6/1/08 through 6/21/08

6/1/08 through 6/10/08

Yikes. I have a lot of catching up to do. Even though I had my computer with me while I was in Ghana, I was too distracted to write, so here goes . . . I spent the Sunday before going to Ghana with Ashley in Lome. It was wonderful because there were very few people in the bureau and so we had internet and the space itself mostly to ourselves. I was able to chat with Jorge for a while and do aimless things on the internet. For some reason, though, I didn’t accomplish the things I should have accomplished like answering letters from the third grade class at home that is writing to me and looking for appealing grad-school programs.

For dinner Ashley and I treated ourselves to over-priced pizza at a fancy restaurant called Phillipats. The ambiance there is certainly very nice – warm woods, reds and candles – and the pizza was pretty good, but I later regretted having spent so much (4,500 cFA = $11.00).

Monday morning, after checking the exchange rate online, I walked to the Togo-Ghana border. It is about a fifteen minute walk from our office which would be a piece of cake except I was a bit loaded down with baggage and unsure of the precise location. Anyway, I arrived without a problem, but almost got cheated out of five dollars by the man who changed francs into cedis (Ghanaian currency) for me. He purposely (I am pretty sure) short changed me, but, unfortunately for him, I counted the money and instead of allowing him to correct his mistake, took, my francs back and my business to someone else.

Crossing the border was a bit of a pain – you have to fill out paper work for both the Togolese and Ghanaian immigration officials, but no one hassled me or tried to extort money out of me so I count myself lucky. The tricky part came when I was swarmed by countless taxi drivers who all wanted to take me to Accra. I wished I was traveling with someone who had done it all before and made Ashley call me twice in the course of finding a car just to make sure I wasn’t getting “taken for a ride.” I was thoroughly confused by all the choices (small cars, vans, buses) and the different destinations (different stations in Accra depending on what part of the city you were headed to). To make matters worse, Ghana recently devalued their currency and what used to be 50,000 I don’t know whats is now equal to 5 cedis which is about equal to 5 dollars. That in and of itself isn’t necessarily bad, although it seems to cause inflation (particularly for low-priced commodities because there is nothing smaller than 5 peswas (like cents), people still quote prices in the old currency and leave the math to you. For someone not particularly “forte” in mental math that creates a bit of confusion especially before I figured out that the number to divide by is 10,000. With Ashley’s help, I eventually settled in a large van that promised (the driver, not the van itself) to take me right to the Novotel hotel (actually called the Novotel Accra City Center) for 5.5 cedis. On one of the phone calls with Ashley she informed me that she had just spoken with our APCD and that he had decided not to go to the Moringa workshop in Burkina Faso because the new CHAP trainees will have just been in country a week and that he wanted to send me in his stead. I was cautiously excited, knowing that nothing was set in stone.
I waited for about forty minutes for the van to fill and then we were on our way. What with all the other volunteers’ talk of hopping over to Ghana for a long weekend, I was under the impression that Accra was only a stones throw away. I guess it is Ghana and not Accra that is a stones throw away, because it took about three hours of weaving back and forth on a pot-hole filled road to get to Accra. Add to that the border crossing and waiting for a car and it is a four to five hour ordeal – not something I would do just for a weekend unless it was a particularly special occasion.

The ride was uneventful, except that I was starving. I hadn’t eaten anything before leaving Togo (I was just too focused on crossing the border and getting a car) and afterwards I was too nervous about the money and getting cheated to dare buy anything on the Ghanaian side.

As we approached Accra, I got nervous again. I was not confident that the driver would really drop me off at my hotel and was worried about finding transportation to my final destination. My first impressions of Accra were overwhelming. It is a real city (not just an overgrown, overcrowded town like Lome) and has real highways that are well paved, with well tended and landscaped medians, overpasses, multiple lanes, working (respected!) traffic lights and stop signs, good public transportation, and the city is relatively clean (it is actually illegal to litter and you will be fined). I was impressed and intimidated. Fortunately, the driver pointed out my hotel and dropped me only a block away, so I didn’t have to worry about finding another taxi and getting ripped off on the price because I had no clue where I was going.

Stepping into the Novotel Accra City Center I felt a little like that poor relative that you have to let into your house because she’s family, but who’s presence is embarrassing and unsettling, because I was dirty and sweaty and this was an elegant, four-star (a legitimate four-star) hotel. Probably the only the doorman opened the door for me was the color of my skin. (Sad but true). Between early morning and my arrival, the receptionists changed shifts and somehow Dad’s instructions to give me a key to his room and the envelope he left with more precise directions to his conference were lost in the shuffle. The receptionist asked if I had a phone number, but I didn’t and so she directed me to a very friendly lady who called Dad’s Ghanaian country director to ask where the conference was taking place. I left my bigger backpack full of clothes at the hotel and went off in search of the Ghana School of Surgeons. I found it without a problem – I only had to ask for directions once and it was only about a ten minute walk from the hotel. When I got there, the participants were still in session. I didn’t want to interrupt and so I waited downstairs for about forty minutes, until around 1:30 when I finally saw Dad book it out of the conference hall, down the stairs and out the door, presumably to go to the hotel to find me. I ran after him and we walked to the hotel together to get me settled in and, most importantly, showered.

