Toby!

I did it! I got a puppy! I’ve been asking around village since December for a puppy, but with no luck. Then last week I saw a dog with two puppies following her… so I asked all the kids in the quartièr which house the dog belonged to, tracked them down, and got Toby. He’s about two months old, and has been a lot of work, but so worth it. Seriously, I don’t know how I did it before having a dog. We go for walks and he follows me around village, and everyone is learning his name already. One really awkward moment (thank goodness there is no ‘awkward’ in Togo): I was in the marché with Toby and a group of people asked me his name. “Toby,” I said, and everyone nodded and said “Toh-BEEEEE” except this one guy who said, “Toby? Isn’t that the name of that slave?” He then proceeded to act out the scene from “Roots” in which the nasty slave owner yells “Yer name’s Toby!” and hits him with the whip... to a captive audience. Of course, Mogou has no electricity. Two people have TVs that run on generators that they turn on once or twice a week. But we’ve all seen “Roots.” Thank you, globalization. What are the odds? Mortified, I grabbed Toby and ran off to buy mangoes.

In hot season, there are not too many good things. But there are a couple. One, no bugs. It’s too hot and dry. Two, mangoes! I’ve been eating them til my mouth gets sore. First it was just the little stringy ones, but now we’ve got the nice big normal mangos almost every day in the marché.  It makes the 115 degree heat kinda bearable. We were hoping to get the electricity up and running before hot season, so we could all buy fans, but no such luck. Maybe by next year…

Apart from the heat and the dog, I’ve been working on a planning a girls camp for students in our canton this August. Working title: Camp Etoiles du Nord. It’s been really fun planning it with my Mango PCV neighbors and Togolese homologues, and the girls from Mogou are already getting really stoked for it. More details to come, as we’re turning in our application for funding this month, so stay tuned!

Hope you’re all doing well—I miss you tons! xoxox