Birthdays, Buddies, Beers, Barbeques and Bye byes!

---

Wow! It's actually my last day in Togo! I have had my last breakfast and my last lunch and going to have my last dinner later.

Have to say that the last couple of days have been fantastic. Two days ago another volunteer, Emilienne arrived, and it has been sooo nice to have some company. She is Swedish, but speaks amazing French and English, so she has been helping me a bit with the last little bits of translation. Antoine, Josie, Merveille and I went to the airport to welcome her, and I have to say it has been very nice not being the ONLY white person in the whole town, even if just for 2 days.

Today is actually my birthday, but we celebrated it last night with a big BBQ with all of the team at PDH. I helped Brigitte gut lots of poissons and made 'jus de tomate' and mayonnaise from scratch! It was a really good night, with a lots of laughs and speeches (We sang Happy Birthday in 4 different languages - Swedish, French, English and Ewé) and some AWESOME beer. As you may know, I am not a big beer drinker at all, but I have to say it was SO nice to have a cold beer and good food under an African night sky. Pretty amazing!

So today I have been tying up loose ends, like changing my money back, giving my Togolese SIM card away, showing Emilienne around, zooming around on moto taxis and generally saying goodbye to everyone. It was actually quite sad when the team laft last night. I gave them all a big hug and thanked them all individually - mainly for their patience with my French. They have been a great team and extremely interesting to work with.

I have given my little presents to the family as a thankyou - a sarong for Rachel, a book for Elolo, a stencil for Merveille and a pen thing for Antoine. I made my own wrapping paper and everything.

So this will probably be the final entry I will put in this blog. Final impressions to give of Togo - it's a pretty amazing place, full of warm and welcoming people, great food, hard workers and very very hot weather!!!!! I have really enjoyed my time here, although some of it has been difficult and very challenging, I am very glad that I jumped in and tried this.

All that is left to say is THANK YOU to everyone who has been reading this blog. Thank you to everyone who has sent me messages and very long emails, I have loved keeping in touch. I would suggest to you all to go and explore a new bit of the world that you haven't seen yet, and try something brand new that may seem pretty scary (I just spoke French for an entire 3 weeks!!!! How scary is that???)

Lots of travelling love to you all. I need to go pack!

Butterworth is coming back!!!!!
xxxxxxx

---

Comments

[Sarah]

Happy Birthday!
I'm glad the last few days of your trip have been so good. Nice to end on a high! Hope you have a good trip back. Looking forward to possibly catching you when we head briefly to Croydon next Friday/Saturday before Canada-ing. Sarah xx