5 Cent Mission: November 2017

Our house, under a starry sky.

A reminder of where we are.

We arrived in Lome airport about 24hrs and 40mins after pulling out of our church parking lot after saying our goodbyes.

All of our plastic luggage tubs arrived intact, as well. None were pulled for further inspection upon arrival in Togo, and the only concern raised was for a couple of the CPAP machines Christine had for the hospital. Once the appropriate document from the hospital was produced, the customs officials were satisfied and we scooted out of the airport quickly. Praise God!

We spent a very short night in the Lucia Guest House in Lome, woke up early and headed directly out of town to avoid any of the planned protests by the political opposition groups. Even at 5am, the gendarmes and police were setting up on major corners and intersections to keep the protesters in check.

When we got to our new home at the Hopital Baptiste Biblique outside the village of Tsiko, we were tired and hot. We spent most of the day unpacking and greeting old and new friends. It was so good to be back!

Within a day we were getting back to work around the compound and starting the boys in their schooling. They are splitting time between the one-room schoolhouse and some home schooling. They seem to be settling in fine in this new educational environment.

Inspected and Insured

We were fortunate to be able to rent/borrow a nice Toyota HiLux truck from the Wards while they are home in the USA. A special thanks to them! This will afford us more freedom while living here. However, to use this little truck we needed to have it inspected (an annual event) and insured (annual, also) while in Kpalime.

While we are familiar with vehicle inspections when buying or selling a vehicle in Canada, here in Togo the process is ever-so-slightly different. Allow me to describe both the inspection and the insurance processes...

Inspection:

At the inspection station, you pull through an official looking gate into a large gravel-like lot. I say gravel-like because it's a mix of fist-sized rocks all the way down to tiny pebbles... and dirt. Driving up in front of the very small office building no bigger than a typical tin garden shed, you will notice there are no windows at all. It's a concrete box. There is a solid wood door – with no window – a twin tube fluorescent fixture hanging precariously from the concrete ceiling and a little tiny slot to communicate through... like you would see in a prison, for example. Big enough to pass some papers and hand over some money. That's it. And you have to bend down a bit to talk to the person on the other side of the wall because this slot was conveniently placed at mid-chest height. You will then pass your ownership through said slot and be directed to wait on an assortment of large rocks or weathered wooden benches under a large tree to the side of the building with the others also getting inspections.

When you are summoned back to the office you are then told whether your vehicle needs to have a thorough inspection or if you just pay your fee and go away. We had to undergo the 'more thorough' inspection. This involves someone getting in the vehicle and backing up 50 yards or so, driving forward and slamming on the brakes to test their effectiveness. Happy with the results, they drive into an open shed-like building and proceed to check the various lights and windshield wipers. Then the power goes out. Yes, at a government agency everything grinds to an abrupt halt because the power goes out. We waited for about 10 minutes until someone appeared around a corner dragging a small generator, pulled the start cord a dozen times or so until realizing the little engine was switched in the 'off' position, then fired it up. Back in action!

With the little power plant now purring away, they plugged it in and continued the inspection. Next was a very fun test. They drive the front wheels onto two steel pads which shake the vehicle side to side in short, aggressive bumps. This is to test the front steering and suspension joints. Again, pleased with the result from our vehicle they back out of the shed and wander back into the office.

We were once again summoned from our comfy rock and invited to the little slot. There we were asked to pay the equivalent of $10 – in cash, of course – for the inspection, and were handed a new sticker that goes on the windshield of our vehicle to show it is current.

Now, all of this is well and good, but beside us in the vehicle inspection line was a beaten and broken looking tractor trailer that had its' fuel tank bound to the frame of the tractor by several feet of rope! This did not look like a winning proposition for the owner. Worse, when the inspector climbed into the truck and attempted to perform the 'brake effectiveness test', he backed the trailer into a large pile of the aforementioned gravel-like aggregate with significant speed and force. While I found this particularly amusing it did not give me much confidence in the whole process! As we were pulling out, the tractor trailer owner was happily walking back to his truck with his new inspection sticker... Can anyone actually fail this inspection??

Insurance

Insurance was a whole other story! We drove to the insurance 'office' which was maybe set back 15 feet off the main highway (which is a very busy, wide two-lane road) through the city of Kpalime. Again, a small concrete box – with a window! The calypso and African music from the bar next door pumping out into the street added a party atmosphere to the blank interior. The door was propped wide open, the hot breeze blowing in once in a while. The door had a curtain hanging as some kind of barrier between the inside of this concrete box and the outer chaos of downtown Kpalime. The curtain was a lovely Valentine's Day motif, mostly white with pink and red hearts on it. It had discoloured from months or years of dust and exhaust fumes . There was a small ceiling fan spinning at such a high rate of speed that it would blow stacked papers off the insurance agent's desk. If it weren't for the weight of the roof I'm sure it could have achieved lift-off!

The agent had a couple of disorganized-looking stacks of papers and files on his desk, a pad of lined paper with lots of hand-written numbers in wide columns, and a keyboard and computer. Beside his desk was a nice little printer. Once he found our quote on the pad of paper with the columns, he went to work entering our info into the computer and then printed out a nice little insurance form. He had to make a couple of photocopies of our documents since we were new clients, so he got up and walked out of the office, hopped on his moto and drove over to the 'photocopy store', another concrete box with a photocopier. He just left us sitting there, feeling both slightly bewildered and slightly amused. Perhaps this is a normal procedure??

He came back a couple of minutes later with the new copies in hand. We paid our annual fee – in cash, of course – and received another windshield sticker to show that we were properly insured now, as well as 'inspected'. We had to pay an additional 100 CFA Francs for the photocopies, but he gave us a nice plastic pouch to put all of our insurance forms in. Seemed like a fair trade at that point. He then wrote out, by hand, a receipt for our payment. His signature was a bit curious... two quick vertical lines, followed by two slightly longer horizontal lines forming a very rough X's and O's frame. He then continued to sign two circles around the centre of the intersected lines, then print his name below the masterpiece, like an artist signing his, well, his signature. A couple of handshakes later we bid the insurance man farewell.