Lunch was provided for Dad at the conference and so he returned while I stayed at the hotel to shower (I later learned that all that was left of the buffet-style lunch spread when he arrived was a spoonful of rice . . . ). My plan had been to go in search of street food after showering and before joining up with Dad at his conference for the afternoon session, but after appeasing my growling stomach with a whole bag of beef jerkey and a pack of chips ahoy and a pack of oreos (all things Dad brought me from the States and mistakenly showed me before leaving the hotel room) I didn’t think I needed street food =0).

I joined Dad at the conference and ended up spending that whole afternoon and the whole next day attending the 2008 International Symposium on Household Water Management. It was very interesting not only to learn about the existing technologies for purifying water, but also to see the interactions between the various professionals (and organizations they represent) involved in the effort to make clean drinking water available to everyone on the planet (there were engineers, social scientists, microbiologists, marketing representatives, epidemiologists – a wide array of perspectives). I really enjoyed being a tag-along and getting a taste for what work in the development/public health/appropriate technology circuit might be like. There are many challenges that these professionals face. First of all, there is the problem of technology/product. You have the filters: filters made of different grades of sand (BioSand Filter – relatively easy to manufacture, but bulky and difficult to transport), ceramic filters (both flower-pot style and half-globe style – also potentially made locally, but difficult to transport due to shape, size and weight), fancy, high-tech, expensive on-the-spot straw filters, siphon filters with silver (that prohibits the growth of bacteria in/on the filter itself – smaller and easier to transport, but perhaps more difficult to manufacture locally). Then there are the methods of killing the microbes (parasites/bacteria/viruses) that many filters fail to remove: diluted liquid bleach solutions, water purification tablets and, of course, if you want low-tech/low-intervention: the sun (the SODIS method advocates putting water out in the sun in clear plastic bottles to heat it to a temperature that kills microbes). Then there is the question of implementation methodology. Should the product/technology be manufactured on site? Should it be imported? Should the technologies/products be sold? If so, should they be sold for a profit or just to recuperate costs? Should the technologies be given away to the poorest of the poor who might not be able to buy them? Should we embrace the idea of “sweat equity” (buying into a technology/product through manual labor) or vouchers (receiving vouchers for a technology after having participated in a formation on its importance and proper use)? Should the international community working towards providing clean water for everyone embrace only one technology/product or multiple technologies/products? These are only some of the questions that these professionals face.

I was glad that I had just read two thought-provoking books on economic development and solutions to poverty and felt well positioned to think about some of these issues for myself. Nevertheless, I have to admit that most of what follows is not 100% original thoughts (let’s break it down: 85% Dad’s thoughts, 10% other people’s thoughts, %5 original thoughts based on my experience so far in a small, relatively poor village in Togo with dirty water and not many options for making it potable), but, hey, everyone has to learn from someone or some experience, so here goes.

As I try to work these issues out in my head, I think my Dad is right on track with his thought process and so that forms the bulk of what I am going to lay out here. He says that we have to stop thinking of people (even very poor people) in developing countries as beneficiaries and start thinking of them as clients. As Paul Polak shows in his book, even people living on less than a dollar a day have purchasing power if the right product is available at the right price and he even suggests that more money can be generated by designing products for the 1.1 billion dollar-a-day customers rather than for the handful (in comparison) of wealthier customers that the majority of designers currently focus their efforts on (hence his initiative: Design for the Other 90 Percent; Out of Poverty, 63-81). Giving things away, even once, has been proven to destroy the market for that technology/product (by artificially under-valuing it) and limit ownership/value. In the past five (I think?) years, a large initiative to combat malaria included distributing free or highly subsidized mosquito nets to all women with children under five. Like my Dad says, however, you can’t measure the impact of an initiative solely on distribution, especially if that distribution was free. Very few people will refuse a free product, but in Togo, where the free distribution of insecticide impregnated mosquito nets took place, many people never took those nets out of their packaging and others hung them over a rafter, but not over the bed. Relatively few people actually sleep under the mosquito net on a nightly basis either because they don’t understand exactly how the mosquito net protects them from malaria or because it is too hot. Distribution, particularly free distribution, says nothing about proper utilization. On the other hand, if you convince a person to buy an insecticide impregnated mosquito net by explaining all of its attributes and how it protects a person from malaria and why it is particularly important for pregnant women and small children, and they dish out even 500 cFA of their hard-earned money to pay for that net, then they are much more likely to take care to use it properly and get the full effects AND, as my Dad pointed out, are much more likely to replace it when it is worn out and no longer effective. The problem with giving things out for free (or even subsidized) is that you can’t reach everyone in need and you can’t re-supply people for all of eternity (not to mention the fostering of dependence and a hand-out mentality). A mosquito net probably won’t last a lifetime, much less several life times and so what happens when the mosquito net wears out? Perhaps the family that was using the mosquito net correctly, and fully understood its value, will pay to replace it even if they got the first one for free, but many others will balk at the idea of paying to replace something that cost them nothing initially. Do we continuously distribute rounds of free insectide impregnated mosquito nets or do we create a market for the product and in the process educate people as to exactly why they should spend x amount of their limited funds on a mosquito net? My Dad would suggest the latter and I would have to agree.

