Under the Togo Shade
The Togo sun and I don’t have the best relationship what with all the sunburns (sorry mom!), sweating, and horrible, truly horrible, farmer’s tan I have now. But it turns out, I’m not the only enemy of the Togo sun. The sun here is so strong and the heat is so draining, that even the Togolese avoid it at all costs. Everything is done under the shade—preferably a tree where there might be a breeze. Every Tuesday I weigh babies under the shade of a tree. Normally, I weigh babies every Friday at the local clinic on vaccination day, but every Tuesday I take part in a project with my nurse where we travel to different neighboring villages in our work zone that are more than 5 kilometers away from the clinic and vaccinate and weigh babies. This project is great because sometimes mothers don’t have the means or the stamina to travel long distances to the clinic, so we come to them and join together under the breeze of the largest tree. The hanging scale is hung from a branch, and I w...