My Villa in Kpalimé

I really appreciated my former house in Kaboli. The three rooms with an adjoining court yard and latrine was the right amount of space for a single girl to sleep, exercise, bathe, cook, work and relax, while living alone in a foreign land. By moving to Kpalimé, however, my comfortable living in Togo has moved to excess.

My “Villa” in Kpalimé has three bedrooms, one bathroom with running water, a storage closet, a kitchen, and a large front room with space for a desk, living room, library and breakfast nook. Outside my kitchen door there is spigot with running water. Within the walls of my small compound, my landlord lives with his family and runs his tailor shop. This means that I am not completely isolated and it makes me feel more secure. There is also a well, which the landlord allows the neighborhood to access.

Outside my front door is a terrace, where I've started an herb garden. And the walls of the compound are lined with various trees and flowers, including a bush with white flowers that come into bloom every so often and fills my house with a honeysuckle fragrance.

I am not completely selfish though and, in fact, the house can feel rather lonely at times. So I keep my house open to people that I work with for meetings and other activities. For instance, the coffee co-op that I work will use the space and electricity to help them bag their roasted beans while we search for a sustainable alternative. Further, Peace Corps Volunteers are grouped in “clusters” and keep my house open to my cluster-mates for when they need to be in town for banking, shopping, or other work.