Settling in Togo

We've been in Togo now for a little more than a month. We still don't really feel that familiar with Lome', the port city we are docked in, but we are slowly getting out and about. When we arrived in February the country was gearing up for elections and we knew that our freedom of movement would be limited. Personal travel away from the ship was suspended for a little over a week during the election and the initial post-election period. We heard lots of reports of large gatherings and some protests, but things seemed to resolve in a mostly peaceful manner. In 2005 there was quite a lot of violence surrounding the Togo elections, so this year many of the Togolese here in Lome' closed their bank accounts and left the country for Ghana or Benin in case violence broke out. We had all been praying that things would go well this year, and apparently they have. The approach to screening patients has been very different this year as well due to the elections. Instead of having a very large screening, effort has been made to avoid large gatherings and have multiple small screenings. I think this system has been working fairly well. Jenny and I were involved in the first screening when there was a lot of uncertainty about how big the turn out would be, but we haven't been involved in the more recent screenings. We, as a family, hope to get out a little more in the coming weeks, but we are often too tired to even want to leave the ship on the weekends. Sooner or later, it seems, cabin fever should force us out more.

In the past month or so I have finally gotten around to doing some reading in the evenings. I finally read "The Shack" by William Paul Young that had been much discussed here. It explores some basic issues underlying our conflicts with God. I have also been reading "Have a Little Faith" by Mitch Albom on a kindle borrowed from a friend. I've found both books very interesting.

A team from Discovery Channel in Canada joined our ship in Tenerife and has recently left the ship after finishing filming an episode of "Mighty Ships" for the cable network. I expect it will air in May or so in Canada. It's possible that it may be seen outside of Canada as well. It will be interesting to see what the film team came away with.

Jenny made heart-shaped waffles and eggs for Valentines Day. And Jenny and Bethany made some pretty pink play dough from scratch using beet juice for the coloring. Bethany made crepes (from white play dough) with scoops of strawberry ice cream (from pink play dough). We all would have liked for it to be real. I spent some time in the crew galley too making real chocolate souffle's. I had forgotten how to make them so the second attempt was much better than the first.

Running club for the kids, which we didn't have in Benin due to the dock conditions, has started up again on Thursday evenings. The kids are having a lot of fun with that, and we love to watch too. I ran with the kids last Thursday. They have a few fun games at the beginning and then fit the kids with pedometers and set them running up and down the dock for 45 minutes or so. They love it and we love that they love it. Bethany saw a rat run under one of the vehicles parked on the dock during running club Thursday. It ran out from under one of the shipping containers that form the wall around our dock space and probably decided that seeing all those kids running was a terrifying sight and immediately headed for cover for fear of being trampled. Good thinking, rat!

A few weeks ago Bethany aquired another temporary pet. She found a very sluggish fly in the dining room and decided to bring it back to the cabin. Jenny and I weren't too excited about the idea, but figured there wasn't any harm in it. Besides, Bethany misses her cat Smokey and has wanted a hamster for years. In light of that it seemed a bit cruel to deny her the pleasure of having a pet fly for a day. Bethany kept the fly in the top of a shoebox without a cover and named it "Mungry the Hungry Fly". She gave it bits of apple and drops of water on a piece of plastic. She even provided some furniture and decor for the fly's new home. And the fly seemed to like being there okay. It stayed on the shoebox cover for six days!! Every day Bethany tended to it and fed it. Finally the evening of the sixth day it left. Where it went we don't know. Perhaps it got strong enough on apple juice and water to fly away.

John