The problem is that everyone want results now, now, now, but behavior change takes time and I don’t know but I would guess that consumer habits are indicators of behavior change. For example, people are starting to get more conscious about plastics and their effect on health, particularly the health of children and pregnant woman, and I read in one of Ashley’s science magazines and also saw reference to it, I think, in a Newsweek, that there is now a huge demand for baby bottles without whatever the component is that makes plastic particularly dangerous to babies. My guess is that people aren’t just buying the new bottles to let them sit in their cupboard, but rather to replace their old, and now perceived as dangerous bottles. However, if I had a bunch of regular plastic bottles for my baby and you gave me one of the new ones without explaining why it is better, safer, healthier I might not use it at all or I might use it intermittently with the other bottles that I already have but I certainly wouldn’t discard all my other bottles to use the new one exclusively.

Think about the same scenario but with a water filter. If you give me a water filter without explaining exactly why and how I should use it, then I may use it sometimes because I like how clear the water is when it comes out, but other times I may just drink dirty barrage water because it is more convenient (not realizing that even one sip of barrage water can cause a bout of diarrhea). On the other hand, if I save up my money to buy myself a filter, I probably understand that the filter is removing things in the water that are dangerous to my (and my children’s) health and I will make more of an effort to use it consistently.

So I agree whole heartedly with my Dad and Paul Polak that it is better to design products to fit the needs and budgets of the poor and then let the market determine the price, rather than design fancy smancy solutions that way surpass a poor persons budget, need to be distributed for free, and have no hope of ever being fixed or replaced if broken. It is the only way to achieve true sustainability and a better way of achieving behavior change.

Moving on. At the conference, there was a lot of discussion about finding the “insecticide impregnated mosquito net” of household water treatment and storage; one relatively simple solution to a world-wide problem. The man really pushing this angle was the representative of a large company that I think manufactured the insecticide impregnated mosquito nets. If the global donor community really gets behind one technology and his company gets to manufacture it, then, of course, that is in their best interest. He seemed to genuinely subscribe to his pitch, but other people seemed to feel that he was simply pursuing the best interests of his company and not necessarily the best interests of those in need. My Dad and others are of the opinion that a variety of products needs to be available because the scenarios in household water treatment are too varied and multifaceted to find one global solution. But some consensus needs to be reached because too many technologies with each organization peddling their brain-child, might be counter-productive.

Finally, I know my Dad prefers in-country production (like teaching local manufacturers to make a product), but as he has realized in thirty (he always says twenty, but I think he is nearing thirty – he probably just doesn’t want to give away his age) yeas of experience, when you manufacture things on site and teach people of different skill levels how to make your product, quality control is difficult. That is especially true with something like a filter where, for example, if the ceramic that makes up the candles is too porous or not porous enough, the effectiveness is greatly compromised.

All of this lead me to think that I should study public health, social marketing and behavioral science.

Anyway, it was a great learning experience. I just detailed a bit of what I learned, but that isn’t even the half of it. I also met really interesting people who are doing really interesting things, things I might like to do some day.

The first two days of the conference were presentations – fifteen minutes per presentation and after five or so presentations, time for questions. I wanted to attend both days and Dad ended up paying the $20 entrance fee so that I could officially participate and eat the food at breaks and lunch. I talked with a BioSand filter distributor in Ghana who told me that one day he would show up in my village with a truck full of filters. His particular BioSand filter is called HydrAid and is produced by International Aid, Inc. and, from what I understand, at this stage they are giving the products away for free. If he were to bring filters to my village, I wouldn’t give them away for free, but Dad and I were discussing an idea (and this was my idea – yay! One point for me!) of setting up water filtering stations around the village at boutiques, gas stands, telephone stands and mills (places where people already “man the booth” so to speak and having it so that the person running the place pours the first basin of water in early in the morning and then washes out his basin with bleach water and lets the water filter into his basin. When someone comes they dump their basin of dirty water into the filter, wash out their basin (contaminated with dirty water) with a provided bleach water solution and then pour the owners basin of clean water into their, now clean basin. He could even put bleach in their water to make sure all the microbes were killed. The problem in Togo right now is that there are no filters (much less low cost filters) on the market and even water purification tablets (Aquatabs – brand name) are not available. The only thing available is alum (a coagulant that makes the larger particles sink to the bottom, but doesn’t kill bacteria and huge bottles of bleach that are too expensive and too inconvenient (who in Avassikpe, besides myself, has an eye-dropper to make sure only three drops of bleach goes into one liter?). If some product were available that made it possible to buy bleach or some other microbe-killing product in small quantities, that would be ideal, but the problem with those products is that their effectiveness is reduced in turbid (really dirty) water.

