Hey Everyone, Thanks for all of your concerned emails...i feel totally safe in my village/region. For those of you who may not have heard, the President/dictator here died of a heart attack last weekend. According to the constitution, the head of the National Assembly should have taken interim power, but his son took power instead while the Ntnl Assembly guy was conveniently out of the country. Basically, it was a military coup. There have been rumours that eyadema was dead for awhile and they purposely sent the natl assembly guy on a mission out of the country. Who is to know? Everything in my village has been very calm, the people were definitely were not sad he died, but i think people are scared more than anything to speak out. That being said, the friends i have talked to say that the togolese won,t stand for the son just taking power, that they will demand elections,...we shall see.. There is more political action in the larger cities. Down in Lome they had a two day strike and there have been riots this weekend. Yesterday they burnt down a hair extension factory, which i don,t quite understand, but... The international community (as you may have read) has condemned E's son taking power. The West African leaders came to meet with the son, but they were not allowed to land in lome and so the Nigerian leaders are demanding an apology. Diplomatic relations clearly are not the best at the present. It will be sad if they just move from one dictator to the next, because this could be a great opportunity for togo to move forward so to speak. Togolese are frustrated because they see no future for themselves, no jobs, no prospects, etc...very sad. Their economy is totally stuck and it remains one the poorer countries in this region. Fyi, we do have a contigency plan in good ol Peace Corps. Right now we are on "stand fast" meaning we are to keep a bag packed and are to remain at our posts. the next step would be going to our "consolidation points", which for me is here in Notse. The step after that is evacuation. i have been getting rather stir crazy at my post, but "luckily" i got a bit sick, puking, diarreah, etc.. the drs think i have giardia, yey intestinal parasites, so i was given permission to come into notse to get medication yesterday. am feeling a bit better today, but this medicine honestly sucks all the energy out of ones body, strong stuff. On that note, I hope hope hope all is well with everyone and keep me updated!! miss you all, love, katie
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Why burn down a hair extension factory? I shirk off the bonds of western style hair and the beauty myth in general! I don't know, I'm just kidding, maybe there was a good reason for it, maybe the factory owner said something they didn't like.
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