Just watch the sunset at the end of the day

IMPORTANT INFO
1) I've posted pictures! See this entry and the ones entitled "Pictures","A true story", and "AIDS Ride" for recent photos.
2) For those interested in sending mail: Due to some problems with missing mail, I opened up a new B.P. with my neighbor Danielle, which seems to be working MUCH more reliably. The address (which I would recommend you use, although the other B.P. will remain functioning as well) is:

Kristina Jacobsen
B.P. 17
Elavagnon, Togo
West Africa

Three months into living permanently at post and I was taking pride in how busy I was keeping myself, thinking, "I don't understand the PCVs who complain that there are some days when they have nothing to do"! Well, I must confess, this past weekend I felt the first pangs of boredom. I'm currently in Lome - a trip that has been planned for some time now as I'd been planning on coming down to the PC Country Director's house for her Thanksgiving dinner (which she offers annually to volunteers), taking advantage of the trip down to simultaneously pick up some work-related supplies from an NGO here, to get a Ghana visa from the Ghana Embassy (for my anticipated trip to Ghana for Christmas with some friends), and to go personally file a complaint with TOGOCELL about my phone's now long-term inability to receive texts (I learned fast how completely useless trying to fix the problem through the customer service line was, as, to put it briefly, customer service does NOT exist in Togo as it does in the States). In any case, I didn't have anything to prepare for this week in village, and this last week was similar to the other weeks in November - somewhat slow due to the absence of people to work with. November is bean harvesting season and my village is literally a ghost town during the day since everyone is in the fields. As a result, my sensibilizations at the dispensaire have been put on hold as the midwife and I agreed that the few women who come and go between 9 and 11 (but not all at the same time) do not constitute a substantial enough crowd to bother with a sensibilization. The last couple weeks have been exam weeks at the local middle school, so my girls club meetings have been put on hold too. My house renovations are now completely finished so I don't have any of that to tinker around with anymore either... So I've been frequently finding myself with a book, sprawled out on a wooden arm chair under the gazeebo in my compound, fanning myself with a bookmark and reading the hot afternoons away.

Of course there's always work I could do: preparing for future presentations and meetings, sorting paperwork, etc....But as proactive as I pride myself in being, I do have a procrastinating side to me as well. And especially when it's just so darn HOT during the day these days, my heat-induced lethargy finds support in the thought: "Well I can always do that later". In that sense, my boredom is my own fault. My boredom this past weekend was certainly short-lived though. I've been so busy here in Lome that I can't even keep my thoughts and plans straight. And when I get back, my weeks will be busy again with a number of PCV visits and as I get back into the full swing of things with the onset of December (I can't believe it's the end of the year already!).

The last chance I got, I was reading some of my fellow volunteers' internet blogs, and their creative and humorous writing made my blog seem so comparably dry and boring! I'll tell you - the greatest thing about being in country with a number of other volunteers with whom you can meet up with every once and a while is that you can laugh your heads off with them over situations that were probably frustrating and stressful in the moment, but somehow, in the presence of a sympathetic camarade, become hilarious. [To better understand my meaning of this, please read my recent blog entry entitled "A TRUE STORY" for an example of such a situation]

As a foreigner in this country who hasn't quite yet grasped an understanding of the reasons for everything that goes on, I can't emphasize enough how important it is (I've discovered) to have a sense of humor about things. Sometimes I think someone could crazy here if they couldn't just laugh things off (Emily - my best laughing partner - agrees). It's become my favorite thing about those "every-once-and-a-while" times when I can meet up and share stories with other volunteers.

As for the time in between ... I'll tell you something: As exhaustingly busy and stressful some days can occasionally be, or, in contrast, as bored as I can feel on some other seemingly endless days, there's something about those sunsets...
Especially when I'm over at the dispensaire, which is set far enough away from the heart of the village that all I hear is the chirping of the crickets, and I'm watching that sun turn from yellow to orange to hazy pink as it sets over the cornfields, with the stalks swaying in the cool breeze that's finally providing respite from the heat of the day... In the sheer utter peace I feel in those moments, I will never deny that I'm glad I'm here.