So anyway, getting a bit off track, my plan now is to enlist the help of the new infirmier to do a survey of the village and talk to people about water – where do they get their water, what do they think about it, do they use alum, how much does it cost, do they understand what causes diarrhea, would they like access to clean water, how much would they be willing to pay for it, etc. Then, maybe I will contact the BioSand distributor and see if he could really bring me filters. . . it could be interesting . . .

Ok, enough about the conference, how about the hotel – pure luxury. Our hotel room had a double bed and a really comfy couch that turned into a really comfy bed (where I slept), a color tv, free wireless internet (apparently a fluke, they were having a problem with their password protection), a fabulous hot-water shower, a pool, bar with live piano music and stellar buffet breakfast (included in the price). I wouldn’t have needed to eat lunch any of the days that I stayed in the hotel because I ate so much for breakfast. I tried to only eat things that I can’t get in Togo, so I ate waffles, scrambled eggs (I can get those) mixed with olives (olives is the key word here), mini croissant sandwiches with ham and cheese, sausage and pure mango juice – all very yummy.

After spending Monday and Tuesday at the conference, I devoted Wednesday to a walking tour of Accra. I had two primary goals: find contacts for Jorge’s thesis and get to know the city. I failed miserably on the first (a bit of a half-a—ed attempt after I went to the parliament to see the clerk and asked for the contact information of the ministers). You would have to be on site to contact these people and be willing to go back again and again and again and track down people willing to talk to you. There is no such thing, even, as a simple printout of all the ministers, much less contact information for them. I did a pretty good job on the second goal, though. I didn’t get lost at all and walked from the hotel, through the ministries area, down past the stadium to the beach and Independence Square, over to Osu (an upscale commercial district with lots of expensive shops and restaurants) and then back to the hotel (that took about three hours). I sat out the hottest part of the day in the hotel room on the internet and then at 3:30 left again to do another loop and found myself in the heart of the down-town market areas. Again, I never got really lost. At times I wasn’t 100% sure which road to take, but never utterly lost. Look at a map of Accra and you will understand why it can sometimes be confusing and easy to get lost. It looks like someone took a box of tooth-picks, threw them on the floor and each toothpick became a road. Dad told me that he once got so lost in Accra that he had to hop in a cab which then took him about half a kilometer to his hotel =0). So I was proud of myself for not getting lost. On my way back to the Novotel I bargained a watermelon down to 1 cedi (about $1) so that I could realize my fantasy of eating a whole half of a cold watermelon with a spoon.

Dad arrived back at the hotel shortly after I did (he had spent another day at the conference – mostly policy stuff on how the international household water treatment and storage community should proceed) and I went swimming in the pool while Dad drank a beer and did some more networking. I am afraid that might be my one of my greatest challenges working in development. I don’t think I am a good net-worker and, being an introvert, I find it exhausting, but it is absolutely essential to the field (probably to most fields so I might as well get used to it). After swimming for about an hour I showered and then we went out to dinner. A whole section of this report needs to be devoted to the food I ate in Accra. Monday night we had gone to a restaurant/hotel/ice cream parlor called Frankie’s for ice cream for dinner. I had four scoops: mango, chocolate, black cherry and coffee. The mango was by far the best. The next night there was a cocktail after the conference, so we didn’t go out for dinner (but I ate a whole lot of yummy chicken – Accra has really meaty chickens compared to Togo and poultry seems to be more available and cheaper in comparison. On Wednesday we went to another legendary (among Togo PCVs) restaurant called Champs. It is a sports bar owned by a Canadian and I had a chicken tortilla wrap. It would have been good except that it wasn’t spicy enough. I had apple cake with vanilla icing for dessert. There weren’t enough apples in it, but it was still pretty good. We went to Champs a second time later in the week and I had barbecued ribs and French fries which were delicious and a real treat.

On Thursday we moved out of Paradise (the Novotel) and into a hotel nearer to Dad’s office. It was a step down, but not bad. It still had all the necessities and Dad even managed to connect briefly to a wireless connection by balancing his computer on the windowsill. I guess since he poured beer on his keyboard, accidentally “dropping” his computer out a second story window would give him an excuse to get a whole new laptop =0) j/k. Dad went off to the office to work and I hopped in a cab and went to the University of Ghana.

