Random Photos and Accompanying Thoughts

To market, to market...

Erin is amazing when it comes to shopping.  I'm sure that anyone who knows her isn't surprised.  However, throw in a foreign language, several Togalese dialects, different customs and culture and you have a whole new experience.  She navigates this through necessity and does it well.  She gets all her own shopping done, plus helps other team members if they are having difficulty.  

She even has a bit of her father show through when it comes to bartering!  Her favourite technique is to ask for the African price, not the white man ( yovo ) price.  She surprised me with how well she's adapted to the market experience.  No surprise though, she's a sucker at the fabric stands...

Here are a couple of photos of her buying pineapples - perhaps the best pineapples I've had yet while here.  Tree ripened fruits are amazing, worlds better than what we have in North America.

A couple of things that don't grow well here appear to be tomatoes and cucumbers.  That's fine by me, but some dear readers might actually like these two things, so I thought I would show you what the ones we put on top of our sandwiches for lunch looked like.

Home Depot, Togo-style

Here is the local lumber vendor.  You will see a customer walk away with two or three 10 foot long two-by-sixes stacked on his head, climb onto the back of a moto and have his buddy drive away - with the lumber still perched atop his noggin!  Bizarre, but after seeing so many other sights, nothing surprises me any more except their ingenuity.

The Kpalime Blind School

Okay, the name is pronounced Pal-ee-may, not Kaplimay or Kayplime, or whatever else you might have come up with.  This town is home to a blind school that's associated with the Mission hospitals both in Mango and Tsiko.  LOts of kids with poor or no eyesight attend here.  They also have a craft store on sight where the older kids and adults can sell items they have hand-crafted.  They also sold ice-cold Pepsi and Mountian Dew.  Score!  Consider me a customer!

On the grounds Nate was able to come and help build a new bridge over the creek near the main gate.  It's dried up in this dry season so it was a perfect time to rebuild.  Nate helped with the concrete work and some, umm, let's call it "dredging" of the creek bed.  It was more like hours of hard labour under a blistering sun.  Here are some pictures of the bridge, where they have dug from - by hand tools only! - and where they need to dig to.  They were almost halfway done.  All the way past the wooden foot-bridge to the trees, men...

I've mentioned before how they have some ingenious ideas and are very resourceful.  Here on the grounds of the Tsiko hospital they receive shipping containers from Europe and North America bringing all kinds of medical supplies and equipment.  They build they containers into large storage buildings once they have been emptied.  Since they have to order 6-9 months in advance, filling the container is essential.  The empty container is added to a line of previously received ones and has the roof removed and then a sloped tin roof built overhead, I assume to give more space and reduce heat build-up.

Oh, one more thing...

Since I've got a soft spot for old Land Rovers, here is one I saw in the town of Adeta.  At least, I think it was Adeta.  Please forgive me as things seem a bit of a blur and keeping names and places straight is tres difficile.