Wildlife and Bugs?!

I had a request for a blog post about what kind of wildlife and bugs we see on a regular basis.  Well, we don’t live in East Africa, we don’t have amazing African Safaris here, no lions, zebras, giraffes, or elephants…that I know of.  We have been to Hippo Lake in Mango, Togo where we’ve spotted bumps of hippos popping out of the water, but that’s the most exciting wildlife we’ve seen in Togo. 

In reality, there are many similar animals and insects here as in the United States, such as beetles, roaches, termites, millipedes, ants, flies, dragonflies, birds, bats, cats, dogs, pigs, cows, goats, donkeys, chickens.  Here they are much more visible though.  The creepy crawlies are inside and outside the home- as much as you try to keep them out.  The animals, except for donkeys (which are always seen tied up and pulling things) are found roaming all around town, scrounging the ground for any food-garbage they can find all day long, and then they go home at night. 

Some of the bugs look a little different here, like this millipede:

This is one of our “friends”.  We have a few geckos that live with us to cut down on the insect population.

This next picture was taken on our wall outside.  I’m not sure what these bugs are called, but I call them “red” bugs or “ackee” bugs.  Circled below are the stages of growth.  We had a bit of an infestation of these red bugs inside and outside of our house, thanks to our lovely ackee trees (February post), NOT.  These bugs were all over the ackee fruit/nut when in season and even made it inside where they started laying their eggs all over our walls and furniture.  Little orange dots here and there and everywhere.  The little orange dots changed to red dots after a few days and the next day those dots started moving.  Thankfully we saw them and were able to get rid of most of them and cleaned up all the fallen ackee and their nuts.  There are still a bunch around the trees, but most of these annoying, but pretty much harmless bugs, are out of our house now, except for a handful that fly in every night.

We don’t have any chickens or goats of our own yet, but we do let these 3 animals live inside our wall.  Sometimes we even bathe them!

This is not our tree, but we do have bats in our mango tree.  We hear them squeaking every night.  I really hope they don’t bite into ALL of our mangos.  I’d really like to eat at least ONE of our own mangos this year.  Soon they will be ripe enough to see.

Some of these cows are on the national highway.  We are on a dirt road a long the national highway.  You can see a dead tree on the far left of the picture that is set up as a barricade for the highway.

I’m sure you see the goat on top of the luggage of van in front of us, but also notice the overloaded semi in front of him which has a handful of men sitting on top of the bags of charcoal or rice or corn or all of the above.  This is a very normal picture.

Typhoid Fever

I can’t say I’ve ever had a fever as bad as this fever.  I’ve written a few blog posts while fighting a fever before, but there was no writing of a post during this one.

Let’s back up a few weeks to the beginning of my bout with typhoid.  Incubation period is usually 1-2 weeks.  I’m not sure when or where I got it.  It could have been anywhere from a hand shake to a fly landing on my food.  Who knows, but I got it.  Feces from someone else who’s gone through what I’ve gone through got in me.  How disgusting!  But that’s not as bad as the 24+ hours that I had the fever.  

Sunday afternoon I was making mango muffins with Sam and I started feeling sick.  Shortly after I could feel my temperature rising.  I could feel something going through my veins.  I started getting chills (a feeling I haven’t felt in a long time) and achy in places, so I laid down.  The kids kept coming in and I kept sending them away.  I kept drifting in and out of sleep.  A few hours later I was achy all over and needing to go to the bathroom all the time.  I'll spare you the details.  I couldn’t just stay in there though, I didn’t have the energy to sit up.  I kept going back in forth with the worst vertigo I’ve ever had.  Thankfully, I had furniture and walls to help keep my balance, sort of, though I never fell.  We have a couple of Malaria tests on hand, so Micah tested me.  Negative.  When I wasn’t in the bathroom I was sleeping.  I slept the most I’ve ever slept for 24 hours minus all the runs to the bathroom.  Too bad I couldn’t enjoy it more.  I couldn’t seem to convince myself that I needed to go to the clinic though.

Thank the Lord, after taking care of the kids for 24 hours straight by himself while monitoring my condition, my husband decided I needed to go to the clinic.  Was it more for him or me?  I’m just kidding, he loves me!  I was a little hesitant to go still.  I didn’t want to pick up any other sickness.  At the same time, I wasn’t sure I could get up and walk around.  I didn’t think I could make the car ride without needing a bathroom.  The clinic is really close to our house, but I didn’t know if they had a bathroom or what the conditions might be.  Shortly after being told we were going, I conceded and hoped for the best.  