My goal there was to get the contact information of professors who might be able to help Jorge with his thesis. To give myself some credit, this wasn’t a half-a—ed attempt at all, but I failed again. First of all, the university is huge and sprawling – like a city in and of itself, all set apart on its own beautifully landscaped plot of land. The buildings are nice and more or less well tended – better anyway than the buildings in the public university I studied at in Uruguay – I was extremely impressed and couldn’t help but think that I would enjoy studying there. I went first to the information center, hoping that maybe, just maybe, they would have something to make my task a little easier. They did to a certain extent – an annual with the names of the professors in each department and their areas of interest/expertise. I copied down all the professors that might be of interest. Unfortunately their emails weren’t included and so I decided to visit the individual departments to see if I could track down any of them personally or at least their emails. At the first building, the professor’s office hours were posted at the door, but no contact information and, of course, I didn’t happen to get lucky with the times. I finally made my way (stopping at the bookstore and the library to see if I found anything useful – I went in the bookstore but decided not to go in the library because they wanted me to leave my bag and I had my camera and video camera and didn’t think leaving them would be such a great idea) to the social science area and went to see the secretary. I asked her if she had a list of the professors in the social sciences. She was very helpful and said that she herself didn’t have that list, but that she would call the registry and ask someone to help me. She sent me over to the registry and on the way I got hopelessly lost. I was getting frustrated and tired and hot and worried because it was nearing noon and I was afraid to find the registry only after it closed for lunch so I hopped in an overly-priced cab that took me to the registry. The 1.5 cedis would have been well-spent had the people at the registry: human resources department been able to help me. They looked at me like I had two heads and said that they don’t have the emails of all the professors and even if they did, they couldn’t give them to me because that is personal information. Eventually they took pity (I probably looked as if I was about to cry) and gave me a general email by which Jorge can send an email to all the hundreds of professors at the university of Ghana in hopes that some might read it and even, perhaps, respond. By that time I was ready to high tail it out of there and that is just what I did. I then hopped in a cab (wary of the much cheaper vans because I couldn’t understand what the apprentices were yelling and had no idea which one was going where I wanted to go) and went to the new shopping mall. The mall could be in the States. It is small for a mall, but has a Wal-mart like store on one end, a grocery store on the other and a food court and small shops in between. I was impressed, but didn’t buy anything except yeast (I just learned today that I can buy yeast in the market – not sure how effective it would be considering it has been packaged and in the heat) and a box of baking soda, but it was fun to walk around in the air-conditioning and see what was available. I then took another cab back to the hotel and devoured half of a cold juicy watermelon (yummy!) and, because there was nothing interesting on tv, laid down to take a nap.

Dad got back around 5:30 and we went out to eat dinner. We were going to go to a Chinese restaurant, but we saw a little street-side joint with Ghanaian dishes and decided to eat there. I had chicken with rice and a spicy tomato-onion sauce and coleslaw and Dad had fufu with sauce and goat meat. It was all very good and much less expensive, so we treated ourselves to a dessert from a near-by French bakery. The dessert probably cost just as much as the meal itself.

On Friday one of Dad’s colleagues picked us up at the hotel at 6:00 and we headed west, across the city towards Ivory Coast. The traffic was terrible and it took us over an hour and a half to get out of the city. Once we were out, though, it was smooth sailing (driving, whatever) and we drove to a town called Takoradi which is closer to the border with Ivory Coast than to Accra, so I got to see a good bit of the coastline. The road was paved the whole way, but covered in pot holes. Most of the towns we passed seemed to have electricity – many of them had long antennas sticking up to better capture the television channels. They also have a neat way of doing roofs with bamboo – they split the bamboo length-wise and fit them inside each other in such a way that they are rain tight (by alternating whether the “u” is facing up or down). It was neat just to get a glimpse of the lay of the land and rural (albeit coastal) Ghana.

When we arrived in Takoradi, we went directly to a part of town that houses the metal workshops. We visited the metal workers who have been trained to make the more efficient charcoal stove that EnterpriseWorks/VITA markets in Ghana. The stove sells for more than the traditional stove, but it is more labor intensive. It was interesting because the metal workers are not dedicating all of their time to making Dad’s stove even though EnterpriseWorks subsidizes their material costs, provides them with the filters and buys every stove (provided it meets the standards) that they make. So they have a guaranteed market and yet, for some reason, it is still not profitable enough, I guess, to earn their undivided attention. I think Dad and his co-workers are hoping that once the metal-workers get proficient enough at making their stove that they will be able to dedicate themselves to it. It seems also that there is a problem with the amount of money that EnterpriseWorks has available in a rotating fund for buying raw materials – it isn’t large enough to supply them with a steady stream. After visiting the metal worker and chatting with them for a bit we drove around the town to visit the retailers of the stove. Dad asked questions like how much it sells for, why people buy it, do they themselves use it, are their customers happy with it after having bought it, etc. It seems like most people are very pleased with the stove. It is advertised as paying for itself in six weeks with what it saves in charcoal (because it is more efficient) and people seem to be noticing and appreciating its value, so that is good.

