A day in the life

Happy holidays from Dapaong. I hope you are all doing well and are enjoying the season. My first full week at post was rather eventful compared to most other PCVs. Last Tuesday I got a call from the U.S Embassy and I was told that the Ambassador would be coming to small village near Dapaong for a ribbon cutting ceremony for a well that the United States, (thanks for paying your taxes everyone) had donated. The two other Dapaong volunteers and I had already been invited to the ribbon cutting, but now we were also invited to have dinner with the Ambassador and her husband. The three of us called Moussa to take us to the near-by village. Moussa is a driver in Dapaong who many volunteers use when they need to travel or have something moved from one place to another. He drives a beat up, multi-colored, station wagon with no A/C, seatbelts, or carpeting and it has several cracks in the windshield, but because of our skin color, when we first arrived to the village everyone thought that one of us was the Ambassador. It didn’t take us long to clear up that we were PCVs and not part of the Ambassador’s convoy. We were still given a nice place to sit right next to all of the village chiefs from the area and we patiently waited with everyone else for the Ambassador to arrive. While we waited we watched traditional Moba dances, (Moba is the predominate ethnic group in Dapaong and the surrounding villages) and talked with the members of the community who could speak French. After being there for about 20 minutes we saw brand new white Land Cruiser pull up and the Ambassador and her husband emerged from the car. The ceremony then kicked off with the sacrifice of a chicken in front of the Ambassador and then we all sat down and there were several speeches in both French and Moba. The village chiefs spoke as well as the chief of Dapaong. Christophe, who is the head of a woman’s rights NGO, thanked the United States for its contribution as well as all of the PCVs he has worked with in the past. The Ambassador briefly spoke and then she cut the ribbon. There was a news team there and chances are I was on Togolese television…again. (The swear-in ceremony was broadcasted on national television). After all the pageantry we were given a small meal and the three of us spoke with the Ambassador about dinner plans. We decided to go back to Dapaong and meet up again for dinner later that night.
We went to the Campamont Hotel for dinner which is where most of the tourists, aid-workers, and diplomats stay when they are traveling through Savannahs. It’s a nice place, but very expensive for a PCV. A steak will run you about $6.50. However with the ambassador picking up the tab the three of us were quick to order all three courses. The food was great and the dinner topics ranged from retirement plans for the Ambassador and her family to scuba diving. After the meal was over we were dropped off at our respective houses in the same brand new land cruiser that the Ambassador took to the ceremony earlier in the day.
I understand that having dinner with the Ambassador will most likely not be a regular occurrence but it was kind of neat to do something like that during my first week as a PCV. The next day other volunteers in Savannahs found out about our extravagant dinner and were extremely jealous, but they were also pretty impressed. It won’t be the last time that I eat at the Campamont but it will probably be the last time the bill is picked up by the head of the United States mission in Togo.