Bob Marley Day

Yes, it's Bob Marley day, which means they play his music all day long on the radio…it's nice to hear familiar music while I'm recovering from my bacterial infection from yesterday. The second stupid thing I did this week was eat beans at a client's home…which led to the infection. But with antibiotics I'm recovering nicely.

Today's a much better day. We visited the women making palm oil and another village making "gari" which is a kind of powdery manioc thing they mix with beans and other dishes. In that village we also saw the women mystics, who are basically young girls-older women who do not go to school but rather go bare-chested and are trained to be mystics and live in their sacred grounds. We didn't enter the grounds, but they saluted us as we stood on the outside.

After that we went to see the men distilling their "sodabi" from the palm wine…but when we got there it turned out their large can had exploded and it would take them half the day to get a new one…so no demonstration, but I got the basic idea. On the way to the place, I started to recognize where we were going (most of the time in the brush out here), and I placed the school where we met with one of the members, and then as we rode by she was there and we waved to her. Edmond was proud of me for starting to place the area. I also wasn't going to go out today because I was still recovering and had barely eaten anything since yesterday morning, and I started crying when I got to the office. He came in though and said I should calm myself and get myself together and we would go out there slowly and come back if I didn't feel well. I'm glad he insisted because then I was really happy to get to see all of the groups working and the women were all waiting for me to come by.

On our way back from the village today, I saw a sign for a small real estate co. (they usually have signs out on the street that have their listings posted). The names of the place was Ets. Don't Push Me. I thought that was funny. There's also a bar when we're riding out on the motorcycle that's called "Bar Maman j'ai faim" (Mom I'm hungry). Most of the time, however, places are named after religious things or things like God Giving, etc.

Speaking of signs and businesses, it's too bad that the government here is so useless that they collect taxes scrupulously from any formal business, but they do nothing in return. They also don't bother to help solve the electricity problems or anything else. The president lives in a huge house on an even larger plot of land separated by long roads and walls from the rest of Lome. It's a sad spectacle and hopefully one day they will have real elections here.

This weekend I think we'll go out on the town, to the market, to the pool and to the beach. I also told the kids in the house that I'll take them to the pizzeria when we go to the pool because for them it's really expensive (it's about $6 for a large pizza). I'm looking forward to some familiar food…I hope it'll be worth it :)

(The pictures are of the women making palm oil and of one woman toasting the "gari")