We had a less positive visit to Cape Coast in that we visited a shop of metal workers who were trained to manufacture Dad’s stove and given money to buy the raw materials but have yet to produce the stoves. Dad’s colleague thinks that they used the money for something else and are now having trouble coming up with the money to buy the materials for the stoves they are being held accountable for. Dad told them that if they don’t produce the stoves they will not be given a second chance to work with EnterpriseWorks (who again loans them money to purchase the raw material and guarantees the purchase of every stove they make that is up to par – all they have to do is make the stoves); they promised to have the stoves ready by next Friday. I am very skeptical. It is odd because they had several metal bodies ready to be completed with ceramic liners, but instead they were rusting in a pile. It doesn’t make much sense.

We left the metal workshop around 4:00 and went to the Cape Coast Castle. According to my Lonely Planet book for West Africa, Cape Coast was the largest slave-trading center in West Africa (p.359), and the enslaved-Africans were imprisoned in the “castle”/fort before being loaded onto ships for the trans-Atlantic passage. At first I was a little disappointed because, upon entering, we were lead to a museum with a generic history of the slave-trade and what I really wanted was a tour of the castle. I got my tour of the castle afterwards, but delayed our return to Accra by an hour and a half. Oops. I can’t really say I enjoyed the tour, because that isn’t an appropriate word when you are walking in places where thousands of people were enslaved and imprisoned in inhumane conditions, but I found it interesting and was glad to have had the chance to see that bit of Ghanaian history. It wasn’t the first time I toured a fort like that – Dad and I visited the Ile de Gorée in Senegal when I was sixteen, but it was still impressive to be in the same damp, dark dungeons where people were held captive hundreds of years ago. The dungeons only had two little windows for air and light and a space through which a spy could eavesdrop on the enslaved people’s conversations. Ironically, the chapel was built right over the dungeon.

By the time we got back to Accra, it was dark and after eight. I felt a little badly because Dad’s colleague still had one to two hour drive across the city before he would be home.

After getting dropped off at the hotel, we went out for brochettes at the same little roadside restaurant we had frequented the night before.

On Saturday Dad and I explored the city together. We first checked out the station where I could get a bus ticket back to the Ghana-Togo border. I bought a ticket for 5:30 on Monday morning. We then walked through the market – for some reason it seemed just a little less claustrophobic than Lome’s market. I think that because Accra has many large markets, no one of them is as big as Lome’s Grand Marche, but that is just a thought – I have no way of confirming it.

We walked to Osu and got ice cream at Frankie’s. We shared eight scoops of mango sherbert. It was heavenly and we saved $3 because 4 scoops costs 4 cedis and 8 scoops only costs 5 cedis, so instead of getting four and four like we had the other night, we got eight and shared it. I love saving money and eating ice cream at the same time! We then got really brave and hopped on a tro-tro (vans that cruise around the city on somewhat pre-determined routes and pick up passengers). We were surprised at how cheap it was. We had been dropping between three and five cedis every time we took a cab and this was only 35 peswas. It wove in and out of Accra’s haphazard streets and we had to walk a bit before arriving at our destination, Palm Hotel (a super upscale, must be five star plus hotel). We were going to have a drink there, but the beach looked too alluring and so we walked over to a place where you could pay to get beach access and spent the late morning, early afternoon strolling and sitting on the beach. It was the first time I had walked in the ocean since arriving in Togo and had I brought my suit I might have swam. The water looked relatively clean even if it did have some plastic bags floating in it. The beach wasn’t exactly what you would call peaceful because there were a lot of ambulatory vendors hawking all sorts of touristy items, but it was still lovely to be right by the ocean, walk on the sand and in the water, pick up sea shells, and drink pineapple juice.

We were a little hungry and Dad had been raving about a Ghanaian dish called “red red” for days, so we decided to order a plate and share. Beans probably wasn’t the best idea because it took about two hours to be ready and ended up being only a plate of black-eyed peas with palm oil and fried plantains. The fried plantains were good, but I wasn’t impressed by the beans. I can get the same thing in Togo for about 50 cFA (about $0.20; minus the plantains, but still) and at this beachfront joint it cost 5 cedis ($5.00). Around 2:00 we left the beach and took a tro-tro to a station called 37 (after a military hospital) and then a multiple person taxi to the neighborhood of our hotel. We ate dinner at our friendly local restaurant except this time I had fufu and chicken and Dad had rice and chicken.

