Travel Tips: Adventures in Togo

The Goodbye Post

2009-08-18T12:24:00.000-07:00

I’m writing this post from the Swiss Alps, which are not like Togo. Due to a baggage mishap, I arrived in Switzerland two days early. Morocco will have to wait until I have more time and maybe more money.

I can’t remember if I promised photos or not, but here they are anyway, some photos from all my Togo goodbyes, as well as a list I started about nine months before I could seriously begin thinking about leaving.

Things I Will Miss About Togo:

Entering Sagbiebou ("Gando Carrefour") from the south

1. My village - visiting and staying in my house after eight months of Lomé living brought out the nostalgia. I had to remind myself of heat rash, waiting for hours for meetings to start and sweaty hot season nights. Still, I had a good cement house (compared to some volunteers' village homes, it was big), a decent landlord, friendly neighbors and a beautiful night sky under which to take bucket baths.

Maimouna and Abdou-Razak in my compound yard.
Alima, Djibou, Izaifot and Hanatou
2. Friends - both in village and among the volunteer community. Maimouna and Zaratou randomly befriended me, and besides my neighbor, they are the women I loved most in Sagbiebou. When Maimouna was pregnant, she told me when she went into labor, she was going to make me come to the hospital with her. Then I moved away and could only get a phone call after from Zaratou's husband. But here is Abdou-Razak, and he is just a cute little monster. Also, my neighbors, Alima, Djibou and the girls, Izaifot and Hanatou, shared the strangeness of a Togolese village with me (they’re from Niger), took me to prayer on feast days and provided intelligent conversation about current events. But they cannot pronounce “Kentucky.”

Zaratou cutting up fresh wagash (cheese made by the nomadic Fulani people from cow's milk)
Zaratou and Maimouna with the fried wagash I was supposed to take to America for my family but ate in the car to Lomé instead
3. Street food - I will not miss the day-long trips up and down Togo, but I will miss the smorgasbord of random food pushed into the car window at stops along the highway. Boiled egg with hot pepper? Why, yes, I believe I will. Fried plantain chips? I’ll take two bags.

4. Cheap, fresh fruit - I know we get fresh fruit in the US. But where can I get a pineapple for 50 cents? And if this place exists, will the pineapple lady cut it up for me there and put it in a black plastic bag, “to go”? What about 50 cent mangoes the size of my head (ok, not my head, it’s bigger than average. The size of someone else’s head)? And cheap, huge avocadoes?

George, my host brother, Fridoline and Christine (neighbors) in Agou Nyogbo
5. Kids waving as you pass on your bike - make that kids in general, but especially the reaction of a group of children as you wave from your bike - all nine or however many hands shoot up and wave back. I'll also miss little neighborhood children running up and throwing themselves at my legs, shouting, "Liiinda! Liiinda!" or "Madame Awa!"

6. Ice cold soda on a hot savannah day - Beer's good too, but if I was having a freezing drink, I'd probably have biked to Mango, and there is nothing like a cold, cold Sprite after a 27 kilometer bike ride. And while we're on it, I'm going to miss my bike, and especially biking in the savannah.

7. Beach bar - Open-air bars line the first kilometer of road from the Ghanaian border leading to Lomé. A beer at a beach bar is a great way to re-enter Togo from Ghana or to spend a Sunday afternoon. Granted, vendors of all sorts of crap from sunglasses to stuffed animals will try to sell you said junk, but with the vendors comes the buffet of street food. And trash-filled though it may be, I will miss looking at the ocean over my beer.

Maimouna and Abdou Razak again, just because they're cute
So. There's my final, sentimental post for your enjoyment. I think it's better to leave the list of things I won't miss. When and if I get a new internet space, I'll send out that address, but at the risk of forever posting here things that will become totally unrelated to Togo, I'll try my best to make this my last post. Thanks to everyone who wrote me letters and emails, and thanks for reading.

All These Things I've Done (and didn't tell)

2009-08-14T09:25:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm safely in Switzerland and out of Africa, I feel like I can share some of these close calls without jinxing myself or causing my parents sleepless nights. So here are four fun things that happened that I decided not to share until after leaving Togo:

1. Once in village, I fainted on my front porch. My neighbors had to lead me to the latrine and in my severely dehydrated state, I was convinced I had malaria and was going to die. But, I was just really dehydrated.

2. Shortly before I left village, I was walking around my house barefoot at dusk, about to leave for the market. As I stepped toward the door, I felt something under my foot and recoiled, thinking it was a very big cockroach. Instead, my flash light revealed a scorpion, which, after much hesitation and pep-talking, I killed with a running shoe.

3. My second night in Lomé, which was the first night I spent in the house after Christmas in Ghana, JT and two friends got held up at gunpoint at our gate at 3 a.m. No one was hurt, but they lost phones, an iPod and a camera. After that, we replaced the light above the door and had no more problems.

4. I got hit by a motorcycle biking home from work in February. He side-swiped me as I crossed into the left lane and I lost my balance and fell into the bushes planted on the median. I had one tiny scratch to show for it, unlike JT, who got hit by a car a few days later and had some nasty bruises.

And after all that and so many bush taxi rides up and down the country, I still made it. Whew.

Last post from Togo

2009-08-10T09:20:00.000-07:00

Aaaand…. I thought about updating during the last two weeks, but I procrastinated and now it’s my last day in Togo as a Peace Corps volunteer. Actually, I’m not a volunteer anymore. I finished my close of service procedures and now I’m just an unemployed former volunteer (officially, a “returned Peace Corps volunteer”, or RPCV, but I haven’t returned yet).

Had I updated regularly, I would have given you better accounts of my farewell trips to Sagbiebou and Agou Nygobo, but now I’ll just say I went to both and said goodbye to my friends in village and my host family in Agou. I finished work at PSI on July 31st so that I could have ten days to travel and run around Lomé. I finished the traveling Wednesday night and have to finish the running around today.

This Saturday, we had a small goodbye party at the house. I decided to make samosas for the first time ever. They turned out really well, but they take a long time to prepare, so I spent half the party in the kitchen. A volunteer friend offered to roll sushi for me when I mentioned that I was going to serve sushi (veggie). He did sushi prep in a restaurant for a year, so the rolls were beautiful and much more professional than anything I would have served.

I feel like my last update in Togo should be more reflective than what I’m going to post today, but I’m exhausted from stress, dancing and my emotional roller coaster ride (from “Yay! I’m leaving! Cheese! And margaritas! Friends and family! No more ‘yovo, yovo’” to “I can’t believe I’m leaving. No more plantains and peanut sauce and street food. No more ‘yovo, yovo.’”). I’d like to write a few more updates, and there’s one I’ve been thinking of for a while that I can’t write until I leave. For now, fingers crossed for a safe flight. I’m spending three days in Morocco, then two weeks in Switzerland and then, finally, back to the States.

In my blogging (yeah, yeah, I know I don’t update enough to call myself a blogger) absence, here are some links to distract you from your work: a site for the Dapaong weavers that I created (in French only for the moment – please don’t click Google translate, it’s so bad. Just look at the pretty pictures).
Also, I posted the first Obama post at This Is Diversity. Someone from their site asked me to share my experiences in Togo there, but I only got around to contributing one article. Anyway, check it out, they have all kinds of interesting tid-bits there.

Obama Village: Not a Village

2009-07-21T09:30:00.000-07:00

This Saturday, I biked about 30k north of Lomé to a sign I'd noticed pointing off the national highway to Obama Village. I've been wanting to go since March, to add to my photo collection of Obama things. I figured I'd find the village chief, ask him why they changed the name, what was the village called before, maybe have some local brew, and then head out again. I even bought bread, a standard gift, to present to him.

I arrived around 7:30 and pushed my bike down the path in the direction indicated, after taking the obligatory photo.

The first man I met couldn't tell me anything. The second one said there was no village, just farms. I asked if one was called Obama Village and he said something about one big farm, well, not that big, but...

The path to Obama Village.

Now, rather than imagining an interview with the village chief, I imagined talking to a farmer who'd named his farm Obama Village (and put the sign on the roadside). I followed the path past smaller turn-offs and one or two shuttered mud buildings. When the path ended in a cornfield, I turned around and followed the sound of voices. I found a hut, where I greeted a young woman and asked about Obama Village.

"It's that way," she said, pointing, "hold on."

She led me, still pushing my bike, down a path, two younger girls following us. They chattered behind us in Ewe*, and their conversation went something like this:

"Ewe ewe ewe ewe Obama Village. Ewe ewe ewe Obama Village ewe."

We passed a cluster of huts and picked up a man of about 20. I was disappointed that this hut cluster was not Obama Village. We continued, passing a woman in a field ("Obama Village!") and another attacking a young teak tree with her machete ("Ewe ewe Obama Village!"). We turned left and then right off the path, at which point I started wondering where they were leading me.

Fifty meters off the path, we came to a palm frond shelter where the young man, Yao, suggested I leave my bike, since the path was nonexistent. I did, and we continued another fifty meters to Obama Village.

That's it.

I asked who built it.

"The owner of this land."

"Does he live here?"

"No. He is in America."

"And the mason?"

"Lomé."

We walked back, and when we arrived at my guide's home, I gave her the bread I'd bought for the chief of Obama Village.

"Thank you very much, Afi. You are the chief of Obama Village."

Yawa, Afi, my guide, Amelevie and Yao

I found out later from a Peace Corps employee that people are buying cheap land right now with the idea of building on it later. So in 10 years, maybe there will be an actual village to visit.

*Ewe is a local language spoken in southern Togo, Ghana and Benin. It's also an ethnicity. It's pronounced "eh-vay" and not like a female sheep.

Vacation photos

2009-07-13T11:04:00.000-07:00

All the vacation photos can now be seen on Facebook, right here.

I also updated the last post on Obama after visiting an Obama barbershop in my neighborhood yesterday.

Obama in Ghana (and everywhere else)

2009-07-10T09:26:00.000-07:00

President Obama arrives in Accra today, so it seems like an appropriate time to post my Obama photo collection. Since his election, I've noticed various businesses have adopted the name "Obama", so I started taking pictures. Here's what I have so far...

A building in Kodjoviakope, Lomé - I'm not sure if it's a hotel or just apartments. They completed construction since I've been here. In case you can't see the "Obama" here's a close up:

Cafeteria Obama in Dapaong

Obama hairdresser, also in Dapaong

A taxi driver in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso loves Obama, but forgot to spell check.

A sign in the Kokomlemle neighborhood of Accra, Ghana, advertises the Obama Inn, bar and restaurant.

Elom the barber and his barbershop in the Tokoin-Gbonvie neighborhood of Lomé.

Mr. Elom said he changed his barbershop's name eight or nine months ago. Before "Obama", he said he just wrote his own name. Why did he change it?

"Because I love him! I love him too much!"

A sign off the national highway points to Obama village, which is not a village.

Two More Cents on MJ

2009-07-03T11:21:00.000-07:00

Because I can only assume that the American media isn't bombarding you with nothing but news on Michael Jackson's death, I just have to add more news from Togo. Actually, I only have this photo* I took of a business in Kodjoviakope, a neighborhood in Lomé

and this link to an article about Faure Gnassingbe's (Togo's president) statement about Michael Jackson's death. For the non-francophones, he's basically saying that MJ was an exceptional singer and dancer who "dug a canal" (my poor, literal translation) between black and white music.

"I've always been one of his fans. What was extraordinary about him was his ability to create bridges between black music, soul, funk and disco, and white music like pop and rock."

Thanks, Faure. And thanks to Melissa for the link.

*The store was closed because it was Sunday, not for mourning.

Back to Work

2009-07-01T10:04:00.000-07:00

Vacation is over, Monday was my first day back at work and I have five weeks of work left and about six of Togo - not that I'm counting. Actually I'm really trying not to count, because then I have to think about paperwork and other things I'd rather ignore.

The parking lot at the Burkina-Niger border, where Amanda and I slept on Night One of vacation. See those guys sitting on a rock by the telephone pole? That's about where we put down our mat.

Male giraffes fighting in Koure, outside Niamey. Love that head-butt move.

Our trip was... well, until we arrived at Green Turtle, our last stop, it wasn't very relaxing. We were in a bus almost every day after leaving Niamey, and the one day we didn't have to catch a bus, I was sick and stayed in bed. This was the day we spend in Mole (pronounced Molay) National Park in northern Ghana. We spent the night before in the Peace Corps sub-office in Tamale, and when we left for the bus station to go to Mole, I realized I felt rotten. The ticket vendors told us to arrive at 1:30 for a 3 o'clock departure. We left around 4:30 and spent those three pre-departure hours waiting at the bus station, which doubled as a market. The ride to Mole included two hours on a paved road and then three special hours bumping along on a dirt road, with the latter part of the ride through the dark, African night. This while running a fever and having to pee. I advise travelers to Ghana to take the less frequent, more expensive STC busses when possible. MMT, the bus line we took to Mole and then Kumasi, is basically just a big bush taxi.

Peter and Amanda P. waiting in the Tamale bus station... hour three.

So I didn't go on a guided walking tour the next morning, but I saw elephants, wart hogs and water buck anyway. The lodge in Mole sits on a plateau that overlooks the park, and I saw two elephants at the watering hole. The water buck came out at dusk. The wart hogs like to hang around the lodge, and one elephant wandered up to say hi around lunch time. The roundtrip bus ride to the park was not worth my time in bed there, but the day off got me back in shape for more bus riding. If you're healthy and have more than a day (or a private vehicle), I would recommend Mole. Breakfast is included with the price of the room. That's always exciting, unless the breakfast is no good (my eggs, toast and tea were delicious, especially since I'd eaten next to nothing the day before).

After Mole, we trekked south to Kumasi, home of the largest market in West Africa. Half of our group wanted to spend a full day there, but Amanda and I woke up at 2:20 the next morning to catch the 4 a.m. bus to Takoradi so we could spend more time on the beach. This bus, an STC, was nicer than Greyhounds I've ridden in the States and was so air conditioned I had to thaw out when we arrived in Takoradi. From Takordi, we took tro-tros (Ghanaian bush taxis) to Green Turtle, where we properly relaxed by doing nothing for four days. The ocean was rougher than any other time I've been there, and after my first swim, I decided not to venture out beyond the breakers again (mainly because once I got out there, the only way to get back in was to let the waves do the work, and they treated me like a rag doll). From then on, "swimming" meant standing in the water, getting knocked over by the waves and then getting back up.

A mid-morning walk on the beach with Peter, Amanda P. and Amanda H.

The intrepid bus riders after dinner at Green Turtle.

From Green Turtle, I went to Accra to meet my friend John. Every time I visit Ghana's capital, I'm amazed by how it surpasses Togo. There's a mall! With a movie theater! And a food court! They have fast food establishments and internet businesses - not cafés, Busy Internet on Ring Road is too big to be a mere café - with internet that loads web pages before you age a year. There's also bumper-to-bumper traffic, pot-holed roads and shanty town poverty - it just comes with middle-class entertainment.

We got back to Togo on Thursday, and it's been raining almost non-stop since. That's good for temperatures and farmers but bad for tourism and malaria (and eventually it's bad for the farmers). When I say tourism, I mean it's difficult to show your visitor around town when the roads are full of lakes and mud. And when I say malaria, I mean more rain equals more mosquitoes equals more malaria. I leave you with this Togo Travel Tip: when visiting sub-Saharan Africa, always bring your malaria prophylaxis, especially if you don't plan on staying in air-conditioning all the time (even then). Yovos.

PS - I've been instructed to update more regularly, which I will try to do in my last howevermany weeks. If all the updates start annoying you, send me an email and I'll un-enroll (or whatever) you from the auto-update list. Also, there will be more photos.

Trip Awesome

2009-06-13T03:48:00.000-07:00

So it turns out that traveling from Cinkassé (on the border of Togo and Burkina) to Niamey (the capital of Niger) is not really possible in one day - at least not if you take a bush taxi, which we thought would be a good idea.

Amanda and I took a bus to Koupela, which is half way between Cinkassé and Ouagaudougou. We got out here to take a bush taxi to Niamey. Had the taxi gone straight there, we could have arrived around 8 p.m. Instead, the first car dropped us off aboout two hours later in a place called Fada N'Guorma (maybe). Then we had to wait about two hours for the next car to leave. This car's driver was a wonderful man, who thought nothing of cramming about 25 people in his 15-seat car. Amanda and I were on the bench closest to the front, and I was pushed against the door. I spent a good part of the ride hanging out the window, because that was comfortable. Then, at one of our unexplained stops (where the driver picked up MORE people to shove in), the door fell off.

Because we stopped about three times along the way, we didn't even make it to the last town before the Niger border. There, the driver left us to sit while he unloaded all the yams we'd had underfoot before picking us up to take us to the station. I was hoping we could just spend the night in a cheap hostel or something, which another passenger assured me was possible. We got to the station, where someone told us we were going to continue (we had all already paid the full fare to Niamey). We got in another car - also overcrowded - and chugged along in the dark, all the way to the border. The guards collected our passports and identity cards, we pooled money so that they would let us go through with all the baggage on top of the car... and then the border closed. And Amanda and I spent the night at the border. In the parking lot. On a mat that someone lent us. I slept well until 2 or 3 a.m. when a semi pulled through and I decided it must be time to wake up. But no... it was not close to dawn and there were still several hours of tossing and turning and hugging my camera bag to my body left.

So! Lessons learned: if you don't want to go to Ouaga from Cinkassé to travel to Niamey, the Koupela bus leaves on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 8 a.m. To get this bus, you'd have to spend the night in Koupela, because I don't think the Burkina border opens before six. Bush taxis are a really rotten idea and bush taxi drivers are the same, it seems, in all francophone West African countries (in Ghana, everyone gets their own seat in the bush taxis). Finally, there is no where to sleep at the border of Burkina and Niger except the ground.

But when we finally arrived, we had showers, some beers, lunch, naps and then more beers at a bar overlooking the Niger River. Today we paid about $80 to drive out to see the last herd of giraffes in West Africa - very touristy, but very cool AND there was a baby AND two of them were fighting. Then we went to a mosque whose building was funded by the Libyan government and next we're going on canoe rides on the river.

We leave for Ouaga tomorrow morning on a bus. No more bush taxis for this trip.

Candles and Trees

2009-06-04T10:38:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I attended two large events, one for PSI and one for Peace Corps.

On Friday, PSI held its annual Candlelight Memorial ceremony, honoring those who have died of HIV/AIDS. Candlelight is an international event that has apparently been happening since 1983, on the third Sunday of May (visit the International AIDS Candlelight Memorial page for more information). We were a little late, with ours happening the last Friday of May at the Congressional Palace. PSI invited the organizations we work with to invite people to the event, which started with a march that I missed, because my duty was handing out condoms inside the venue.

As we've learned from previous events, freebies draw crowds (all invited participants received tshirts) and mobs. Condom distribution went fine until everyone arrived at once, pushed through the two entrances and decided they really wanted to get to their seats but also really wanted condoms. Security decided they should help me distribute from the middle of the stairs rather than at the bottom of the stairs, where I was getting smushed. Then a PSI employee started yelling at them, which started a shouting match with me still trying to hand out condoms between the two shouting parties. I hope this is the last time I ever get mobbed for free stuff in Togo.

I'd never been to an event like this in Togo (except for maybe that cryfest at camp last year), but as an American, "Candlelight Mermorial for Victims of HIV/AIDS" led me to expect a somber evening, despite the two musical guests. But people talked and cheered throughout the speeches and the moment of silence, and I felt it was all kind of a joke. Co-workers said it was an improvement from last year and generally thought it went well, though, so I guess I can only blame my Western expectations.

On Saturday, I went to Notsé, a town in the Plateaux region, to attend Moringa Fest. Two volunteers from my training group, Ashley and Danielle (remember Danielle from the last post, when she got married?) have worked with the moringa tree for most of their service. Moringa Fest was the culminating event of two years' of moringa-educating and promoting. Volunteers and Togolese counterparts ran stations that explained different benefits of the moringa tree: nutritional information, how to plant and care for the tree, how to dry the leaves and make powder, how to cook with the leaves, and how to use the seeds to purify water and make oil. There was a rowdy kids' section where volunteers (including roommate JT) tried to corral 50 children and keep them out of the adults' way. Throughout the day, on the main stage, volunteers presented their stations' lessons, and during breaks, people could visit the stations and get more information. There were also games like musical chairs and a moringa-themed song and poem competition to keep the mood festive. The moringa tree is called the "miracle tree" for all its uses and its leaves' high nutritional value. If Ashley and Danielle could just reproduce their event all over Togo, malnutrition might drop immensely.

Next Wednesday, I start my West Africa tour: Niger, Burkina Faso (we're really just crossing it) and Ghana. It's impossible to just get the Niger visa in Togo and you can't buy it at the Burkina-Niger border, so I bought the Visa Entente. This gets you a one-time entry visa for Benin, Niger, Burkina Faso, Togo and Côte d'Ivoire, which is valid for two months. Obviously, I don't need Togo, I already have a five-year Burkina visa, I don't really plan on going to Benin and U.S. citizens don't need a visa for Côte d'Ivoire. So I spent $50 for Niger, mainly because I want to see giraffes. But if anyone ever plans to travel to those countries, keep the Visa Entente in mind.

