Adventure!

Last weekend my roommate Hilary, a friend Sondre and I went on an adventure that was unlike anything I've ever experienced before.

We set off at 7am on Saturday morning. Destination: N'digbe- a remote village in the mountains north of Lome. Mission: Paragliding off the mountains. It was a rainy/misty morning when we left the ship, which made for a perfect traveling temperature. The heat and humidity is often a lot to handle here.

We set off in a taxi to the "bus station" where we proceeded to barter with the "bus station attendant" for a fair price of 3000 CFA or $6.00/person for the 4 hour ride to N'digbe. You can pretty much barter on prices for anything here.

THEN, we got inside the "bus" which was basically a narrow 8-person van with 14 people smushed inside. This was bound to be the least comfortable road trip of my life.. yes, I think it was. I was practically sitting on the lap of a random Togolese man the entire way... oh man. But I am proud to say- I survived this part of the journey.

When we were nearing N'digbe, after a long, sweaty, smelly ride with many stops to buy plantains and water off the side of the road, we met a guy named Raw, who spoke a very small amount of English. He ended up inviting us to stay overnight at his place in a different village if we couldn't figure out a place to stay, but we turned down the offer, as we were on a mission to paraglide... An African inviting you over within the first minutes of conversation is not an odd thing though. In the states, if a random guy in a bus invited me to stay at his house overnight, I would be weirded out, but here it's really normal. The Togolese are extremely hospitable and this sort of thing has happened to me on several occasions here.

Anyways, Raw decided to take his day off and help us find the place that we were supposed to stay at in N'digbe anyways. We were a little skeptical of his motives, but he ended being a nice guy and got us safely to the Inn.

Raw

So.. we found N'digbe! It took forever though. We were definitely on African time.

N'digbe basically has two small streets that cross. In the middle of it is a well, there are goats and chickens running around everywhere, no electricity, no plumbing, etc.

Random Texaco in the middle of the smallest most remote village.. this seemed out of context

The town's church

We stayed at this small Inn owned by a woman named Paulene. Hilary and I shared a room.

We road zimmijons (motor bikes) around the area...

Saturday night, we had a giant African feast by candlelight in town. We had met up with some other friends from Mercy Ships and with the people that were running the paragliding- this French couple who come to N'digbe every year for 4 months at a time to teach and take people paragliding. The meal was fantastic and I ate a really common Africa dish called "fufu" (pronounced foo foo) which is a mashed-up type of root and yam, made in to a mushy ball and you dip it in some sort of broth/meat sauce. Sounds gross, and a lot of westernized people hate it, but I kind of liked it.. I mean, it is called "fufu".

A plate of fufu accompanied with peanut soup

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fufu

Annnd we woke up on Sunday morning, waited around for a couple hours to be picked up from the inn by the french couple (they were running on African time). They finally came and took us to go paragliding!!

This is Sondre getting ready to take off..

I'm pretty sure this is me

In the air!

I think this is me too

Annnd, there was this clan of ridiculously cute children in the village who followed Hilary and I around chanting "Yovo! Yovo! Yovo!", which is the West African way of saying white person. And then they came and pinched our hands and sat on our laps.

Love,

Caitlin

Easter and a familiar place.

It seems like there’s always a shift from foreign to comfortable that happens when you live somewhere for an extended period of time. The shift may happen overnight or it may take months or even years for a new place to start feeling more like a home, depending where you are. Here, on the ship and in Africa, it’s hard to completely reach a full shift from foreign to home because people are constantly coming and going (and the people are so often what make up a home), but in spite of this fact of Mercy Ship life, recently, I have begun to sense a bit of that shift to feeling like this place is more familiar than unfamiliar.

Last weekend was definitely one of several small catalysts for this changed perception. Easter was a beautiful day even though I was full of doubts as my family back home celebrated their usual traditions (including throwing eggs at a tree off my and aunt and uncle’s deck- weird family, I know:) Anyways, I anticipated a difficult time, spending Easter here on the ship and in Africa apart from my familiar settings at home. I was proven wrong, however, and my weekend was really a comforting and joyful time.

Easter morning began with a sunrise service on the top deck of the ship. Miraculously, a couple roommates and I managed to get out of bed at 5:30am. We sang worship songs while looking out on to the Atlantic Ocean. Afterward, I went on a really nice morning walk on the dock (I love walks), and after that we had and 8am service in our community area (the International Lounge) where everyone dressed up and we had communion and this congressman from Texas who was visiting gave a great message.

At 10am we were surprised with a huge brunch that was put on by the galley and dinning room crew. Some of them had stayed up until late hours just to prepare this for us. We had tons of fruit, eggs benedict, hashbrowns, sausage, French toast, etc, etc. It was such a blessing to be served in this way!

There was this massive fish that they were cutting up and serving and my roommate stephanie had to pull one of it's big teeth out the night before. grosss.

Little lamb cake

This was the fruit and bread table they had out for us.

Then, the highlight of my day. My roommate/friend Lyndsay and I decided we were going to go for a walk- potentially to the beach and or the craft market. Lyndsay is one of those people who is incredibly flexible and if plans change, she is eager to discover a new adventure. I love this about her and I also am very laid back about plans (in Africa, it seems like almost everyone is laid back about plans, time, etc). Love that. But anyways, Lyndsay and I ended up spontaneously going to the hospitality center which is a site off the ship ship where patients go for longer recovery after they have received surgery on the ship.

We spent the afternoon/evening playing with the kids at the Hospitality Center. It was awesome! And, luckily, I had brought my camera along and the kids were thrilled about that. One kid took my camera inside an older patient's room and took a picture of him in bed.. he looked really confused. They took probably about a billion pictures collectively. We played games and sang. It was just a really great way to spend my Easter Sunday here.

Wild kids :)

After our time at with the kiddos at the hospitality center, Lyndsay and I took Zimmy’s (these sweet motorcycle taxi’s) back to the ship. I'll have to post pictures of those later.

Yea, Easter was a great day here.

Love,

Caitlin