"MOVE MOVE MOVE!! WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE!!"
Our truck bounces to and fro as we race down the dirt road like a bat out of hell. Sitting in the bed of the truck, I grip the side like a vice to prevent myself from being launched out. Looking behind us, hundreds of bodies are hurtling towards us, screaming, yelling, and shaking their fists in the air. Toto stands next to me, sweat streaming down his face while he slaps the roof of the truck, yelling "FASTER FASTER! DON'T SLOW DOWN! They're GAINING!!" I turn around to observe our pursuers, and think to myself how this really is much more bizarre dressed up in a Santa suit....
So an angry mob chasing us you ask? A coup d'etat? Terrorists? While all are certainly frequent occurrences in this part of the world, you may be surprised to find out that I was merely caught up in the melee of delivering presents as Santa, and the onslaught of overly excited children that followed. More on that later.....
For now, let me say: Joyeux Noel, Joyeux Année, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!
Once again I’m back with more to say! I hope the holidays treated you all well, and you were able to be surrounded by family and loved ones. While the holidays can sometimes be a hard time when abroad, and rather nostalgic-ridden, I was fortunate enough to have some wonderful experiences with wonderful people, which definitely got me through. So here are a few anecdotes from the festive times in Togo.
CHRISTMAS IN TOGO
I was asked by a lot of people: “what do Togolese do for Christmas?” Well it appears that they do the same thing that they do pretty much any time there’s a holiday, birthday, funeral, church service, family reunion, social get-together, or anything at all: get a bunch of friends and family together at someone’s home to eat and drink. Togolese seem relatively low on variety. What is funny though is that even if the day of the holiday itself is rather calm, the three week period surrounding Christmas and New Year’s (who are we kidding, more like whole month of December) is apparently referred to as “the holiday period”, which means everyone will go out more at night, buy more things in marches, and spend more time in bars. So in essence, they celebrate “the time” of the holidays, instead of perhaps the actual “holidays”
TRAVELS TO THE COAST OF IVORY!
One of the more fantastic parts of the past month was a week trip I took to Cote D’Ivoire (Ivory Coast). My supervisor, Brenda (the Embassy Public Affairs Officer) is married to an Ivorian named Serge, so they invited me to drive with them across the Ghanaian coast all the way to Abidjan in Cote D’Ivoire. Let me describe Serge for a moment. He drives a big SUV with giant decals on either side of a massive dragon fighting some barbarian (apparently called “the God of War”). He himself looks like a huge, corn row-coiffed body builder, and often wears big blingy silver necklaces laden with his name, accompanied by silver rings on all his fingers and multiple silver bracelets also laden with his name. He’s a character.
So a little background on Cote D'Ivoire: Cote D’Ivoire used to be what Ghana is now: the richest and most developed and stable country of the region. However somewhere along the way it succumbed to all the usual stories of civil wars and coups that plague most African countries. The funny thing about it is that it still bears the remnants of its former glory. For one its biggest city, Abidjan, is a complete powerhouse, and bigger and badder in every way than Lome. Bigger buildings (skyscrapers even), more paved roads, more modern shopping malls, endless restaurants, bars, and nightclubs, and a legitimate middle class. It actually reminded me a lot of Seattle because the city is built along a bunch of different lakes, lagoons, and hills, has many bridges, its skyscrapers are just off the water, it has terrible traffic, and even has its own Capitol Hill with the working class but rather edgy and young neighborhood where everyone goes out at, Yopougon. So I spent most of the time exploring the city, often with Serge’s cousin Constantine.
