I’ve lived in Togo since 2006 and there isn’t much that surprises me. You kind of get used to the way things are and you know what to expect. For instance, if you are driving down the road, you expect a bicyclist to swerve out into your lane to miss a pedestrian walking down the road. Sure it puts him in danger of being hit by you as you are going 50 mph and he’s going a mere 10 mph. But you learn to expect that and so you just give him a wider berth and keep on going. However, today something took me back. It was something that I had never seen before, even here in Togo. I had two high-schoolers come over the house today to do some odd jobs. They wanted some extra money and since there really aren't any jobs available, I gave them something to do. Yesterday the removed a stump, today they removed a palm tree including roots before I put them to work on a building outside that was filled with mice. After a couple hours of clean, I decided to check up on their progress. They showed me everything they had done and it looked great! Then they showed me something I wasn’t really expecting to see. Three big old mice! Nasty and huge they were! They were so proud of their kills!
Now for the part that blew me away; I went out about 30 minutes later to pay the guys for their work and I noticed they were grilling something over and open fire to eat…yep…it was the three mice. Crazy! After all these years there are still some things in the culture that take me by surprise!