Finishing up, Peace Corps Style

2009-05-13T10:04:00.000-07:00

So, approximately three months before our official Close of Service date (August 22nd, calculated by Peace Corps from our swearing-in date), we have a Close of Service (COS) conference. This involves going to a hotel by the beach and learning about all the medical and administrative things we have to do before we can get on the plane.

When I heard about COS conference two years ago from the volunteers that were leaving around the time I arrived, my reaction was, "Hotel by the beach? Food? Pool? I'm totally staying for that!" I realize that's not really great motivation for two years' service, and had I been utterly miserable in Togo, the idea of Hotel Novella Star certainly wouldn't have kept me here. But, I made it. And so did all these people:

That's 14 less people than we started with (we lost 15 from the original group and gained one transfer from Kenya):

For more comparisons, here's the original group of health (CHAP) volunteers at our swearing-in:

And now:

I had a great time hanging out with everyone one last time. We ended the week by celebrating a fellow CHAP volunteer's wedding. Danielle and Jorge met in Bolivia about seven years ago and have been carrying on long-distance since then. He joined her here in Togo in January, they got officially married in Ghana, and we had a ceremony on the beach in Togo (the first of many ceremonies? I think they're planning more in the States and Bolivia). Anyway, I took most of the wedding photos and you can see them in all their un-Photoshopped glory on Facebook, here, here, and here. Yes, there are three albums, and about a hundred variations of the following photo (that I obviously didn't take).

And that's about all that's new. I have some West African travels planned for June and a ticket out of here for August 11th. So... see you soon.

What Happened in April

2009-05-03T06:14:00.000-07:00

I know, I know - another month has passed with only one blog update. Here's a summary of April:

Easter weekend, I went to Agou Nyogbo for two volunteers' "fake wedding." They celebrated Togolese style, with heavy American influences (bridesmaids and groomsmen, shoving cake in each others' faces, etc.) Now they are recognized as married in the eyes of Agou Nyogbo, but nowhere else. You can see photos on Facebook .

That week, Togo made it into the international news (BBC) when Kpatcha Gnassingbe, the president's brother, became the victim of an assassination attempt. Actually, he was plotting a coup, and two days later, he ran to the US embassy, seeking refuge to avoid arrest. They got him anyway (read about it at the BBC ) and THEN found a bunch of weapons at his house ( article ). You would think this would all be very exciting or scary, but everyone carried on like nothing had happened. Just another day in Togo.

I finally, finally put out the second (and my last) issue of Perspectives. Here in Togo, we have many volunteer-published newsletters: Farm to Market for the Natural Resource Management and small business volunteers, the CHAP Newsletter for health volunteers, the the Griot an Onion-style satirical newsletter, and then, Perspectives. Perspectives prints volunteers' essays, poems, recipes - basically, whatever they want to submit. I became editor of the gender and development newsletter last March, and the Perspectives editor and I decided to combine our publications because neither ever had many contributions. We put out one issue in July, then procrastinated, and then she got medically separated right around the time we planned to work on the next issue (late October). Then it took me another four months to put the newsletter together, but it's finally out and it looks quite nice. If you'd like to see a copy, I'd love to send it to you, but I've had no success emailing it, because the file's too big. I'll take suggestions on what to do about that.

This week is our COS conference (Close of Service). It's from Tuesday afternoon to Friday at the Hotel Novella Star, which is outside of Lomé towards Benin. For three days, Peace Corps will tell us all about the things we have to do so we can leave Togo. This is the last time that everyone who's left from my training group will be together in one place. I think we're all having some issues realizing that our two years are almost over. I'll try to be better blogger and at least send some pictures out next week.

Finally, news from Sagbiebou: Zaratou's husband (I don't know husbands' names - my male neighbor is STILL "Alima's husband") called me on Friday to tell me that my friend Maïmouna had her baby. It's a boy, and since I've had no news since Friday, I guess everyone's still healthy.

I apologize for the lack of news and will try to do better in my last three months. I have an official COS date - August 10th. Now I just need a plane ticket.

A Morning around Nano

2009-04-05T05:32:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago in Dapaong, I was finally able to check something off my To Do in Togo list. Near Nano, a village southwest of Dapaong, there are cliffs that shelter caves. The Moba, the dominant ethnic majority in northern Togo, hid in these caves during tribal warfare. Today, it is one of the few tourist sites that I'm aware of in the Savannah region.

Normally, getting to the caves involves a hike, but I got very lucky. A group of Rotary Club International/Public Health International members from Oregon were in Dapaong that week, doing lots of good work in Nano. I caught a ride with them and Will, the Nano volunteer, right up to the caves' gates.

I don't know what I was expecting, but I was surprised to see this elaborate ladder leading down to the caves.

Tom the Rotarian about to descend the ladder.

Our $4 guide led us to the cave and showed us where camp fires blackened the ceilings. We saw the food storage containers, and at Will's suggestion, I crawled through the claustrophobia-inducing tunnel used for sleeping. Turns out, I'm not claustrophobic, but I'm glad I'm not a Moba during tribal wars.

With Will at the caves.

After the caves, the Rotary folks visited a church and Will gave me a tour of Nano's market. He bought me some bean beignets and got himself pig's blood sausage. Ew.

He also shared all the excellent contents of his mom's packages with me. Thanks, Mrs. Vu! I think this is only the volunteer treatment, so don't expect candy on your tour. There are semi-cold drinks available in Nano, though. And blood sausage.

2009-03-14T06:11:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos from the trip.

I made a kid cry at the clinic.

This is Alex, the birth assistant's nephew. I used to make him cry, but we're friends now.

From (l-r): Zaratou's husband, Maliki and some guy I don't know.

Zaratou lounging in the family courtyard.

Zaratou's courtyard with sheep.

With Maïmouna.

Maïmouna said, "This is Aziz's (her son's) future wife. Take her photo."

It's funny when the kids ride donkeys, except for when they beat them.

Izaïfot and Hanatou on their way to get their hair done.

Standing outside Dapaong feels like being in the middle of nowhere.

Quiktrip to Savanes

2009-03-14T06:08:00.000-07:00

Isn’t it funny that when my access to technology increased, my updates decreased?

Last weekend, I went back to Savanes – two days of traveling, two of visiting. Actually, there was traveling involved every day. On Saturday, I took the Lomé Limo, a 15-place van hired by Peace Corps to go round-trip from Lomé to Dapaong twice a month. I got off in Mango, spent the night, then went to Sagbiebou for a short Sunday visit.

When I walked into my compound, Hanatou, the younger of the neighbor girls, ran up to me, completely naked as usual, and hugged me. I almost started to cry, it was so cute. I didn’t even care that she had food on her, as usual. People all seemed happy to see me again, although I guess I did a poor job of explaining where I went. A third of the people I talked to thought I’d gone on vacation to the States and others thought I’d left for good.

On the trip up, I’d bought bananas and bread to give to people, because when you travel, you’re supposed to bring something back – bread is very popular. But in Mango, Laura’s cat attacked my bread bag, and even after we put it in the pantry, it managed to crack open the door and remove a noticeable chunk from one of the loaves. So I had one less bread to give.

I toured the village, distributing my bread – my house, the clinic and finally, Maïmouna’s house. Together, we went to Zaratou’s, where we stayed for about an hour, chatting in the courtyard and eating soy. I met Maïmouna and Zaratou by the roadside where they sell yams, watermelons and mangos (seasonally, not usually all at once). Maïmouna is the one who hennaed my feet in September 2007 and Zaratou paid for it. They were my favorite women in village.

While sitting around at Zaratou’s house, a woman I know from the market came over, shouting about something. She ranted for a long time and eventually sat down on the porch with us. Zaratou’s husband explained that their sheep had wandered over to her house, where she was drying millet. The sheep, spying a tasty snack, ate the millet. Zaratou gave her a bucket of millet to replace what the sheep ate, but the whole scenario was so typical – why leave your millet out when you know that animals roam the village and will eat anything?

Maïmouna and I went to the market around 11, where I bought small, sad, pre-mango season mangos. Then we went to my house, which was all locked up, and took naps on my landlord’s porch. She passed out – she’s about seven months pregnant – but I couldn’t sleep in that heat. The whole day, I kept thinking, “HOW did I do this last year? It’s so hot!” My water bottle was empty by noon, and all I could think of while trying to sleep was cold water, swimming pools, juice and glass bottles of icy Sprite. I got a tan from walking around for a few hours in Sagbiebou.

Eventually, I gave up and went to the market to buy juice. The women make lime juice and juice from hibiscus, which they sell in bags. I bought some to share, went back to the house and sat with the neighbors until Maïmouna woke up. Then I went to Dapaong.

I had no real purpose in going to Dapaong, beyond seeing my volunteer friends and picking up the last thing I’d ordered from the tailor there. I wanted to be back in Lomé by Tuesday night, so I decided to leave Monday, go to Kara, and take the Kara-Lomé bus on Tuesday, which is more reliable than bush taxis. Forgetting what a trial it is to get from Dapaong to Kara, I only left around 4 p.m.

I’m not sure if I’ve described enough in my updates just how frustrating bush taxi travel is. The drivers stuff passengers in the cars – there are ALWAYS more people than seats – and then they let you sit there until they’re ready to go. They make frequent stops for no clear reason and leave you steaming and squashed in the car. If you get out and dilly-dally, they yell at you. Taxi drivers are some of my least favorite people in Togo.

This Dapaong-Kara ride was no different. I waited for maybe half an hour outside Dapaong (I like to wait by a technical school outside the city so I don’t have to deal with the men at the taxi station). Finally, a decrepit nine-placer heading to Kara rolled up, and I climbed in, sharing the back seat with two women and a baby. We drove four kilometers out of Dapaong, where the driver left us on the side of the road while he went back to Dapaong. He returned about 20 minutes later with more junk and more passengers in the car. I almost refused to go, thinking I’d just put myself through a Dapaong-Lomé ride the next day, but I really wanted to catch that bus. So I squeezed in, this time on the front bench, with the mom and baby and two guys. I got the pleasure of riding on the edge of the bench, perched right on the exposed metal hinge of the seat and seat back. For three hours, from Dapaong to Kanté, I sat with this metal bar tattooing my tailbone. I even got out my towel and used it as padding, but it still hurt. In Kanté, the woman got out, and I switched to her window seat next to a pane-less window (ok, that was not meant to be a pun. The window had no glass! But it was also less painful than the metal bar).

I spent the night in Kara and got up early to pay for my bus ticket. While waiting to check my bag, Fortune smiled on me and the head of PSI’s military outreach program sidled up to me.

“Hi! I have to stay in Kara today, but the PSI car is going to Lomé. Do you want a ride?”

And that’s how I got a free, air-conditioned ride back to Lomé.

I have some interesting work coming up in the next few weeks, both in Lomé and back in Savanes, if all goes as planned. I expect that will give me something to write about; I’ll aim for more than a monthly update.

Finally, and this is very late, but for all those who helped Liz McCartney of the St. Bernard Project win CNN Heroes 2008, here is a Thank You letter from Liz.

Happy St. Patty’s – we don’t celebrate that here, but I fully expect any able bodies to have a beer in my name, or at least catch a cabbage.

a fruitless quest

2009-02-16T03:44:00.000-08:00

15 February 2009

A month and ten days after starting at PSI, work is still painfully slow. Before I started, I was sent a letter that outlined the work I would be doing. Last week, I finally took the list around to the people responsible for the different tasks.

First I talked to Charifat, who is in charge of the program for sex workers. My list says I’m supposed to “help with presentations during film projections for sex workers”. I went to one session with Charifat, and while it was interesting, it was all in Ewe. I asked her how I could help, despite the language, and she said she didn’t know. She didn’t express any other needs for the program, so I moved on to Valentin, one of the guys who runs the youth program.

For the youth, my work list says I’m supposed to help with supervision, especially with the supervision of the girls’ program. The youth program, 100% Jeune, consists of PSI-trained peer educators in schools across the country, who are required to do a certain amount of presentations a month. I’ve attended two supervisions with Valentin, showing up at the school unannounced when the P.E.s had a talk scheduled. Valentin gave tips at the end of the talk; I watched.

When I asked how I could help, Valentin asked if I would be interested in going on supervision trips in the “interior” (what Lomé people call the rest of the country) with him and the co-coordinator. I said I would love to, but what would I do? Because if I’m just going to watch, sending me would be a waste of PSI’s money. Then he said I might be able to organize an International Women’s Day event at one of the schools, if they decide to do it. I have a feeling this won’t happen (which is ok, because I’m supposed to go on vacation that week). On to the next task.

Ephraim, who edits the youth magazine, which I’m supposed to help with, gave me a list of the topics for the next issue, which will focus on promoting the HIV/AIDS test. When I suggested we include a testimonial from someone who’s taken the test on the page where a “specialist” will explain the test’s importance and how it works, my idea was rejected. Ephraim said the information had to come from a specialist. Later, I decided he misunderstood my suggestion and wrote him a note. I’m waiting for a response.

Finally, I reported to John, the head of communications, and told him about my unsuccessful quest for work. I suggested he give me the publicity materials to develop or revise (first task on the list) so I could start on that. He told me I wouldn’t really be able to do that until after everyone in communications (except JT and I, we weren’t invited) got back from this training they went to on Thursday and Friday. K, thanks, John! And back to trawling the internet for future job and graduate school possibilities.

Most of my work has been coming from Peace Corps. Last week, I went to the training for new CHAP volunteers in Pagala to talk about PSI’s family planning program. I got a ride Wednesday afternoon with the PC country director, thinking my presentation was on Thursday evening. Oops, no – no one bothered to call to tell me it had been moved to Friday morning. So I stayed in Pagala for three nights to give a 20-minute presentation. It’s ok, though – I saw friends and got free meals.

On Wednesday afternoons, I’m working at the PC office, helping with Friends of Togo (FoT) requests. FoT is exactly that – ex-volunteers, their friends and families, raising money for small Peace Corps projects in Togo (if you’d like to become a member, more information is available here, I think). My new job is to keep track of how much money we have, send volunteers the application, answer questions, call them if their projects are approved and keep a database of current, pending and completed projects. It also seems that if I don’t have any FoT work, I’ll be doing other busy work, like updating bulletin boards. We’ll see about that – I agreed to help with FoT, not busy work.

So that’s work. Yesterday, JT and I did photo and video for a PSI presentation for women at a factory. It was the usual HIV/AIDS prevention presentation – test promotion, male and female condom presentations. There was also a quick word from HIV-positive woman. I took photos, and with any luck, I’ll be able to do the same at Monday’s event at the port.

Last night, I went to another work-related event. PSI has different target groups – youth, sex workers, religious groups, truck drivers, the workplace and Men who have Sex with Men (MSM). Worldwide, PSI uses marketing and sales to tackle health problems. They sell products, from condoms and lube to multi-vitamins and mosquito nets. Peer educators for each target group educate the population on health issues and promote these products. The idea behind selling products is that if people buy them, rather than receive them for free, they are more likely to use them instead of resell them. Ok, that was a very long tangent.

Anyway, so I went to an MSM event, a Valentine’s Day party at a night club near my house (unfortunately, globalization has brought Valentine’s Day to Togo, to a certain extent. I’m sure it has yet to reach small villages). When you go out at night here, you don’t go out until about 11. We left for the club around 10, and because it rained, out of nowhere (it’s dry season), JT’s friend came and picked us up in his car. The rain delayed the start of the party, but by midnight or so, the club was very full. It was fun to see all the boys, a few girls, and a few boys-as-girls, all decked out in red and white (as a straight, white woman wearing purple and brown, I was the epitome of out-of-place). But by 2:30, I was all danced out and was falling asleep. Rather than risk getting mugged on the eight-minute walk home, I climbed into the back seat of the car and slept until 5:30, when the party ended and it was safe to go home on foot. I’m embarrassed that at 25, I can’t even make it through a whole night without dozing in the corner.

I have goals to strive for before I leave – one all-night party and finding some work.

photos of my new home

2009-01-28T04:12:00.000-08:00

Here are the photos I meant to post with the last entry. I hate the way this thing does photos and can't figure out how to make it look better. From now on, I'll be posting in Facebook and providing the link.

JT makes pizza and rarely wears a shirt; and our awesome porch.

(from top to bottom) My bedroom, the guest room and the living room.

Expat Life and Office Hours

2009-01-26T00:42:00.000-08:00

Life in village seems so very long ago and far away.

Last week, JT and I got monthly passes to the outdoor pool at the British School of Lomé. We went twice last week, and this week, we got up early on Monday, Wednesday and Friday to swim before work. JT swam on swim teams and can give me tips, which is very helpful. Beyond the breaststroke, I feel like a drowning person, but my freestyle is already getting better. I swim now to get my exercise, since biking around Lomé is stressful and I’m still giving my knee a break from running. I think another three months should do it.

Despite the traffic, I have been riding my bike, mostly to the pool and work. Sometimes I’ll ride it to the Peace Corps office. Traffic is scary and is a huge change from the two-lane, empty national highway up north. I’m getting used to it and just have to remember to pay attention.

Last night, we saw Thierry Nkéli Faha in concert at the French Cultural Center (FCC or CCF, in French). He’s Togolese and sings in local languages and French. He’s been on tour around Asia and will go to Europe after he finishes his Africa tour. I haven’t been to a concert in I-can’t-remember-how-long, so I was excited about this opportunity. The FCC is a like an entertainment goldmine. They do movies, concerts and lectures, and they also have a library.

Lomé also has other great things, like cheese. The supermarkets here are expensive for Peace Corps volunteers, and so is cheese, but I bought some last week. JT made quiche and pizza. I cook, too, but less ambitiously (think pasta salad and pancakes).

Work is still pretty slow, and I’m still working on that pamphlet. It’s in its final stages, though. I wrote three summaries for it, and when I gave it to a co-worker, the paper came back bleeding blue. It wasn’t even French corrections, just the way I’d written it. She told me we needed more active verbs and journalistic style, which was all true. I haven’t written much in French since college, so now, I can’t even write a sentence without looking up a word. I wanted to say, “I’m a good writer! Just not in French.” Next time I’ll pay more attention to my active voice.

I’ve run into a few Togolese-style incidents in the last few weeks. At work, our hours are 8 to 12:30, then 2:30 to 6. One would think that if someone worked through their two hour lunch break, she could come in an hour late and leave an hour early. Our Peace Corps predecessors warned us that this creates office tension. Apparently, our co-workers don’t like people leaving early, which I can understand but not completely, since you’re working the same hours. I noticed the time thing the very first day, when I packed my computer up at 5:45, forgetting that quitting time is six, not 5:30.

“You’re going home already? It’s not six yet,” the guy who shares my office said.

“Oh,” I replied, looking at my empty desk and saying in English, “but I don’t have anything to do.”

So, despite his permission to go home early that day, since it was my first, I restarted my computer and chatted online for 15 more minutes.

Today at the bank, I thought the bankers would withhold my money because my withdrawal slip signature didn’t match my ID signature. On the ID, I signed on one line. On the front and back of the withdrawal slip, I signed my last name under my first. Don’t ask why, I just did. They asked why. Then they compared the signatures long enough for me to worry about whether I would get money today.

It’s good to have these run-ins to remind me that despite cheese and concerts, I’m still in Togo. Because the unpaved streets and cries of “Yovo, yovo!” are sometimes just not enough.

Thanks to everyone who’s been sending mail, especially all the Christmas cards from the Anadarko folks! Merci beaucoup.

...I was going to upload photos, but it doesn't look like it's in the cards today. Maybe next time.

There's No Escaping the Gloom and Doom

2009-01-11T08:03:00.000-08:00

My first week at work was uneventful. I got two tours of the office, went to two four-hour meetings in the same day, halved the amount of email in my inbox and on Friday, actually got some work to do (designing a pamphlet about PSI’s World AIDS Day activities). It was depressing and made me wonder if I didn’t make a mistake leaving village. Once things pick up, I think I’ll be fine.

Since we’re on depressing topics, let’s talk about the cloud over the week. On Tuesday morning, my host father from training, Daniel, called to tell me that Esse, my host mom, died. They anesthetized her for a Caesarean last Saturday, and she never woke up. The baby, a girl, is fine.

So yesterday, I went to my first Togolese funeral. Except I didn’t really go. I left Lomé in the morning with Trace, the Savarys’ other trainee, and his wife (they were in the training group after me). When we arrived in Agou Nygobo around 10:30, the ceremony was just ending. It was in this huge, unfinished church, with woven palm-leaf shelters providing shade (it’s really just a shell of a church – no roof, no walls). Two other people died in the village that week, so they combined the three ceremonies. I saw the three caskets come out, and then Daniel found us and we went back to the house with him.

I thought it was bizarre that we didn’t go to the internment, but he told us that it would be too difficult for him. Everyone we talked to seemed disappointed that we hadn’t arrived earlier to see the open casket. Apparently Esse was dressed in her best pagne. But she also died a week ago, and this is Africa, so I’m glad we missed the viewing. I would have liked to go the burial, though.

We sat inside the house with Daniel, making small talk and eating lunch. After lunch, we went outside to make room for others in the house. We sat under a mango tree and waited. George, my host brother, came back from wherever he was. Daniel said George understands what happened, but he seemed ok, still mischievous and spoiled as ever. I gave him my camera and let him run around taking pictures until the battery died. Then he refused to give it back, discovering that if he turned it off and on again, he could take at least one picture. I finally got it back and asked him to take us to see his new sister, Grace.

