Topic: Return
We Survived!
I am now comfortably back in my room; a little bit chilly in fact. Birds are chirping outside which I heard every morning in Togo, but that's about the only similarity.
The flights back were long. I watched Kung Fu Panda, Iron Man, and about half of Narnia on the planes back. We ate as many peanuts and free drinks as we could on the plane :) From Lome to Paris (the better flight in my opinion) it took about 6.5 hours. Then from Lome we flew to Cincinnati which took 9.5 hours. Our layover in Paris was about 5 hours giving our trip a grand total of 21 hours.
My family was waiting in the airport with a sign for ted and me! can you believe it! Haha. They had had a sign for my sister when she came back from a year in France so my sis was CERTAIN to have a sign for me. It was great seeing my sister! I hadn't seen her in over a year because she didn't come back from France until about a week AFTER I left for Togo. So that was very exciting. But the sign wasn't embarassing. Ted and I had more than well enough embarassed ourselves.
Our last full day in Kara, before our descent to Lome, the Marianist brothers had a small going away party for us. They gave ted and I a polo shirt of the Marianist community and also the best gift of the trip...a complete chief's outfit: A traditional Chief "shirt" and "pants". I dont really know how to describe it, but the pictures will be going up very soon. The clothes were HUGE! but as we later extrapolated, they were sort of susposed to be extra big to show our chiefhood. There was also a matching hat for each of us.
We wore our traditional outfits the day of our departure and throughout the 21 hour journey. We received all kinds of reactions good and bad and just plain gawking! But, its not like we weren't used to the attention coming from a predominantly black culture being white people. Maybe subconsciously we did it to continue getting this attention as long as possible. If so, it worked! The best comment was in the Cincinnati airport going through customs. The customs officer, with a southern (redneck) accent asked as I handed him my passport, "so what's with the git up?" "oh it's the traditional wear of chiefs in Togo" I explained. "Why wuld you wear it here?"
"I just wanted to bring back a little of the Togolese culture with me"
"what wure you doing over there in Togolee?"
"we were with a school engineering program to establish a long term engineering program for our students"
"what school is that?"
"University of Dayton"
"And they let you wear that?"
"Yea"
"hmm. looks like I might have to stop giving to the church..hrmm"
I wasn't sure what to say, because it sure didn't come off as a joke. But then there were others who would come up to us and say "GREAT outfit!" and the lady in the Charles De Gaulle airport who was working behind a glass window who stood up, waved frantically and gave us a HUGE grin as we rode the moving walkway (on the other side of the airport).
When we got back in Cincinnati my family drove us to meet up with Ted's grandparents and sister in Dayton. We went to Longhorns Steakhouse. I ordered a 22 oz porterhouse (wish I could say I ate it all haha but I didn't). Been eating ever since. It's not that we didn't eat in Togo, we ate three times a day, but the diet was so high carb that it was difficult to sustain energy or stay full for a very long time. So we were eager to dive into the beef and chicken society that we had left.
Speaking of which, it's time for breakfast :) maybe I'll have some chicken! or at least some eggs..