Back from Mango!

We have all officially made it back to the hospital from Mango!  What a great trip!  I am so glad that I got the chance to see this piece of Togo.  It was a 16 hour road trip for Rhonda and me on Wednesday, but we finally made it to the town of Mango dusty, tired and very sunburned.  It was so great to see so much of the country.  We ended up driving through almost every major town in the country.  It gets progressively more dry and grassland like as well as progressively more poor as you travel north.  When we got to Mango we stayed with a long term missionary named Anna.  What an incredible person she is!  She is about my age and has moved to this far northern city by herself.  She lives in a compound with the people and has really settled in making it home. She has learned the language and has reached out particularly to the Falani people (the tribe that I sort of described gypsies in a previous blog).  The Falani are looked down upon and discriminated against by just about everyone else.  They can’t even shop in the markets in town without getting cheated just because of the tribe that they are from. It is so sad.  Anna, however, has made friends with many of the women and has been welcomed into their lives.  She freely visits them in their homes and they often come to hers to talk and spend time together.

 

Anna, Kristen, Rhonda

We stayed with Anna while in Mango and had a wonderful time.  What a great hostess.  When we got there she had dinner waiting and then gave us a tour of the place. As soon as I stepped inside the house I could feel the temperature difference.  The outside air temperature had begun to cool down, but her home was still very warm.  I took my shoes off and walked inside and noticed that the cement floors felt like they were heated.  Back in the States people pay a lot of money for heated floors….here it come for free!  She showed us our room that Rhonda and I would be staying which had two mattresses on the floor each with a pillow and covered with a fitted sheet.  There were no other sheets or blankets to put over us at night, but honestly I was thankful because it was pushing 100 degrees in her house.  She showed us the bathroom which had a modern sink, toilet and shower.  I just had to laugh because along with giving us the tour she informed us that she was having a little bit of a frog problem particularly in the bathroom.  These little orange frogs like to sit on her toilet.  We were instructed to just push them into the bowl and flush them down.   Haha, wow.  Yep, I am definitely in Africa!  We were also told not to touch them with our hands because they have some sort of toxin in their skin that stings.  Looking at the frog currently sitting on the toilet seat I wondered if that toxin gets left behind on anything they have touched.  I decided at that point not to test it out and I would just avoid sitting on the seat.  I was so thankful for a shower that night to wash away all of the grit from the day.  I don’t think I have ever had such a bad farmer’s tan.  When I stepped into the shower I just had to laugh.  There was only one knob to turn, which in Africa means that the water only comes in one temperature.  Great!  Who would want to take a warm shower in this weather anyway?  It was perfect.  We finally went to bed after visiting with Anna for a while and when I laid down I could feel the heat from the floor coming up through the mattress.  How in the world was I ever going to sleep?  Heat was coming at me from all sides.  I was trying to lay as perfectly still as possible without letting any limbs touch or any joints bend to avoid trapping any unnecessary heat.  I just prayed that the Lord would allow me to sleep.  I was so tired that I drifted in and out for about an hour or so before I fell into the best, deepest night’s sleep I have had in over a week.  Praise God!  The temperatures outside continued to cool and eventually permeated the inside of the house.  So wonderful.

 

We were woken up around 4am the next morning by the Muslim call to prayer.  In many towns this is conducted over a loud speaker system that can be heard throughout the whole place.  However, in Mango this was replaced by a man that got up every morning between 330 and 430 and ran up and down the streets yelling in a raspy voice to wake everyone up.  I just had to smile.  What a job this man had! 

 

We got up hours later, had breakfast and started to make our way towards the compound where the new hospital is being built.  It takes a long time to get anywhere in Mango with Anna because when she is walking down the streets all of the women come up and greet here.  It was so wonderful to meet all of her friends.  We made it to the compound and took a tour of the construction site.  I was so impressed!  This is going to be an extremely well done hospital. 

There are a few homes and other structures already completed on the compound which include a guest house, homes for some of the missionaries, a work shop and a pool.  The quality for all of these buildings would rival anything we have back in the US.  After visiting with some of the missionaries and seeing the construction site we wandered back into town to go to market.  Like most African markets it was an open air event with different stalls set up selling various things.  What made this market different though was that it was nestled under a canopy of trees.  This is so key to help keep the temperature down.  We bought little snacks along the way and made this lunch.  We also stopped by the home of Anna’s friends who is a Falani lady and she had the most wonderful fried chicken prepared for us when we arrived.  What a treat!  After visiting for a while we then stepped out to walk around and see more of the town.  We visited with more people and then walked down towards the old section of Mango.  It was at this time that I started to really notice the heat and felt like I should probably start thinking about doing something to get to a place that was somewhere cooler.  Some of the missionaries from the hospital drove by and offered to pick us up and take us back to the hospital for a meeting.  I gladly took them up on it.  When we got back to the hospital we were told it had reached 122 degrees!  No wonder the heat was starting to bother me.  I don’t think I have ever been in weather that hot.  Thankfully, there was no humidity which did make it much better.  After taking a rest inside and out of the direct sunlight Anna, Rhonda and I wandered over to the water tower on the hospital compound.  What a view you can get from the top! 

Enjoying the view from the water tower

 

Very few things can beat the beauty of the sun setting over the African grasslands.

 

The African grasslands of northern Togo are totally the description everyone thinks about when they think of Africa.  Simply beautiful.  The waves of golden grass extended for miles in every direction and just reminded me of how incredibly great and vast my God is.  We watched the sunset over the horizon and then headed back to the guest house for dinner.  This would be the last dinner for the construction team of short term missionaries currently working on the hospital before they head back to the US.  After dinner we all decided to go for a night swim in the pool.  What a perfect evening!  The water was so refreshing and the African stars so incredibly bright.  I absolutely cannot believe that I have had the honor and privilege to spend the last month here.  We got a ride back to Anna’s house in town and no sooner had we stepped foot inside her home than there was visitor after visitor of African women coming to say hello.  People were just wanting to talk, play games and many brought meals.  What an incredible example of how to fully integrate into another culture and love people who are so different than you as truly part of your family.  It was such a good, tangible example for me to see.  I learned so much by just spending that little bit of time with this incredible and dedicated missionary.  It was getting late so we finally just had to close the door to keep more people from coming.  Bedtime followed the same routine as the night before and again we were woken up at 4am by a raspy voice shouting down the street.  The van with the short term construction team that we were going to be getting a ride back to the hospital down south would be here soon.  The time in Mango just flew by.  I am so glad we were able to see it.  The ride back was uneventful and comfortable!  The van actually had air conditioning.  I don’t think I will ever take such a luxury for granted again.  We made it back here to the hospital just as the sun was setting.  My last night in Togo.  Wow.  It is bittersweet.  After checking in at the hospital Rhonda and I spent some time dipping our feet in the pool and just watching the African sky. One shooting star after another danced in front of us.  So peaceful.  I will definitely miss this place. I know there is much reflection and processing of the events of this last month yet to happen, but I cannot describe the contentment and joy that I have had in the opportunity to serve here.  I have had the privilege of working with some incredible people and the honor of loving the people of this little known country.   I just praise God for His incredible grace in allowing me the chance to do this.  Where I will serve in the future long term is still being heavily prayed over. I know His guidance will come at just the right moment and not a second sooner.  I just thank the Lord for the work He is doing now and for whatever may lay ahead.  Tomorrow I leave to fly back to the US.  I am so thankful that I will get the chance to spend Thanksgiving with my family this year.  Oh how He has so sweetly provided.  Thank you for your continued prayers and encouragement.  I cannot tell you enough how much it means to me.  Blessings to you all, goodnight.