Togo.

This is so, so real. Like, way more real than I ever imagined. I don't even know what that means, but this is SO real.

First things first, my immediate living environment for the next 7 weeks. I'm living in a host family of a family with, as far as I can tell, a very average lifestyle. Definitely not rich, but not too poor. I have a semi-comfy bed (with a mosquito net, incidentally), a place to bathe (I have to fetch water from the well whenever I want to bathe...but usually one of the 14-year-old girls sees me struggling and takes over with the strength of, I swear to God, Hercules), a semi-flushable toilet (I dump water into the toilet and it "flushes"), my own room which is actually kind of large with a desk, food to eat (it's ranged from great to just eh but always bearable), and even an electric fan.  I don't need much to manage, and they've given me everything I need, I think.

Their "house" is a collection of rooms, roof made of tin, all surrounding a common, uncovered courtyard of trees, dust, and some laundry. I know a picture's worth a thousand words, but I haven't been able to get the pictures from my camera recently, so I'll do that as soon as I can.

This past weekend, I've been mostly hanging out with my host brother (21) and host sister (23), who happen to be the youngest of the 10 children, but only 3 or 4 of them still live in the house. There's the patriarch and matriarch of the house who are both retired, and a variety of visitors that come in and out.  The host brother has a mini-Vespa thing that I've ridden around in (Rome was good practice for the "roads" of Lomé), and I saw the beach yesterday.

My host siblings are amused by every little thing I do.  There was, for example, the Putting In The Contacts incident (host sister: can I try them on too? me: uhh...no.), the Unpacking All My Things incident (host sister: why do you have so many medicines? are you afraid you're going to die here?...mind you, dear reader, that I just have a facial cleanser, malaria pills, Pepto-Bismol, skin creme, and contacts solution), the Play With The iPhone incident, the Learn To Fetch Water incident, and several others that I have likely forgotten.

The actual city here is very, very, very dirty with a shocking lack of infrastructure.  I mean, there's the central political area that I saw yesterday, but everywhere else is unbelievably underdeveloped. I'll try not to wax philosophical for this post, but it's shocking that cities like this exist while people like me can freely vacation in cities in London, Paris, and Rome. But, we'll save the inequities and such for a later post.

But, all in all, I've enjoyed my first few days here.  It's been relaxing to say the least, and I can definitely manage. It's not as bad as I was expecting, I think, but I was definitely expecting the worst. It's certainly not luxurious, but I have all the essentials taken care of. I can definitely see that I'll be reading a lot, but that's not so bad.

I'm currently at work waiting for the director to come to the office to see what I'll be doing for the next few weeks, so I guess I'll update on that when I figure it out too.

This is so real.