We arrived and after asking a few people where to go, we found ourselves in an office  of a lady who was speaking with another young woman and toddler sitting up on a nearby cot.  They weren’t there to be seen though, they were clearly visiting with the lady who in turn was asking us a few questions.  So after, a man came in and asked us more questions.  Around here doctors, nurses, random people sitting in a doctors office, and whomever do not introduce themselves nor do they wear any kind of uniform or badge.  We had no idea who we were talking to, but they were asking us questions and writing in my “carnet”.  There are no files of records here.  Every person who goes to a medical facility is issued their own “carnet” (little book) in which symptoms, diagnosis, lab test results, prescriptions, etc. are written down.  I was checked for malaria again, but it was negative.  He wanted to check my blood for a few other possibilities.

He walked me to the lab to have my blood drawn and tested only to find out the lab was closed for the day.  But the doctor tracked down one of the lab technicians for us.  We watched the technician like a hawk.  Well, I wanted to, but I was a little out of it, so I watched more like a pelican.  I did see the needle was new, but it didn't seem like he put anything on the cotton ball to clean my skin. I hope I’m wrong.  

After the blood test, the doctor asked if I wanted to lay down while we waited for results.  Thank the Lord!  I was so exhausted, achy, sweaty, out of it.  Of course I wanted to lay down.  He took us to a small room with 4 cots in it.  One had someone’s belongings on it.  For just a second I was hesitant about laying down on the cot. Who knows if it was clean or not.  But only for a second, ugh, I was way to exhausted to do anything but lay down.  While we waited, another person came in and laid on another bed.  The results came back and the doctor explained them to Micah.  There are no privacy laws here, others could definitely hear the results. White blood cells- normal, hemoglobin- good, another test for malaria- negative.  Typhoid fever- positive.  Wow!  

Didn’t see that coming.  Of course I didn’t really see much of anything coming.  Micah said they’d have to give me one injection right away, then we’d have to come back in the morning to get another injection.  First, Micah had to go buy the goods from the pharmacy which fortunately is right there on site.  The doctor warned me that I might feel like I need to throw up during the injection.  Oh, great!  It ended up just being a metallic taste in my mouth.  We were done.  We went home for the night.  It wasn’t too long after that when I started to feel much better.  The fever went away and the aches and vertigo weren’t as bad.  I wasn’t quite as delirious as I had been.  It wasn’t until this point that I realized how out of it I was.  

We went in the next morning.  The doctor just happened to be walking in at the same time and he took us straight into the lab to give them my stool sample, even though there was a line- of some sort.  There was hardly anyone there the day before, but they only take stool samples (amidst other samples) between 7 and 8 a.m. followed by handing out the results at 11am, so there were quite a few people there that morning.  He showed me where to go to get the injection.  I was really able to watch this time.  I watched her mix the powder with the water (that came with the powder in a little container that said clean water).  I watched her fill the needle.  I watched her clean my skin.  I watched her stick me.  I watched her push it slowly into my arm.  I watched it all.  And I realized even more how delirious I was the day before.  When she was done, we went home.  We’d have to go back at 11 to find out the results of the stool sample.  Most everyone else just waited the 4 hours around the clinic.  

I didn’t actually go back with Micah to get my results.  He was able to get my results and talk to the doctor without me being there.  That’s when Micah found out he is actually a registered nurse, not a doctor.  Thanks America for having badges!  

None-the-less, I am now feeling much better.  I’m still taking another antibiotic to completely get rid of the typhoid, or so we hope and pray.  I’m not really up for eating much yet.  Although, I have made myself eat one of those mango muffins which Sam I were making oh so long ago.  We are being even more cleanly about things and praying that nobody else in our family gets sick too.  Thank you for your prayers as well.

Thanks to Valerie, a fellow LCMS missionary here, for watching the kids during our trips to the clinic and Bekah for being my go to state-side nurse for questions!  :)

Oh, and for reference, I did take the typhoid vaccine before coming here.  It’s only effective about 48% of the time though.