Sunday, after eating breakfast at the hotel, we waited for a man to show up with Lowell Fuglie’s moringa book (according to Dad, Fuglie is the Father of Moringa). We had been trying to cross paths with this man all week and finally got to meet him. His name is George and he has a moringa “plantation” in the Ho district of Ghana and said that Ashley and I can visit him there. Lowell Fuglie lives in the northern part of Ghana and apparently has 90 or 900 (?), anyway, a lot of acres of moringa, so hopefully, after our moringa workshop in Burkina Faso, Ashley and I can convince our APCD to let us visit those two moringa experts in Ghana.

After meeting up with George Dad and I decided to go on a self-guided city tour using tro-tros. We figured it would be fun, allow us to see the city, help us figure out our way around and in the long run (and even the short run) save us a lot of money on transportation. So we hopped on a tro-tro going to “circle” (Nkrumah Circle). You really have to get a hang of the trotro system before being able to use it effectively because they yell out incomprehensible things like “circircircircircle” and you are supposed to understand that that means Nkrumah Circle. But since our purpose was the riding of the tro-tros in and of itself and not to arrive at any particular destination, it was fun. After “circle” we jumped on one to “La Paz” (on the outskirts of the city) and then to 37 and then out to Quarshie and cruised around the shopping mall and then we jumped in a tro-tro to Osu and had eight more scoops of mango sherbet and then continued on again towards circle, but before we arrived we got out to meet friend’s of Dad’s for lunch at Champs. We had burned up several hours riding tro-tros around the city, but we were still early for our 3:00 lunch date. We sat in Champs and drank for an hour before they arrived and then had a nice lunch with them. The woman was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Niger when Mom was the PCMO there and the man now works for CARE. They had said that I could stay with them while visiting Ghana, but, unfortunately for me, they are moving to Madagascar next month. They extended the invitation to Madagascar, but somehow I’m not sure I’ll get there.

After lunch we tro-troed back to our hotel and then Dad paced around the room until it was time for him to leave for the airport and I watched a movie. He left for the airport around 6:00 and I just finished the movie I was watching and then went on to watch four more movies. One diamond-seeking-adventure movie, a movie with Jennifer Anniston and Jane Cusack, and then a short South-African movie about this rich white man that needs to get to the airport and has all these problems in the process (like a baby in the middle of the road and getting locked out of his car) – it was hilarious. And then I watched Armageddon and cried until my eyes were puffy. I had forgotten how good a movie it is.

Before going to bed I spoke with the night clerk about getting a taxi at 4:00 in the morning to take me to the bus station. I didn’t sleep well, though, because I was nervous about not waking up in time (I set the alarm on my phone, but didn’t trust it to work) and kept waking up every fifteen minutes or so to check my watch. I got up at 3:30, got ready and then went downstairs to ask them to get me a taxi. I didn’t think they would find one so quickly, but they did and it was a nice one. Again, I was nervous because it was dark and I was in a city I don’t know particularly well and headed to a rather shady part of town, but everything was fine and I was at the taxi station before 4:30. That was a relief, but I still had an hour before the bus was supposed to leave. Better safe than sorry I guess. But real kicker, though, was the fact that the bus didn’t actually leave until 6:30. I was annoyed, but tried to sleep it off and slept most of the way to Aflao on the Ghana-Togo border.

Crossing into Togo was annoying and tiresome, but again no-one gave me a really hard time. I ended up walking from the border to the Peace Corps office, though, because the taxi drivers wanted to charge me 2,000 cFA to go a distance that I know shouldn’t be more than 300. I was dripping with sweat (my hair looked like I had just stepped out of the shower) by the time I arrived and then had to run around the office dealing with passport issues for Burkina etc. and catch up with friends from my stage that I hadn’t seen in a while like Tig, Steph, Natasha, Regina, Allison, and Ashley (not my Ashley). A lot of people were in Lome because the new CHAP/SED Stage just arrived on Saturday. Believe it or not (I don’t), yesterday (the 9th) was our one year anniversary of being in Togo (pat on the back =0).

After doing errands, chatting with friends, and struggling through the painfully slow internet to at least send emails to my parents and Jorge to report my safe arrival back in Togo (home sweet home), I loaded my stuff up went to the bank and then had the easiest, quickest Lome departure of my life. Fabiola, a GEE volunteer from the Stage after mine, accompanied me to Notse. We tried a new strategy, going to the University of Lome rather than the taxi station and got a car to Notse in less than two minutes. We left the Bureau around 2:45, went to the bank, and were in Notse, at Ashley’s house, by 5:00. That is Guiness record timing.

It was great to see Ashley again and Giz (my kitten) has grown a lot. He is still peeing on everything though, I don’t know how to get him to stop that . . .

