Bonne Année!

Although it’s hard to compete with the excitement and anticipation of my recent trip to France/Switzerland, when I was planning it I was very keen on finishing in time to be back in village for New Years. Last year I celebrated New Years in a friend’s village and I could tell how it had disappointed them. They build up to this party for quite a while and is, I’d say, their biggest “fête”, even more so than “Premiere Mai” which I wrote about months back. People make sure to prepare enough to party well, and since we’re coming relatively fresh off of the harvest, a lot of people are as well off now as they will be for the rest of the year since they’ve been able to sell their surplus. That means that they have some money to spend for now. Yes, money is precious, but to differing degrees everyone sets something aside so they can treat themselves to a good celebration. Regardless, I was really looking forward to being in village for this and made sure not to miss it.

As opposed to New Years back home, the New Years party takes place during the first day of January and not New Year’s eve. For the first time in my life I actually didn’t stay awake for stroke of midnight. If I had I would have been alone, because it’s simply not the thing to do here. They would rather be in bed at a good hour to wake up real early the next day to start preparing the day’s feast. The same goes for the kids, who want to be the first ones running from house to house screaming “Bonne Année, Bonne Année”. It’s like the Togolese version of Trick-or-Treat except on New Years. The tradition is that everyone has candy on hand to pass out to kids (like my friend Jean is doing in the picture), especially the ones that parade by to say “Happy New Year!” Kids and adults alike continued the hearty “Bonne Année” cheers all day and throughout the rest of the week.

Once again the party revolved around food and drink. The measure of how well you partied is all in the caliber of the food. Just like parties for us can be marked by dining at a fine restaurant, extravagance is the goal of a good party. In the village this means novelties like rice, spaghetti, canned tomato paste for sauce, meat and bottled beer. In our family we killed a goat and a rabbit to go with our main plates of mixed rice and spaghetti and then capped off the night at the village bar where everyone managed to get some beer for themselves. But nobody eats just one plate of food, in fact your bound to eat several plates. The tradition is to prepare not only food for yourself, but enough to send food over to neighboring family and close friends. Thus, if you are at the house all day any number of people may send dishes of food over to you as well. Plus, if you intend to visit anyone’s house on that day to give Bonne Année wishes, expect to be invited to eat even more food. In my case, I way over ate on New Years, to the point of being uncomfortable. It’s was all great, but my stomach wasn’t pleased with me by the end of the night. Felt a lot like Thanksgiving in that respect, and similarly, it was hard to regret.

France and Switzerland with the fam for Christmas!

Hello everybody! How has the holiday season been treating you! Thanks to everyone that sent me Christmas notes (Shannon & Craig, Steve, Betty & Earl, Uncle Bob, Mary & Chris, Tim & Samantha)! They’re appreciated so much, and I was ecstatic to find each one! I’ve put myself on a guilt trip because I haven’t posted anything in a while! I’m overdue, but I’ll try to make up for it by filling you in on what I’ve been up to!

It’d been so long looking forward to these past travels! So long that I could barely believe it was happening when it finally was time. But sure enough, as always time flies and after 15 months in Africa I got the great chance to leave the continent and vacation some in Europe. Since the little brother Kyle (he’s now 21 folks so buy him a beer!) was wrapping up his study abroad in Rouen, France, I set that as my first destination. Some long travel, but more or less things went according to plan, which for sure is more than my parents and Kelly can say about there travels. In sum, I bussed to Ouagadogou, Burkina Faso where I caught a 4 am flight, which had stops in Niger and Morocco on the way to Paris. And, BOOM, just like that, I found myself back in the “developed world”. And for all the anticipation, I strangely felt in stride. Granted my perspective had greatly changed, altering the light in which I now saw my surroundings, but I also felt a normalness of things that was nice to have back.

After arriving in Paris and having a brief money crisis (turns out African money, specifically CFA, is not a highly sought after thing in France, so thanks Uncle Chris, your birthday money from last year, being US currency, got me out of a pinch) I caught a train straight to Rouen to meet Kyle, which is up in the Normandy region. What a relief it was to finally see in person another member of my family! We spent 4 nights there before heading back out on the trains, this time catching the high speed TGV train, express to the French Alps and a mountain village called St. Gervais. There I had another travel adventure, as we were forced to hike 45 minutes up the side of a mountain to get to our apartment! We had gotten in so late on a Sunday that all the taxis had already called it quits. Normally, my folks and Kelly would have been there already to pick us up, but they had a travel fiasco of their own to cope with. So with baggage in hand we had to buck up and call on our own Mainah’ salt to drag ourselves up to our beds!

The next day a Swiss friend from my time in Quebec came in to catch up, another great chance! And the day after that my parents and Kelly finally made it in! At that we hunkered down for the Christmas week. It was a great chance to relax and just appreciate the familiar feeling of taking it easy in the presence of family.
Beyond that, some of the best parts were skating, skiing and, most importantly, I enjoyed the food! Good, western food has been a craving I've been fighting for a year and I took advantage of it all in France. Bystanders may have taken me to be a glutton, but during my time there I was not going to be ashamed for how much I ate. Delicious!

The trip wrapped up with a jaunt into Switzerland to visit some family friends. While mom, dad and Kelly were flying out from Switzerland, Kyle and I still had to make it back to Paris for our flights home. With that, I reluctantly but necessarily said the goodbyes and hopped a last train back to Paris for a quick afternoon of sightseeing (it was something that needed to be done!) before my flight the next day. Of all the things I saw in that half day I will say that the Eiffel tower was the most spectacular! It was amazing to gaze up at all lit up in the night, and there was an equally incredible view from half way up (we walked the stairs!). Nonetheless, the general feel and mood of Paris had a certain coldness that didn’t make me sad to be leaving. In fact, it made me even more excited and ready to head back to Togo in time for their New Years celebrations!