Top 10 Differences

Living in Dapaong, Togo compared to Milwaukee, WI

1. Often electricity goes out a few times a day (or more). 
2. 100 degrees Fahrenheit in February.

3. You don’t stop to kill every bug you see, just the creepiest ones.

4. It’s always hot.  Even in the mornings when the guards are wearing their long sleeves and it feels nice to us, it’s still actually hot.

5. 1 month (or more) of dust in Milwaukee = 1 day of dust in Dapaong. 

6. You have to clean every day, not only because of the dust, but all the dead bugs that didn’t make it through the night.

7. Things break way too easily.

8. Occasionally the water goes out for a few hours (or more).

9. Often people don’t drive the right direction.

10. People - even children! - can walk, ride bikes, herd cattle, sell stuff, and take naps on the national highway.

This video was taken in August during the rainy season.  Not much has changed, except for the lack of puddles, the craziness is very much normal.

I had to trim down the video a lot to upload it to my blog, this is probably 1/3 of the road through Dapaong.  Dapaong is known as a market town.  You can see a lot of little shops along the road where people try to sell things that they've bought off of semis traveling through Dapaong from the port in Lomé to Burkina Faso.  Imagine a town wide garage sale and that's pretty much Dapaong every day of the year.  Many clothes and shoes that are donated to Africa from Goodwill or other donors can be found here for very cheap.  

Ackee

We were told we had 2 cashew trees in our yard. Our guardians were certain of it too.  Yummy!   Then we researched how to prepare cashews.  Wow, not easy, in fact, not really safe.  Come to find out, we don’t have cashew trees.  After seeing the inside of the fruit, we realized they weren’t cashews.  We did more research and finally found a picture of what’s growing on our trees.  

Ackee!  Ever heard of it?  I hadn’t.  Ackee is actually the national fruit of Jamaica.  Ackee trees originated in West Africa and were imported to Jamaica in the 1700s.  Ackee has been banned in the United States because it’s toxic.  Well, not when it’s ripe, but if you pick an ackee before it’s ripe and pry it open, it is toxic.  It causes what the Jamaicans call “Jamaican Vomiting Sickness” which often leads to death.  Thankfully, it’s easy to tell when they are ripe, because they break open on their own, revealing their black seeds. 

I have now tried ackee raw and also boiled & sautéed.  It tastes alright, not great, but not bad.  It was actually similar to scrambled eggs when boiled and then sautéed, but a little nutty.  

I haven’t thrown up yet, so no toxicity.  However, the three times I’ve eaten some, I’ve felt sick and had to make a few extra trips to the bathroom…  I don’t think I’ll be trying it again.  

Here’s to hoping our Mango tree bears good fruit!

Eating Like Americans in Africa

Never have I used so much oil!  I was shocked when I saw our 3L bottle of oil was almost gone in less than a month.  I never used that much oil in a whole year when living in the States.  I still try not to use much oil, but Africans love to use oil.  I felt so sick to my stomach thinking about how our family had ingested all that oil in less than a month.  We asked our house helper to use less and now a 3L bottle of oil lasts about 2 months, but that still seems like a lot of oil (fat).  Somehow we aren’t gaining weight though, in fact Micah and I (mostly Micah) are losing weight.  It’s not just from sweating either.  Instead, it’s because we don’t have many processed foods or fast food at all.  We drink more purified water and eat a lot of fresh produce that hasn’t had a bunch of chemicals, oil, and sugars added to it.  So we can add as much fat and sugar as we like and are still consuming less than we did in the U.S.  As long as I don’t make too many cookies anyway.  Bad addiction.

I didn't have any pictures to add to this post, so I took some pictures of the food we have here.

In our fridge:  We have lots of drinks (mainly water), margarine, mayonnaise, yummy pork broth (from cooking a bunch of pork in our pressure cooker), leftovers, yogurt, watermelon, cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, bananas, plantain, finger paint, hard boiled eggs (raw eggs we keep out of the fridge), chocolate!, butter, ketchup, mustard, parmesan cheese (from the States), homemade ranch dressing, play-doh, more beverages, and jelly.  Everything was purchased here except for the parmesan cheese, ziplock containers, and pitcher.