For now, she’s staying at a house just up the road from the Savarys’, with the woman who will nurse her for the next six months. When we arrived, she was sleeping alone in a full-sized bed, separated from the rest of the room by a hanging sheet. She looks just like Esse – same crinkly eyes, same flat face, same nose. We took turns holding her and told George that as a big brother, he had to take good care of her. It will be interesting to see where they are as a family in six months.

I left for Lomé shortly thereafter. I’m doing ok, but am still having a hard time, mainly when I think about it (so after writing this update, I don’t plan to think much about this again). It’s unreal. Esse was maybe 32 and healthy. She was my first Togolese friend, and after all she did for me, I wasn’t a very good friend to her. I hadn’t called them since October. I kept thinking that I should, to find out about the baby and tell them I moved to Lomé. And now it’s too late.

C’est la vie. And sometimes la vie is rotten.

With Esse at swear-in, August 2007.

Happy New Year

2009-01-02T07:50:00.000-08:00

It’s very exciting to write “2009” because this is the year I finish my service and come back to the States, for however long. Happy 2009!

I moved to Lomé on December 22nd. Peace Corps paid for me to rent a car to move all my belongings, and I called the guys that drove the chase car during AIDS ride. The apprentice brought me a bag of carrots as a gift. The journey down was typical – we broke down for two hours before leaving the Savannah region, then ran out of gas in Lomé, about five kilometers from my house. All was well once we arrived, and I even did a happy dance after I got the house tour. Three bedrooms, two bath, kitchen, big living room, great porch – I’m in Posh Corps now.

I spent that night at the house, then left the next day for Ghana. I almost didn’t go, because we were only staying for about two days, and the trip to Green Turtle Lodge can take more than 10 hours. But the lure of Christmas on the beach, away from Togo, beat any financial concerns.

As expected, the trip was long, but travel in Ghana is so much easier than in Togo (unless you and the taxi driver misunderstand the agreed-upon price and get into a screaming match). We arrived on the 24th, spent a restless night in our tent, thanks to mosquitoes, then spent most of Christmas Day in the water, swimming and floating beyond the surf. We had to cut the stay short, due to elections in Ghana, so we left early the 26th.

Peace Corps staff told us the border would close at 6 p.m. on the 26th (the borders close for elections to prevent non-Ghanains hopping over to vote). At the lodge, someone told us they’d been closely following border activity and that it wouldn’t close until the 27th. We decided not to take any risks, but just outside Accra, my dad called to say the internet said the borders were closed. So we got out in Accra, called a bunch of people, ate lunch, called some more people, went to Peace Corps Ghana’s office, and ended up in a hotel for free (the same hotel where I stayed on my way back from South Africa. Except I didn’t know then to announce myself as Peace Corps and paid too much money for a room).

And thus began our vacation from our vacation. We were exhausted from all our Christmas fun and traveling. In Accra, we recovered by doing nothing but walking around looking for our next meal, eating too much (Indian food! Pizza! Smoothies! Soft-serve ice cream!) and watching movies in our room. When the borders reopened Monday, I was ready to go back to Togo. Ghana is expensive, even when your hotel is free.

Since then, I’ve been settling into my new home, and getting to know my new roommate, JT, and my new dog, Manu, short for Emmanuel (he loves JT more, which is ok, except for he won’t let me walk him unless JT’s there). JT’s been here for a month already, and he has Togolese friends. They cooked us a huge meal last night, and also took us dancing on New Year’s Eve. So all is well. Work starts Monday, and I’m ready. All this free time in the big city means I have no routine and end up with a very bizarre sleep schedule.

I want to wish you all a happy new year again, and thank everyone who keeps up and puts up with the blog and my rambling. Only eight months left - enjoy it while you can.

I believe you can see Ghana photos here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2034011&l=18adf&id=66700997.

The last weeks in village

2008-12-16T07:13:00.000-08:00

13 Nov 2008

I’ve been procrastinating on writing updates. Then I realized that once I move to Lomé, I will probably have less interesting stories to tell. Now it’s time to play catch-up.

The World AIDS Day presentation the peer educators prepared went… it happened. It was at the elementary school, and our crowd consisted of students, teachers and a few random men. I invited a guy who’d helped train the peer educators, hoping he’d bring other men and women from the village. Instead, he commandeered the presentation, interrupting to explain and add information, then telling a dirty joke he told at my party at the end of the talk (it’s not even funny a joke). I just sat back and let things proceed, interjecting only to transition themes.

I thought it would be fun to have freebies, so I requested t-shirts, caps, key chains, bottle openers and condoms from PSI. This was actually a stupid idea, because it perpetuates the idea that if you go to a talk, you’ll get something. And everyone mobs and scrambles to get their “gift”, which can be disruptive. Then they complain when they get nothing. I gave t-shirts and hats to peer educators and certain people who helped prepare the activities. Peer educators who rarely attended meetings and were absent both at stuff-distribution and for World AIDS Day got nothing. They were very upset (“But we’re peer educators!”). Strangers are still asking me for key chains.

Further evidence that free stuff draws crowds: last week, the Togolese government held a mosquito net campaign and the women came in hordes. The nets are free for anyone with children age five or younger. The children get a vitamin A pill and a pill for parasites. But the women are all there for the nets. We have nets for sale at the clinic, but who comes then? If they’re free, though, women will stand in the sun all day and push, wrestle and yell to get a net. I was at the clinic from 8 a.m. until 4:50 p.m. on Tuesday, feeding kids pills, something children love eating. The clinic staff had to beat people back on multiple occasions.

On Wednesday morning, we ran out of nets around nine. Staff told women to go home, and some did. But when a truck arrived with more nets, I looked outside and could see women with their children running from the huts, paths and the bush surrounding the clinic. It was insane.

After World AIDS Day, I organized reproductive health talks at the middle school. I persuaded four other volunteers to come to Sagbiebou and help me. We each had our own classroom – four rooms of boys and one for all the girls (83 of 363 students). We talked about reproductive organs, sex, contraceptives and alternatives to sex. With a teacher’s assistance, I went into more detail than I feel I could have comfortably gone into in an American classroom. My theory is that French acts as a barrier and I’m more comfortable with certain subjects because it’s not my first language. Or perhaps I just have no shame.

Today I took my neighbor, Alima, to the Gando market (Gando is 17k away and home to my closest neighbor, Andrew). She’d never been, so I said we would go before I left. I imagined strolling around, looking at cloth, maybe having lunch. We arrived, went to Andrew’s, then hit the market. She shopped for a mat until she found an acceptable price, which took about 10 minutes.

“Ok, do you need anything? I’m finished.”

I tried to do the stroll-and-shop thing, but it was almost impossible to walk through the crowds. So I got what I needed and we left. I think we spent maybe two hours in Gando, max, including the wait for the car. But now Alima can say she’s been to the Gando market.

I move to Lomé on the 22nd and am already nostalgic for village. When I catch myself thinking, “How can I leave?” I respond by reminding myself of heat rash, peer educator meetings, overbearing mothers at the clinic and the wildlife just waiting to take over my house. But I’m still eyeing the calendar for three day weekends when I could come visit.

Please send any mail to the original address in Lomé. Email me if you don’t know what that is.

Happy Thanksgiving update

2008-11-27T03:00:00.000-08:00

21 Nov 2008

No death or disaster in the last few weeks, so I promise only good, interesting stories today.

I got the PSI job! I’m waiting for the official letter, but last week, the Peace Corps country director heard me complaining about my state of limbo (do I start new projects or am I moving?) on the ride to Dapaong in the air-conditioned Peace Corps car. She called Lomé and confirmed my invitation to begin at PSI in January. I haven’t told anyone village yet, but the Peace Corps community knows. Our rumor mill is so effective: tell two people, and complete strangers congratulate you on your way back to village.

I’m sad to leave Sagbiebou and “Madame Awa.” Children will not shout my name and run up to touch or grab my hand each time I pass. Lomé means anonymity, but that’s ok – less of a readjustment to make when I return to the States. Finishing my service in the capital will also be less satisfying than completing two years in village. But every time people come late, if at all, to a meeting, I look forward to working with Togolese in a professional setting (where I will also probably be made to wait for meetings to start). Maybe I’ll hate it. Lomé is certainly more stressful than village – more harassment, more filth, more traffic. And it’s dangerous, but so are New Orleans and East St. Louis. I’ll just make friends, watch my back and hope for the best.

Volunteers say everything in Togo is more intense, especially our emotions, our ups and downs. So it’s difficult to say if all the coin-flipping and deliberating preceding the PSI news was my own indecisiveness or that compounded with the Togo intensity factor. It’s also hard to say whether my reaction to the following incident was normal Linda or Linda+Togo.

Yesterday, for the first time, someone who is neither Gabe nor my parents called me from the States. One of my college roommates got engaged on November 9th and finally succeeded in reaching me on the phone. Logically, I reacted by squealing, laughing, crying, dancing and jumping around my house, even after hanging up. I realize this is old news to the rest of the world, but congrats to Katie and Kris, and thanks for making my day.

That day was proceeding bizarrely, as days in Togo tend to do. I spent an hour at the middle school waiting for someone who never showed. Then I moved on the clinic, stopping at the Catholic deacon’s house to drink tchakba (millet beer, which is gross. Also, he may not be a deacon, but he helps leads services) and eat soja, which is basically tofu. I had been checking on their youngest daughter, who had diarrhea for weeks, but I think she’s ok now. I still check now and then, and sometimes I time my visits for Thursday mornings, tchakba and soja day. (Update on 11/27/08 - actually, I went by again yesterday and found out Irene, the little girl, died on Tuesday in Mango. I just love when my assumptions are so off-base).

I arrived at the clinic just as the mid-wife received a little boy who had fallen and bitten through his lower lip. They sent him to Bila for stitches, and because blood and needles make me all twitchy, I watched. Bila asked me to “help”, so I held the kid’s hand and tried to distract him by trickling cool water on his burning forehead. Either the anesthetic the clinic uses doesn’t work or they don’t wait long enough for it to settle in, because the kid cried the whole time. Granted, the needle looks like a curved industrial staple and Bila shoved it through the boy’s face six times. I wanted to cry. He was a very brave boy, because he could have screamed and fought, but opted just to cry. If the clinic had lollipops, I would have given him one.

That evening, it rained, which is absolutely freakish. We’re in harmattan, the dry, windy period that falls between the hot and rainy seasons. The last rain fell mid-October, and it’s really not supposed to rain again until May or June. I liked it, but it’s not good for people’s cotton. Andrew, my neighbor, also picked exactly this hour of the day to bike back to his village. When going for a bike ride, never believe a Togolese when he says it’s not going to rain.

The day before the rain and stitches, the landlord celebrated his son’s baptism, or naming ceremony. They call it baptism, but since they’re Muslim, I’m sure it’s different. I can’t actually describe the ceremony, since I missed it. No one called me, and I was taking my cue from the women who were sitting in the compound courtyard. I kept an eye on them while I baked a cake, planning to join them when they went outside the gate, where the ceremony was to be held. Then all the men came back and I was told, “Baptism’s over, time to party!”

Despite carrying the baby for nine months and then delivering it (you know, like the mail, no big deal), the wife doesn’t participate in the naming ceremony. None of the women do. They just get up at four in the morning and cook all day for the men, then sit around waiting to serve them. WHAT?

I did get to go to the dance party that night, but after dancing with all my little kid friends, who insisted that at least four of them hold my hands at all times, I was pooped. Then the dance party turned into a dance show, with everyone else watching two to four people show off unimpressive dance moves. I need more than that to keep me from my bed.

Anyway, the kid has a name now, which I forgot. His sister, a few weeks older and born to the other wife, the one I didn’t know was a wife, is Rachida. And for the record, my landlord has three wives. That’s a lot of wives.

25 Nov 2008

On Sunday, I celebrated my 25th birthday by organizing a small party for friends and co-workers in village. I invited about 17 people. I was worried that all the uninvited would be angry with me and that the party would be a disaster (I’m a pessimistic worrier when it comes to my own plans and projects). Instead, it went better than expected and only one person has commented about his non-invitation.

During the week before the party, I bought ingredients for the dinner, following Saibou’s wife’s instructions. I gave money to a clinic employee to buy 10 guinea fowl. We decided he could probably get a better deal than me with my Caucasian disadvantage (white=rich=higher prices). On Sunday morning, Falila, Saibou’s wife (la grosse, “the fat one”, as opposed to “the one who works for the microfinance”), prepared the food. In a text message, I asked Saibou what time I should come over to help.

“The cooking starts at noon.”

When I arrived at 12:20, the cooking was nearly finished, and I doubt Falila would have allowed me to do anything anyway. They let me buy and transport the kaffa, the white startch we ate with the sauce. Then they fed me fufu for lunch.

After all Falila’s work, I hoped she would come to dinner. I told Saibou to bring a wife, but as usual, the women stayed home. Still, the male to female ratio was pretty close (7:5) – Madeleine and Yendar from the clinic came, and Maïmouna, my market friend, and Moulika, the seamstress, were also there.

We had dinner at the bar, crowding into one of the round, thatched-roof pavilions (“pavilion” is really too grandiose a word for what the Togolese call a paillot. It’s not a hut, because it doesn’t have walls. It’s a paillot. Best word there is for it). Everyone ordered beer, or soda for the more observant Muslims, and then we ate our kaffa, sauce and guinea fowl.

While waiting for the eating to begin, people told histoires drôles, or “funny stories” – jokes. Some PG, but mostly really dirty jokes, with gestures. Some of them were funny, but perhaps I should have provided music for dancing, instead.

Before the night ended, my guests surprised me. While we rested before second helpings, Saibou, who I assumed was on his cell phone in the bar’s yard, stuck his head into the paillot:

“You know we’re not here for a funeral. Santa Claus is arriving soon.”

Then Bila came in carrying a plate with four candles and a “cake”, a pile of Animal Cracker-like cookies. Everyone sang “Happy Birthday” in French, I got teary-eyed and then failed at blowing out only four candles at once.

And that was my party. We ate watermelon for dessert, and then people went home. I’ve had better parties, but this certainly beat last year’s 50k bike ride and warm Coke. Plus, some volunteer friends are spending the night Wednesday, and I expect there will be more celebration then and on Thanksgiving.

On that note, I wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving (sorry if this is late, I’m not sure when I’ll get to functioning internet). Thanks to all who’ve read and commented on my rambling notes all year.

More gloom and doom

2008-11-07T05:36:00.000-08:00

6 Nov 2008

I learned somewhere that it’s best to end things on a positive note, so I’ll give my depressing news first, then end on what I consider a fantastic note.

Last week, a village acquaintance died in Mango. He was good friends with my neighbors and spent many hours in our compound. He and I joked that when I taught his kid English, he would give me motorcycle lessons, which is against Peace Corps rules so not something I could do anyway. He had an accident a few months ago that put him on crutches, and when Alima (Mrs. Neighbor) told me he died, I realized I hadn’t seen him for a while. I assumed this was because I’d been running around Togo, but he’d gone to Mango and Kara for treatment. In Kara, they sent him home to his family in Mango, I guess to die. Alima said he had a liver problem. Saibou, my nurse counterpart, guessed a tumor. He’s probably right – the man was always extremely thin. I was still surprised, because I didn’t know he was sick.

On Tuesday I heard more sad news. While I was visiting the new volunteer in Mango, his counterpart, Mr. N (“N” because his name is long and I’ll only butcher the spelling), came by to explain why he could not take the volunteer to see his village that day. His son had drowned in the Oti River. Mr. N had called the new guy to tell him the night before, but New Guy only understood “accident”. I’ve talked to Mr. N frequently in the last months because he was coordinating the construction of New Guy’s house. He said a few kids decided to go out in a canoe and it flipped. Some of them could swim, but not his son.

“Why wouldn’t you teach your kids to swim if you live near water?” I thought, and for once I only thought it. He was composed for a father who’s just lost a child, but people react to death differently than we do in the States. I haven’t seen many adults cry since I’ve been here. Maybe people are just more accustomed to death.

And now the positive note. On Wednesday morning, I woke up and from various radio stations, pieced together that America elected its first black president. I listened to the stories on the BBC all day (based on the broadcasts, all other current events took a holiday to celebrate Obama’s elections), breaking up my listening with excursions around Sagbiebou, where everything was exactly same. United States what?

I got a little thrill out of delivering the news to Mr. Neighbor, with my toothbrush hanging out of my mouth (what a messenger). He thought that was great, but now comes the real test: will Obama govern well? He compared getting elected to getting married – good job, you got married, but now let’s see if you can manage your family. Then he went off on Bush and how America has wasted lives and billions of dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Someone’s done his homework.

Saibou and I also had an interesting conversation. I asked him if he’d heard the news and he said, yes, that’s why he was tired. He’d stayed up watching television in Mango while the American fell asleep by 10:45 in village. He asked why so many people were crying. Again with the crying – what adult cries in public, especially at election results?

“They’re happy. He’s America’s first black president. This means a lot for many people,” I explained. “I cried a little when I heard. I’m about to cry now! It’s a big deal.”

“Ok. Is he really considered black, though? He’s really light-skinned. But his dad’s from Kenya, right?”

“Yes. Some people said that he wasn’t ‘black enough’, but yes, he’s black.”

Later he asked if in the States, people call out, “Black man! Black man!” or “White man!” like the kids here yell, “Yovo!” at any light-skinned person here. I said no, that would cause problems in most situations.

Finally, he asked why the rest of Africa was so thrilled.

“What do they think Obama is going to do for them? He’s America’s president, not Africa’s.”

I decided that was a rhetorical question, but I think he’s right. No matter what foreign policy or international aid changes occur in the next four years, I doubt places like Sagbiebou will see much change.

And now I’ve totally failed my goal to end positively.

Vote for CNN Heros

2008-10-29T09:56:00.001-07:00

Hello, all -

Ok, I apologize for writing again so soon after that painfully long update yesterday, but here I am anyway. I just got the following email Liz McCartney, my former supervisor at the St. Bernard Project in Louisiana, where I volunteered for about six months before Peace Corps. Here's her email:

"I am writing to ask you a strange favor. I was selected as one of
CNN's Top 10 Heroes of the Year. This came with a $25,000 award that I
donated to SBP. I am now in the running for the $100,000 prize which
will determined through online voting. And there is no limit to the
number of times you can vote. So, I am writing to ask if you will go
to cnn.com/heroes and vote for me. (Louisiana style -- early and
often!) If you could spread the word and encourage your family and
friends to do the same, I would really appreciate it. As you can
imagine, SBP could really use the $100,000 prize!

Things at SBP are going well. We celebrated the completion of house
151 last week. We are moments away from opening a mental health
clinic, developing affordable rental housing for seniors and, most
likely, opening operations in New Orleans..."

So you can see they have come a LONG way from eight volunteers a week and operating out of two rooms in an old appliances repair shop (although they might still be there, I'm not sure). Please take the two minutes it will take your speedy internet to get you to the website and vote. And then tell your friends!

Thanks,
Linda

The Worst Week Ever/Longest Update Ever

2008-10-28T06:52:00.000-07:00

After a great weekend of work and play in Dapaong, I joined six other volunteers and six Togolese counterparts on Savanes’ AIDS Ride 2008. We biked out of Dapaong on Monday morning at 7:30 a.m., and thus began the worst week I’ve had in Togo.

I’m afraid this update may come off as nothing but complaints and whining, but at least some of it is legitimate. Bear with me.

The first day went fine, with the exception of an hour-long lunch delay. The AIDS talks went well all week, although we had to cancel a few due to logistics. We stopped for the night at a school in Namoundjoga, somewhere south-east of Dapaong, showered, ate dinner, then relaxed while the counterparts met with our coordinators (two volunteers).

This is where things began racing downhill. The counterparts expected per diem, which was not in the budget. The coordinators promised to try to make arrangements. I learned about this later, as we weren’t invited to the meeting and I was busy falling into a Benadryl-induced sleep. I had nearly crossed over into unconsciousness when I heard what sounded like bikes falling. It took a few minutes, but I eventually convinced myself that I should get up and try to help with whatever was happening.

What happened did involve bikes and falling: one of our coordinators passed out while moving a bike, then had some kind of a seizure. The chase car driver drove the other coordinator and I out until we found cell phone coverage and could call Lomé. Our medical officers decided our friend should go back to Dapaong that night, then down to Lomé the next morning, accompanied by another volunteer. So in one night we lost two volunteers, and our second coordinator was left to deal with budget issues, food arrangements, village chiefs, volunteers and difficult counterparts – with only my weak attempts at assistance as comfort (Coordinator #1 is now in the States for medical examination, and we sincerely hope she’ll be rejoining us soon).

So, terrible start to the week there. The next day was OK, but of course, Coordinator #2 was stressed all week, and I was stressed for her. Wednesday was the worst for me. I woke up tired, then thought I was going to faint or vomit before the first presentation. I did neither. Instead, after one of our skits, I turned to exit the “stage” and slammed my head into a beam with such force that I ended up on the floor. Everyone panicked. A counterpart nearly pushed a desk on me trying to help. Very, very embarrassing – I shed tears for my dignity, but I wish I had a video tape of this so I could watch it and laugh.

