Hotel Palm Beach

Last weekend I celebrated my first full week of good health in about two months with a trip to the pool. I knew one of my students, along with his mom and friends, would be there and I took a Togolese friend who wanted to learn to swim. The day before we had had the storm of all storms by Lome standards and so the dust from Hermiton was washed from the air so the sun was stronger than it has been in months. I applied sunscreen, don’t worry!

When we arrived I was shocked at all the white people who were there! I haven’t seen more than 10-20 white people in one place in six months now so seeing almost 50 of them at the pool was a little shocking. As we waited to pay there was a man at the bar chatting with me in English and he was holding a few American dollar bills! Real USD! I told him “Wow, you have US currency! I haven’t seen American currency in almost six months.” I held back asking if I could touch it and look at it up close. Oh the things that I have begun to forget or lose touch of after living here. I soon found out that The Mercy ship had come in and will be docked for about six months at the port. They are a Christian organization that travels to countries and provides medical care to the people. Apparently there are hundreds of people on the ship so I was easily mistaken for one of the Mercy Ship people all afternoon, even though I was hanging out with the few Togolese who were at the pool rather than standing in American circles in the water.

One of the things I loved watching was the interactions between the Americans, which is different than the social expectations here. Another thing that I loved was how my student, who is Lebanese and Liberian, was asked all day where he was from. When he replied Lebanon, the Americans tried not to twist their face but their confused voices could only say “Oh?” followed by dead silence for at least a minute.

I would like to report that my friend who could barely put his face in the water at the beginning of the afternoon was swimming about 10 feet on his own by the end of our time at the pool. I think spending a lot of time in the kiddie pool helped and buit his confidence. I know we will be back to practice his new swimming skills.

The biggest highlight of my afternoon was the race. One of my student’s friends is an 18 year old boy who lives down the street from him. This friend’s name is Say Please. I always smile when I say his name. He is a very nice respectful boy and it’s great that he speaks English to some extent. This kid also happens to be very fit, like most Togolese men, he has extremely little body fat and rippling muscles. Say Please and a few other Togolese guys were taking turns racing across the pool and after watching two races I couldn’t help but ask if I could get in a race too. They laughed and smiled nicely at me and said yes. I know they completely misjudged me being the small, chubby, white girl a saw no threat whatsoever to their manhood. I wasn’t quite sure how well I’d do either but I knew it’d be fun and I could at least stay up with them. It’s been a long time since I swam regularly but swimming is still in my heart strong as ever! So we raced and I blew them away! I was about one full body length ahead of both the guys. I laughed and swam around smiling and cheering. The guys had these looks of complete shock and confusion on their faces but they smiled for me too. The Togolese girls in the pool came over to give me high fives when I made it back to the shallow end. My friend just smiled and gave me the amazed look that he gives me when I do something that he never thought was possible. I laughed some more. It was like I wasn’t even on the white people’s radar. My student made sure that he told all the kids at school on Monday, so my super hero teacher status was upgraded this week too.