Snuggs on the loose: Life in Togo

I got the chance to visit one of our translators at her home a couple weekends ago. It really put into perspective how fortunite and privileged I am. At home I always considered myself to be middle-income; not wealthy, but not barely scraping by each month either. After seeing Amele's house, I realize that actually I'm very weathly in comparison, and should never complain about what I don't have. Amale's house is less than half the size of our cabin here on the ship approximately the size of my parent's back porch. Our cabin isn't big compared to my house back home, or even an apartments back home, although it is considerably larger than our first cabin. But after seeing Amale's house, I feel like I'm living in luxury. It's all in the perspective, I guess.

I was so amazed, and blessed - I think that word gets used too much sometimes, but it definitely applies here - by her wonderful hospitality and generosity. She had decided to teach us how to cook African food. I'm not the best cook to begin with, but turns out it was quite easy, because it was seafood soup! Started out by heating water on a small kerosene stove - that was sitting in a cardboard box, Yikes!

Then in go the greens, which became very slimy, followed by saltpeter mixed in water (which just looked like muddy water). After that cooked for a little while, in went the prawns (shrimp), crabs (shell and all!), oil mixed with some spices that turned it red, and some sea salt. While we were making this, Amele's friend was cooking on a small wood stove beside us making.......well.........I don't know what it's called, but it's a thick, sticky concoction made out of water and cornmeal.

Then it was time to eat! Don't need utensils here, just dig in......with your right

hand that is. It is very rude to use your left hand to eat with. It was quite tasty, although I had my doubts when I was watching it cook. The process goes like this: dip your fingers in the soup, pinch off a bit of the doughy stuff and use it to scoop up some soup, swirl your hand around a little bit so that the sliminess breaks and doesn't drip on you,

and pop it in your mouth! Yum! Then, if you're brave, or African, you choose a nice morsel of crab and eat it - that's right - shell and all! Crunchy! I wasn't brave enough to try it, but one of the girls with us braved it and took a small bite. She said it wasn't too bad, but I didn't care to share that experience with her.

After we finished eating she took us around to see the lake nearby and we found a wonderful climbing tree. So we all climbed it and took pictures. There were several Africans around just standing there watching us, I'm sure they were thinking "these yovos have really lost it!" But it was lots of fun!

It's always interesting to see other ways of living, to get a small glimpse into someone else's life, and wonder "how different would my life, and views on things, be if I had grown up here instead?"