The virtue of bathrooms

Here in Togo, bathrooms for public use are often few and far between.

Unfortunately, because we do not tend to be accustomed to the local dishes, bathrooms are often a coveted item to discover. They come in a range: from real "african style" bathrooms (aka hole in ground) to gas station standard bathrooms in Canada (you know what I mean, the kind that are just a little sketchy but you'll use them!). We have found in our travels that whenever you come across a bathroom, whatever the standard may be, you use it, because you never know when you'll see one again.

It's interesting to think of all the different mthods of creating a bathroom, and what other dual usages it can have...such as shower. Or place to store bricks. Or just the good old back yard. The oddest place I have used as a bathroom is the pavement behind someone's house. No word of a lie, I REALLY had to pee, and they couldn't get their outhouse open, so they just gestured to behind the house and told me to go. Let me tell you, it was weird. But when presented with no other option, sometimes you just have to go with the flow (no pun intended!) :p

Lazy Days

Life here in Kpalime is nice. The pace is slow, the food is good, and we are getting a chance to relax.

We had a chance to visit the waterfalls near Kpalime, they are called Kpime falls. There is a dam at the top of the waterfalls, and normally the dam is only open during the rainy season. Right now it is the "petit saison" (little season) between the wet and dry season, when there is a bit of rain but also a lot of just hot. Anyway, some piece of equipment in the dam is currently broken, so they had to empty the water to fix it. So to our luck you might say, the waterfalls were running very strongly! We got some beautiful pictures, Tim even pulled out his tripod to take a few shots. It was really gorgeous. A tall waterfall, and about halfway down it splits into two streams of water. I can not wait to share the pictures with you! But the connection is way too slow, so unfortunately for now, just words. :)

We are doing our best to relax, and our plans seem to change daily. We had hoped to go to Lomé the capital on Monday and Tuesday, but then we were invited to a friend,s place for dinner Monday night. And then we had something come up today. And tomorrow a friend is coming to Kpalime from Lomé that we have to see....so maybe we will get there tomorrow night....who knows? Oh well....c,est le Togo. :)

First Impressions

When Tim was here in Togo a few years ago, he was staying in a relatively small town, with about 50,000 people; içt is the kind of community where many people know each other and you are bound to see someone you know on the street on any given day. When we arrived in Accra, it was quite a different experience. Accra is a city that contains several million people. It is a loud, bustling, vibrant overwhelming city. We also visitied Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana. Also quite large, and loud, and overwhelming; Not quite what I had anticipated.

We arrived in Kpalime (the city I ,entioned before) it was a refreshing change! It is much more my pace. And not quite so loud... :p

Hans Cottage Botel (Ghana)

Tonight we are staying in a place called "Hans Cottage Botel". It's on the road between Cape Coast Ghana and Kakum National park. It's an eclectic place, with a pond-ish wetland that is inhabited by real crocodiles and there's bamboo forest and oodles of birds. You can actually hear them singing everywhere. It's beautiful. The restaurant is up on stilts overlooking and OVER the water. So you can sometimes see the crocodiles swimming around. Pretty cool. :P

We spent today in Cape Coast and Elmina visiting the slave castles. These are castles/forts used by the Portuguese, English, Dutch etc who were a part of the transatlantic slave trade. It's where the slaves were brought after being captured/sold into slavery and traded with the Europeans by other black mercenaries for guns/gunpowder. It was a saddening, somber experience, and yet it brought hope to my heart. The Ghanian people that we talked with said that the slave trade was awful and inexcusable. And yet they said from it hope has emerged because it has created the world that we know today and the many very influential African descendents (i.e. Barack Obama) that we see in our world today. I found it all to be a very humbling experience.

I'm really enjoying being here in Ghana. I hope to post more later. But I need to go wash some laundry. It really is stinkin' hot here. ha ha....you sweat a LOT.

