I'm living with someone from Timbuctu. Isn't that exciting.

I'm also living with her ex-boyfriend. This struck me as slightly odd too. I love the French. She is amazingly friendly and gave me Malian tea which made me hyper. He is a wry Frenchman with concomitant Gallic linguistic snobbery who is convinced the English eat boiled beef all the time. He makes coffee machines and I end up being his guinea pig. I may spend the next two weeks on a permanent caffeine high.

I just tried to look up 'concomitant' to check it means what I think it means and realised normal people have to pay for oedonline. May have to spend rest of life in full-time education.

They took me to a funky concert at the Centre Culturel Français and we had a barbecue and went to the beach and it's all lovely. And now I'm going home cos my time's about to run out.

Things it is not a good idea to do in a hot climate, part 47:

Skip breakfast and allow French people to feed you rosé at 11.30 a.m.

Well, things have been, erm, interesting since I last updated. Spoke to the parents and told them about the creepy housemate and they panicked and forced me to move out immediately. This led to me going round expat bars and throwing myself on the mercy of the owners. I managed to find a flat for the short-term and I explained the situation to Olivier last night and he laughed at me, told me I should have followed my instincts and then said I could move in with him. He's a long way from the town centre, which means spending more time on African roads (I just sent my parents a huffy email saying, 'huh? is this any better?') but he's also a long way from the creepy French businessmen who started hitting on me yesterday and led to me feeling more scared and panicked than I ever did with the housemate. Still, I trust Olivier and he's good company - uses his judgement about people, doesn't just go running towards Europeans - so it's worked out quite well.

And I spent the weekend with an extravagant Frenchman who kept feeding me cheese and wine, so perhaps it was worth it after all.

I would also like to announce to the world that I am no longer Hannah Roberson, no fish. I maintain the right to be Hannah Roberson, extremely picky about fish and I'm not ready for anything with eyes yet, but if you take the icky dangly bits of prawns and deep fry them then they don't make me feel physically ill any more.

I also drink beer. What has Togo done to me?

Email has been extremely annoying this morning. Hopefully I have now managed to get someone to book me a flight home from America in April. Also I have managed to email the boy. This shouldn't really have taken me three hours.

Still, I don't have much else to do. They're working on African time here. I know I shouldn't be annoyed they haven't found me a project, as that's just the way things work out here. That's why you have to bargain for everything. Any transaction needs contact between people, so you can both be sure you're getting the best possible deal from it. So, they couldn't have arranged a placement for me until they'd met me and talked to me about what I wanted to do. It all makes perfect sense. I'm just a bit bored.

Went to Kpalimé (small town about 2 hours north of Lomé) on Saturday night and it's NOT HUMID AND STICKY. I actually felt cool for the first time in two weeks. Had a few problems with a drunk and amorous housemate who insisted on showing me off to all his family. All a bit messy and horrid, but I managed to fend him off and since then he's been so apologetic and contrite that things are much better than before. He even went out for an hour last night, which gave me time to talk to the other guys, who are really nice. It's much easier to talk to people here than in Kenya, I think partly because I'm on my own, and partly because French is much more entrenched than English is there and people speak it much better.

Yesterday I met the Frenchman again and drank about 400 bottles of Coke. There really is nothing to do in Lomé, so we went on a sort of non-alcoholic pub crawl and wound up on the beach. We tried to go to the Lebanese car salesman's bar for lunch but it was closed on Mondays. This is how small Lomé is. That is why I am bored.

I just want to start work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have somewhere to live. And this keyboard is evil so this will be a short entry. It has nice blue walls with no dodgy stains. My housemates cooked me pasta. It has an en suite bathroom! (Unfortunately the water has been turned off so it's really just a room in which to wash with a bucket - Wellers, please amend my hardcore rating on wholeworldofpain acordingly!) I am no longer living out of a backpack. I have an address you can send letters to. I have befriended a Frenchman who needs a haircut (his words, not mine) who bought me coffee and promised me a barbecue at his nice, new house when Nik comes out to stay. My housemate is coming to take me to a restaurant called Al Donald which looks a bit like McDonald's but nicer. I should be starting work soon and they all seemed lovely and clued-up there!

Africa is finally being nice to me.

Hamster x

Hurrah! The third internet café I've tried in Lomé has finally decided to open this site and not be painfully slow. Apologies for any misplaced letters - it's a French keyboard with half the numbers labelled as on an English keyboard.