Lunch was disappointingly disgusting that day – even the Togolese didn’t like it (and oh, how they complained about it in our final meeting). Then, on the bike to Mango, our sleep-over spot, I decided to drive through the middle of a puddle. It was a very deep puddle that soaked my shoes and half my bike bag. Granted, this and the following incident are due to my own stupidity (who drives through the middle of the puddle?!).

Certain people will remember an accident in 2005 involving a new digital point-and-shoot and sledding outside Geneva. It appears I do not learn from my dumb mistakes. I recently purchased (finally) a lovely digital SLR Nikon camera that I had to take on AIDS ride (I did lose my little camera’s charger, and we had to have photos for the sponsor, so I did actually have to bring it). I was very careful all week – very careful, that is, until Wednesday night in Mango when I walked away and the bike fell on the cement. And the camera was on the top… and the lens broke (not the glass). It still works well enough so that I can take pictures, but it’s certainly broken. I am still berating myself for being an idiot and now have to figure out how to repair this from West Africa.

So, in addition to my friend seizing, I gave myself another reason to be blue. Then, on Thursday morning, a counterpart flipped his bike and split his large toenail in half. That evening, a volunteer crashed and lost a camera. Amazingly, two villagers found and returned it the next day.

After dinner Thursday, the counterparts tricked Coordinator #2 and I into a meeting. We wanted to play with numbers that night and meet the next morning to give them their money. That afternoon, I’d given the driver money to buy watermelon, so we thought we’d eat ours with them. Instead of a fun chat, we had a serious complaint session.

It started out with someone, representing the group, reminding the coordinator that they were still very concerned about per diem (as if she’d forgotten and hadn’t stressed every day over how to get them something) and that they couldn’t go back to village empty-handed. This is a valid point – they could all have been doing something else that week, and Peace Corps events usually include per diem. Still, certain counterparts had been told that there would be no money, that this was volunteer work, that if they had other things to do, they should do those activities. But they came anyway and acted surprised when they heard there was no money.

They complained about the food, how it was often late in arriving and how it was terrible on Wednesday.

“We only tried it because we didn’t want to hurt your feelings. It gave us diarrhea. That’s not ok.”

“Do you think I wanted to eat that?” I replied. “Will and I ate more than anyone, and we don’t have diarrhea.” What I thought was, “Do you think I enjoy leaving pizza for doughy food with gluey sauce that gives me diarrhea for TWO YEARS? Many things could have caused the diarrhea.”

After many more complaints (pain, fatigue, heat, lack of “encouragement,” which means money), our coordinator spoke. She explained that it was very hard losing a close friend and co-worker to a seizure at the beginning of the week. She hadn’t been in charge of money, so now she was trying to figure that out, as well as everything else. She mentioned that it was discouraging to run around doing everything and never hear a “thank you”. Finally, she said that for Americans, volunteer work means free, and we didn’t realize that it’s not the same here, even if you tell someone there’s no money.

The responses to her show of feelings were, “Volunteer work is for rich people,” and “God will thank you.” This is where I left to cry out of frustration and rage.

Volunteer work is easier the more comfortable you are – if you work three jobs, it’s difficult to find time to work for free. I also think that any time I’ve volunteered, I’ve gotten something more than warm feelings out of it – credit hours, resume padders, experience. In Togo, it’s money. So I shouldn’t judge. But I did, and all I’m left with is, “Why am I wasting two years here, when I could be doing other work that interests me somewhere more comfortable?”

Anyway, we gave them about $8.00 each, plus their travel costs, mostly out of the coordinator’s wallet. The majority of them were still displeased and grumbly and almost refused to sign a shirt the volunteers gave to the coordinator as a “thank you”. After our morning presentations, I came back to find Coordinator #2 lying on a mat, finally knocked out from severe dehydration. She recovered enough to oversee the final presentation, which is grand, as I didn’t know exactly what to do.

So, that was my discouraging week. It’s unfair to let this effect my feelings toward my village, but I can’t help thinking that anyone who’s worked with me has been disgruntled because I didn’t give them any money. I have never wanted to go home as much as this week, but I’m sticking it out in Togo. Just maybe not in my village…

In September, I applied for a position with the organization Population Services International (PSI) in Lomé. They hire a volunteer or two each year to help with their various programs (you can check them out at psi.org). So I would still be a Peace Corps volunteer but with a 9-5 job. I applied to work in their the HIV/AIDS education program, especially with youth and women. There is a chance I’d get to do photo and design work. I had my interview today and I think it went well. Before the interview, I was unsure about taking the job – I feel guilty about leaving village. But I think I can get over it. I’ve always wanted to work with an organization in the HIV/AIDS sector, and I think this would be great experience. I do, however, welcome any advice.

Until next time, and happy elections to all!

A Week of AIDS activities

2008-10-19T05:11:00.001-07:00

18 October 2008

I’m in Dapaong again, and it’s all for work.

On Thursday, my program director, Tchao, visited me in village. After quizzing me about my activities, eating watermelon (they’re back!) and visiting Saibou at the clinic, we went to Dapaong in a Peace Corps car. Life in Togo must be so different if you have a private, air-conditioned car.

Today we had our first “AIDS club” meeting, and I think it went really well. A little refresher: the club consists of eight volunteers who will meet once a month with between 50 and 100 kids from a Dapaong AIDS association, Vivre dans l’esperance. The kids are all “infected or affected by AIDS” and some are as young as seven, others as old as 20. The plan is to play games and have fun but also teach them useful information like income-generating activities, reproductive health practices, budgeting and so on. The seven-year-olds may just get games and songs.

Our first meeting consisted of ice breakers and group work. In the small groups, the kids were meant to brainstorm activities they’d like to do in the club. We got everything from playing soccer, dancing and singing to learning computer skills and teaching children to read. Then we had them think of potential names for the club and held an election. “Children’s Club” won, but since there are some very old children, we might combine it with “Leaders of Tomorrow”. Children and Leaders’ Club.

I think one thing I could have improved was the introduction of the club. The kids were a little unclear about why they were there, and I just launched into volunteer introductions without explaining Peace Corps or our vision for the club. Hopefully they’ll forgive me and come back next month.

AIDS Ride starts on Monday from Dapaong. This is the bike tour that volunteers do throughout Togo’s regions. We bike through villages and stop to do AIDS presentations, spending the nights in schools. Last year I got dehydrated and spent a whole day in the chase car and sleeping on a school bench. This year, I plan to avoid that by drinking ORS (oral rehydration salts, pretty disgusting) every day.

This will be my only bike tour this year. I decided to pass on Tour de Togo – biking the whole country once is enough, I think. However, it will take place again this November, and if anyone would like to donate a second time for girls’ education, we’re collecting. Let me know.

Another vacation!

2008-10-09T12:54:00.000-07:00

9 October 9 2008
Remember when I said I would write more frequent updates? I’ve done really well so far on that promise, no?

I’ve just finished another vacation (I plan to return to village soon). My parents arrived in Ghana on September 25th and leave from Accra tomorrow. During their time here, I ran the marathon, then we went to the beach for five days, and then we spent a few brief days in Togo.

The marathon was basically what one would expect in West Africa. I spent the night with the three other Togo PCVs running the full marathon. Garth and Maureen, a couple who work in Ghana, both former PCVs, opened their house to us, which was super generous and very helpful. We woke up at 3 a.m. for our supposed 5:30 start in Pram-Pram. A van full of other PCVs picked us up on the side of the road around 3:30 and drove us to the village. Except we weren’t starting in the village, but at the Ghana Man Center. We eventually found that and at 4:30 were the first people there. No race officials. No one else.

Eventually more people showed up, but by 6 we started walking back in the direction we came. A bus pulled up, and a man leaned out and yelled, “You have gone too far! Did you see the white line? The starting line?”

We turned around and walked back, to find the white line that the guy drew about 10 minutes after asking us about it (the starting point had been marked by a pile of leaves and rocks). Once everyone else arrived by bus and van, we started – at seven, an hour and a half late.

Things went well for the first 10 miles or so. I stuck to my very slow pace and took advantage of the infrequent water stops. Fortunately, my parents and another couple, the Iwans, drove the course and gave everyone water when there were no stations. Without their help and cheering, those 26.2 miles would have been a lot more difficult and lonely. Except for that part where we ran through a market, along a traffic-clogged, two lane road. That wasn’t lonely, just extra challenging, especially since by then, everything hurt and I wanted to cry.

Anyway, we all finished and then ate lots of food that evening. I had a falafel, and about an hour later, when everyone else arrived, I had my margarita and nachos. And a brownie with ice cream. There were also chocolate bars in there somewhere.

The next morning, my parents and I drove five hours west to the Green Turtle Lodge, an eco-friendly paradise, basically. IT WAS SO NICE! They operate on solar-energy, have self-composting toilets (glorified latrines), hire local people in all kinds of capacities, and lead canoe trips, hikes and tours around the area. We went on the mangrove swamp tour, and I saw a monkey and a very large reptile (mom and dad were looking in the wrong direction both times). I went swimming every day, ate excellent food, wrote letters and read. I’m going back for Christmas.

We only spent a few days in Togo – went up on the “Lomé Limo” on Monday, spent a day in village, then came back to Lomé yesterday. My parents really liked my village, and a guy I work with treated them to guinea fowl and beers (I got beer, but no guinea fowl – even though it looked delicious. Still a strictly seafood “vegetarian”). The middle school president gave them a school tour, which means they visited all five classrooms and saw all 500 or so students. I think one day in Sagbiebou was exactly enough time.

Yesterday, a driver from Lomé picked us up to drive us back. Not 50 kilometers from my village, he hit a pothole and got two flat tires. I don’t think he knew how to change his tires – he didn’t know where to find any of the tire-changing tools in the car – because Dad and a guy on a bike did most of the work. Then Francis the Driver disappeared for an hour looking for a second tire, or getting it fixed, I don’t know. We made it to Lomé around 5 p.m., so it all worked out. Mom and Dad left for Accra around noon, and it’s back to normal life in Togo for me. So write me a letter, cause you know I get lonely.

Pictures from marathon are at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2031439&l=10944&id=66700997 and pictures from Green Turtle are at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2031442&l=e6f54&id=66700997. I hope those work for you.

Two for One

2008-09-15T09:19:00.000-07:00

8 September
I’ve decided to start writing more updates. This means writing more frequently at home than only on the night before I leave for an internet-equipped destination. The updates won’t be more frequent, just longer. Skimming is totally acceptable. I never read those long, chunky emails from my overseas friends, either.

I’m very slowly getting back into work. A week after leaving the States, I got back to village. The ride from Lomé took two days, in a Peace Corps car. As we fishtailed through stretches of mud on the Kpalimé road, I was genuinely nervous, especially since there was an overturned truck in the middle of one stretch.

I stayed in village three days, long enough to give out gifts. Then I went to Kara for our one-year party and to Dapaong for a goodbye party. Then I came back and did some work.

Work means I had a peer educator meeting, where we decided we should have a second meeting the following week. Meetings would be so much more interesting if anyone else SPOKE. I was nervous about having two grown men (my male “apprentices,” a tailor and an elementary school teacher) in a group of teenagers. Now I’m relieved they’re there, because they are the only contributors. This must be payback for all the staring I did at my teachers when they asked us questions in class.

To get me through my first month back, I’m looking forward to the marathon and my parents’ visit. More accurately, I’m looking forward to my parents’ visit and dreading the marathon. Sixteen miles was challenging, but I felt good about it (maybe because I ran it in the States). I finished 18 miles, but I walked. On Sunday, I ran to Mango, hoping to do at least 18 again, maybe even 20. Right… I walked early on and maybe covered 16 miles, mostly trudging. There are three of us in the north running the full marathon, and we’ve all acknowledged that it’s going to destroy us, but we’re not backing out now. I’m going to run – or trudge, walk and crawl – this thing and then never run more than 13 miles again.

11 September
Now let’s talk about street food.

Everyone has been to a fair – state fairs, renaissance festivals, international festivals, street fairs – whatever, you’ve been to one. And every one of those fairs has food booths. After an hour of looking at livestock or crafts or riding rides, you take your tickets to a booth and make the exchange. Tickets for corn on the cob, corn dogs, popcorn, or non-corn delectables: turkey legs, funnel cake, Lemon Chills, cotton candy. Then it’s back to the rides.

Life in Togo is like the fair, minus the midway (bush taxi rides do not count), quilts and butter sculptures. That leave the food booths, or what we call street food. Food you buy – with money, not tickets – on the side of the road or in the market. It’s cheap and easy and when it’s finished, because this is Togo, you can throw the corncob on the ground.

You can easily make a meal of street food. For instance, today for lunch I had 100 CFA (about 25 cents, which is enough) of rice and sauce. In Sagbiebou, there’s always a woman selling rice with tomato or peanut sauce. Sometimes it’s rice pâte, which is rice reshaped into balls. Soja, fried pieces of tofu in tomato sauce, is also readily available year-round. Now there’s also fufu.

None of this food is that interesting, and after three fufu dinners in a week, I’m already sick of it. The street food I dream about is in Lomé. In the Kodjoviakope neighborhood, by the Texaco station, the avocado-bean sandwich lady serves a delicious breakfast. Little white beans in sauce, avocado mashed with onions, oil and salt, spread on a piece of baguette, all for less than a dollar. I can also usually find fried plantains in Lomé. If you mix those with black-eyed peas and sauce, you get another bizarrely tasty meal. And you always have the option of eating at the stand, or taking it to go in a black plastic bag.

The real beauty of street food, however, is snacking. From Lomé to Cinkassé, you can buy food along the highway, although it’s a good idea to also bring your own snacks. The bush taxi driver only stops briefly when you want to buy bread. But when he stops, even briefly, vendors ambush the car. People of all shapes, sizes and ages shout into the car window, selling their food. Fried plantain chips, kebabs, hard-boiled eggs, peanuts, bread, lime or hibiscus juice. I know I can always get dates in Mango and fried bean cakes at the Atakpamé stop. With luck, a Fan Milk man will cycle by, selling ice cream that you suck out of a plastic package. With even more luck, my vanilla Fan Ice will still be frozen. When I feel like indulging in village, I buy beignets made from corn flour. Then I take them home, dip them in sugar and pretend I’m in New Orleans.

Then there is seasonal street food. Right now we’re in corn season, and I can have corn on the cob, grilled or boiled, every day (both are extra chewy, sometimes so much so that I have to give my jaw a break). Starting in late November, it’s watermelon season in Sagbiebou, available whole or by the slice. There are carrots, which only qualify as street food if you’re willing to eat them unwashed off the street. Same for mangoes.

And all of it’s cheap. Even if your corn isn’t sweet, it only cost about five cents, not five tickets (you know that fair food is overpriced. The tickets are supposed to make you forget). I still miss pizza, but I’ll also miss the acceptability of walking around eating beans out of a plastic bag by hand.

Mostly "home" again

2008-08-23T07:59:00.000-07:00

In the future, I think I'll try to avoid flying to Dubai unless my final destination is east of it. Emirates is very nice, but I left Louisville at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday and got to Togo at 6 p.m. Thursday. And I still have to traverse most of Togo before I'm really home.

I did spend the night in Dubai, which I can only describe as surreal. I slept on the plane, so I wasn't completely exhausted, but I went to a mall at 10 o'clock at night. A mall with lots of jewelry, clothes and carpet shops, but no bookstores. A Cinnabon and a Starbucks, but again, no bookstores. So I just wandered around and spent some time taking pictures of the Burj Al-Arab hotel:

Then I explored more than necessary and ended up walking around the parking garage and loading bays of the mall. They looked much like parking garages and loading bays in the States. I got back into the mall through the prep area of one of its restaurants, then got a cab home. The ride took me across the city. I got to see all the tall buildings, including the Burj Dubai, which will be the tallest structure in the world when completed. I also saw every chain restaurant an American needs: Fuddruckers, Applebee's, Chili's and TGIFriday's. And the Mall of the Emirates, where I probably should have gone. It's the one with the indoor skiing.

I'm sure Dubai has much to offer besides American restaurants and malls, but when it's night and you're alone, the mall will have to do. And there are zero malls in Togo, so now I've had my fill.

From the United States of America

2008-08-17T07:38:00.000-07:00

There's nothing like 15 months in West Africa (not Ghana) to make you appreciate America. Parks with drinking fountains and bathrooms, coffee shops, wheat beer, bookstores, movie theaters showing new releases, cheese on everything, convenience stores, Target, pizza... last night I ate an entire pizza and a plate of cheese fries. I love visiting.

And now the camp pictures I promised:

All the campers had challenges they had to complete. This one involved getting a bucket full of water out of the circle without the use of a rope and without entering the circle... full of fire ants.

Another method.

The Butterflies getting ready for the relay race and scavenger hunt, which they won.

The Butterflies posing at their market table with the bracelets and toffee.

All the beaded jewelry.

Check out his shirt.

Co-counselor Amy and I with our Papillons on the last day of camp. I might have shed a little tear. But only because kids started first.

Now I have a few more days in the States and then it's back for lap two. But first I will eat five more pizzas.

Things Fall Apart, Part I

2008-08-05T04:11:00.000-07:00

I’ve been traveling since Saturday and I have yet to board a plane.

On Friday my dad called to tell me Togo made international news because of flooding down south. I knew a bridge was out on the country’s only national highway, but he got me worried. So instead of leaving Dapaong on Sunday, I went up Saturday morning and got a ride with a friend to Kara that evening. I thought I might be able to get on the bus to Lomé the next morning without a reservation. They were backed up for three days.

Fortunately, another volunteer was going down Sunday morning and we caught a bush taxi together. Everyone was in the car by 6:45 a.m. We didn’t leave Kara until 7:45. We arrived at the station in Lomé at 7:30 p.m. Twelve hours for a trip that usually takes five hours. The detour on the Kpalimé road alone took nearly five hours. We would have arrived earlier if the driver hadn’t made 53 unnecessary stops – we did a lot of screaming at him. In the end, he gave us money for our taxi ride to the Peace Corps office, but probably only because he wanted us to shut up.

It turns out nine bridges are out on the national highway, not one or two. I’m waiting for the Kpalimé road to go. It already had as many holes as a Peace Corps volunteer’s underwear after a year in Africa. Now every bus, bush taxi and 18-wheeler has to take it to get to and from Lomé. Volunteers are already speculating about evacuation. The government deregulates gas prices at the end of the month and soon travel will be next to impossible. I’m skeptical about evacuation, but everything just needs to hold on until I get back. Don’t want to miss the fun.

Camp and home improvements

2008-07-25T05:02:00.000-07:00

Even though I spent an hour and a half online last Sunday, I failed to post an update. Here’s a summary of what happened after Lomé.

I spent July 4^th and too many days after in Kpalime with volunteer friends who pampered me (and their three to five other guests) so much that I extended my stay by a day. I saw my host family, and yes, Esse is pregnant. She said the baby is due around December, so maybe I’ll have to plan a visit around then.

From Kpalime I went to Tchifama, a village just outside Pagala, where we do our in-service trainings and camps. I spent the night with another friend, who shares the village chief’s compound with 20-something people. Very noisy. It was great just for a night – we had burritos and carrot cake for dinner. The next morning we went to Pagala for camp training.

I loved and loathed camp but overall had a positive experience (so much so that I’m trying to establish a once-a-month volunteer-kid get-together with the association in Dapaong). Amy and I were Butterflies with the oldest girls. This meant we could leave them for five minutes and not worry that anyone would lock herself in her room at night and pee on the floor. They still managed to drive me crazy half the time, especially when it was time to go anywhere. But they eventually cut down their prep time, their table manners improved quickly and they got all the activities we did with them.

During the week, all the cabins learned income-generating activities like making popcorn or juice. Then we had a little market at the end of the week with bottle cap money. The Butterflies made beaded bracelets and toffee. I thought we were just going to make single-strand bracelets, but the woman who taught our session had everyone do a really complicated four-strand method. Turns out she thought we were making beaded AIDS ribbons. We managed to make enough bracelets by Friday and the kids purchased them all with their bottle caps.

On Thursday night, we had a candlelight vigil. I think the point is to give kids a chance to share their stories. I heard that last year, only one girl spoke, so I expected a repeat. Instead we had lots of sharing and LOTS of crying. I didn’t fully understand a single story, but it still made me cry because a roomful of nine-to-15-year olds were talking about their dead parents and AIDS. Besides making everyone cry, I fail to see the point of this activity, but the associations insist we do it. The next night we had a dance party, so that ended things on a happier note.

The biggest news back in village is that I got wired! My landlord plans to move into the compound soon, maybe with his family, but definitely with his generator. The electrician came Wednesday, knocked holes into my walls and now I have light bulbs and outlets. Very exciting.

One more week in village and then I begin my long voyage to America. Where I will post pictures of cute children at camp.

Workin' hard in West Africa

2008-07-04T00:06:00.000-07:00

I just worked more in the last week than I have since I got to post (unless you count biking as work).

My peer educators are trained! I don't know how well I trained them - most of them missed some, if not half, of the questions on the final exam - but training ended Sunday and everyone survived. Over the three days, I rollercoastered from extreme satisfaction and joy to impatience, frustration and near tears. I considered firing (not possible) Azembe, an instigating 10th-grade student. He had a comment on everything the women's rights speakers said and tried to argue both that things were better when women had to beg their husbands to travel and that we should isolate HIV positive people. I get fired up about both those subjects. Instead of grabbing him by the neck and shaking him, I babbled on in my best angry French about tolerance and gender equality. Then my counterpart translated.

A quick tangent on that – I’m learning, a little belatedly, that if I want to increase comprehension during activities, I need a counterpart to translate. I mean translate from Linda’s Non-African French to African French, not translate into local language. Fortunately, for most of the weekend, I had a great counterpart, Karim, who is the president of the moto syndicate. I think that means he’s the boss of Sagbiebou’s moto drivers.

After we finished training on Sunday, Saibou (nurse counterpart) and Mr. Tairou (teacher counterpart) told me we needed to motivate the kids with Cokes. I’d offered to take those two, Karim and another teacher who helped me out for beers, but it ended up being the whole group – you can’t expect people to participate in anything if they’re not going to get anything out of it (no, certificates and homemade sugar-cookies are not enough). It was fun, and we split the bill three ways. The kids did a “banc” (a cheer) for me, and when they left, I engaged in two beers and lively conversation with the counterparts and one of the girls’ fathers. Beers in Africa are twice the size of American beer. I slept very well.

On Monday, I headed south. I spent the night in Kara, then came down to Lome on the bus Tuesday morning. After two and a half days of editing, our Perspectives-GAD Newsletter combination issue is complete. I’ve forgotten how tedious producing a publication is. Still, it looks good (mostly thanks to Amanda) and come next Friday, volunteers will have something new to read.

On Wednesday night, the ambassador extended an open invitation to volunteers to attend a 232nd birthday reception for America, which took place in his very large backyard. We went, partook of the free drinks and finger foods, mingled, then moved on. Kind of fancy, except it was clear who the non-Lomé volunteers were (Amanda and I), based on our grungy attire. I don’t even own a nice pair of shoes anymore. Anyway, it was interesting to hang out with ex-pats and meet non-Peace Corps people.

Camp Espoir “Training of Trainers” starts next Friday. Rather than going back to village (an all day affair) and then repeating half the trip next Thursday, I’m going to visit friends in Kpalimé and outside Pagala. Hopefully I can see my host family. I heard rumors that my host mom, Esse, is pregnant or has already had the baby. So we’ll see.

Enjoy the photos.

In Benin. Awaiting your praise for this one.

This canoe trip (Benin) was much less harrowing than crossing the Komoungou with bike bags.

Sagbiebou: an antennae surrounded by mud huts.

The mosque. And a lizard.

(l-r) Mr. Tairou, peer educators with their certificates and Saibou.

Rachidatou's dad, Rachidatou and Mme Awa.

I Like Fufu

2008-06-25T08:25:00.001-07:00

When I got here, I never thought the words, “I really want some fufu” would ever pass from my lips, but… it’s true. I now like fufu (for those unversed in West African cuisine, it’s pounded yam. Not sweet potato, although that would be delicious, just a big, white yam).

Now that I’ve made that confession, we can move on. My peer educator training is this weekend, and I can’t help feeling anxious. Here are some of the challenges I’ve encountered during the planning process.

1. After announcing the students selected to attend training I heard that one girl was upset because she wasn’t chosen. We based selection on their quizzes and input from guy I’m working with, Mr. Tairoo. So this girl had let her friend copy her quiz, and the friend was picked (not by me. Tairoo suggested her). Girl One came to see me, so we decided she could attend. Everyone has to pass the exam at the end of the weekend, without cheating, to officially become a peer educator. Except I have a hard time saying, “No,” so I hope they all pass.

2. Last Friday, Mr. Tairoo told me he was going to be in Dapaong for exam corrections Wednesday through Friday. He might be back on Saturday. The training is from Friday until Sunday. I need a new counterpart for student-related activities. He always does this! He would never tell me when he had to leave town on a Wednesday afternoon, so I would wait around for him to start health club. I don’t know how to replace him without offending him, though.

3. Yesterday, a student told me she was going to Mango until Sunday. I told her she couldn’t become a peer educator if she missed training. I really want her to attend - she’s the girl who brings my water, and I’m sending her to camp. I told Tairoo and he talked to her. Now she says she’s coming back Thursday morning.

That’s a glimpse of the frustrating planning process. I should also add to the list my own procrastination. Apparently I intend to plan my sessions in the two days before the training begins.

I spent the weekend in Mango. We had a goodbye party for Cliff, which gave us one last chance to enjoy his delicious curry pasta. On Sunday, Amanda and I did our nine-mile run. We ran out to the hippo reservoir, and this time we got a great look at the hippos. They were already in the water but very close to our path (not dangerously so. No worries, I’m not going to provoke hippo rage). As we ran past, they yawned and gnawed on each others’ heads. Looking at hippos took up about two minutes, at most, of a 90 minute run. I hope the marathon route includes distracting scenery, because if it’s 26.2 miles or rice fields, I’ll just quit.

"Et les activités?"

2008-06-07T04:31:00.000-07:00

So I thought maybe I might spend about 10 days in village after returning from my Sokodé meeting, maybe do a few day trips to Mango and Gando (if you spend the night at home, it counts as being in village. Says me). Then I ran out of cooking gas mid-meal. And since there’s a constant shortage of gas in Togo and when we get it in Dapaong, it sells out in about half a day, I took my empty tank up that weekend. So much for 10 days in village.

In Dapaong, I bought a little coal stove for about three dollars. Someone in village gave me a huge bag of coal. For my first village-style cooking session, I made hard-boiled eggs. After some fire-starting tips from my brother (the first time I got fed up and just added kerosene), I moved on to lentils and rice and pasta salad. Then I got a new gas tank. But now I’m a coal-fire genius… with a stove and a huge bag of coal that I won’t use for another nine months.

I’ve been semi-busy. Last Wednesday I gave a quiz to middle-schoolers interested in becoming peer educators. They did, oh, pretty abysmally. I was especially disappointed that no one got the family planning question, including the three girls who attended the family planning talk the week before. But we’ve selected students and hopefully I’ll be able to train them over a weekend in June.

This Tuesday and Wednesday, I was in Kara for a Camp Espoir meeting. Espoir is a camp for kids infected and effected by AIDS. Our camp is in July, and in the meeting, we went over logistics and started planning sessions with the Togolese counterparts from the different associations that send the kids. I’m really looking forward to camp.

I got back to Sagbiebou Wednesday evening. I spent Thursday doing peer educators stuff and working in the clinic, then biked out again on Friday. In Mango, I planted a small moringa nursery with the environment volunteer there. We only did 16 trees, but it’s for the AIDS groups I work with, which only has about 10 members. Everyone will get a tree. At our meeting on Sunday, I invited everyone to come help. One woman came in time to help plant, one came late. I made a coffee crumb cake the night before, so after planting, we had cake. Then, after going to the on-time-lady's house to greet her family, I biked to Barkoissi and had lunch with Amanda. I caught a car for the rest of the Dapaong trek. 40k is enough biking for one day.

Official marathon training started last week – I’m training for the Accra International Marathon at the end of September. Today was supposed to be my “long” seven-mile run, but I woke up feeling… indisposed. I’m hoping that goes away by tomorrow. Unlike my heat rash, which apparently is never going to go away, at least as long as I’m sweating in my cement house in village. I actually have started missing cold weather. Just a little.

2008-05-16T09:03:00.001-07:00

So, this week I managed to stay in village for about four days. I'm in Sokode for a Gender and Development Committe tomorrow (I'm the communications coordinator or chair or whatever - that just means I edit a newsletter), then back to village on Sunday.

But in those four days, I planted 52 moringa trees by the clinic and gave two family planning talks to a total of about 56 women. One of them even got a Depo shot. And before you go thinking planting 52 trees is hard work, let me tell you that it's not. Bila hacked holes into the ground with my machete (yes. I have a machete and it's very useful for digging holes) and I dropped two seeds into each hole. Then we watered the mounds in the evening. The plan is... well, I'm not sure what the plan is, but it has something to do with getting women to start feeding their kids moringa leaves or powder made from the leaves. For those who don't know, the moringa tree is basically a miracle tree. You can use all its parts for something - the leaves are super nutritious, you can eat the flowers, the pods, the seeds (or use the seeds to grow more trees), the roots... it's great. And it's really hardy - a tree near my house got crushed by something. There was nothing but a stick left, and now a new tree is growing in the same spot. Google it. So I'm planting with the hopes of starting a trend.

That's about all I have to report for now. Rainy season moved in this week - I got to use a blanket a few nights and I even wore jeans and a long-sleeved shirt one day! But I still have heat rash. One thing at a time.

The Grass is Always Greener

2008-05-06T04:21:00.000-07:00

After four days in Benin, three of which were largely spent in a hotel conference room, I’ve decided that Benin is a more advanced version of Togo. Then again, the Benin volunteers heard Togo was a better version of Benin, but I bet none of them ever tried to get from the south to the north of Togo in one day. And we did that almost effortlessly in their country.

The conference was interesting, and I’d like to incorporate some of what I learned in my work. One afternoon we prepared recipes we created, which had to contain a certain amount of calories and protein. My group made mango porridge, which is less delicious than it sounds, but better than I expected.

The evening the conference ended, some Benin volunteers took us to see hippos. One of the volunteers, Holley, works with a guide there who does these tours. For about $2.00 (not including the roundtrip moto ride), the guide leads you down a path to a lake, then escorts you around in a large canoe for as long as you want. It’s so peaceful and beautiful, especially in the evening, that I didn’t care if we saw the hippos. We did, but again, I have no pictures, as it’s unwise to get close enough for pictures (at least with the zoom on my camera). At the end of the tour, the guide gives everyone a shot of sodabi (local liquor that feels like it’s burning holes in your esophagus) and the chance to sign the “livre d’or” – the Book of Gold, which is a school notebook.

On Friday morning, we left Lokossa around 8:00 a.m. in a bush taxi organized by two Benin PCVs. We arrived in Bohicon just in time to catch a bus north to Natitingou, where we took another taxi to the Togolese border. The whole trip was amazingly easy, with minimal harassment and only one long wait for a taxi in Natitingou, which we spent at an internet café.

So that was a fun and educational little trip. Coming back to Savanes was amazing, because it rained a few times, and it looks like spring, all green everywhere. It still feels like summer, though, and my heat rash came back in all its prickly redness the first night in Togo. I just keep telling myself it’s going to cool down soon. I’ll let you know how that works out.

Photo update

2008-04-27T23:20:00.000-07:00

Since I'm now in Lome, on the way to that conference in Benin, I have speedy internet access. Here are some photos... from months ago.

Koudapani (cultural festival for the Oti prefecture - that's where I live) festival in Mango in January.

With Heidi at the reservoir outside Mango where the hippos live (no hippo pics, sorry, they were too far away for any good pictures)

The girls who played in the Gando vs Sagbiebou game on March 9th - no, those are not our uniforms, we borrowed them.

The girls who didn't get to play in that game.

Saturday morning runners.

Hello Again

2008-04-26T10:52:00.001-07:00

My father told me on the phone last week that my “readership awaits”. Apologies, readers. When I was in Dapaong two weekends ago, I had little motivation to write about my activities in village. I think I’m at the stage in my service called What Am I Doing Here? At least, I hope it’s a stage.

I spent a lot of mornings at the clinic this month, recording kids’ weights and names. Then Bila, one of the clinic workers, and I visited some of the kids at home to conduct surveys with their mothers. All this is in preparation for a Hearth program seminar in Benin next week. More on the Hearth program if I can actually get it to work in village. It’s basically a program that teaches mothers how to prepare various nutritious meals for their children. And as we’re in the famine season, now would be a great time to do this. Unfortunately, the rain is also starting. Rain means fieldwork and fieldwork probably means everyone stops coming to any activities I plan.

Not that attendance is high in the first place. I finally had eight girls show up for a sex-ed class this Wednesday. Perhaps I could get a bigger crowd if I said, “We’re going to talk about sex!” Or maybe it would scare everyone away.

Bila and I gave a talk on family planning to about 27 women in the market. Three or four ran away when I showed a picture of man putting on a condom. The ones who stayed until the very end, though, were very adamant about the benefits of birth control. Then this week, the imam’s wife, who missed that talk but apparently heard about it, came and asked me about natural methods. I told her what I could but encouraged her to visit the mid-wife for more info.

Life in my compound has been… troubled. The younger girl, Hanatou, decided she no longer loved me this month. And she started whine-crying (not real, I Just Fell and Hurt Myself Crying, no, I’m Not Getting My Way Crying) at everything. Lately, she’s started greeting me again and has stopped crying when I say her name. There’s still the occasional wailing incident, though. I like it best when that happens around 1 a.m.

Two weeks, ago, the village soccer team spent the night in our courtyard. The school director, who lives in the compound, coaches the team. He also helps out with the girls’ team, which has now fallen aside since the men’s team seems to be in season. Thanks a lot. Anyway, the guys had a game on a Wednesday, so that Tuesday night the whole team plus many more men crowded the compound. I’ve been sleeping on a cot on my porch because it’s too hot to sleep inside, but I spent that night in the house. They had a game again yesterday, but Saibou (nurse counterpart) told me he told them that they couldn’t sleep at people’s houses. So they slept at the school.

Finally, Hanatou’s parents have taken to extended shouting matches. One took place just before my last trip to Dapaong. At the time, I suspected Mr. might have hit his wife, Alima. This Tuesday evening, they started up again. They shout for a while, he leaves, she rants at him in his absence. On Wednesday morning, they were at it again, full force. I have NO idea what they’re saying, because it’s all in local language, and not a local language I know.

So I had just bucket-bathed and was getting ready to go to the clinic when I heard scuffling. Because I’m nosy (let’s call it concerned), I peeked out the door. She was holding a wash basin over her head, threatening or defending, but definitely yelling. He was walking away. Then she yelled something, he 180ed, knocked her on the ground and his arms started flying. I ran out in only my pagne wrap (so, basically a towel), yelling, “Hey! Hey! Stop!” and what I think is his name. The old lady in the hut next door also ran over, and after a small eternity, he stopped, walked towards me and said, “Awa, c’est fini” (it’s finished) over his wife’s yelling and my, “I don’t know what you’re fighting about! C’est pas bon! I don’t understand!”

I still don’t know what they’re fighting about, but even if she’s saying terrible things about his mother, it’s not ok to beat your wife. I know I should probably mind my own business, but when it takes place in my courtyard in broad daylight, it becomes my business. Fortunately, he’s been traveling to Lome a lot, giving us some peace.
And that’s the news from Sagbiebou, where there are more mangoes than the women can sell, but still no toilet paper.

Why It's Easier to be a Togolese Man

2008-03-21T10:31:00.000-07:00

Zenabou was a ninth-grade student in Sagbiebou. She was one of the three girls on my six-person Women’s Day committee. She came to clubs, ran with the “footing” group every Saturday, and was one of the more talented girls on our newly formed soccer team. Two weeks ago, she gave me a little local language lesson while we waited for the car to take us to the team’s first real game in Gando. That Wednesday, on the sidelines at a boys’ game, she was kicking a ball around with her friend Adjara .

This Monday morning at our training in Pagala, my counterpart, Bila, told me that Zenabou died Sunday night. He didn’t know why, so during the day, I came up with my own answers. Young people who have died in my life died from meningitis, Long Q-T Syndrome (a heart condition) and car accidents, so I grouped Zenabou into the random deaths club, blaming maybe meningitis, maybe some other viral infection. These were situations I could handle.

Bila caught me on my way to dinner that evening, and once again, corrected my idealistic assumptions. Zenabou took pills to give herself an abortion. And she succeeded all too well.

I have so many questions. Did her friends know she was pregnant? Did she tell anyone what she was going to do? Was she already dead when they took her to the clinic on Sunday night? Who’s the father? What will happen to him? What could I have done to help her?

In the very back of my brain, I feel like I should have done more – made it clear to the girls on the soccer team and in the clubs that I was available if they needed to talk. Had club meetings on more than just HIV/AIDS. Started sex-ed classes. The irony of the situation is that the day I learned all this, we were talking about family planning and sex-ed classes in schools. Now I’m definitely going to address the situation, but it shouldn’t have taken a failed abortion for me to realize that there was a situation that needed addressing.

So. That’s life in Togo, because unfortunately, this isn’t a unique incident. Abortion in Togo is only legal in cases of rape and incest, so girls will take herbs (or pills) to self-abort. The volunteer who led our sex-ed session said she found that in her classes, girls really didn’t make the connection between sex and pregnancy. So condom demonstrations and encouraging abstinence are probably a waste of time unless you start from the very beginning, which it seems is what I’ll have to do.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that Women’s Day went ok, even though we started three hours late, and the chief’s representative didn’t really know what he was attending (“Today on the International Day of… Nutrition? What is it?”). We had a crowd at the soccer game, and in organizing a student vs. apprentice game, I also started a Sagbiebou girls team.

I wish we hadn’t just lost one of our stars.

It Takes Some Getting Used To

2008-03-03T07:41:00.001-08:00

Although I’ve been in Togo for almost nine months, there are certain parts of the culture that still surprise or irritate me and that I have yet to fully appreciate. The two that stand out most are touch and observations.

Most Togolese and I have vastly different concepts of personal space. I like personal space; they like to share my personal space. Obviously, in overcrowded bush taxis, there is no option but to acquaint your thighs with your neighbors’. But about a month ago, I got a ride from a counterpart’s friend. I had the back of this Mercedes to myself until we picked up a lady heading home for a funeral. We talked a little, and then she started stroking my hair. I realize my hair is different, and I didn’t really mind. My friend’s counterpart regularly puts her hand somewhere on my friend’s person – thigh, butt, shoulder – and leaves it there throughout the meeting or car ride. So I can handle a little hair-stroking.

The touching seems to be restricted to same sex (again, aside from bush taxis, aggressive street vendors and creepy men). I rarely see public displays of affection between men and women out of adolescence. But boys and men will hold hands or put their arms around each other and no one blinks an eye. In the States, if your son was holding hands with the neighbor boy, you might wonder. Here, it’s a sign of friendship. But if a dude tries to hold my hand, he’s not trying to be friends.

So the touching surprises me; what irritates my politically correct background is the statement of the obvious. Not just things like, “It’s hot,” but the speaking aloud of things we, as Americans, observe and keep to ourselves. If we meet someone overweight, we see that; here, he or she is called “le gros/la grosse” (the fat boy or girl). If you’re white, you’re “The White Man/Woman” and if you’re Asian, you’re “the Chinese”. If you suffer from acne, you will be reminded of this and questioned why you have those “buttons” on your face, and do they hurt? This week, a man asked what was going on with my chest (I have little bumps, probably from the heat, that show if I wear a tank top). I told him I didn’t know, but it was ok.

"Du courage!” he said. Have courage, a common Togolese phrase. I burst out laughing, which is probably rude, but usually I just get angry.

In Lome in December, I walked into a bookstore. It was hot outside (surprise!) and I was sweaty (surprise!). The doorman, who makes sure you check your bag into a cubby, instructed me to do so, giving me the once-over. Noting the sweat droplets and stains on my shirt, he shared his assessment with me.

“You are really suffering from the heat.”

“And you are very observant,” I said, which does not translate (“observant” is NOT a French word).

Anyway, those are the main things that get me. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes frustrating. It usually depends on if you’re the first or tenth person telling me I’m a white, sweaty person.

The Unfortunate Tale of the Cat in the Latrine... and other stuff

2008-02-22T09:08:00.001-08:00

Since I arrived in Sagbiebou, my landlord has gradually expanded the compound. We have an almost completed wall enclosing the yard, and behind my neighbors’ house (the ones across the yard with the two little girls), he’s built a shower stall and the beginnings of a latrine. The latrine is currently only a 10-foot hole with cement walls. A wall with a small square window in the middle divides the hole into two compartments. I don’t know why. I’m not that well-versed in latrine construction.

Up until last week, I threw my food waste behind the house, so I passed the latrine hole daily. I always checked to see if anything was new in the hole – lizards fall in frequently and bake to death since cement walls are kind of hard to climb. Then last Monday, there was something new: a black and white cat. I’m fairly sure this was the same cat I’d occasionally seen dodging around in the field behind my house. It’s probably the only cat in Sagbiebou, and I doubt it belonged to anyone.

Pet or not, I wanted the cat out of the latrine. Lizards can bake, but I didn’t want a baked, starved cat on my head. I also thought little would be more fun for children than tormenting a trapped animal. Mission Rescue the Cat (and make a friend?) began. I thought maybe if I saved it, it might hang out and eat rodents.

It wasn’t much of a mission. All I did was find a plank of wood and lower it into the hole so that it rested on the window of the dividing wall. My neighbor helped, and then we left, hoping the cat would figure that out. We checked throughout the day, but it stayed in a corner. I thought maybe it would take a chance at night, when we were quiet and sleeping.

The next morning the cat and plank were gone. Excellent. The cat climbed out and my neighbor removed the plank. As I turned to go back to my house, Alima, my neighbor’s wife, corrected my idealistic assumptions.

“Les enfants l’ont tué,” she said. The kids killed the cat.

“No. It’s not there anymore, it climbed out,” I told her.

“No. The kids killed it. Look, there’s blood.”

Oh. Indeed. There was blood.

So, apparently, these “kids” (I’m thinking they were probably young adults, because that is a deep hole for children) climbed down and killed the cat with a knife.

“Why?”

“To eat.”

I didn’t like Togo very much that day.

Other than that, the last few weeks have been more good than bad. We’re still doing HIV/AIDS in health club, and the English club met for the third time this Wednesday. I think the students enjoy it, although I don’t know if tongue-twisters and the “Hokey-Pokey” will do much for their English. Last Wednesday, they listened to the Voice of America’s “Special English” news broadcast at my house for the first time. They understood “Monday”. We’ll work on that.

Last Friday, I met with three women and three female students to discuss activities for International Women’s Day. We decided to hold a girls’ soccer match with a message given prior to the game. This will be Sagbiebou’s first Women’s Day celebration, and I hope it begins both a tradition and a girls’ soccer team. The men who lead the Saturday morning runs (totally out of my hands now, which is great) have been talking about a team. My counterpart is among this group, and he told me they want to pick the best players from that game to form a team.

Last Sunday, I went to Mango and rode my bike to see the hippos. There’s a dam about five kilometers outside Mango, and that’s where the hippos hang. Other volunteers said that when they visited, some boys were singing and the hippos seemed to love it. So we tried to sing to them. They were shy and stayed out in the water, poking up their heads to see if we were still there. I suppose shy hippos are better than hungry hippos. Next time I want to see more than eyes and ears, though. Maybe we have to learn the African hippo-calling song, since “Hippos! Hippos!” and a “Whole New World” failed.

one photo from South Africa

2008-02-01T03:45:00.000-08:00

I meant to upload pictures yesterday but forgot the camera cable at home. The original title of this post was "Two Photos from South Africa", but then the internet stopped working. Not that exciting, but if I don't post this, I'll just have wasted an hour. Just be happy I resisted the urges to photograph walls of yogurt in the grocery store, fancy furniture display windows and all the food I ate.

The backyard at the Rose Guest House in Pretoria.

Why I'm the Worst Teacher Ever

2008-01-31T08:43:00.002-08:00

This month’s update drought comes from distraction, not a lack of electricity or internet.

When I last updated, I was about to start teaching. After a dull New Year’s in village – my fault for failing to seek out the parties – I taught three classes. Then I went to South Africa.

I knew before Christmas that I would have to go sometime in January for certain health expertise unavailable in Togo. I expected more notice. Peace Corps called on a Tuesday afternoon, and by Wednesday evening, my travel buddy (who was actually in physical pain, whereas I was in vacation mode) and I were on a plane from Accra, Ghana to Johannesburg.

I spent exactly a week in Pretoria, living every Peace Corps Togo volunteer’s dream – a painless med-evac to “Africa Lite”. The Peace Corps houses med-evacs in a luxurious guesthouse, and I mean luxurious by American, not Togolese standards. I took hot showers, watched many bad movies on TV, ate granola and yogurt AND an egg dish every morning and swam in the pool twice. Between doctor and hospital visits, we frequented two malls, a flea market, the Peace Corps’ internet and Pretoria’s “White House,” the Union Building. I went to the Botanical Gardens, and I ate almost everything I’ve missed in Togo, except for a cream cheese bagel. Apparently, “cream cheese” in South Africa means something different from American cream cheese. So I had a bagel with melted cheddar. Also tasty.

I believe I actually had more language mishaps speaking English in Pretoria than French in Togo. At the Pick ‘N’ Pay grocery store, I heard the man at the check-out ask me if I wanted a packet (I think he actually said, “Plastic”).

“A what?”

“A packet (or plastic)… gestures at plastic bag. What do you call it?”

“Oh. A bag.”

A few days later, another incident at a different grocery store. I asked an employee at the entrance if there was a toilet. He went outside, and I followed him, expecting him to direct me to another store. He grabbed a shopping cart, went back inside and pushed it through the turnstile. I was still following him, thinking it was kind of rude to decide to clean up and then answer my question. He pointed at the cart.

“You can use that.”

I must have given him a WHAT-are-you-talking-about face.

“You wanted a trolley, no?” Um. No.

After making an idiot of myself all around Pretoria, I headed back to Togo in time for CHAP’s three day Project Development and Management (PDM) seminar. It took place at the Peace Corps Training Center in Pagala. It’s basically a retreat center with bucket showers instead of running water.

I got back to village Friday, went to a prefectural cultural fest in Mango on Saturday, cleaned my filthy house on Sunday and quit teaching on Tuesday. During the three classes I taught, I quickly realized that I can’t teach grammar. Maybe with training I could, but I feel it’s unfair to the students to have me teach instead of the director, who knows what he’s doing and is good at it. I realize it’s also unfair (and pitiful) to agree to teach, and then quit after three rounds, and I feel rotten about it. So I’m going to try out an English club and tutoring instead. Maybe we can have more than three meetings.

2007-12-27T07:21:00.000-08:00

After recovering from biking most of November, I spent December in and out of village, accomplishing very little. I had a brief jaunt down to Lome for doctors’ appointments at the beginning of the month, then convinced myself it was silly to start new projects before the New Year. I’m a great volunteer.

About two weeks ago, I had my first running meeting with maybe 10 kids. Six of them started with me at the primary school, and we picked up others along the way. We ran through village on the national highway, and at someone’s yelled request, the students started singing. The song and our two-line formation deteriorated by the end of the 20 minute run. No one showed up last Saturday, so I just ran alone. I’m going to blame the school holiday on the lack of students and hope it’s not because they changed their minds about running on Saturday mornings. They picked the day.

On the 19th, we celebrated the feast of Tabaski (sheep festival) in village. It’s a Muslim holiday commemorating God giving Abraham a sheep to sacrifice in lieu of his son, Isaac. To celebrate, everyone kills and eats sheep.

I was a little nervous about a sheep-slaughtering festival, but it wasn’t too terrible. I only saw three dying sheep and watched my homologue wash his sheep’s intestines and cut up innards. I visited my market lady friends, and in the evening, I participated in dancing. Yes, this means I danced, but mostly I watched. The next day the chief, in the holiday spirit, gave me something in a black plastic bag. I thought it was more rice and cooked meat, because everyone sends each other food on feast days. I got home, eager to eat the rice for lunch. I opened the bag, and it was full of raw meat. I gave it to my neighbors.

On the 23rd, I biked up to Dapaong. I think it’s about 102k, and I’ve biked from Dapaong to village before, but getting here this time was really difficult. There is a long stretch of barely discernible incline leading to the city, and about five kilometers out, I had to stop and walk. This is very frustrating after pushing my bike up real mountains. But I got here, and Amanda said she’d stopped in the same place. She only had a 40k ride from her village.

Christmas passed without all the usual hype, which may be why it didn’t really feel like Christmas. We exchanged small gifts, made lots of food (bread, lots of desserts, pasta salad, chicken, fries, fruit salad, deviled eggs and crazy Scottish baked things by Helen) and ate it at Paul the Lebanese guy’s house. Helen, Amanda and I intended to go to a 9 p.m. mass on Christmas Eve, but we were in pajamas by 7:00. Then Helen said it would last two hours, so we watched Borat instead.

I begin teaching next week when school starts again. I’ll teach third year English three to four times a week. The books I received from the school director provide less guidance than I expected, so I visited the head of school inspection in Dapaong. He’s going to give me a grammar book before I go back to village. I know correct grammar when I hear and see it (usually), but I doubt I could tell you what the present perfect or past progressive is without reference. So I’m a little nervous about trying to teach it with just a student’s book and a course syllabus. Teaching should make for interesting future updates.

I’m trying to get back to village tomorrow, but that would require me to pack my bags, and I’m very lazy. Maybe I’ll get a burst of energy soon.

Happy New Year to all, and celebrate safely.

Merry Christmas

2007-12-24T08:27:00.000-08:00

The subject line basically covers everything I want to address. I'm in Dapaong, it doesn't feel like Christmas, and I'm ok with that. However, I hope everyone has a lovely holiday, with or without snow, whatever you prefer.

A more interesting update will follow in the next few days.

Joyeux Noel (wow, I hope I spelled that correctly or my French teachers and my parents will send me mocking emails).

about that trip...

2007-11-29T13:24:00.000-08:00

See photos from the Tour de Togo at http://webster.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2022400&l=e376a&id=66700997.

I'm very tired, so please excuse this post. I leave tomorrow for village and want to write a little about our trip - thanks again for all the encouragement and donations.

We biked for 10 days, although Dun and I took a break on Thanksgiving (only biked 17k from Waragni to Pagala). We had an amazing meal - turkey (I didn't have any of that), Stovetop stuffing, devilled eggs, jambalaya, salad, mashed potatoes, steamed veggies and lots of dessert. It's not Thanksgiving unless you eat yourself sick, and I gave myself a REAL Thanksgiving. Then I biked about 75k the next day (happy birthday to me) and had a warm coke. The Pagala folks did sing the birthday song to me on the 22nd, and then Dun and Connor sang it very quietly at 5:30 a.m. on Friday before we hit the road.

On Saturday, we biked from Seregbene to Badou. This was the casualty day (lots of blood, nothing serious, just scary, and the three uninjured bikers managed to bandage up our friend - although I was called the "worst health volunteer ever" - blood makes me nervous), and also the day my right knee decided it was finished with this trip. The day ended with an 8k stretch of paved road down a mountain. Very enjoyable, except the next day we had to go back up the mountain to get to the path to Amlame, Sunday's destination.

Sunday was by far the worst day of the entire trip. After pushing our bikes up 8k of mountain, we had a few little downhill spurts, then more mountain. It was basically mountain all day. At the end of the uphill part, around 2 p.m., we reached Elevagnon (sp?), which was very lovely... until we realized the only way to get there is a 20k path up (or down, in our case) a rotten sand and rock path. So... 20k down, braking the whole way. I felt bad for the people who joined up again after a Thanksgiving break in Sokode, but everyone survived.

Monday we went about 85 or 90k from Amlame to Agou. We had a lovely lunch in Kpalime, then raced to Agou Akoumawou, where Helen and I showered, washed clothes, then let the Peace Corps drive us to Nyogbo. I visited my host family. They were very disappointed that I was only staying about half an hour, but I promised to return. They gave me bananas.

Tuesday was a straight shot to Lome, 105k. By that point, my left knee decided it was finished too, so I rolled in with Ace bandages on both knees. We saw what was probably the best sight of the entire trip during that 105k - a grinning girl holding up a dead bush rat by its head. Sorry, I was going too fast to stop and take a picture.

When we got to Lome (very scary biking amongst the cars and motos), we stopped to have a quick drink, then rode to the beach bar, where the lovely Melissa O'Shaughnessy (Savanes volunteer) had organized lunch for us - sandwich makings, candy bars, little gift bags filled with dried fruit, Gatorade, Doritos... I love Melissa. And that was it. 10 days, over 900k (the national highway route is about 700, we added roughly 200k with our off-roading madness), and at least $5,000 raised for girls' education. Yay.

I'm going to go pack, go to bed and go back to village now. On a bus.

and then there was delicious food

2007-11-28T07:21:00.000-08:00

We made it to Lome alive (but maybe in pieces with Ibuprofen and rehydration salt addictions). Longer post with pictures to come, but this is just to announce that we're all alive (one casualty the whole trip).

So far we've had pledges for around $5000 (at least?). Thanks so much!

whose idea was this, anyway?

2007-11-20T07:37:00.000-08:00

Ouch.
That, in one word, sums up the last four days. As in, ouch, my crotch has never hurt so much. Ouch, my shoulders tense up after about 20 kilometers and ouch, by the end of the day, my legs are so tired it's hard to get off the bike.

Here is a simple break down of our schedule: wake up around 5. Eat breakfast (bread or oatmeal). Bike. Take short breaks and one longer lunch break (eat more bread). Bike. Arrive at destination. Complain alot. Shower and wash clothes. Eat dinner. Sleep. Repeat until next Tuesday.

Actually, we've decided to take a break on Thanksgiving, since we're biking an average of 85km a day. A little more detail about the trip so far:

Saturday morning, Dun, Amanda and I caught a car to Cinkasse, on the Togo-Burkina Faso border. Took a picture, biked back to Dapaong, gathered bags, volunteers and a second breakfast, then biked to Mango. Total of 105k. Cliff made us delicious curry pasta.

Sunday morning, Cliff rode with us to a river (I don't pay attention to names anymore), where a pirogue shuttled our bikes and then us across (pictures to come later). Then we biked forever on junky sand, gravel and dirt paths through savannahs. Periodically, we passed women going to the field or carrying wood piles on their heads, but for the most part, it was very lonely. Yet every time we stopped for a break, small crowds appeared from somewhere. 85k total.

We spent Sunday night in Guerin-Kouka, at their maison du passage. Yesterday and today were "easyt" days - 55k and 50k, respectively. From Guerin-Kouka to Kabou is about 35k, but the hills are long and numerous, so it felt longer. We took a long break in Kabou and visited the volunteer there, then finished the 20k to Bassar. Amy hosted us in her almost-American house, complete with running water, electricity, a refrigerator and flush toilet. Amy is wonderful.

This morning, after more bread - there are other things to eat here, but I feel safe with bread and shortbread biscuits - we biked from Bassar to Sokode. This ride took us along the edge of a national park (again, it will remain nameless), which only means gorgeous views, not animals. Gorgeous views and hills that make you cry for your mom - or just push your bike for several kilometers. There are skull and crossbones road signs along this road, which should give you an idea of the steepness.

Now we're enjoying our afternoon off in a "big" city. We're leaving the majority of our group here in Sokode for Thanksgiving. Dun and I will continue tomorrow (and will also be the only two who biked the whole country), but others will join up again, or for the first time, in the next few days. If you're still interested in giving anywhere from $5 to support our ride AND girls' education, it's not too late to email me and tell me so.

I have to go find some bananas now, before my entire body goes into a spasm.

2007-11-16T03:58:00.000-08:00

Ok, thanks again to everyone who plegded - I AM actually going to bike. We start tomorrow. Positive thoughts, prayers, crossed fingers or whatever are welcome as we bike down country. I'm looking forward to the part where we ford a river (like Oregon Trail!).

Our estimated arrival date in Lome is November 27th, the day before the 45th anniversary celebration. There are only three of us doing the whole route (all Savanes volunteers, because we're clearly the most hard-core - disregard my frequent bouts of illness). I'm trying to think positive - "Don't get sick, don't get sick." So, fingers crossed.

I was hardly in village long enough this week for anything exciting to happen. We had another club meeting and started the AIDS section in my "Life Skills" manual. We played a Myths and Realities game, where a student read a statement (poorly translated into French by yours truly and the compact Larousse English-French dictionary) about AIDS, then decided if it was true or false. They got all the questions right and the statements spurred some interesting discussions ("If a mosquito bites someone with AIDS and then bites someone negative, can they get AIDS?" "If a HIV-positive woman cuts herself while preparing juice and you drink the juice with the blood in it, can you get AIDS?"). Fortunately, the teacher working with me during meetings is great, knowledgeable and enthusiastic enough, so I don't have to run meetings completely alone. I also don't know how well I could control a classroom full of teenagers, so I'm happy to have him there.

After the meeting, several students stayed to discuss running. When I get back in December, we'll start meeting between 5:30 and 6 on Saturday mornings to run. We'll see if this goes anywhere.

Hope everyone is well and I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving.

thanks

2007-11-10T06:41:00.000-08:00

Thank you to everyone who pledged for the Girls' Education Bike Tour. I may have asked prematurely, as I may not be able to go (and won't know until Thursday, the day before I have to return to Dapaong for the tour). In any case, I'm planning on going on it, but if things change, I will let everyone know. Your money, of course, would still be welcome, but I understand if you prefer to donate on the condition that I actually bike.

As for AIDS ride this week, it went wonderfully until Wednesday night when I lost my lunch (several times) in a field next to the school where we were sleeping. I spent Thursday sleeping in the chase car, on school benches and on a mat on the ground. Peace Corps would be significantly easier without all the illness.

So I spent the week riding 127k on my bike and doing condom demonstrations for crowds of all ages. There was more to the presentations than that, but condoms got by far the most reactions all week long. Here are some pictures.

Helen on the road from Nano to Malagou, Day 3.

Amanda and Helen pushing bikes up the mountain on AIDS Walk (Wednesday was a tough day).

Showing my appreciation for the awesome baobab tree outside Bagou (or Bogou, we went to both).

Naki-Ouest's elementary school students mobbing to check out the new arrivals (Day 1).

the begging begins

2007-11-03T04:55:00.000-07:00

Hello again friends. The disadvantage to my being in Dapaong is I start clogging your inboxes with my incessant rambling. However, I'll try to keep this short and toss in some photos for your enjoyment.

Next week, I'm participating in AIDS ride, in which volunteers spend the week biking
around region doing presentations on AIDS in different villages. About two weeks later, with more volunteers, I will bike the length of Togo, from Cinkasse to Lome to raise funds for the Karren Waid Foundation, a Peace Corps fund that supports girls' education. All participating volunteers find sponsors for the ride (it's like those walks where you pay five cents for every mile I walk). My target is a total of $100 for the whole ride (school fees for a year of middle school are about 5,000 CFA, which is roughly $10, not including books and uniforms). So basically, if five people want to give $20, I would reach my goal. Or 20 people could give $5.00 and fund about six girls' scholarships (each scholarship is around 15,000 CFA).

Please email me at ljgolden@gmail.com if you're interested. At this point, I just need you to pledge - the details of how we will actually get this money will come later. I think what will happen is when the tour organizer, Dun Grover, goes home for Christmas, he will collect checks, so you would mail them to him. Again, more details to come.

Thanks ahead of time, and enjoy the photos (if I succeed in uploading them).

The Oti River and oncoming storm (which totally soaked me). Now that rainy season is over, this river is significantly smaller.

The women's side of the Ramadan prayer service at the elementary school.

My wonderful neighbor girls, Izafot (4) and Hanatou (2). They're fun, but a little too much at times (the baby hasn't quite learned how to share yet).

some events of the last month

2007-11-02T08:17:00.000-07:00

After 19 days in Sagbiebou and 26 days withough internet (that’s alot for someone whose job used to essentially be responding to emails), I’m happy to report I’m still alive.

The highlight of those 19 days was spending five of them sweating in my bed and on my floor, temporarily out of order with what I’ll call a bacterial sinus infection (who cares about technicalities – what it was was unpleasant). The highlight of that experience was walking ino my kitchen one night to discover maybe 100 tiny spiders converting everything in my cooking area – dirty dishes, sponges, stove, med kit – into their new home.

So I killed them.

Before disappearing into my house for a week, I celebrated the end of Ramadan with my neighbors and landlord. This means I went to a huge service at the elementary school with them, then greeted the village chief and other important community figures. In the evening, I visited my landlord and spent the most awkward hour and a half sitting at a table with him, a lady with a baby (a wife?) and my neighbor Alima, with an audience of 20 children. We listened to his stereo, drank Fanta and he and I ate. I shared with Alima, i.e., tried to get her to eat the meat while I ate the cous-cous around it. Like I said, awkward, and very anti-climactic, as the way people talked up this celebration, I was expecting music and dancing in the street. I suppose that comes from living in New Orleans.

I spent several weeks half-heartedly searching for the middle school director. We finally met the day before school started. He told me I could start a health club and I told him I could help teach English. I always told myself I would never teach, but I’m excited to start. I observed one of the classes this week and just being at the school is 100 times more interesting than sitting at the clinic.

This Wednesday, 31 students attended the first health club meeting. I think it was forced attendance; before my counterpart, the science teacher, arrived, only one kid said he was there for the meeting. Anyway, I introduced myself, we played a name-game (or tried) and I asked what they wanted to do with the club (get soccer balls and jerseys). Then I gave them an anonymous health questionnaire to see what they know. More than half of them think malaria comes from the sun and that condoms are 100% effective in preventing pregnancy and STIs. Considering the number who also said they have sex, this demands attention. Hopefully, they come back next time.

I’m still far from fluent in Tchokossi, but can now greet (or at least respond to greetings) in Gan-Gan and Mossi (Burkina language). One of the Mossi yam and melon vendors forced a language lesson on me two weeks ago. Then she decided she wanted to pay someone to paint (henna) my feet. So last Sunday afternoon, I sat in the market and let a woman put henna and ash on my feet and left hand (I tried to discourage the whole event by saying I have dirty, stinky feet, but they insisted). The ash turns the designs black, so basically, I look like I walked through coal. Everyone else loves it, and my friend was so happy she air-kissed me. I gave them brownies to say thanks.

And as always, thanks to everyone who’s been writing. Mail is almost better than chocolate – chocolate makes me fat, and letters make me happy (but if you want to send both, I'll just be fat and happy). So thanks, and eventually, you will receive a response.

Work, markets and elections

2007-10-05T03:19:00.001-07:00

Health update: no more fevers, but now I have an infected cut by my 2004 shin puncture scar (some will remember that incident). That's what I get for tyring to shave my legs in village. Idiot.

Food update: I just had the most delicious yogurt at this little restaurant in Dapaong. I brought my own chocolate granola, and it was heaven. They even had a tv with French news.

In the last two weeks, I’ve taken tiny steps in the direction of what can be called work. I mean work beyond cooking for one every day, baking brownies, burning my trash and chasing out the continually growing spectrum of wildlife encroaching on my personal space. The crickets and spiders have given way to salamanders, wasps, one very large roach (insecticided), two small frogs (one disappeared and one died) and an annoying and ever-changing collection of insects that only come out at night to dance and commit suicide in the light of my candles and lantern.

Wednesdays are still my busiest days, although we went from about 170 women and babies last week to maybe 50 this week. 50 is comfortable. On Monday, with the clinic staff, we decided to focus on two themes for talks on pre-natal consultation (CPN) and vaccination days. For CPN, the talks will be on the consequences of giving birth at home and on Wednesdays, nutrition. I did the first talk on Tuesday, and the birthing assistant translated.

As a result of the Dapaong malnutrition conference, the Sagbiebou clinic now “takes charge” of moderately malnourished children. This means that if I notice an underweight baby on Wednesdays, we compare its height and weight to a number on a chart. If the baby is less than 80% of its body mass index, we send the mother home with enriched porridge for two weeks. Last Friday, one of the medical assistants, Kokue, and I biked to five of the families’ homes. All the mothers said they prepared the porridge properly (one measure of porridge, two measures of boiled water) and that the children ate well. I believe each child stays in the program for three months, so we’ll see how many gain weight.

On Tuesday morning, I biked over to the chief’s house to ask for his assistance in finding a language tutor. Hopefully something comes from that, as I’m getting tired of saying the same 10 things I know in Tchokossi to everyone.

I’ve discovered that going to the market is a great way to increase my vocabulary (and amuse everyone else), meet people and take care of business, all in one trip. Right now, in addition to the usual okra, tomatoes, onions and garlic, I can get oranges, bananas and watermelon at the Sagbiebou market on Thursdays. Last week I followed a little girl around who said she knew where I could get peanut butter. She took me to her mother, who was chatting with friends and not selling peanut butter, or anything else, for that matter. Later, I found a woman (she acted like we’d met and talked before, but apparently, I dropped my talent for remembering names and faces in the Atlantic) who took me to a lady with delicious peanut butter. And she taught me how to say peanut butter in Tchokossi.

Two weeks ago, I biked to Mango (about 30k/16 miles) to check out their market. Less exciting than Sagbiebou, but Mango has shops with toilet paper – I had a lesson-teaching experience of leaving my last roll on the latrine floor before a downpour... paper bags hurt – and a volunteer with a lovely house containing a flush toilet and refrigerator. AND they have a community center with a bar that has nearly frozen drinks. Cold drinks have become a source of great happiness.

Last Saturday, I biked to Gando (15k/8 miles) for their market, by far the most lively in my prefecture. If you come to Togo, we’ll go to Gando’s market. They have a huge pagne (cloth) selection, a Fanmilk (ice cream approximation) guy on a bike and more stores with toilet paper. I ordered a lit picot (plastic-woven metal-framed bed) from the picot guy and a food cabinet from the carpenter. Then I had a cold drink before biking the 8 miles back on the dirt road to Sagbiebou.

The market was probably more lively last week due to elections campaigning. Parliamentary elections take place October 14th. We go on “standfast” this Monday until the 22nd. That means no leaving village during those weeks. It also means pack a bag and be ready to evacuate if necessary. I was unconcerned about this until I came to Dapaong and other volunteers partially convinced me that there is a slight chance of unrest. So I’ll pack my bag when I get home, but will continue to believe that the election will go smoothly and all will be well, minus a potential loss of phone reception and maybe a toilet paper crisis (I’ll have to stock up while in Dapaong).

And on that note, I’m going to go withdraw most of my money from my bank account and buy some tp. Just in case.

Too much time in Dapaong

2007-09-15T07:04:00.000-07:00

I just got over my first illness in Africa, which is the sickest I’ve been since April 2003. On Monday, I went to the morning session of the conference, skipped the afternoon half, and then attended all of Tuesday. On Tuesday night, I started feeling chilly. But I was also really warm. And things just went downhill from there.

Now, 10 liters of water and about 20 Ibuprofen later, I think I’m mostly back to normal. Minus a really ugly cough, but I get one of those every year. And urgent trips to the bathroom, but that too, will pass. Needless to say, I missed most of the conference.

Before I became immobile for three days (except I wasn’t, and I nearly passed out twice after going into town to get food, bad idea), I visited Cinkasse, the northern most town in Togo. Nothing too exciting there, except Helen screaming at the 15 moto and taxi drivers who mobbed us when we arrived.

On Friday (last Friday, yesterday I didn’t leave the maison), I rode to another volunteer’s village and helped out with a day camp. We played HIV/AIDS education games. I’m looking forward to [hopefully] working at the schools in my area, but the beginning of school has been delayed by a month because there are elections in October. So... I guess I’ll have to wait.

This evening we’re having a COS (close of service) party for a volunteer who’s leaving in about a week. Then I’m going back to village. Unless my fever comes back. Nothing makes you want your mom like being sick in Africa. Except all the news I’m getting from my mom is about fabulous travels, which is not what one wants to hear when she’s sick in Africa (but write me about your travels anyway, I like updates).

Now I’m going to disappear for an indefinite amount of time again.

Welcome to Sagbiebou

2007-09-10T08:44:00.000-07:00

My arrival in Sagbiebou (Aug. 27) stressed me out considerably more than the post visit wedding-style welcome. Within moments of pulling to the highway shoulder, a small crowd gathered to help carry my possessions into my house. I know I should be grateful, but I don’t like people touching my stuff. I’m not usually overly-possessive or even neat, but when I move, I just want to put things down where I want them and at my own pace.

When I got into the house, the “bedroom” was locked and “Where’s the key?” got no satisfactory answers. In my absence, someone moved the bedroom stuff, including the clothes and books I’d left, into my “kitchen”. The kitchen stuff was in the living room. Once everyone left, I discovered that the clothes, which were left under the window, were all a little damp and moldy. Gross. So I had a wet mattress (it rained on the way up from Lome), no bedroom and one pair of extremely moldy pants.

After the initial desire to sit in a corner and cry, I unpacked what I could, ate something and got over it. The next day, I got my bed, table and two of the four chairs I ordered, and we got someone to break into my room. I have different locks on all three doors in my house, and the locksmith locked the bedroom keys inside the bedroom. That’s where the keys were.

The first three months at post are meant for figuring things out: get to know the community, identify potential work partners and projects, improve local language. At the moment, my goal is to leave my house at least once a day to do something besides run or ride my bike. I’ve succeeded so far, although I can entertain myself for hours in my house, cooking, baking, sweeping, reading, writing letters and checking how much water my filter’s filtered.

Sadly, every small task I complete is a big deal.

“I hung TWO laundry lines! I’m fabulous,” and “I burned my trash. Good day, good day.”

When I do leave my house to stroll around Sagbiebou, I get a taste of what life as a celebrity must be like. Everyone in village knows my name and they yell, “Madame Awa!” from distances so great I’m unsure who’s calling me. I just walk around waving at everyone and telling them, “Ca va.”

The only day I really do anything that can pass as work are Wednesdays, when we weigh and vaccinate babies at the dispensaire. I mark the babies’ weights on their growth chart and mark what vaccinations we give them on another chart. Ideally, we would take time to ask each mother if she’s exclusively breast-feeding or advise her on how she can help her baby gain weight (most of them are underweight). However, it’s extremely chaotic with 25 screaming children, and I can hardly ask a mother her child’s age, much less what she’s feeding it. Also, I ask the age in Tchokossi, and of course, the mother only speaks Gam-Gam or Peul or some other local language.

I hoped to find a language tutor immediately, but the tutor seems to be in the same place as my house-assistant girl, and I don’t know where that place is. So I walk around and try to pick up little phrases and words from strangers (okra, eat, I already ate, bon appetit). I also try to learn kids’ names, but I ask a child his or her name and the responses sound like the kid just made a noise.

“Nzda? Really? Your name is Nzda? Oh, NzDAN! Of course.” So I still have to work on wrapping my brain around the vowelly names. I’ll get there (I hope).

After 10 days of hanging out in Sagbiebou, I hopped in a bush taxi (that broke down) to Dapaong, where I’m staying for another 10 days. I only planned to stay the weekend, but my counterpart asked if I could attend a nutrition conference here this week, so I said yes. I don’t plan on dividing my time equally between village and capital, but I call this gradually settling in to life in the bush.

I do have a new address, although the old one also works. Please send mail to

Linda Golden
B.P. 102
Mango, Togo
(West Africa – if you feel this will confuse your postal workers, leave it off).

Finally, on a subject mostly unrelated to life in Togo, I found out (two weeks after the fact) that St. Bernard Project, the organization I worked with in New Orleans, was on Oprah on August 29th, the two year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. For an organization that started small and is barely a year old, that is amazing progress. You can check them out at www.stbernardproject.org. I'm so proud.

off to post

2007-08-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

I've been an official Peace Corps volunteer for three days, but the fun really begins Tuesday, when I arrive in village. We're leaving tomorrow morning, but since we have a long way to go, the Savannes volunteers will probably spend the night somewhere so we don't have to move into our electricity-less homes in the dark. This is good, as I still have some shopping to do. Apparently, five days in Lome aren't enough for me to buy everything I need. Shopping in the market takes alot out of you, though.

Yesterday we went to a beach party organized by the Gender and Development committee to raise money for girls' scholarships. It was at a private beach and therefore like leaving the real world - manicured lawns, super clean bathrooms with hand towels, a pool... I swam in the ocean with the black plastic bags and other random pieces of trash. There was a wall further out that broke the big waves, therefore making it somewhat safer to swim. The undertow was still strong.

The whole time in Lome has been kind of surreal. I've been to four different "yovo" stores (yovo = stranger, foreigner, white person), which are like supermarkets at home, or maybe in Europe. The first visit, at "Le Champion" I was overwhelmed. The second visit, at Super Ramco, I just popped in to buy spices. The third store, Citimart, broke the bank. I lost it and just bought things somewhat indiscriminately. I don't REALLY need insecticide, but it might come in handy in my latrine. And raisins... I might use for baking. And cashews are just good.

Now I'm going to try to post pictures. I don't know when I'll have internet access again, since I'm going to Sagbiebou, so the weekly updates may become bi- or tri-weekly updates. We'll see. So wish me well, send mail (letters, not packages) and hopefully I can write in a few weeks.

My house in Sagbiebou

The road to the Tech House in Agou Nyogbo

With family members and compound residents. I've got my arm around my little brother George.

Pounding fufu (really just for the picture - it's hard work).

George is a supermodel and I'm shiny.

CHAP trainees minutes before swearing-in as official volunteers. Top row (L-R): Nori, Lauren, Ashley, Aimee, Kate, moi, Becka, Alicia, Tig, Danielle. Bottom row - Natasha, Helen and Stephanie

With my host mom at swear-in. She's wearing an outfit made from cloth I gave her as a thank you gift.

last week in Agou

2007-08-18T06:51:00.000-07:00

We started last week with a crêpe night on Sunday, grace à Linda and Lauren. The crêpes turned out well, but it didn’t come close to a Geneva crêpe night. That might have something to do with location.

We did group presentations on Monday and Tuesday, which included a health carnival for kids, a skit and discussion on HIV/AIDS, and a session on making enriched porridge. All the presentations had great attendance, and aside from some rain, things went well.

Training is basically over. On Thursday, we had our final oral French exam. We’ve had three exams – one as a placement for the classes, one mid-way exam, and this final one to see if we’ve attained an intermediate-mid level. The test administrator asks you questions and they tape record your answers. Now, after eight years of French, I do ok. At the mid exam, I was at the intermediate high level. I will NEVER get anywhere, though, because when I have to speak French under pressure, my level, whatever it really is, drops to dummy. My French teachers can attest to this. I did manage to quite eloquently yell at a taxi driver who tried to overcharge us last week, but I did rotten in that testing room. In any case, it wasn’t so bad that they’ll keep me an extra week. My French is definitely good enough to manage in Africa, and I’m practicing by reading French fashion magazines. That should be very useful in learning how to say, «It’s very important for babies to breast-feed exclusively during their first six months.»

We leave Agou Nyogbo on Wednesday morning for Lome. Swear-in is on Thursday evening, so if you write me, you can start addressing it to PCV Linda Golden, since I’ll finally be an official volunteer. Hopefully I can post some pictures next week. I have lots.

And in other news, I’m thinking about getting a dog to keep me company at post. I’m hesitant, because then I have to find someone to take care of it every time I want to bike to Mango or wherever, so I’ve decided not to actively search for one, but to be open to the possibility of one finding me. So if anyone has dog-training tips to send me (just in case) I might need them.

Next week, updating from Lome... and hopefully the beach.

worms, candy and rats

2007-08-11T06:21:00.000-07:00

Another week down, less than two to go. While classes were a little more interesting this week; certain events also added excitement, or at least created extra fodder for the Peace Corps rumor mill.

Mid-week, my Tchokossi teacher and I arrived at our class and learned that I am now the only Tchokossi student. The business trainee headed to Mango switched posts, which means I no longer have a neighbor 30k away from Sagbiebou. It also means I get private language classes to learn whatever health-related vocabulary I want. For instance, the Tchokossi word for malaria, pongombie, is a combination of “horse” (pongo) and “urine” (mbie). Evidently, malarial urine resembles that of a horse.

I also learned the word for guinea worm, which coincided with the previous day’s technical session on said worm. A word of advice before today’s health session: don’t drink untreated water, because that’s how you get guinea worm – and you don’t want it. The worm injects its eggs into water. If consumed at the correct stage in its wormy life, the worm can live in one’s body from nine to 12 months before announcing its presence. It usually migrates to the feet, arms, or hands and moves to the skin’s surface, forming a painful blister. When the person submerges the infected area in water, the worm pops out to inject its eggs into the water and start the cycle again. The only way to remove the worm is to pull it out by slowly wrapping it around a thin stick. If it breaks, you’ve got a new permanent, but dead, friend.

The good news is that guinea worm has almost been completely eradicated in Togo. The two cases recorded this year came from Ghana. Nonetheless, I hold to my original plan: if I get guinea worm, I’m going home. I probably wouldn’t know I had it until I got home anyway, so it works out.

This week another CHAP trainee left for the US, bringing our training group down to 13 (one girl left after two days in Nyogbo). After the goodbyes, I went home and cheered myself up with my newly arrived dark chocolate M&Ms (thanks, mom! Mail was fabulous this week – Katie and Lori, two thumbs up… still contemplating on whether to share). I also went on a run, joined by my host mom (she lasted five minutes), Felicia/Felicité, my 15 year-old neighbor (she almost made it the whole way) and Koku, another young neighbor (he lasted the entire run and picked up a friend). This gives me hope for a future Sagbiebou running club.

Finally, we did a second home visit this week. My group’s visits were standard – families with no mosquito nets, no latrines, frequent malaria cases. However, one group visited a woman busy grilling mystery meat. In New Orleans, we used to joke about the ratburgers, the mystery meat they served as employee meals at the restaurant. That woman was actually grilling rat for dinner, and there was a second one hanging out in a cage. And people ask why I’m vegetarian.

So those are the week’s best, worst and strangest parts. Thanks, as always, for the emails and letters. If you’re thinking about writing, think about including some pictures. I only brought about 10, and I’m moving to a very empty house very soon and need something to put on the walls.

Oh. And if the postal workers at your post office return three letters you’ve tried to send me with the reason, “West Africa’s not a country”, slap their fingers with a ruler. Then find a different post office.

a short update for a dull week

2007-08-04T04:35:00.000-07:00

All I can say about this week is that it passed quickly, but each day felt like an eternity. Two more weeks of training… Technically, i should be in class right now, but someone cleverly negotiated for the whole Saturday off. Since no one fought to have class, we’re actually having a proper weekend.

So in addition to two mind-numbingly dull lectures on health education in the Togolese school system, I had two Tchokossi classes this week. We learned how to count! That sound simple enough; however, there are different ways for counting things and money (and possibly a third way of counting ages, but we haven’t gotten that far yet). I’ve got the basic 1-100 down, but when it comes to franc CFA… we’re talking more math than the French “four-twenty-ten” (that’s 90 for the non-French speakers). In Tchokossi, you count money in units of five, so one is “biye”, which actually means 5 CFA. The number 20 is “dara aburayno,” which means 100 CFA. So if you have a certain amount of money, you divide by five and say that number. Confused? The trouble will start when the bean vendor tells me the price for a bag of black-eyed peas and my notebook’s at my house.

And on a different note, I’m starting a new Google group for friends and family of trainees. I’m giving administrative powers to others, as limited internet access makes monitoring a group extra challenging. To join, visit http://groups.google.com/group/pctogo0709 … someone will eventually add you. The hope with this is to put our training group’s families in touch so they can exchange info on calling cards, travel plans, mailing and whatever other fascinating topics emerge from having a kid in Peace Corps (“So what diseases has Mary had?”).

Finally, on my way to the internet cafe this morning, I bought myself a little snack. The package had a picture of little crackers that you dip in chocolate, so I thought I’d try it. The chocolate was dry and crusty, so I just ate the cracker sticks. Next time when the package says, “Quality Food You Never Taste!” I’ll pay closer attention.

Happy August, folks.

untitled post

2007-07-28T12:11:00.000-07:00

So I didn't update last week because after typing up the blog, the power went out. Disgruntled, we left to shop for post visit. I cheered up quickly when Helen said, "That man's naked. There's a naked man running down the street."

And indeed there was. That was our introduction to the crazy man of Kpalimé.

We left for post visit the next day, Saturday. There are four of us in the Savanes region, and I got dropped off first. I had a huge welcome and immediately got a new name from the chief (Awa). The women accompanied me to my house with my counterpart (the volunteer's first point-of-contact in village) and all my junk. Apparently, I got a new bride's welcome, which involves singing and ululating.

After dinner with my counterpart, Saibou, and the presidents and vice-president of two village committees (development and health), I spent my first night in my new home. They put a cot from the dispensary in it for my visit, but it's otherwise unfurnished. There are two rooms (bedroom and kitchen) and a large living room which will also serve as a dining room and guest room. There's no running water or electricity. The shower floor has to be cemented, and they have to build a seat for the latrine. Hopefully that will be done when I get back.

Sagbiebou lies along the national highway (two lanes) at the intersection to Gando, a village 16k towards the Benin border. The village consists largely of mud huts. Mine's not a mud hut. The dispensary opened in February. My counterpart, who's the dispensary nurse and director, and the birth assistant seem to have the most modern houses. When I had dinner at Saibou's on Sunday, we watched TV5 on the generator-run television. The village has great cell phone reception, but that's about it for amenities.

I spent A LOT of time at my house during my four days in Sagbiebou, cleaning my water filter, washing dishes, cooking mediocre and unspiced meals and making candleholders out of cardboard. I also read, took naps, played with different interior decoration ideas and planted a moringa tree that another volunteer brought me.

On Monday, we had a meeting with the chief and local authorities. People seem very interested in doing business, education and farming projects. Judging from the children's swollen bellies and bleached hair and the raw sewage between huts, I'll have enough to do in the realm of health. I'm willing to expand, though.

After the meeting, I sat around at the dispensary. There was a lot of this during my visit as well. The best parts of hanging out there came on Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Saibou and I planned to meet at 8:30 to go to Gando so I could order furniture. We didn't leave until after 10, because Saibou had patients. Then he told me that because the baby born that morning was big, there was some "tearing" and he had to do a little surgery on the mother. I asked if I could watch. So on my third day at post, I watched my counterpart sew up a woman's vagina. He used a little anesthetic, but he definitely sewed where he hadn't injected, because she was clearly in pain.

The next day, Saibou had to go to Dapaong, so I hung out with the rest of the stuff at the dispensary. Wednesdays are vaccination days, so I got to mark what vaccinations we gave on a sheet of paper. Shortly after I started doing that, the birth assistant called me in because a patient went into labor. So I saw my first live birth. I went over and held the woman's hand because she gestured at me. I don't know if that's what she wanted, but it helped me.

I left on Wednesday evening and spent the night in Mango with another trainee. Yesterday we came to Dapoang, our regional capital, where the volunteers (ok, Ben) fed us an amazing meal of salad, tapas, bean burgers and brownies. We're going back to Agou tomorrow for the last three weeks of training. Apparently, those weeks will take forever. Going to post made me realize how much I like my host family, so I'm going to soak up the free food and lovin' while I can.

field trip

2007-07-13T07:46:00.000-07:00

This Monday, we made soymilk and tofu It was probably the coolest and most useful thing I’ve ever learned to do, besides maybe sheetrock a house. We put lemon grass and sugar in the soymilk, and it was better than any Silk I’ve had.

Today I’m in Bassar, in the Kara region. Our field trip began yesterday. Our first stop was the Red Cross in Atakpame, where the director gave us a brief overview of activities in the region. One of the employees was from the Savannah region and hopefully I’ll get to collaborate on some kind of project with them.

From Atakpame, we drove to Sokodé, where we had lunch and visited a Peace Corps maison du passage. It’s like a hostel for volunteers passing through town. They had lots of books there, so I grabbed one. The book situation seems pretty good for now, at least until I get to post.

In Sokodé, we visited a family planning ngo. They have had 215 girls start birth control since January, which is great for preventing pregnancy, but not necessarily AIDS. Still, it’s impressive.

Today we visited an ngo that works with people living with HIV/AIDS, their children, and children whose parents have died from the virus. This was by far the best visit – even though I was exhausted, thanks to the rooster that crowed non-stop outside our window starting at 3 this morning. We heard about the different programs, some of the children sang for us, and four HIV postive people told us their stories.

The stigma against people living with HIV/AIDS is still a problem here, to the point where families turn children out of the house for disgracing them by getting HIV. One woman said only her mother knows about her status. She’s a hairdresser, and she’s afraid that her customers will find another hairdresser if they find out she’s positive. Unfortunately, she’s probably right.

The other problem is the lack of ARVs (anti-retrovirals, or drugs) in Togo. Previously the Global Fund subsidized drugs for people living with HIV/AIDS, but Togo lost its funding due to human rights violations in the 90s. They continue to fund those who were subsidized, but for those who are newly diagnosed, there may or may not be drugs available. One guy today has gone 15 days without his ARVs. If you have enough money, you can pay for your own, but they come from Lome and are basically unaffordable for most people.

So that’s the situation here. Sorry to be a downer.

Tomorrow we’re visiting a traditional healer, and next Saturday, we leave for post visit. The Ewe (pronounced eh-vay) lessons have been replaced by Tchokossi lessons. When I get to post next week, I’ll be able to ask people their names and tell them I’m from America. I’m sure it’ll be great.

2007-07-07T07:12:00.000-07:00

In case you haven’t realized, I pre-write my entries during the week. Then, while waiting for the internet to load, I type them in Word. Internet here literally gives me a headache. Ok, on to the interesting stuff.

My home for the next two years is Sagbiabou.
Don’t look for it in your Lonely Planet books. You might find it on Google maps, but it’s a tiny dot on our four foot Togo map , so good luck. It’s 30km southwest of Mango in the Savannah region, which is the furthest north. I have two years in the hottest part of Togo ahead. Glad I brought along 36 rolls of film to fry.

What else do I know about Sagbiabou ? It has about 2,000 inhabitants, no electricity , pump and well water and cell phone reception. I’ll get back to you on that after post visit during week seven. I’ll be working with the staff at the dispensary, hopefully creating fabulous health education plans. I believe there’s a middle school five or six kilometers away, and I’d really like to work with youth and women.

My closest CHAP neighbor will be in Dapaong. If you visit, you should look into flying into Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou. Apparently it’s cheaper, and it’s just about as close to Sagbiabou as Lome is.

So we wished the week away anticipating our post assignments, and the Fourth of July holiday helped the time pass. That morning, 12 of us hiked Mout Agou in five hours. We didn’t make it to the official peak because the guards demanded 2000 CFA ($2) from the group to pass their little rope road block. The top was just around the corner, and we decided to keep our money and go back down.

In the afternoon, we had a party at our Tech House. I made pasta salad with another trainee and others brought guacamole, brownies, fried tofu with hot sauce (bought from a toothless old man on the street – he’s cute, not sketchy), cornbread, french fries and fried chicken that was alive that morning. I thought it went well, for a Fourth of July celebration abroad.

Our technical classes became more interesting this week, which also sped up Friday’s arrival. On Tuesday, we weighed babies, Thursday we did home visits and yesterday, we gave short presentations (causeries) to a small group of random Togolese.

Most of the babies screamed and fought – who wants to hang from a scale in plastic underwear in front of mom and 14 white girls anyway ? – and the home visits were awkward. We broke into small groups and popped into homes to ask questions about children’s vaccinations, mosquito nets, water sources and waste disposal. It was practice, just as the causeries were, but it was still awkward. I expect it will be even more awkward at post when there are no other Americans to help ease tension with jokes. Then again, I won’t be reading questions off a sheet of paper.

Next week, we’re going on a three day field trip. More on that next time. Still waiting for letters.

Lessons

2007-06-30T07:09:00.000-07:00

Before I go off on my weekly whatsit, let me advertise someone else’s exciting adventure. Four Webster friends are walking across the US as part of a senior overview project. Check out their story at www.stinkyfeetpictures.com.

Last Friday, my French class – a total of three students – started Ewe lessons. Ewe, one of many local languages, is what everyone in Agou Nyogbo speaks when they’re not accommodating the yovos. My host father told me Germans often find Ewe comparable to German and transition easily.

I speak German. I feel like I’m learning Chinese-Klingon. I have yet to move beyond, “My name is Linda. What is your name? How are you? How are your children? Morning. Teacher. Student. Mid-day. Evening. Driver. Nurse. Doctor. Come eat. Come wash.”

No matter what phrases I learn and practice, I rarely understand what my family and neighbors say to me when they greet me or send me off. “Yoh” is a common response and precedent to an actual response, so I usually just say, “Yoh?” and hope that it’s right.

The Ewe lessons may end if my post is up north. While people speak Ewe throughout the country, our village may use another one of the 40 languages (Peace Corps teaches nine of those). On Thursday, our program director gave us the 14 post descriptions. It was the most exciting event of the week, besides jiujitsu.

On Wednesday, we had the afternoon off for “private studies”. My private studies meant my first jiujitsu lesson with three other trainees and four Togolese guys. Jiujitsu, which means “gentle” is a martial art that our coach, a self-described “peanut”, has studied for 12 years. Before joining Peace Corps, she taught in Brazil. She’s teaching us very basic self-defense.

While the girls practiced moves on each other, she would help the Togolese guys. They let her demonstrate maneuvers on them, an she can flip a dude like a pancake. I think after a few more lessons, I will at least be able to incapacitate an attacker long enough to run away. Hopefully that will never occur and I can just continue enjoying the lessons, which involve lots of rolling around in the grass.

As for post, about six or seven sites sound promising to me. After some reflection, I realize I’m open to going anywhere. Electricity, running water, cell phone reception – I didn’t really come here for all that. It would be great to have regular access (once a week) to internet and phone, and that’s possible from all the sites. So I guess I’ll survive even if I get sent to Tado, the most feared site on the list. We find out next where we’ll be. Besides our Fourth of July picnic, that will probably the event of the week.

Send letters, please. I promise to reply to anyone who writes. Also, if you send anything besides letters, try to fit it into a padded envelope. I hear that makes the journey smoother, faster and less expensive.

The address, again, is:
PCT Linda Golden
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 3194
Lome, Togo
West Africa

I'm waiting...

Dining in Agou

2007-06-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

We’ve been in our training village, Aguou Nyogbo, for 10 days. Last Wednesday, the chief, elders and our host families welcomed us with music and speeches.

Since then, we’ve had language, technical and bike classes. We visited a market, annoying the sellers with questions on prices. We wandered around Kpalimé, the nearest city, after tearful breakdowns in internet cafes. On Sunday, eight of us hiked up Mount Agou with various “family” members. We visited a local state hospital. Yesterday, we learned how to make our own compost piles.

However, in spite of new families, a new climate that nurtures latrine-loving lizards, roaches and buzzing, winged creatures (I have a shower and a flush toilet. Total high-life), food remains tied with bowel movements as the conversation topic. Since one is not really polite or interesting conversation for non-volunteers, we’ll talk about food.

First off – I’m still vegetarian. After our first family meal, minus my five year-old brother, George, I announced that I don’t like meat, but I eat fish. For the next three nights, I had fish in every dinner. I meant that I like the occasional salmon, tilapia or flounder – not smoked fish every day.

The fish streak ended pâte night. Pâte means both pasta and a doughy, corn-based starch eaten with sauce. You use the pâte to scoop up the sauce. My mom’s sauce of choice is fish sauce made from greens called gboma, similar to collard greens. The gboma gives the sauce a brown, mucus consistency. Add the fish and voila! yuck. I ate it, but the next morning I told my mom no more fish sauce.

For breakfast, I had omelette two days in a row. To my host mom, omelette means semi-scrambled eggs garnished with raw tomato slices and large pieces of raw onion.

“Pas de omelette tomorrow, s’il vous plait»

In the last week, the breakfast spread expanded to bread, jam, margarine, homemade peanut butter and La vache qui rit cheese. I also have a bunch of bananas that I race to eat before they brown completely. I eat a lot of bananas.

At every meal, my host mom asks what I want to eat for the next meal (burritos, guac and a margarita). Since I don’t know her meal repertoire, I go off what I’ve eaten the last week. So again, lots of repeats. But aside from the trying to come up with meal ideas, I’m doing ok on the food thing. I’ve had no scares. One volunteer’s family gave him corn-based porridge for breakfast. They told him it was maize, which sounds like “mice”. He said, “No, thanks.”

We have avocados. That was really my biggest concern. I recently had a mango that completely reversed my stance on mangos. It was amazing.

And, on that note, I leave you with a wish list:

1.Chocolate candy (Ashley received Reeses in the mail and they were mostly unmelted).
2.Vitamins
3.EmergenC
4.35 mm negative holders
5.razors with soap in them
6.Secret gel deodorant. I don’t care what scent.
7.A 3 lb. tent (mom and dad? Birthday present?)

Togocell

2007-06-12T11:26:00.000-07:00

Very briefly - bought a cell phone today. Number is 927 1088. To call from the States, enter that number after dialing 001 228 number.

We leave for stage (pre-service training in French, really internship) in Agou Nyogbo tomorrow. Cell phone reception is "unstable" there, and there's no net access, so you may not hear from me for a while.

Thanks to all who have been reading and emailing - it's great to hear from you all. This is the worst keyboard of my life.

2007-06-10T09:32:00.000-07:00

First Togolese blog in my first Togolese internet cafe, where the keyboards are an even greater challenge than those in Switzerland. I can't even type my name properly.

So, despite our hour wait on the runway at Dulles, we made our connecting flight in Paris. They held the plane for us AND all but one of our bags arrived. I hope to eventually post some pictures, but I think I'll wait to attempt that later in my stay.

I need someone to write me the ending of the film Zodiac, because I watched it on the plane, but an announcement interrupted it right when Jake Gyllenhall runs out of the creepy film guy's house. Any takers?

Our delay meant we arrived in Togo just before sunset, which is at six. The Peace Corps took care of all our arrival needs: all we had to do was sit in a room and wait, hand over our passports, and get our bags.

My final days in the US were full of lasts. Last hot US shower, last pizza, last Ben and Jerry's, last phone calls. Now I get to have firsts: first sightings of people carrying huge packages on their heads, first Togolese beer, first Togolese meal, first night in a bed with mosquito netting (I always wanted a canopy, and now I almost have to have one).

We're staying at a hostel in the capital, near the Peace Corps office. After dinner and some official business, current volunteers walked us to a bar, where there were more volunteers waiting for us. It was all a little overwhelming, especially the walk on completly dark streets. We really do need flashlights.

Today we got more shots, got a talk on safety and security and took a language "test". That was just a conversation with a PC staff member. We also chose our bikes and helmets.

I'm sure there's more I wanted to say, but my time's almost up. I may have said this already, but if your inbox is tired of updates, please unsubscribe yourself from the Google group.

I'm going to start reading "On Writing Well" so these updates suck less.

One last day in the USA

2007-06-07T18:09:00.000-07:00

I apologize for that rhyme, but not so much that I'm going to change it.

Staging, as I suspected, was somewhat like freshman orientation, with everyone a little overwhelmed and excited. As soon as I walked into the hotel lobby, two other volunteers grabbed me (the luggage is a dead give away). We went to lunch with one more girl, and talking about all our anxieties helped get me out of the I Just Said Goodbye to My Family mode. The whole staging event reinvigorated my enthusiasm about my service. I didn't even cry today!

Out of our group of 35, 20 will work with SED, or small enterprise development. There are 15 community health and AIDS prevention (CHAP) volunteers, including myself. There are 6 men, and 29 women. All the CHAP volunteers are women. And that's pretty cool.

This morning, I went for a lovely run in our nation's wonderful capital. The fact that my knee gave me almost no trouble made the run extra lovely. And my next run will be in Togo. I can't wait.

We start tomorrow morning at 7 a.m., with a fun trip to the clinic for vaccinations. Our flight doesn't leave until 10 p.m., but we're going to the airport at 3. I suspect that five to six hours in the aiport will be enough time for me to finish reading the Togo section of my West Africa guidebook. Or else, I can get well-acquainted with Dulles.

One last note on packages - I heard that anything weighing over five pounds will cost me about $20 to retrieve from the Togolese postal workers. More on that if I ever get my $43 package of books.

Letter to Family and Friends

2007-06-04T20:27:00.000-07:00

Dear Families,

Greetings from the Togo Desk in Washington, D.C. It is with great pleasure that we welcome your family member to the Togo training program. Over the years we have received many questions from Volunteers and family members alike regarding travel plans, sending money, relaying messages and mail, etc. As we are unable to involve ourselves in the personal arrangements of Volunteers, we would like to offer you advice and assistance in advance by providing specific examples of situations and how we suggest they be handled.

1. Irregular Communication. (Please see #3 for the mailing address to Peace Corps' office in Lomé the capital of Togo). The mail service in Togo is not as efficient as the U.S. Postal Service. Thus, it is important to be patient. It can take from three to four weeks for mail coming from Togo to arrive in the United States via the Togolese mail system. From a Volunteer’s post, mail might take up to one to two months to reach the United States depending upon how far the Volunteer is from the capital city, Lomé. Sometimes mail is hand carried to the States by a traveler and mailed through the U.S. postal system. This leg of the trip can take another several weeks as it is also dependent on the frequency of travelers to the U.S.

We suggest that in your first letters, you ask your Volunteer family member to give an estimate of how long it takes for him or her to receive your letters and then try to establish a predictable pattern of how often you will write to each other. Also try numbering your letters so that the Volunteer knows if he or she missed one. Postcards should be sent in envelopes--otherwise they may be found on the wall of the local post office.

Peace Corps Togo has established “The Lomé Limo” which runs up and down the country monthly, delivers mail, medical supplies, and sometimes volunteers or staff to central sites along the national road.

Volunteers often enjoy telling their “war” stories when they write home. Letters might describe recent illnesses, lack of good food, isolation, etc. While the subject matter is often good reading material, it is often misinterpreted on the home front. Please do not assume that if your family member gets sick that he or she has not been attended to. The city of Lomé has medical and dental facilities, and there is a Peace Corps Medical Officer there as well. Most Volunteers can reach Lomé in less than one day’s time. Many Volunteers also have access to a telephone so that they can call our Medical Office. In the event of a serious illness the Volunteer is sent to Lomé and is cared for by our Medical Unit. If the Volunteer requires medical care that is not available in Togo, he/she will be medically evacuated to South Africa or to the United States. Fortunately, such circumstances are very rare.

If for some reason your communication pattern is broken and you do not hear from your family member for at least three months, you should contact the Office of Special Services (OSS) at Peace Corps in Washington at 1-800-424-8580, extension 1470 (or direct: 202-692-1470). The OSS will then call the Peace Corps Director in Lomé, and ask her to check up on the Volunteer. Also, in the case of an emergency at home (death in the family, sudden illness, etc.), please do not hesitate to call OSS immediately, so that the Volunteer can be informed by a member of Peace Corps/Togo staff.

2. Telephone Calls. The telephone system in Togo has fairly reliable service to the United States. In the interior of the country, where most of our Volunteers are located, the system is less reliable. Most Volunteers have access to a telephone in or nearby their post

When dialing direct to Togo from the U.S., dial 011 (the international access code) + 228 (the country code) + the number. Volunteers generally set up phone calls with people in the U.S. in advance, and have the distant party call them, which is much less expensive than calling the U.S. from Togo. Many volunteers decide to purchase cell phones once they arrive in Togo, but they may not always have regular reception at their site.

The Togo Desk in Washington, D.C. usually calls the Peace Corps office in Lomé once every two weeks. However, these calls are reserved for business only and we cannot relay personal messages over the phone. If you have an urgent message, however, and have exhausted your other means (regarding travel plans, etc.), you can call the Desk, and the message will be relayed.

3. Sending Packages. Parents and Volunteers like to send and receive care packages through the mail. Unfortunately, sending packages can be a frustrating experience for all involved due the high incidence of theft and heavy customs taxes. You may want to send inexpensive items through the mail, but there is no guarantee that these items will arrive. We do not recommend, however, that costly items be sent through the mail. Even though many Volunteers sometimes choose to get local post office boxes, you may always use the following address to send letters and/or packages to your family member:

John Doe, PCV
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 3194
Lomé, Togo
West Africa

It is recommended that packages be sent in padded envelopes if possible, as boxes tend to be taxed more frequently. Packages can be sent via surface mail (2-3 weeks arrival time) or by ship (4-6 months). The difference in cost can be a factor in deciding which method to utilize. For lightweight but important items (e.g. airline tickets), DHL (an express mail service) does operate in Lomé, but costs are very expensive. If you choose to send items through DHL, you must address the package to the Country Director, s/c Corps de la Paix, 48 Rue de Rossignols, Quartier Kodjoviakopé, Lomé, Togo. The telephone number for the Peace Corps office in Togo is (228) 221-0614, should DHL need this information. If you send the item to the Country Director, no liability can be assumed. For more information about DHL, please call their toll free number, 1-800-CALL-DHL, or visit their web site at www.dhl.com. Please be aware that there is a customs fee for all DHL packages sent to Volunteers. For each DHL package, the Volunteer will be taxed 10,000 CFA (roughly US$20).

Sending airplane tickets and/or cash is not recommended. Certain airlines will allow you to buy a prepaid ticket in the States; they will telex their Lomé office to have the ticket ready. Unfortunately, this system is not always reliable. Many airlines (e.g., KLM, Air France, Ghana Airways, Air Togo) fly into Lomé or Accra, but each has its own policy on pre-paid tickets. Please call the airline of your choice for more information. You could also send tickets via DHL as mentioned previously. However, Peace Corps will assume no liability in the event of a lost/stolen airline ticket.

Trying to send cash or airline tickets is very risky and is discouraged. If your Volunteer family member requests money from you, it is his/her responsibility to arrange receipt of it. Some Volunteers use Western Union, which has an office in Lomé. Volunteers will also be aware of people visiting the States and can request that they call his/her family when they arrive in the States should airline tickets need to be sent back to Togo.

4. E-mail. There is fairly reliable e-mail service in Togo with cyber cafes in most large towns. Connections can be very slow and time consuming as well as costly. E-mail, however, may become the preferred method of communication between you and your family member in Togo. Not all Volunteers have access to e-mail on a daily basis but they should be able to read and send messages at least once a month. As with other means of communication, do not be alarmed if you do not receive daily or weekly messages. Unless in Lomé at the office, Volunteers have to pay for internet time at cyber cafes and this can be a slow or expensive process depending on the connection at the café.

We hope this information is helpful to you during the time your family member is serving as
a Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo. We understand how frustrating it is to communicate with your family member overseas and we appreciate your using this information as a guideline. Please feel free to contact us at the Togo Desk in Washington, DC, if you have further questions. Our phone number is (800) 424-8580, ext. 2326/7, or locally at (202) 692-2326/7.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Brown, Country Desk Officer
Nicole Lewis, Country Desk Assistant

First blog! Exciting!

2007-06-04T19:57:00.000-07:00

Howdy, folks and friends!

Welcome to my very first blog. At the moment, I'm still in my room in Houston, but I thought I should put some general information out there for everyone. I'll close with the official Peace Corps letter to family and friends, which should cover anything I forget.

I leave for staging in D.C. on Wednesday morning. From what I've read, I imagine staging will be like orientation with fewer ice-breakers (although I'm open to a game of Ride the Pony). We're in D.C. until Friday, when we jet over to the clinic to get our vaccinations and then go to the airport. We fly to Paris and arrive in Lomé Saturday evening.

I'll spend the first three days with all the volunteers at a Peace Corps house in the capital. Then we get separated by programs for our three-month training. I'm going to Agou Nyogbo, which apparently has unstable cell phone service. I'm unsure of what that says about internet service. We'll see.

Several people expressed interest in sending packages, which is AWESOME. However, packages can take anywhere from four to six weeks to arrive - if they do. So just keep that in mind. There is also the possibility that packages will be "examined", which essentially means I might not receive everything you put in the package. So don't send anything super valuable.

Here are some tips for mailing, which I stole from the book "So You Want to Join the Peace Corps... What to Know Before You Go" by Dillon Banerjee. He suggests addressing mail in red ink, because somehow, that keeps the curious away. He also says it helps to scribble religious symbols or quotes all over the outside of any packages.

"Though many of the countries in which Peace Corps serves are largely animist in religion, superstition runs high and even corrupt postal workers are wary of intercepting religious parcels."

So break out your religious texts, and toss a "Sister" in front of my name. I'm serious. If nothing else, it will make me laugh.

In case you do feel the need to send me packages, here are some things I think I might want (list subject to change):
- Post It notes
- pictures
- books (definitely!)
- AA batteries
- pens
- peanut butter
- EmergenC/vitamins
- lipgloss or chapstick
- a map of the world
- books
- US stamps (I plan on sending one person a letter full of stamped letters to be thrown into the post box)
- margaritas, I mean, books
- books

That being said, let me tell you that I sent myself some books today. Six books, two of which were blank journals. Apparently, amongst the other recent changes at the post office, they did away with media mail, at least for international packages. The postal worker told me I had the option of priority or express. I went for the cheaper of the two, priority, which was $43. Perhaps sending one book at a time will be more economical (unless it's Harry Potter, whichI fully expect to see in my mail box by next January. Thanks).

That's all I have for now. Tomorrow, I look forward to packing. In typical Linda fashion, I saved it for the very last day.

Oh. Here's the letter from the Peace Corps. Nevermind, look at the next post, this one's already too long.