Amsterdam Airport

Well, we've started our adventure to West Africa. We left Friday evening from Toronto, not without adventure: my passport was inadvertantly left in the scanner at home and we didn't realise it until we got to the airport. Thankfully, one of our good friends was able to go to our house and pick it up and meet us halfway between the airport and home. (Thanks Heather!)

The flight was great, I really like KLM airlines and would recommend them to anyone. We had television screens in the seatback of every seat, and had a choice between many many TV shows, movies, music and the likes. We could have even gone online or made phone calls if we'd felt like using our VISA. The food was amazing, the service superb, and we had all the free drinks (alcoholic and non-alcoholic) that we wanted. It was great!

We left Toronto airport at 6 pm, the flight was 7 hours, and we arrive in Amsterdam at 6:35 am their time. So you do the math....right now it is 10 am Amsterdam time, and I have not been to sleep. Oddly enough, I am not tired at all. Tim is sound asleep on a funky recliner type chair, there are little gatherings of these chairs all over the airport, and let me tell you, they're prime real estate! It took us a while to finally find some, but thankfully eventually we did. I tried to sleep, but it's broad daylight out, and lots of people were walking to and fro. And I'm excited. So eventually after about 40 minutes of trying to force myself to sleep, I resorted to walking around the airport. It's HUGE. A very cool airport, lots of shops and eateries, lots of neat architecture and windows. Dad, I think you'd really like it. :P

It's cool, a nice place to be while we wait to travel to our final destinations...Ghana and Togo. I'm really excited, a little nervous, but mostly excited. I can't wait to see all the places I've heard so much about from Tim. I can't wait to try Foufou finally (Tim talks about it so much!). I can't wait to meet Amedzi and Christine and Fofo....someone said to me that it will be interesting to see if it all lives up to my expectations. I don't know if I really know what to expect, but I do know that as long as I'm with Tim, it will be wonderful. :)

I'll try to post more later....running out of time. Love you all.

What's in my Garden?

So....as I mentioned in my last entry, we've invested in a large, fairly well-kept garden (if you don't count the month Tim and I weren't here, which led to a fair amount of weeds!). One of the struggles I am having is that I don't know what most of the plants are in my garden. Soo....I went around and took pictures of some of them, and I'm going to start posting pictures, in the hope that someone may know what they are. Here goes....

Picture #1 - Small bush, about 4-5 inches tall, about 6-8 inches in diameter.

Picture #2 - This is the flowers on a large bush, consisting of lots of green leaves, sort've tree-like, probably about 4 feet tall. I feel like I should know what kind of plan this is, but I don't.

Picture # 3 - Small, fuzzy green plant. I'm wondering if it might be a poppy that has transplanted itself? Or the starts of a thistle...

Picture #4 - This guy is in the planter in my front yard. Some kind of funky ivy maybe?

Picture # 5 - Neighbour to the "funky ivy" is this mysterious green plant. I have no idea what it is, maybe if it had some flowers on it I might... :P

This is the end of round one of "What's in my Garden". Feel free to respond with what the plants are. Think of it as a fun game... :)

Home Sweet Home

We've taken the plunge and relocated to Barrie and bought a house! We've actually had our house for about a month now, and have been living in it for about two weeks. I have been spending most of my time unpacking boxes, organising where things go, and working in our garden. YES we have a garden. I'm learning lots...how to prune, what are weeds and what are plants, what humus is (it's the ideal kind of soil, not to be mistaken for the chick pea mash we love!)...it's lots of fun. The neighbourhood is beautiful and our neighbors are great! Here are some pictures from around our place:

This is our house from the front. Pretty cute eh?

This is one of the many spiders that calls our yard home. We have an absurd number of spiders. I'm not sure why, but they just seem to like our house a lot. I've had a few run-ins with the spiders, and I'm sad to say I did resort to some Spider-Ban (spider killer).

Our neighbours Ralph and Donna gave us these mums. Aren't they beautiful? And this is Ed, hanging out in his new favorite spot.

The funniest part....These are our neighbours that sometimes wander into the field across the street.