Togolais Diaries...Contd

Le 31st Mars 2009

Bonjour!

The most fun filled day till now! The day began a little late with a finally spicy taste of Maggi instant noodles for breakfast. The Togolais people don’t have the kind of spices Indians too so one does miss them in normal food as there is a limit to bland food one can continuously consume. As they say, you can take an Indian out of India but you cant take India out of an Indian. This was followed to the trip to the cyber lab as my membership was finally activated today. So had a great time blogging and catching up with people over the net and even over the phone. Thank you Rajat and adi for giving me a call, even though the call rates were so exorbitant! It made my day!!
Sat in lab till the time it closed that was 4 pm and saved a lot of stuff on the M.D.G’s in my pen drive. Will read them tomorrow. At this time met a Dutch intern Barbara aka Babs who very kindly invited me for a pizza treat to be given by another Dutch intern Flo who is leaving country tomorrow after staying in the country for 3 months, later in the day.
So at like 6:30 met these two Dutch girls and a couple of local boys Lolo and Justin who turned out to be walking talking entertainment packages. Justin as I came to know later had a major thing for Indian girls as he found them extremely pretty though I did make it a point to tell him that I found Pakistani girls prettier! Apart from this he adds a lot of Indians randomly from the friend list of his existing friends on facebook who are Indian. As a result, he knows quite a lot about India and constantly kept asking me questions about the country as he even wants to come here for an internship. He would definitely make everyone have a whale of time if he did land up coz his spirits can actually make everyone high! I was also pleasantly surprised to see my host Sam also joining in and boy this guy did have a way with the girls and was simultaneously flirting blatantly with both the Dutch girls. This was the first time that I had seen a person hitting on 2 women at the same time in front of each other and being quite successful at it too! Great stuff to watch. : DD
We went to this pizza place which wasn’t exactly a restaurant as the there were only 2 tables to be precise and were laid out in the open next to the road still this one was one of the best pizza places in the town. There was a smallish room where they made pizzas which had no electricity at the time when we went so they made it in dark with only the embers of the mud oven tandoori like thing with coal and all where the pizzas were being made illuminating the place! Just didn’t matter though as these kind of things are becoming a normal sight as I spend more and more time discovering the city and the lifestyle of the city. The food was entirely paid for by Flo as her farewell treat and maybe it’s the Marwari in me speaking but yeah the food was pretty edible though the quality of pizzas being a no match to the ones at Pizzeria, Pizza hut or even Dominoes but then compared to here they are just indulgent luxuries, so everything cool and didn’t miss them!!
The conversations was the wackiest I have had thus far in Togo from topics ranging to anal sex which was described rather vividly by Lolo as ‘Chi Chi’ as he called it to hilarious effect, to me teaching them Hindi cuss words and boy they did pick them up fast! To the caste system in India, equality of women, to relationships, to how men are always running after girls, to specialities of Holland, to another Dutch girl who would be arriving tonight close to midnight, to pulling each other legs about their respective. boyfriends / girlfriends to relationships again and then to some French cuss words which as usual I was pathetic to pick up as it was ‘FRENCH’ and so and so forth.
Lolo and Justin were hilarious all through out and I got to really admire Justin for his empathy in the way he spoke about Pakistan, India and stuff in general and his cheerful spirit. Sat there till 10 in the night in an alien land next to the road lost in conversations and drinks (limited to Red bull and Coke for me, not necessarily so for others). It was a great feeling to actually find so much in common with complete ‘strangers’ as I might refer to them. I didn’t even know Lolo and Justin till the evening today and had met Babs in the morning and Flo only for some time on the beach on my 1st day. To think of it, we were people with three different colours, with all three different native tongues, out of which two were in a foreign land yet no one could say that somebody was an outsider. It’s the great ability of humans to connect across language barriers, nationality and ethnicity just that I guess barriers in mind need to be eradicated and only then one can realize that no other barriers actually exist.


P.S. I had met this extremely friendly person Joseph on my fist day here on the beach at LC picnic and we had hit off rather well. He came all the way to meet me and to take my number when he realized that I was in the computer lab in the university. He has made an excellent offer, an invitation to go on a Red Cross camp to be held over this weekend in the countryside! Looks like a great opportunity and if things work out then ill get my first chance to make a trip to the countryside!! Woohoo!!