Des Animaux

We all slept well last night. Amazing. No nightmares for Nicholas, a solid night’s sleep for me. Rebecca said she slept well too. We woke up feeling good.

With some sleep behind us, I’d like to say a little something about animals.



In the past few days, we’ve dealt with another lizard, disposed of a worm, seen a pig and monkeys and puppies.
The lizard… another male fell out of the palm tree and was sitting on the bottom of the pool. He was pretty too, bright yellow head, red and green tail. One time when I can sit outside quietly by myself, I’ll take the camera and snap some photos of them. The big ones grow to about 8 inches long.
After a mad dash through the Leader Price grocery on Friday (they close at 1 instead of the standard 12:30, but more than that, they stock puppy food!), Ian purchased a pile of tomatoes from a lady walking by the car. I diligently soaked them in a diluted bleach solution to clean them (Clorox is a great cleaner, even for vegetables, because the residue is plain salt) and when I rinsed in distilled water a worm floated in the pot. The tomato with the worm hole was summarily tossed.
Saturday we walked to the Coin Chaud bakery to purchase baguettes and some pastries. On the return trip, we passed a woman and her car filled with campfire wood. She was in the process of tying the legs of a shrieking pig before tossing it in the trunk with the wood. I know what was cooking last night.
Today we went back to the Coco Beach resort (story about that later) and next to the wall is a small grove of trees. Two long-tailed monkeys were playing on the rooftops and tree branches. They were actually kind of cute.
Since we were there, we checked on the puppies again. They’ve graduated to mobile sausages. Snuffling, peeing, roly-poly sausages.
So, we didn’t actually intend on going to Coco Beach today. Not too far away is Lomé Rivage, a nicer beach but with rougher waves since it doesn’t have that old road playing the role of breakwater. We mentioned our destination to the Embassy Driver and he was surprised we wanted to go there. The story… someone was pulled out to sea, and the resort was destroyed.
We went to find out the real scoop.
The resort was indeed closed. The place wasn’t destroyed by waves or storm, it had been torn apart by the military just last week. The someone who was swept away was related to the President. The story from the resort was about Eyadema’s niece. Later we heard it was the current President’s nephew. Whomever it was, apparently it was the resort’s fault that Mother Nature has given the Togolese coast a wicked undertow, and it was the resort’s fault that he or she went swimming in it. And so, one of the two successful beach businesses was intentionally destroyed. Seems a natural consequence doesn’t it?
Not.