I’m still working on perfecting a variety of dishes to prepare for our family.  Most of our meals start with a salad or have some kind of vegetable and end with a fruit for dessert.  There are a few dishes my family sees often.  Having little kids, mac and cheese & hot dogs was the first perfected dish.  We can get many varieties of pasta and Laughing Cow cheese (“The Cow Who Laughs” is the reverse-translation from the French).  That’s pretty much the only kind of cheese; the local cheese just doesn't cut it for us Wisconsinites.  The hot dogs are imported and chicken based, but surprisingly pretty good—maybe that’s because they’re processed!  My spaghetti sauce from tomato paste isn’t the best yet, but we’re getting there.  I’ve been trying to use my Italian seasonings sparingly, since I don’t have a lot, nor can I buy more here.  I think our favorite dish so far is a made up Mexican rice dish.  Our house helper makes us a pot of beans in a tomato sauce each week and I make some rice and add some taco seasoning and laughing cow cheese and/or sour cream (old homemade yogurt).  The first time I tried mixing all these things, I could almost taste Chipotle Mexican Grill…almost!

In our little pantry:  Top left we have my "Pseudo-American" shelf of items which are mostly found here, except for some of my baking ingredients - cream of tartar, vanilla, and food coloring - along with the cheddar cheese & sour cream powders which came from the States.  Top right we have my African and American shelf: pasta, rice, corn meal, beans, milk powder, tomato paste, chicken bouillon, curry powder, bags, skewers, and matches.  Bottom left we have my all American shelf, the Coca-Cola and potatoes are from here though.  The Ziplock container is full of food from the States like Gatorade powder, pepperoni, pre-cooked bacon (well there once was), M&Ms and granola bars.  The bottom right is my all African shelf, ignames (yams) and in the back are our 2 African cooking pots and a grinding pot.

So after 5 months of living in Africa we are still finding new foods and trying new things, but we have thankfully found enough foods thus far to survive well!  A few other foods I’ve tried and we’ve all really liked, but just don’t make every week because of time and/or lack of ingredients, are pizza, cole slaw, cheeseburger soup, tortillas, cinnamon rolls, & pulled pork.

In our little freezer (someday we will get around to getting a solar chest freezer):  The bottom drawer has meat, cheese, and frozen water bottles.  The middle drawer has vegetables.  The top drawer has flour, sugar, coffee, milk powder, and FanIce (ice cream).

Foods we can’t get here that we ate a lot of in the states include good meat, bacon, pepperoni, ground beef, lunch meat, cheese (except Laughing Cow), broccoli, sweet corn, grapes, berries, strawberries, most seasonings, powdered sugar, good breakfast food, American chocolate (we have found a place with European chocolates though that are quite satisfying), chips (except for Pringles, oddly enough), real ice cream and custard.

It definitely helps that we have an excellent house helper that cooks 2 African dishes for us each week (which actually turns into 4 or more meals with leftovers).  She also comes early enough to make breakfast 3 times a week.  That only leaves 14 other meals I have to plan and prepare during the week.  I figured the other day, if we didn’t have a house helper who helped with the cooking, we would be going out to eat a couple times each week at least.  If we just went out one time a week, it would cost us more than we pay our house helper for an entire week.  Having a house helper actually saves us money in the long run.  And that’s even taking the cost of food into consideration.  She makes us African meals that don’t cost much at all, actually saving us even more money than if I was cooking a half local, half imported meal.

Perhaps in another post, I will touch on the African dishes which our house helper has made and is teaching me.

Weather

That's not fog in the distance.  That's dust.  Also notice the man on the motorcycle wearing a coat and near the center of the picture a man buying a coat on the side of the road.  

Welcome to our "winter" aka harmattan.

If dust was snow (try replacing the word snow every time you see the word dust below), we’d have a white Christmas for sure, possibly even a blizzard.  It’s harmattan season here in Dapaong (December-February), which means dry, “cold”, dusty days.