I then took a side trip to the official capital (and decidedly odd city) Yamoussoukro, with two friends from Seattle (Becky and Carl) that were also in town for a Fulbright and travel. This place was bizarre. It was the village of one of the former presidents, who decided to build a giant basilica there, the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro. Guinness Book of World Records lists it as the biggest church in the world. Yes, bigger than St. Peters in Rome. Apparently the Vatican asked that it not be, so the dome is smaller, yet they put a big cross on top making it bigger. It’s huge, each seat individually air-conditioned, admittedly beautiful, and awkwardly out of place in a city of only about 200,000. Apparently whenever President Boigny was asked the price, his response was always “faith has no price” (and so no one actually knows). He was also asked by the pope to build a hospital before he would bless it. So while the Basilica was finished in 3 years (and was blessed), I noticed that the hospital was still under construction (over 20 years later)....sigh. On top of this he also built six-lane roads (lined with street lights) throughout the city that no one drives on, two huge 5 star hotels that no one stays at, and a giant building for his “Foundation” which apparently sits empty. At least he dreamed big.
My New Years in Cote D'Ivoire was also very memorable. We went to the town of Serge’s family, an hour outside of Abidjan. All 50-ish of his family members gathered in a big courtyard, and at about 3:00 pm they opened coolers full of beer, brought out food, turned on the music, and started dancing. This lasted literally nonstop from that time on New Year’s Eve until about 4:00 pm New Year’s day. People took naps in their seat, then woke up and continued dancing. I’m not ashamed to admit my first dance with an Ivorian was when the family grandma grabbed me (surprisingly forcibly) by the arm and dragged me to the dance floor. I’m also not ashamed to admit that I was impressed by her moves too! The other funny part about the experience was how all throughout the night, people would party with the family, then leave in groups of cousins or uncles and go join mini-parties at other parts of the town for a while, come back to the main family party again, only to leave again other parties elsewhere. It was like the whole town was one big fiesta.
SANTA CAME TO TOWN
Now to return to the narrative at the beginning of this e-mail. So a few days before Christmas my friend and Togolese colleague Toto (Toto from Togo... it's just too good) approached me with a simple request: “Hey Phil, would you like deliver some presents as Santa to a few schools?” It sounded like fun, so I obliged. When I arrived at the school that was putting on this event, I discovered that not only was I going to dress as Santa, but I was going to do it mounted on a pile of gifts on the back of a WELL-decorate truck (my “sleigh”), assisted in throwing gifts by other teachers in the truck (perhaps my “elves”), flanked by men on horseback (ostensibly my “reindeer”), further flanked by men on stilts and drummers driving around on scooters (not sure about the link here) and finally surrounded by a police escort (yeah here neither). It was a veritable parade! We drove/trotted/walked all around Lomé, throwing gifts to everyone we saw. Ideally it was for kids, but the adults were pretty competitive too. I saw one woman do a complete tuck-n-roll to grab a stuffed animal. The whole time we’re shouting and waving and playing music and having a jolly good time.
The first school we went to was chaos. Maybe this was the first time Santa had ever visited, because these kids were freaking out to the point where they started storming the truck for gifts, causing the parade organizers to panic and pull us out. Obviously the one way to get already overly hyper kids to freak out more is to start running away from them, so seeing Santa flee prompted the kids to chase us down. So the for the next 15 minutes the scene was of a truck loaded with Santa racing down a small dirt road, with about 300-ish kids sprinting after us as if participating in a revolutionary mob. It was fantastic. The other schools went fine. I got to get out, sit down, and hand gifts out to kids. We were even able to give gifts to an orphanage too. The irony was that it was not even the second day when I was asked again to play Santa at an Embassy/expatriate party. This time I had to ride in on a bike and give ice cream to everyone (don’t ask), then sit in front of the X-mas tree, lead kids in song, and have each of them sit on my lap and tell me what they wanted for X-mas. I’m proud to say I only had a 25% frequency rate of kids crying on my lap. Apparently I could start moonlighting with this gig.
So that’s been my holidays! I’ll end this abruptly because I wrote yet again a novel, but I hope you are all doing well and enjoying the beginnings of 2013. Know that I miss you all a lot, and you have an open door in Togo whenever you decide to come!
Best Wishes,
Phil
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