Un Bon Repose

Summer Vacation is here, and for me that means a (much needed!) break from teaching. What am I doing? Smaller side projects, being a camp counselor, traveling a bit, and practicing the great Togolese art of the repose.

Weather is hot here, and work - mostly physical labor in the fields - is hard. This means that a big part of Togolese culture and daily life is resting. My Togolese family and friends return from farmwork each day around noon, and commence their repose. Usually this involves both lying around doing nothing, and sleeping.

The cement houses we live in absorb heat throughout the day, so the beat place to repose is outside in the shade, where you can catch a nice breeze. Just outside our compound, my host family has a "paillote," a small straw structure that provides a little shade, and is populated by a reclined bamboo chair and a few wooden benches. Thus is my host dad's preferred repose spot - lying back in his traditional chair, he conks out for an hour or two each day. By his side, my host mom will sometimes lie supine on the wooden bench, one hand brushing the ground, equally out of it for a while.

Other members of the family spread out in the compound, face down on the cement floor, or sprawled out on more wooden benches, making the whole household look like victims of a gas leak.

Three o'clock rolls around and we head out again, sometimes for more work or just socializing. And each night as the sun goes down, my host brother brings Dad's chair back into the compound, setting the battery powered radio beside it, to prepare for the evening's encore performance.

My little brother, lazing around in Dad's chair before he gets home to claim it.