Dusty
Thankfully the dust doesn’t fall from the sky, but it does blow around a lot.  The first dust storm which we experienced started in the middle of the night.  I remember waking up around 2am and not being able to get back to sleep.  It smelled and felt like I was breathing in dust.  Unfortunately, I was too tired to realize we were experiencing a dust storm or I would have gotten up to close all the windows and cover a few things.  You live and learn!  When we woke up we could see the dust hovering in the air outside…and inside our house along with a nice layer of dust on everything throughout the house.  Thankfully, we haven’t had another dust storm since the first one, giving us time to put some things away and find coverings for bookshelves and the like.  Even without another dust storm, there's dust everywhere, inside and out.  We often feel like we are breathing in dust. (haha, that’s kind of funny replacing the word dust with snow here)

“Cold”
The first dust storm didn’t just bring dust from the north, but it also brought the cold—cold according to West Africans, that is.  We see people walking around selling coats and blankets, and most everyone is wearing long sleeve shirts, jackets, coats, or shawls (the ladies use a panel of fabric which can also be used as a skirt, baby carrier, etc).  To us Americans, it feels amazing to not be sweating all day long!  The temperature gets down to 63F at night, but still up to 93F during the day.  To me, it feels like the beginning of fall and I love it (except for the dust in my nose!).  I love no longer seeing 30 degrees celsius (86F) on my indoor thermometer when I wake up in the morning.  Now it gets down to 25.5 degrees celsius (78F) in the morning, it's fantastic!  Sam's been cold in the mornings even with pants and a long sleeve shirt... he's so African!

Rainy
Our first 3 months here in Dapaong (August, September, & October) were filled with hot and humid, rainy days.  At first it seemed like we’d have a rain storm every afternoon.  I realized this quickly because I’d always be rushing outside to get our clothes off the line before the rains poured down on them.  After a few weeks, the rains seemed to be more sporadic, coming anytime during the day, with a few dry days here and there.

Dry
It hasn’t rained since October and probably won’t rain again until May or June.  November was dry and hot.  The temperatures were higher, but the rain and humidity were gone, so it was bearable.  Along with the rain and humidity, the majority of bugs disappeared!  Don’t get me wrong, we still have plenty of bugs, but at least we don’t have to go around vacuuming up a bazillion flying bugs in the kids’ rooms before they go to bed at night anymore (that’s another story).

Hot
It’s always hot, even when it’s “cold”.  And yet, the heat wave season is yet to come in March!

Holidays

Celebrating holidays isn’t like it used to be.  We used to go to so many fall and winter events in Milwaukee, from Fall festivals and pumpkin patches to Christmas parades and Candy Cane Lane (several blocks of Christmas lights) just to name a few.  Really, we did a lot of activities with our friends in the fall and winter and had so much fun.  It’s not easy to think about these past events while casting aside the desire for what we can’t have.  Yet, it is nice to reflect upon all the good times we had and the good times we will have.

Annual family picture at Candy Cane Lane, December 5, 2014.

Now, we don’t have a lot of decorations nor events to go to which remind us that Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas are just around the corner.  In fact I didn’t really think about Thanksgiving until the week of.  On top of zero fall decorations and activities, I didn’t have the cool fall weather to warn me Thanksgiving was coming soon.  It was hotter than ever in November (yet thankfully no longer humid).

I don’t want Advent and Christmas to pass us by, so we are working hard making Advent and Christmas decorations.  Not that we let the other holidays pass us by.  The kids worked hard on their Luther’s seals for Reformation, pumpkins for Halloween, and turkeys for Thanksgiving.

The only part of the house that was decorated for fall was the kids' doors.  That's slowly changing for Advent and Christmas.  (The pictures on their doors are the kids with their Baptismal sponsors at this time last year.)

Now they’ve made an Advent wreath with candles and also ornaments for our Advent tree.  For that, we have an advent calendar with little books that the kids hang on the tree each night during evening prayers.  Yet to come in the next few weeks are a toilet paper roll nativity scene amongst many other crafts.

Right now, Sam is really into cutting and gluing things which is perfect for making decorations for our house (since we did not bring many at all).  We’ve gone through a lot of colored paper and are unfortunately running low.  Hopefully we have enough to make it through all our Christmas crafts.  Thankfully, Sam has learned to be resourceful and color a whole piece of white paper the color he needs for something, such as orange for pumpkins to put all around the house.  White paper is easy enough to find around here; bright colored paper not so much.

So, since we don’t have holiday events to go to (except for the Reformation Celebration at the CLET, which was very nice to have!), we are working hard to remember and celebrate holidays by doing lots of crafts.  Starting new traditions isn’t always easy, but can still be lots of fun.  Our kids aren't phased in the least.  Sam is the only one old enough to remember some of the things we did in Milwaukee thanks to lots of pictures, yet he really enjoys all the crafts now.

Blessings this Advent season as you, too, prepare for the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ.