10/7/07
I am a little sad because the soccer ball I bought already needs to be fixed. I wonder if the ball is really cheap or if all soccer balls will get ruined that quickly. I know they weren’t misusing it. In the States, every childe has their own ball. Here, 50+ children are sharing a ball. Perhaps a couple weeks is all, but if that is the case then I am not going to be able to keep this soccer thing going. Dad is bringing me three balls from the U.S. so we will see how they hold up.
This morning I biked back to Avassikpe and arrived around 10:30 without incident. As soon as I got back, several men started to draw in the sand where my paillote is going to go. I am glad I was here because I had to insist on how big and how tall I want it. They wanted to make it low to the ground like other people’s paillotes in village, but from the very beginning I have said that I want a high one and so they went off to cut some taller supports. I got excited thinking that they were actually going to build my paillote today - wishful thinking. It is now around 3:00 and there are still just some supports loosely placed in the ground. I wonder where the men went. You would think that when you pay for a job it would get done rather quickly. I was thinking of offering to pay someone to help me fence-in my garden, but on second thought, I am not sure that it would expediate the process any.
I washed almost all the clothes that I owned leaving me with very little to wear until they dry. It was a little hard on my thumb, but I am sure it will dry out again.
I got sunburned while riding my bike this morning. I should have known better . . .
They are building one of those corn drying structures behind my house. I might go watch or try to help. . .
I helped out a bit. At first I just stood and watched, but then Tsevi arrived and I told him I wanted to help so he told the large group of people working that I wanted to help and of course they were very welcoming. There were lots of bugs though. All I did was help scoop cobs of corn into metal basins which the man then threw on top of this platform. When most of the corn was piled on they started putting already woven together paillote (grass mats) over it to protect it from the rain. I didn’t stay to watch the whole process because I was starting to itch and so I went home to shower again.
The woman next door just threw a rock the size of my palm at her eldest son (10? 11?). I sometimes get the urge to throw rocks at him too, but I don’t give in to them.
10/8/07
I have a conflict. Whereas I would like to support and encourage children’s enterprising efforts and work ethic, I cannot buy all the brooms they can make, nor can I pay them for every service rendered. For example, three little boys are now hoeing my garden (already overgrown with weeds after what? Two weeks?) in hopes of monetary payment. And to complicate my dilemma, I just read a whole Human Rights Watch publication about child-trafficking in Togo and some of the causes being a lack of opportunity in home-towns. I cannot single-handedly create opportunity, however, and I don’t want to create a habit of paying people to do things for me. I am torn between creating opportunity and paying people to do things – giving them a chance to earn some money – and doing things myself as I would prefer. I think I should just do things myself, as much as possible, because I can’t give everyone an opportunity to earn money and that is not my purpose here. And yet, hoeing my garden might be these children’s (all under 8 years old) equivalent of a lemonade stand. I appreciate and want to encourage their effort, but after buying two brooms (and over-paying for them because I didn’t’ have the right changes) I have been accosted by children who want me to buy the brooms that they make. If I give these three boys something for hoeing my garden, I will have children hoeing my garden all day every day whether it needs it or not. What to do? What to do?
The other dilemma is that it has been emphasized to me from several different sources that I should not go anywhere alone because of this head-cutting business. People seem absolutely convinced that it is true and I tend to believe them over the officials who have reason to lie. But if I can’t go anywhere by myself, I pretty much can’t go anywhere at all because I have no one to accompany me everywhere I go. Hopefully this will all blow over soon.
Other than that, this morning I sat with Tsevi and some people a bit and drank a new kind of soda – apple soda. It was ok. I just sort of stumbled on their rendez-vous. I don’t know what it was about or what they were talking about besides the head-cutting.
A man also brought the woven together grass for the roof of my paillote. That is exciting. It makes me think that it might actually get built this Thursday.
Efo, the guy who has been helping me with the soccer organization took the ball to Notse today to get it fixed. He just brought it to me and I was going to give him the money – he said it cost 400cFA, but he said that the kids pooled their money to pay to get it fixed. That was a very nice surprise. I wasn’t expecting it at all, but it shows some responsibility and commitment.
Oh, and about my paillote – there seems to be a bit of discussion about its size. People seem to think it is too big and too tall. I am not sure if they are completely disapproving and regard it as excessive or if they just think it strange. I don’t want people to be put out by my paillote, but really, I want it to be a place where people can gather, where I can draw with children, where we can hold club meetings and practice sketches and where I can relax or cook if I want to. And anyone who wants to sit and push corn off the cob under it or whatever is more than welcome.
I went to Lili’s tonight and helped pound (and eat =0) fufu. I told her that because she only let me pound a little I was only going to eat a little. . .
10/9/07
I had a good productive day today. I got up at my usual time (5:30), ate a breakfast of oatmeal and studied Ewe a bit. Around 7:00 I headed over to the dispensaire and on my way I stopped to greet a womn who lives in front of me who is always very nice to me. Yesterday, as I was sitting with Tsevi and the other people she had asked me to go to the filed with her. I got up, ready and willing to go and she said no, no, tomorrow. So this morning I asked her if we were going to go the field. She said yes, after she finished preparing breakfast. I went to the dispensaire and after about fifteen minutes, the woman’s daughter (8? 9?) came to get me. I went home, changed, lathered myself with sunscreen and bug repellent, filled my nalgene with water and went to meet them. It took at least half an hour to get to her filed (walking through other people’s fields). In parts we had to walk through calf-deep water. The woman took her flip-flops off. I didn’t want to walk barefoot in it and so instead I splattered the whole back of my pants and shirt with mud and got stuck a couple of times. The children had to dislodge my flip-flops. It was all very amusing.
The task of the day, I found out when we got to the field, was to weed a space to plant tomatoes. The woman told me to have a seat. I said “no way,” picked up a hoe and started to “help.” At first the already shaped beds looked disastrous after I gave them a once-over, but eventually I started to get the hang of weeding and leaving the beds in tact. The idea is to weed the walk-way and then the bed and I think that they do a cutting motion to uproot the weeds and then a scraping motion to pull the weeds off the beds and into the center walkways.
It was hard work, but of course my pride wouldn’t let me stop or even take a break. I hoed for about two hours straight and was just about finished when I mistook my toe for a weed. Just kidding, but I sliced the underside of my big toe on my left foot with the blade of the hoe. The little girl quickly pointed the blood out to her mother who had her run off and gather what I can only imagine is a particular sort of leaf that has some traditional clotting, cleaning or healing properties. The woman, whose hands were as dirty and caked with mud as mine, crushed up the leaves and used them to clean the dirt off my cut. Really, it is a pretty good idea and probably the cleanest thing any of us could have found at the moment. After cleaning the mud off, she wrapped some crushed leaves to my tow with a piece of pagne. I sat down and waited as she went to uproot two huge ignams which she then gave to me as a thank-you gift. I carried them back on my head trying the whole way to let go of the bucket they were strategically placed in, but never succeeding for longer than one or two seconds. The things women here can carry on their heads absolutely amaze me – the weight doesn’t even need to be evenly distributed for them to carry the load flawlessly.
When I got home I showered and vigorously scrubbed the cut on the bottom of my foot with a strong anti-bacterial soap and gauze pads. I scrubbed it a second time when I got inside and then bandaged it up. I had stopped taking the antibacterial medicines for my thumb because it was healing really well, but I started again today because my newest cut is deep and it was hard to clean it well even though I tried to get inside and clean it out.
Afterwards, I cut up one of the ignams and started frying it in wedges called koliko. I didn’t really know how to make a sauce for it, so I invented a tomato, onion, garlic, chicken stock, piment and bean sauce. The woman I accompanied to the field had come over to thank me and had sent what I can only imagine were boiled chickpeas, still in their pods, with her son as a gift (the plant looked a lot like peanut and they grew in the ground like peanuts). Considering two ignams are already way too much thanks for the work I actually did, I brought her about half of the ignam fries (koliko) and sauce and the other half I brought to Lili. I saved a couple pieces and a little sauce out for myself, but really, ignams are huge and can feed a lot of people. I am saving the other one for Thursday to give to the men if they finally build my paillote.
After giving Lili the koliko, I came back to do my laundry – my clothes from this morning were super dirty and so it took me a long time to get them even remotely clean. Nevertheless, my pants and the shirt I work and ride in will never really be clean again.
Around 4:00, I went to the dispensaire and played UNO with Lili and the girls. The talk all the time now is about the head-cutting. Rumor has it that there are several people who are dispersed throughout the Haho prefecture (my prefecture) on a head-hunting mission. It is thought that they target mostly women and children who are weaker. I must say, I am a little nervous about it, but I am not planning on going anywhere alone.
We played UNO for over an hour – I won a lot – when I got tired of winning =0) I went to the soccer field to see if the kids were playing (I had given them the ball earlier). They were just starting when I got there and so I watched them play and had a long discussion with a kid who wanted me to be his correspondent which to me was about the equivalent of “penpal” and to him translated into me buying him school supplies. Pretty much my policy is going to be that I will consider using my own money for things that can be shared by the village as a whole – the soccer ball, a shady area for baby-weighing etc., but I am not going to buy things for individuals. The community is too small. I couldn’t help one person out without fending off one hundred similar requests, so I think I will just try to stay away from those sorts of commitments.
10/10/07
So my garden has become little children’s toilet. Great. Another reason to fence it in ASAP. Lili asked a man in the village to get me some wood to fence it, but she said that because I am white he wanted to charge me 1,000 cFA. If it had been for her, he would have gotten it for free. It isn’t the money, but the principle that makes one feel a little unwelcome. If I wasn’t afraid of losing my head, I’d go off and cut my own wood and cart it back on my bike. About the head-cutting business – I talked to our safety and security officer and he insists that it is jus uncorroborated rumors.
A lot of political campaigning was going on today so I had to just keep my distance and watch from afar. They spent most of the day waiting for party representatives to arrive and then they played music and made speeches and such. I could see the goings-on from the porch of the dipsensaire where I sat most of the day. When I wasn’t sitting there I was visiting Mana (Lili’s seamstress friend) or cleaning my house for Emmanuelle’s arrival tomorrow. I wanted to buy Mana’s pagne scraps to make a quilt, but I don’t think she has enough. Either that or she didn’t fully understand my request.
I would like to talk a bit about food – first of all about how I have had food coming out of my ears today and second of all about how it breaks my heart when the kids next door com to me telling me they are hungry. This morning I woke up and made banana doughnuts. I don’t know what I did differently the last time, but they weren’t as good today. Still, I brought some over to Tsevi’s wife. I was happy when the woman in front, the one I went to the field with yesterday, came back with my plates empty – I thought she had broken the chain of reciprocity and was glad for it. Otherwise it could go on forever. Not half an hour later, though, she brought me a container full of the fermented corn balls in a spicy fish sauce, which I tried to eat for lunch. (1. I hate everything fermented. 2. I can’t pick apart the fish and eat it. 3. It was way too spicy for me.) I appreciate the gesture, the woman is really sweet, but I had to figure out what to do with the food and what to give in return (you are not supposed to return an empty dish). I ended up giving her cut up pineapple because I had three that were all on the verge of going bad. I gave the second one to another woman and the third is my dinner. And the food itself I gave to the children next door. So besides the banana doughnuts and the fermented corn balls and fish sauce, Lili offered me food at the dispensaire and when I went to visit Mana, she shamed me into eating some fufu and after I had tried to choke down some fishy fermented corn mush for lunch Lili made me eat some rice with spicy tomato sauce.
Now, how is it that I can have food coming at me from all sides and the kids next door go hungry? I wonder why their mom is a single mom and perhaps that has something to do with it. I would give them food more often except she might stop feeding them altogether if I do that, figuring that I will pick up the slack. It is so hard though to listen to them say that they are hungry (and I am sure that they are) and not give them food. Kids aren’t picky here and that is a difference between here and Agou Nyogbo, my training sit. Here, it doesn’t matter what it is, if you give a kid something and tell them that it is food, they’ll eat it (even if it isn’t edible). I was thinking about how most kids in the States aren’t huge fans of beans, but here, children beg for them. It is sad – sad on both ends. Sad that we have so much and don’t know how to appreciate and share it and sad that they have so little.
This evening, before it got completely dark I sat outside and watched a beautiful lightning storm ricocheting around in the thunderhead to the south. The sun rises in my back yard, so it is easy to tell which way is east, west, north, south. My house is like the north-south compass on a map.
Now I am writing and waiting for it to be a reasonable hour to go to bed. Tsevi brought me two ignams to make koliko for tomorrow so now I have THREE ignams and I am really hoping my paillote gets built.
10/12/07
So, I hardly do anything all week long and then on Thursday I have so much to do I can’t squeeze it all in. Traditionally, people here don’t go to the fields on Thursdays and so that is the day everyone has time to do things with me. Yesterday (the 12th) I got up and ate oatmeal for breakfast. Then Tsevi had offered to accompany me to visit the basket maker to see if he had made any progress on my baskets. He hadn’t, so Tsevi returned to Avassikpe and I continued to Agbatitoe to meet the catechist who was to take me to meet the Ewe teacher. We rode more than halfway to Notse and then turned off onto a dirt road that was pretty difficult to maneuver on the bicycle because it was so gutted by water.
When we arrived, we found the Ewe teacher’s house. I had allotted an hour for the lesson and an hour for travel each way and had scheduled a rendez-vous with the community Health Agent from one of the villages around Avassikpe called Azakpe for 10 o’clock. I should have known better. It was not just a quick hell, let’s talk logistics, get in, get out sort of meeting. First we greeted his wife. Then we talked about what he does, his goals, his aspirations, his animals. Then we began to talk about the Ewe lessons. I think he might really be able to help me learn, but it will be a lesson in patience. The workbook he had me buy is an entire book on the Ewe alphabet. While I understand the importance of a strong base, especially since pronunciation in Ewe is everything, EVERYTHING, I am impatient to be able to communicate. He slowly and painstakingly went through how he plans to teach me and I think, I hope, it will be good. We decided that he will come to me in Avassikpe because of the head-cutting rumors and that each week we will fix the next date and time according to both our calendars which actually will work well for me I think. We also agreed that each lesson will be two hours long, that we will try to meet on a weekly basis and he readily accepted the 12,000 cFA a month that I offered (the amount Peace Corps will reimburse me for). I think I can learn a lot from him if I can just find the patience to trust the process and his teaching style. I think I will ask him if I can record our lessons so I can review during the week. He is a very nice man, very friendly, knowledgeable, willing, energetic, enthusiastic – a genuinely good person I think. So, after we got all the buisiness-y stuff out of the way, it was already 9:00 and so I was thinking that we had better get going. What I didn’t know was that not only was this Jerome’s village (the Ewe teacher), but Nicolas’ (the catechist who had accompanied me from Agbatitoe) village as well. And so we had to make the rounds and greet everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, in the village. Greeting people is hugely important here and were you to return to your birth village and not greet someone they (as Nicolas explained to me) would think you were angry with them and/or would be injuriously insulted. In addition, I was treated as an honored guest who must also be introduced to all important village people and so we walked around from compound to compound greeting people and we sat with the chief and drank what I was told was not yet fermented palm wine, but it surely tasted fermented to me. I only took a sip – it wasn’t very good. When we finally made it back to Jerome (the Ewe teacher)’s house and I thought we were about to take our leave, Jerome’s wife said she had prepared something for us which, of course, so as not to insult and be ungrateful, we had to stay and eat. And then, as we were about to finish, a new person arrived and so we had to greet him. I seriously had to use self-coaching strategies to not get too impatient and lose me cool. I had also stupidly forgotten my cell phone and so I couldn’t even call Lili to ask if the ASC from Azakpe had arrived or not. I felt quite stressed. I was hoping to visit the priest in Agbatitoe as well, but by the time we left it was already 11:00 and by the time I got back to Avassikpe it was 12:30 (2 ½ hours past the time I had asked the ASC to arrive). And wouldn’t you know it, he was there waiting. I ran home to drop my bike off and grab my helmet. Emmanuelle was already in the house. I hardly had time to greet her properly before I was on the back of the ASC’s moto heading for Azakpe. And not only had he been waiting for me for 2 ½ hours, but the chief and his entourage as well. Even so, they received me very well. The chief is relatively young and friendly and the village is quite large and spread out even though it is far off the beaten track. I explained who I am an why I am here and apologized for making them wait. They were all very friendly. Then we went to tour the beautiful dispensaire (complete with never-used furniture including a fancy birthing bed still wrapped in the plastic packaging) that was built over a year ago and still doesn’t have anyone to staff it and so it sits there, locked and out of place. What a huge shame. I am going to try to see what I can do or understand what they need to do to get it up and running. They seemed very open to my idea of doing baby-weighing in village, so maybe Azakpe can be a starting place. Afterwards, the ASC brought me back to Avassikpe on his moto. He didn’t ask for any sort of remuneration and didn’t make me feel too too badly for being so late.
I was pretty wiped out when I got back and glad for having eaten the steamed bean chunks Jerome’s wife had prepared for us that morning. I ate some oranges and then took a shower. It was very strange to be in village with Emmanuelle. I am used to answering to Yawa, but really, she is Yawa. It felt very unsettling – it was almost as if her presence mad mine superfluous. People would greet her and then me almost as an afterthought. Obviously I don’t hold her responsible, but I prefer being the only volunteer in village. We are very different personally-wise and it is very evident in that I allow the children to stand at my door and stare in and to hold my hands as I walk about town. She herself says that she doesn’t like children. Of course, my leniency has allowed them to develop bad habits, like asking all the time for food and pleadingly telling me that they are hungry, however, I like my way of interacting with them. Even though it affords me less privacy and admittedly sometimes drives me a little crazy, it creates less of a wall between us.
After I showered, Emmanuel showed me around to the different boutiques (little shops) in town. I bought some oil and sardines to make koliko, but as my paillote didn’t get build =0( I didn’t’ make koliko either. I will make the men koliko when they build my paillote as a thank-you (even thought they have already been paid).
We stopped by two of Emmanuelle’s village friends’ houses to visit. Neither of them were there, but I did meet the informal “chief” of the Kabiye neighborhood. Emmanuelle and I are thinking that a joint good-bye Emmanuelle, welcome Danielle gathering would be good because she thinks that the fact that I haven’t been formally introduced to the entire village might adversely affect my work. Anyway, now that I know where these people live, I can visit from time to time.
I made curried lentils and rice for dinner and we talked. I gleaned Emmanuelle’s impressions on certain people and situations and told her some of my ideas –which she thought were good, so that is encouraging. She didn’t tell me much that I couldn’t already guess.
As a side note, I am afraid that someone may have set up some sort of video shack near my house because I can hear video-game like music, but I am not sure exactly how that would be possible considering the lack of electricity.
10/12/07
I got up early and ran to the bathroom and then I made us pancakes for breakfast. We ate them with the honey I bought in Lome.
Around 7:00 we headed over to the dispensaire and as Emmanuelle waited for a moto to take her to Agbatitoe, I fixed one of Lili’s blood pressure thingies using my bicycle repair kit (tire patches) and duct tape. I was proud of myself because I got it to work again. Then I swept the yard with Lili’s 16 year old brother Komi while we talked about how much the typical high school student here dislikes the French. Then I came home and left for the market. I was planning on having an avocado sandwich for lunch, but my avocado was hopelessly past its prime and so I had an egg sandwich instead. I tried a new food that is really good – like a fried, spiced cornstick – kind of like a hush-puppy. It was really yummy – a new local favorite of mine as of today.
Now it is around 2:00 and I am going to take a shower and head either over to the dispensaire or to the market.
I showered, did some laundry and went to the dispensaire. I hadn’t been there long when Komi, Lili’s 16 year old brother said lets go watch the soccer game. Intrigued by exactly how we were going to watch a soccer game in Lome from a village without electricity, I went. There is a structure not too far from my house that has a tall antenna sticking out of it, but I never thought to ask what it was. They must have a generator somewhere because inside was a small colored television and rows of crude benches. The entrance fee to watch the game was 100 cFA. It was kind of fun to watch the Togolese watch the game. I think they are like Latin Americans here with respect to football (soccer), such avid fanst that even children manage to find 100 francs to watch the game. It was like a sauna though. Today was unusually hot to begin with and with so many bodies cramped into a relatively small enclosed space . . . let’s just say it was steamy and a little stinky. Togo was playing against Mali and they lost 2-0.
Afterwards I went to the market to look for soja, but didn’t find any and so I came home to shower again to cool off a little.
I think I need to hang my pineapples somehow because it seems as thought it is always the part of the pineapple touching the ground that goes bad even thought I thought laying fruits and veggies on the ground was supposed to help keep them from going bad.
I think I will read my book a bit as I wait for it to be a semi-reasonable hour to go to bed (it is now only quarter to seven).
10/13/07
Today I had yummy French toast for breakfast and then I went over to the dispensaire to sweep the courtyard and pick up the weeds. Lili is making pregnant women or their husbands (if they come accompanied) weed the courtyard and then I try to sweep it up. Some of the weeds are still rooted in the ground so I hit them as if I were golfing with the short handled broom (really just a bunch of branches tied together) and make people laugh. Komi says it isn’t war, but now I use the war analogy to describe the whole operation. Some of the weeds are rebels, others get taken to concentration camps, others try to escape. It makes people laugh and I like making people laugh.
Then I collected grass with the children – a certain kind of grass used to make the brooms and I sat with the kids on a mat in front of my house and they helped me make my broom. I did most of it myself and people were impressed (even though six year old children know how to make them).
Now I am making lunch – beans with gari and fried plantains. I adore fried plantains. There are children outside unfortunately. I don’t mind most of the time, but it is really uncomfortable when I am cooking.
When I finally got the children to leave, I ate lunch and then, just as I was finishing (I was hiding in my room eating), I received a visit from Mana and a friend. I showed them my pictures to entertain them a bit and then told them I was going to take a shower and so they left. As I was getting ready to shower I found a little scorpion on my wall. I caught it in a cup and took it outside. I asked Efo if it was dangerous and he said that the big ones will sting you but he seemed not to think it was deadly. Another man held it in his hand before Efo stepped on it. He said the man had spiritual powers and that is why it didn’t sting him. Oh, on the topic of spiritual powers, Emmanuelle said she attended several voudou ceremonies in village in which the men dance and go into trances and cut themselves (explaining the big welts I have seen on men’s arms). She also said that something about some Africans’ skin leads to exaggerated scarring, but still, the welts covering some men’s arms are painfully thick. And this morning, as we were collecting grass for our brooms, the children managed to convey to me that I should not go near a specific tree because of something having to do with voudou. I can’t wait to see my first voudou ceremony.
Anyway, I showered and around 2:30 went to the football field with the kids. The older boys soon arrived and I had to insist that the little children get a chance to play as well. They got fifteen minutes and then the older boys got half an hour and then I had to fight to get the little ones another turn. I had to threaten that I was going to take the ball and go home if they didn’t clear the field. In an attempt to assuage the angry voices I blurted out that soon the little kids will have a ball and can play on one half of the field while the older kids play on the other. I am not sure that was wise. Oh well.
I stayed at the field all afternoon until dusk. I had to break up several fights which seem to start out as playful wresting and gradually escalate into tearful punching and kicking. I figure boys will be boys, so I let it go until I think it has gotten out of hand. It is interesting, though, because they look like they are wrestling even though I am not sure they have ever seen wrestling as we practice it in the U.S. I guess wresting is a sport that traverses time and culture.
After coming home, I sat outside for a bit – inevitably attracting children as I tried to translate my notes on child-trafficking in Togo from English to French. Then I came inside and was cutting up a pineapple when Mana and Komi stopped by. I made them popcorn, just to offer them something to eat. Komi dropped off the bananas and telephone cards he had bought me in Notse. They only stayed a little while (I think they were afraid of missing real food back at Lili’s house) and now I think I will go to bed and read. Tomorrow’s the election, I hope it goes smoothly . . .
10/14/07
It is around 7:00 in the morning of election day and everything seems normal from where I am sitting – children are playing and women are making breakfast, sweeping courtyards, doing laundry, going to the fields, going to the mill. The men seem curiously absent, though, perhaps they are watching over the election process at the school.
I thought maybe I would go to church today, only the second Sunday I have been in village. I asked Tsevi, but he said he would be helping with the election. Efo said we could go, but I don’t see him around and I don’t know what time church starts so I will just work on translating my notes on child trafficking.
This morning I was heading over to the dispensaire when I was intercepted by one of the chief’s unmarried daughters (late teens, early twenties ?). She was heading over to the school with some boiled peanuts to sell and invited me to come along. I was curious to see how the elections were progressing and so I went. It was actually all very calm and orderly – people (both men and women) standing in line waiting for their turn to vote. To amuse myself and the people around me, I walked around with the peanuts on my head and said “azi, kpono” – “peanuts, 25 francs”. I even learned how to say peanuts and 25 francs in kabiye so as to include all my customers. People found it quite funny and in a little over half an hour I had sold all the peanuts. As thanks, the girl gave me a whole bowl of unboiled peanuts which I later boiled and salted myself and ama enjoying right now (I was a little overzealous with the salt . . . )
Afterwards, I came back to my house and when I stopped to say hello to the woman who lives in front (Efo’s elder sister) she said she was going to the field. I blurted out, “can I go too?” What was she supposed to say? No? That is the last time I am going to volunteer to go to the field for a while and I have a newfound respect for women and children. My head and my shoulder are very bruised and sore from carrying a huge chunk of tree trunk back from a field that was over half-an-hour walking distance. Somewhere on the way home I felt near tears my head hurt so badly, but my pride held them back because the under twelve year old boy in front of me was carrying a lot that was probably almost as heavy. It was horrible – I could feel the weight of my cargo compressing my head and my spinal column and I am serious when I say that even though I had a pagne to cushion my head it is bruised and sore to the touch. My shoulder is bruised because I had to give my head respite for a while and so I rested the lot on my shoulder. Of course, all of this was self-inflicted pain because I had offered to help transport the wood and picked my own log. I actually think I have a bump on my head.
I showered as soon as I got home, made a creamy noodle invention for lunch, did my laundry and went to the soccer field where I spend the whole afternoon, from about 1:30 until 5:30. I played with a baby, policed soccer games, wove a broom handle, read my book and amused little children with my crazy antics.
Just now as I was sitting in my house reading waiting for the children to get bored of watching me so I could eat something, older kids came to intrude. Yawovi – the kid who first approached me about the children’s rights group and a friend. Since the older students are leaving soon for school in Notse, we concluded that we will try to have club meetings in Notse on a weekday. I am happy with that conclusion because I was thinking about trying to change my weekly trip to Notse from the weekend to a weekday so I can be in village on the weekend. This might work well for a variety of reasons. It would make my trips to Notse more work related and productive and it would be better for internet. The other reason Notse might work better for these meetings is that hopefully we can include students from the villages around Avassikpe as well and then do a tour of the villages with our sketch to educate communities on the dangers of child trafficking – that would be very good.
10/15/07
So I just had a four hour long Ewe lesson. Yikes. I think it will be helpful, but like I mentioned before it will take a lot of patience.
It is evening and I am sitting waiting for the kids in my supposed children’s rights group to show up. I made popcorn and bissap juice for them, but who knows if they will come . . . I hope so because I think they will be leaving tomorrow or soon after for school. This afternoon I tried to make bean beignets. They didn’t turn out at all like they are supposed to – I think perhaps I should use bean flour and not just mashed up beans. I had a recipe for it in the Where There is no Whopper (PCV Togo Cookbook) which I sort of kind of tried to follow, but it didn’t seem right so I improvised as well. Anyway, even though they weren’t real bean beignets, they didn’t taste horribly and so I brought them over to Efo and his family anyway as a thank you for helping me all the time with the kids and the soccer ball business.
Then I went to visit Lili (after showering of course because whenever I use my stove I end up dripping in sweat). Afterwards I came back and sat with the women in front (not understanding any of their conversation, although the topic was the elections) and then I went and sat at the soccer field to watch the children play. Aside from my Ewe lesson and my club meeting, if it happens, not too eventful . . .
10/16/07
There is nothing lonelier than vomiting and pooping your insides out in the middle of the night in a dark village on a plain in Togo. I don’t know what I ate, but it did a number on my digestive system and even thought it is afternoon now I am still feeling nauseous. Last night I vomited pretty much on the hour every hour and left my house to visit my latrine after dark for the first time, not only once, but four times. The cycle seemed to be pee out my butt, vomit, pee out my butt, vomit. It was uncomfortable to say the least, not to mention that it created an exaggerated feeling of being all alone. Today I am being cautious with what I put into my stomach considering that just a drink of water provoked a vomiting fit early this morning. I chewed on a couple of pept-eez which I think only helped in putting a better taste in my mouth and I ate two pancake and drank some water. Pancakes were the closest thing to toast that I could think of. I have kept them down, but I am still feeling queasy. I am really thirsty, but I try not to chug the water, but rather drink it slowly and constantly.
Last night the students finally came for our first club meeting around 8:00 – three girls and four or so boys. It was the first time I ventured past my grass-roofed porch after dark. I went around 7:00 to ask Efo if they were going to show. He was showering, so I sat with his family. I think I will make them my adopted host family here in Avassikpe – they are so nice, warm, welcoming, friendly and undemanding. They taught me the words for fire, firewood, pot, lantern (which I can’t remember now) and dog. Then I taught them some words in English. It was funny to realize that they have as much difficulty pronouncing English words as I do with Ewe words.
The club meeting went well. The students seemed interested, motivated and intelligent and it was refreshing to speak to a group of people who understood exactly what I was saying, no translation needed. There was only one boy who seemed to be there because of what he might get out of the club ( a T-shirt, “we need instruments and a microphone system . . .”) rather than what he could offer to the club. We decided that we will hold weekly meetings at Ashley’s organization in Notse (this morning I confirmed with her homologue that this would be ok). The day of the week is to be determined, but like I said, except for the one kid who goes to school in a different town (and so hopefully won’t be too involved) everyone else seemed to be on the same page. They sat in my house, ate popcorn and drank the hibiscus juice I had made and all in all I think it was very successful. They laughed a lot when I referred to the mice in my roof as elephants. I am thinking of asking people, when they go through the ritualistic greetings to ask me how the elephants are instead of how the children are, considering that I don’t have children and I do have elephants. I think it would be funny.
It is rotten being sick in a village without electricity (and indoor plumbing) because there is no easy form of entertainment and it quickly gets too hot to stay in bed.
I sat with Efo’s family a bit, “helped” a little girl do the dishes, went to say hi to Lili, lay down a bit and read Newsweek, got up and sat on a mat outside where it is cooler, wrote Ewe words for family members on the back of my photos and showed them to some children – which of course attracted attention, so I showed them to the neighbor lady, Efo’s older sister and Efo. They thought it funny that you are younger than me (Efo says that here the man is supposed to be older – I didn’t comment that that is because it is still an extremely male-dominated society). They also thought it strange that we have houses made of wood and that we celebrate birthdays with cake (which they translated as sweet bread) and candles, and when they weren’t confusing my mother and me completely, they were insisting that she must be my older sister, not my mother. It was fun and now I have the Ewe words for family members drilled into my head. Then I lay down again. Lili came to check on my and told me that I should eat something and so I made pancakes, ate two, and brought the rest to her. She said they were too sweet (I had sprinkled them with cinnamon sugar) for her, but I think the little girls enjoyed them.
Then I came back, took a shower and I was going to play UNO with the chief’s daughter, but she left and hasn’t come back – not that I mind. I think I will lay down and read my book. Oh and Emmanuelle called and is coming tomorrow and staying until Friday morning and supposedly my paillote is going to be built tomorrow (I will try not to get my hopes up) and hopefully I can organize a joint thank-you/good-bye Emmanuelle, welcome Danielle village gathering Thursday morning. If I feel better a bit later when it gets cooler, I will walk over to the other quartier (neighborhood) and try to let her close village friends know at least. I already told Tsevi.
The election results haven’t been announced yet – just a side note . . .
Child beating especially when it is culturally and socially acceptable makes me sick. After the woman next door finished beating her eldest (and I am serious when I say beating – I saw her toss away the stick) and once his crying had subsided a bit I gave him some boiled peanuts (perhaps not the smartest move, but motivated by compassion). If I were him, I would have run off to heat them in hiding, but he stayed to share with his brother (whether motivated by gloating or genuine sharing who can tell?) and when his mom came back she took them from him and went to sit off to the side and eat them all herself. It made me want to take them back.
I forgot to mention that the other day someone told me that they cut the trees down in village when they get too big because otherwise the roots break the houses. That is why there are all these leaf-less tree stumps around. Not great when you’re looking for a shady spot to rest.
I made myself some grapefruit juice and then sat outside reading my book for the bulk of the afternoon. I finished it and it wasn’t exactly uplifting – a book in which the hero is a tragic character who spreads his loyalties too thin and loses everything. Not exactly what I needed – as I am feeling sick, sad, lonely and unenergetic. My usual energy and willingness to play and romp with the children and make people laugh fuels my high, but I feel decidedly weaker today what with the vomiting, diarrhea and fear of food.
There are some ambitious ants that are trying to transport pieces of popcorn out the window and don’t realize that the pieces are way too large to fit through the cracks. I was wondering how the popcorn got on the window sill – I am glad it is ants and not mice. Ants are truly amazing in their ability to transport objects so much larger and heavier than they themselves.
I think I will lie in bed and read Newsweek and hopefully I will be able to sleep through the night. Oh, I forgot to mention that Lili stopped by to check on me again and she said that if I need to I can beep her cell phone during the night and she will come over. That was super sweet of her.
10/17/07
Yesterday (Wednesday, the 17th) they built my paillote – but they didn’t quite finish. I woke up around 5:30 to sounds of chopping wood and soon after they tore down (literally) my front porch and with it part of my gutter system. It mate quite a racket and for a little while I was trapped inside my house which was unfortunate because I really ahd to pee. They removed it quickly, though, and once I was dressed and ready I went outside to say good morning and go to the bathroom. I then started to cut up the two ignams Tsevi brought me to make koliko (ignam fries). By the way, I slept through the night after receiving a visit from Lili and Mana around 7:30 (they woke me from a fitful and sweaty sleep). They were just checking up on me and wanted to know if I wanted to eat some pâte (about the last think I wanted – if they had said mango sherbert I’d have said maybe . . . =0) or if I wanted Mana to stay the night with me (the second to last thing I wanted) but it was sweet of them to offer. In the morning when I woke up I was feeling fine.
I sat outside and got to chopping up the ignams as I watched my paillote go up. They stuck the eight posts deep in the ground and then made a roof frame by connecting the posts all around the top of the circle and making a cone of wheel-spoke like supports. They seemed to be doing a decent job, but what do I know? I cut up ignams with one of the chief’s daughters and she informed me that I should chop up the ignam before peeling it because then I will peel it well. Apparently I hadn’t peeled it well – I didn’t want to waste, but I don’t think I went deep enough. Then she showed me the right way to cut them which is perpendicular to the crease. IT was fun to chop it up and I filled a whole bucket full. I then let the ignam soak in salt water while I prepared a dipping sauce with onions, garlic, tomatoes, tomato paste, oil and sardines and of course some spices – salt, piment (hot pepper), mystery spice, a tiny dash of cinnamon.
It took a couple of hours to fry up all the koliko – I thought it was a huge amount . . . the timing was perfect and they got to a stopping point in the construction (they ran out of the grass for the roofing and so there is a hole in the top of my paillote) just as I was finishing up the koliko. They promised to come back and finish it that night, but of course they didn’t show. When I brought out the koliko (four heaping plates full plus a bowl of sauce), I thought it was enough to feed a small army. They finished it off in about five minutes. Seriously. I only ate one myself and saved some for the little old lady in front who asked me for some. It was sort of awkward because there were all these other people around, but of course I can’t feed the whole village. It was also strange because, while they scarfed down the food, they never commented on whether the food was good or not and once it was all finished the left abruptly.
I cleaned up and went to say hi to Lili and let her know that I was feeling better. Emannuelle was scheduled to arrive sometime during the day and so I wanted to clean up a bit and didn’t stay long at the dispensaire.
As I was cleaning, one of the little girls that lives with Lili (her little sister’s name is Afie and the other little girl’s name is something like Sepa) came to get me and informed me that Lili wanted me at her house. She didn’t say why, but I went. I brought my third ignam as a gift, I didn’t’ think I would use it and frankly, I was tired of looking at it sitting on my floor. When we arrived, more ignams were boiling in a pot in preparation for fufu. I like fufu much more than koliko. Koliko has a bitter after taste for some reason that fufu doesn’t seem to have. The doughty texture also amuses my mouth. I pounded fufu and got two blisters on my hand, but the fufu was yummy.
After pleasantly full on doughy goodness and happy to have eaten fufu rather than the koliko I had prepared, I went home and showered. I had been playing UNO with the kids for about fifteen minutes when Emmanuelle arrived. Gradually, the crowd and the number of players grew and grew. It was fun though because I learn the children’s names and spend some time with them and I also learn new Ewe words from listening to them speak in a very particular context. It is a little tiring to monitor the game and there is a little bit of miscomprehension of the colors in French and a bit of strategic disconnect, but eventually they will get it and the games will go more quickly and smoothly. It is fun because it is an easy game, but they get a huge kick out of it. Emmanuelle sat and watched and played with the smaller children who were unfortunately excluded from the game.
We played until it was time for soccer – around 4:00 the children tend to head to the soccer field if they are free. Emmanuelle and I took advantage of the “repos” from little people and relaxed just a bit and then made the rounds to say hello to different people – Lili, Tsevi, and Emmanuelle’s two closest friends in village – a man named Koffi and a woman named Bebe. Kassim was at the dispensaire so I asked him how much his brother wanted to chauffer my Dad for two days and he said (60,000 cFA = $120!!!) and I said no way. It stressed me out because I was sort of counting on him, but Emmanuelle solved my problem by calling the guy who drove her parents around and he said he would do it for 11,000 francs a day plus gas, so the problem is hopefully solved. I hope, I hope . . .
At Bebe’s we ate pâte with a green leafy sauce and Emmanuelle drank some sodabe. A friend of hers who visited had written an article on the Tchouk making process and it was published in a magazine dedicated entirely to beer. She had brought copies of the magazine with her as gifts and of course it was a huge hit. Then we went to visit Koffi and there was almost a full page picture of him in the magazine, so he was tickled to death. It was fun to see their reactions.
In the evening, after returning to the house, we just chatted a bit and went to bed around 8:30.
10/18/07
It is evening now and I am tired but I am waiting for some banana bread to finish baking and in a dutch oven that takes hours. Anyway, it is ok because I am behind on my writing and it will be good to get caught up. Emmanuelle is sleeping. I try to imagine how hard it must be to say good-bye to a place and people who have been the center of your live for the past two years, knowing that you will never see them again. The gathering this afternoon was not quite the huge, village-wide thank you Emmanuelle, welcome Danielle that we were both hoping it would be and I think a certain disappointment with the anti-climactic farewell compounds her feelings of somehow having failed Avassikpe. She also seems to think I am a much better fit for the village and while she readily accepts that, it doesn’t make it any easier.
This morning I woke up extra early (my bladder is my alarm clock) and made pancakes. I was just about to sit down to eat when Efo came by. He had mentioned that he was planning a trip to one of the nearby villages that I hadn’t visited yet and I asked if I could go. We went on bicycles, but it would have been much easier to walk. The path (not worthy of the denomination of road) was really just a well trodden, deeply rutted, water logged footpath. So deep and narrow were the ruts that I didn’t so much pedal (I couldn’t, my pedals kept getting caught on the high sides of the ruts) as push myself along with my feet while perched on my super comfortable bicycle seat. When I wasn’t biking in a rut, I was biking on the edge of the rut, at every moment afraid of falling in. It was quite treacherous and my mountain biking skills and rough terrain riding definitely need some work (and my saddle bags didn’t help any).
When we finally arrived, Efo and the other guy who accompanied us sat and talked with some men about the pig he wanted to buy and I made faces at the kids who of course flocked together upon my arrival. The older ones think it is great fun to make the little children cry by forcing them towards me. Some of them I think are genuinely afraid of me. Eventually, though, the older children ventured forward to shake my had, followed by the younger children. That lasted quite a while. From the conversation the men were having, I gathered that the price the guy was asking for the pig was too high and Efo was pleading with him to lower it, but he wouldn’t. Eventually we got up and went to walk around the village a bit to greet people and so I could see the lay-out. Efo’s dad is apparently buried in the village, Abourdikpe, which means that I still have some figuring out to do in terms of family relations because I was under the impression that his father was still alive. Apparently his father had a wife in that village and we visited her. There was a very old man (completely bent at the waist and blind) who Efo unquestioningly informed me was 120 years old. I didn’t think it worth arguing about. The woman gave us a bowl of beans, gari and piment to eat and I ate a few spoonfuls. Then we walked out to the road that wraps around to Azitou (where my Ewe teacher lives) and the route nationale and, in the other direction, Azakpe and eventually Avassikpe.
On the edge of the road is the school (just two big grass roofed pavilions – school didn’t seem to be in session even thought it should have been) and there I had an unpleasant encounter with the director of the school – a pretentious, smarmy man who even after I said that I was Madame and not Mademoiselle (meaning that I am married) said that he wanted to come visit me in Avassikpe. I told him that he could stop at the dispensaire and see if I was there. As I walked off, which I did as quickly as possible, he gave me a sick little wave. He mad my stomach churn, he just oozed creepiness like no one else. We sat in and around the village talking to more people who raise pigs and eventually made on final plea to the first man we had talked to before leaving pig-less.
The trip back was just as nerve-wracking, only hotter. When I got home I wolfed down some cold pancakes with honey and I tried to get myself organized to do laundry. First, though, I had to fix the clothesline that had been torn down in the paillote-raising process. The clothes line is a wire tied on one end to my house and on the other end to a tall wooden pole. I started to dig a hole with my coup coup, but apparently wasn’t doing a very satisfactory job because it was soon wrenched out of my hands by children who proceeded to dig it for me. By this time Emmanuelle had returned from Lili’s where she had been treated to some mid-morning fufu and she sat with me as I washed my clothes. We chatted and around 11:00, she headed off to visit her friend Koffi. I continued washing clothes with the company of many little children until around 12:30 when I finally finished. I showered and just as I was debating whether or not to go join Emmanuelle, she arrived to fetch me. We went over to Koffi’s house where we had a very tasty farewell lunch of rice, spaghetti (yes, people like to eat rice and spaghetti together here) a spicy, oily sauce and fried duck. When I grabbed a piece of meat at first I grabbed the food. Emmanuel told me that I could put it back and Koffi chose some meaty pieces for me. It was a very good lunch. I don’t know what I would have done once I realized I had chosen the foot had Emmanuelle not saved me. We ate and then Emmanuelle and Koffi drank some sodabe and ate some more. They say sodabe opens the appetite so you can eat more. I don’t think I need that.