Well, here I am, without aforementioned Lonely Planet (I did cave and buy a Rough Guide though) and having a bit of a mixed time of it so far. To begin with, my flight was late and Alitalia have bumped Tawfiq buses off the top of my 'Most hated transport company' list. Seven hours is a long time to spend in Milan airport with no euros and no food. The nice Ghanaian lawyer I was sitting next to on the plane told me they were giving out vouchers but not until too late, and they'd helpfully hidden the Alitalia desk anyway. I arrived at 3 a.m. smiled my way through a difficulty with my address at customs and was met by the lovely Revd Simon. He was so helpful on Tuesday - helped me get my visa, change money and cross the border etc. Then I got to Togo and it all went pearshaped.

There was a small communications glitch and I'm now homeless. Contrary to what I was told, it is NOT easy to find accommodation in Lomé and they do NOT have discounted rates with the guest house. And even if they did, the guest house mings. (Kenya people think Baringo, Kakamega or that place on the Malawi border and then imagine living there.) So I decided to live with a host family but they can't take me at short notice and the guy in the room next door keeps knocking on my door at obscure hours of the day asking if I like oranges or if I want to go to breakfast with him. Which I don't, and it's getting a bit annoying, and he's here for a month.

So, after getting very depressed on Friday night, I decided to do something yesterday. I found an internet café (well, 2, and they were both slow), walked along the beach, got followed around the market by a guy who wanted me to buy souvenirs from him and then went and sat in a nice, peaceful bar for a while drinking coke. I stayed there so long the manager came and talked to me, and while I'm not sure I can trust him entirely (I'm suspicious of people who throw money around, particularly in the direction of young, female tourists) it was nice to have the company. He drove me up the coast out of Lomé to a posh hotel on the beach and bought me beer. It was quite random and quite fun and I was very upfront about the whole having a boyfriend thing so I'm not leading him on at all.

Except he gave me water and tomatoes, one of which wasn't clean properly, so my stomach had an interesting night and I spent most of this morning lying on my bed in my dingy room, sipping chlorinated water and wanting to die. But I didn't die. I even managed to have a shower and leave the hotel. Aren't I clever.

Lomé is funky and I'm slowly learning my way round. Togo got through to the world cup yesterday and it was MAYHEM on the streets. Singing and dancing till the small hours and yellow t-shirts everywhere. It was great.

Anyway, my time's running out, so I'd better go.

Hope you're all well.

Hannah xx

I have found somewhere to stay in Accra.
I have obtained a visa.
Someone is meeting me at the airport.

Hurrah.

I've just started reading The Waste Land online. I love Eliot.

Me

I'm going back to Africa soon.

This required a blog.

And yes, I know I'm going to Togo, and yes, I know Mandinka is spoken in Senegal. Until about 10 days ago I was going to Senegal, and I thought Mandinka was the funkiest name for a language ever, so I stole it. And Senegal itself looks so funky I intend to go there anyway, and I will learn some mandinka solely to validate the title of the blog. Ewe and Mina (the two most spoken languages in Togo) weren't half as memorable.

Aside from a handful of people I've grown rather fond of, Africa and languages are the two things I love most in the whole world. Which is why I'm going to Togo as part of my third year abroad, being a linguist (French and Linguistics at Oxford in case you were curious and/or considering stalking me) to volunteer with a women's organisation. The organisation works on promoting gender equality, creating jobs and HIV/AIDS awareness, though I think my role is going to be largely fund-raising and translating things into English. Still, if I have to get stuck in a desk job, this sounds pretty exciting.

The organisation I'm going with have been wonderfully helpful (albeit in a very African way: lovely and well-meaning but sometimes need a bit of prodding) and just emailed me to wish me a happy birthday and ask me if I want to design more programmes and projects for Togo during my stay. Visas, however, are another story. Given as Air France want to charge me £1000 to fly direct to Lome, it looks like it'll be easier to fly into Accra (capital of Ghana, just next door) and organise another flight or catch a bus when I'm there. On the plus side, I can get a visa for Togo there, i.e. a proper one that allows me to go in and out of the country many, many times, as opposed to the stupid two-day airport visa which is all the French embassy will condescend to give me. On the negative side, this depends on:
1) being able to find somewhere to stay in Accra;
2) being able to find two people to act as referees for my Ghanaian visa;
3) being confident I can handle African public transport so soon after arriving.

I'm going to be living on my own. Abroad. In a developing country.

I'm scared. And excited. Mostly excited. And frustrated about visas.