cloudy that if you go too far to poop and cant find the house with the flashlight, it is easy to get turned around and end up walking off in some random direction looking for the house (I only did this the first night). The dogs are only not good when sometimes it is creepy that they surround you and watch you poop or brush your teeth or whatever you do outside of the homestead after dark! I find that weird and usually try to shoo them away. In the house in the city, I share my bathroom with fire ants and a spider that is only out at night, and one creepy beetle, but at least I'm not surrounded by hungry dogs when I poop! I will say though, that during the day, the "bathroom" on the mountain has the most gorgeous view from a toilet that I have ever seen. As soon as I can, I will post a picture that is a view. Imagine green cultivated mountainside with palm trees sprinkled around.