Afterwards, we were supposedly to attend a village-wide meeting, but of course no one was there. We went home and Emmanuelle showered, then we went back to the dispensaire, past the chief’s house where meetings usually take place and still nothing. I got bored of waiting, so I went to help the children carry corn cobs from the school to the director’s house. School started on Wednesday and I guess one of the ways they help supplement the teachers’ salary is by helping them out with fieldwork. I think Thursday afternoon is the regularly allotted time for that, but I guess if work needs to be done then they do it regardless of the day. Anyway, I helped the children carry metal basins full of corn cobs and it was fun. I love doing things like that because it makes the children enjoy the work more and it pleases the adults who see me helping out. I made about three trips and then I got called to the meeting which, although it was supposed to be a village-wide meeting, turned into a meeting with just the elders in which Emmanuelle thanked them for her time there and they in turn thanked her and she relayed the torch to me. Of course it still didn’t serve the purpose of introducing me to the half of the village that doesn’t know me, but I guess it was better than nothing. Afterwards, they presented Emmanuelle with a bottle of sodabe and we were chased inside by the rain where they proceeded to take shot after shot of sodabe as the rain came pouring down. Tsevi sweetly ran to close my windows and came back rather sopping wet, but I guess the sodabe warmed him from the inside out. We sat there for a while, the men engrossed in their conversation in Ewe and Emmanuelle and I chatting off and on. The sodabe and all the mixed emotions were definitely taking their toll. When we got back to the house I proceeded to mix up the batter for banana bread and she went to visit another of her village friends. When she returned, we talked a bit before she went to bed. I think she is not better at good-bys than I am and I think she has somewhat mixed feelings about her time here and me as her replacement. Her logic tells her that she and Avassikpe were not a healthy fit and that had she stayed in Avassikpe full time, it would not have benefited either party. She also knows she should be happy that I seem to be a better fit for Avassikpe (at least for the time being). However, perhaps the somewhat irrational feeling side of her (that we all have) feels somehow threatened by the fact that I love living here and she didn’t. However, we have already established between us that even though we get along, we are very different. Anyway, it was a little awkward and I keep trying to put myself in her shoes, to imagine how it must feel to be nearing the close of your service – but I don’t think exactly the right words came out of my mouth.
After she fell asleep, I caught up a bit on my writing while waiting for the banana bread to bake.
10/19/07
Late last night I remembered that I was to have an Ewe lesson today and then this morning I remembered that the DPS was also scheduled to visit (the prefectural director of health – the guy I have tried to visit several times in Notse and he was never in his office). I went over to ask Lili what time he was coming and she said that actually his visit had been postponed until next Thursday, so I didn’t have to call off my lesson. I wasn’t much in the mood for an Ewe lesson as I was running a bit low on energy, but canceling would have been inconvenient and inconsiderate of my Ewe teacher, so . . .
10/21/07
It is now Monday the 22nd of October and I am in Notse. I have spent the whole day typing up my emails and now we are discussing plans for a World AIDS Day event. It is complicated because Ashley’s organization wants to do a big, expensive production – with a race, a soccer game, a march, music, skits, t-shirts, prizes etc. World AIDS Day is a little over a month away and they have no money as of right now. It is frustrating because it seems that their focus is on the money that can be filtered and pilfered through the organization and not the message of itself. Now we are trying to think of how we can modify the ideas into something that is feasible, both organizationally and financially. We are thinking more along the lines of a skit competition and poster competition.
Yesterday morning I went to the Assembly of God Church in Avassikpe. It is this big, partially constructed building without a roof (but it has a metal pavilion inside the high cement brick walls. The first surprise was that men and women have to sit on different sides of the church (Efo later told me that that is so that you aren’t distracted by the dancing of the opposite sex). As soon as I arrived at 7:30, we were ushered into groups for Sunday school. I was in the French group, which was a good thing. The lesson was on Jesus’ miracle of multiplying bread and fish to feed the masses. The message: God can transform what may appear to be a little into a lot and if you put what you have in God’s hands (I am not sure how literal or materially-focused this message was). Anyway, for the most part I surprised myself by not being too too off put by what they said.
The church service itself started around 8:30 and began with lots of singing accompanied by a modern drum set, two trumpets, maracas hand clapping and dancing alternating with praying out loud – everyone seeming to issue their own prayer to the Lord but voices raised high. Then several people gave their testimonies on how God has worked miracles in their lives and offered up thanks including a very nice chair, a stand for the preacher to put his bible on for example and monetary thanks. An overall offering was taken and then later other offerings at different intervals during the singing, but I only gave once. Then the sermon was given by the pastor and it had to do with the right and wrong reasons for coming to church; the right reasons being to follow Jesus’ example and achieve everlasting life and the wrong reasons being to find wealth, to find a cure for an illness, to find a spouse. The nice thing about the service is that it was translated into French and Kabiye for a total of three languages: Ewe, French and Kabiye and so I could both follow along and get a bit of an Ewe lesson at the same time. Every once in a while they missed a translation because the person speaking got carried away and went too fast, but it was still much better than nothing. The atmosphere overall was friendly, a bit over-bearing, but friendly. The service ended around 11:30 and so I had a total of four hours of churching. It was ok though.
Afterwards I went home and changed. I broke open my coconut and shared it with Efo and his family and then his sister offered me some pâte – you can’t refuse food here without being rude and so I ate a little. The boys had weeded the dispensaire, so I went to approve their work and made them sweep up the weeds and write their names down on a piece of paper. As it was only 12:30, we went to play UNO under my paillote. I forgot to mention that they finished my paillote while I was at church and gave it a rather shabby hair-cut, but overall I am pleased with the finished result.
UNO went ok and then I called it quits, gave them the soccer ball and took advantage of the distraction to clean up my house a bit before closing in up and heading to Notse around 3:30. My cell phone was completely out of battery and my flashlight not working to charge it and so I wasn’t able to tell Ashley that I was coming. Nevertheless, I found her without a problem and we were reunited. It is great to see her again and get caught up on all the Peace Corps Togo gossip except that I learned that two more people from my stage (but from the SED group) have gone home.
I have sort of summarized this last bit because I want to go to internet before it closes.
