How many expats does it take to hang a hammock?

This and more exciting questions will be answered in today’s blog post. So Lome is awesome. I don’t know if I can say it’s beautiful, but it’s certainly beautiful to someone who has dreamed of going to Africa ever since she saw The Lion King as a three-year-old. I love the dirt streets (hopefully soon I’ll learn not to mind all the trash laying around or the road-kill lizard I nearly stepped on yesterday), the roadside stands selling anything and everything your heart could desire, the moto rides through traffic (which is extraordinarily tame compared to Haiti) and I love the people. It’s all so interesting to me. Moms here carry their babies on their backs all strapped in just hanging out. It’s adorable to see their little feet poking out on either side as they lean back to enjoy the ride. Also, at night, there are sometimes fires around-just people burning trash or something-but it looks so cool against the dark sky. I’ll try to snap more pictures so you all can see what life here is like rather than me trying to describe it all…

So on Sunday morning, Hannah and I met in the Paris airport and had some delicious “Pain au Chocolate” and “Café au Lait” while we caught up a bit. It was so exciting to see her face amidst so many unfamiliar things. It has been SUCH a blessing to be here together and I’m so thankful God worked that one out. Our next flight was about 6 hours and it was great, we had our own row and just got to watch movies and play Who Wants to be a Millionaire in French. (I may or may not have made her drop everything to watch the first five minutes of The Lion King with me as we flew over a very pride-rock-esque area. Seriously though, it gets you pumped up...)

When we landed in Lome, we waited for a bit in customs, but had no trouble getting through or getting our bags. Will and Margaret were right there to meet us and it was so good to see them. They are pretty much the best hosts we could have asked for. We had a nice meal at their house and then went to meet our housing host, Becky. She is an Ex-pat from the UK who works for an NGO here. (By the way, an expat, or expatriate, is basically a foreigner living in a different country). She is lovely and our house is wonderful. Hannah and I have our own room with beds and a wardrobe. My favorite part of the house is the roof terrace- pictures to come. We are really blessed to be living with Becky. She’s a lot of fun and has made us feel right at home.

Will has been taking us around town getting us set up before we start our research next week. He speaks French well and has been invaluable to us. Customs are just different here so it takes some getting used to. My favorite purchase so far has been our moto helmets. Mine has a Togolese flag stamped on the front and the back- it’s ok, you can be jealous.

Hannah and I have been enjoying getting settled in and spending time with our hosts. The food and coffee are amazing. I’m probably going to eat better (and cheaper for sure) here than I would have at home. Yesterday went grocery shopping in town. They had everything you could need. It was really nice. I wanted to cry tears of joy when I saw all the good milk on the shelves. If you know me well, you know I have a thing about milk. It has to be fresh and high quality for me to get near it (really, what did you expect when I was raised on Turners quality milk?). One of my biggest fears about Africa was that the only way I’d get milk was straight out of the cow or something. So when I saw shelves of fresh, highly purified milk, I was so relieved. It’s the little things in life . . .

I also smiled when I saw this guy hanging out on a shelf. You can take a girl out of Pittsburgh, but you can’t take the pride for all things Heinz out of the girl.  A little taste of home.

After our lovely trip into town and some really good lunch with Will and Margaret, Hannah and I came home for some down time. We decided to spend some time on the terrace and wanted to try out the new two-person hammock I brought. It took us way longer than it should have to figure out how and where to hang it best, but in the end, it was a success. This is the life.

Tmorrow we’ll be travelling north where most of our research will be done. Looking forward to getting started with that and seeing a real savings group after studying about them for so long. Hannah and I are both sort of nerds when it comes to this stuff. We love research. Seeing the lock boxes in person will probably be one of the highlights of our trip. For those of you who didn’t study microfinance for a semester, don’t worry, you’ll hear all about lock boxes from me soon.