Ashley, Fabiola and I hung out and had French toast for dinner. This morning (Tuesday) Ashley and Fabiola headed up to Atakpame and I decided to delay my arrival in village by another day so as to catch up on this fabulous log =0). Today I went to the market, picked up Gizmo’s padded lining for his chariot, fixed one of my soccer balls and then pretty much just sat in front of this computer typing away. Now I am sick and tired of looking and little letters on my screen and am planning on watching a movie or something. Tomorrow I will bike to Agbatit – I have to be there by 6:45 because one of my groups of Peer Educators should be presenting – and the I will only be in village until Friday when I will come back to Notse because on Saturday a Peace Corps driver will pick Ashley and I up in Notse to take us to Dapaong where we will spend the night before continuing to Burkina Faso for the moringa workshop.

6/10/08 through 6/13/08

That was the shortest time I have ever spent in village – 48 hours at most. Wednesday I left Giz at Ashley’s house and biked to Agbatitoe in time for the 7:00 presentation of my Peer Educators after the raising of the flag. Ironically, the Director of the school chastised the students for being late when he himself was late. The trio was presenting HIV/AIDS and did a very good job. I was proud of them. Afterwards I backtracked to Rodokpe to speak with the director of the primary school there. I tried to arrange for one of my groups of Peer Educators to do an HIV presentation there and then I biked to Avassikpe, arriving around 9:30. I was very happy to see all the empty space in my garden, meaning all my moringa seedlings have been planted (or stolen, is it bad that I don’t really care which?). The other surprise that awaited me was that both Tsevi’s wife and a woman who lives near me gave birth to baby girls while I was away. I visited the women, gawked at the babies, did laundry (lots and lots of laundry), made okra and ademan sauce for pâte and collected prizes for my Peer Educators. I am going to recognize the students who came to every class, the students who have the least lates, the student who participate the most in class, etc and I am putting together a box of things that they can pick from as a reward – things like soaps, toothbrushes, little tubes of toothpaste, chap stick, shampoos, body soap, little deoderants, etc. and the best part is that I didn’t buy any of it, they are all things that I have gradually collected.

I spent some time sitting with DaJulie in the afternoon and in the evening I went to thank the Pastor for planting the remaining seedlings. Apparently he and Tsevi planted them – I can’t believe even he wasn’t able to mobilize more people that than . . . anyway, somewhere in the course of our conversation, I explained the concept of WWJD to him (what would Jesus do). I told him that it used to be a big thing in the States and that it was on T-shirts and things, but for some reason he thought it was very original and profound and now thinks I am called to be an evangelist. When I tried to explain that not everyone’s calling in life is evangelism, that I prefer to allow my actions and my life “preach” for me, he read a verse from Mark that says that everyone is called to preach the word of God and informed me that I was just scared, but that that would wear off as I gain experience. He is determined that I will be a preacher by the time I leave Avassikpe, asked me to give a sermon one day at church and loaded me up with reading materials. Great. So the planting of my trees comes with a price. Just kidding, I don’t think it is that contrived.

Early Thursday morning I biked to Agbatitoe for another presentation by my Peer Educators, this time on teenage and unwanted pregnancies and again I was impressed and pleased by the way in which my students pulled everything together. Afterwards I biked to Rodokpe again to try to reschedule the presentation there. We couldn’t find a convenient date for both parties, though, so I decided that the last group would just do a repeat HIV/AIDS presentation for the youngest of the classes at the CEG (middle school) in Agbatit? I wanted to get it done and over with, as did, I am sure, my students.

I went home to Avassikpe and made pâte on my charcoal stove and roasted corn that the director of the CEG had given me. Jerome was scheduled to come for an Ewe lesson, but he called to say that he would be late. In the meantime I wrote up a list of questions about water use and preference that I want him to translate into Ewe and then I filled in the names of my Peer Educators on their certificates and signed them. And then I puttered around. Jerome hadn’t specified how late he would be, but he didn’t arrive until after 2:00. Just before, I went to the dispensaire to drop off the numbers for the vaccination day on Friday and to inform them that I wouldn’t be present. I also asked about the medication for the Shisto that they keep saying they will order and their answer angered me. They (Lili and the infirmier) say that the dispensaire isn’t willing to invest in buying a medication that they are not sure will sell. They aren’t convinced that people are willing to pay for the medication to cure Shisto and don’t want to buy a shipment of it and then end up high and dry. The matter is complicated by the fact that the dosage is a multiple of the patient’s weight and so could end up being quite expensive. Inconveniently, I can’t go around saying that the treatment is only 250 francs because one pill is 250 francs and for every so many kilos the person needs to take an additional pill. They want me to foot the bill, but I don’t know why I should be willing to foot the bill when they are not; the dispensaire has the money. It makes me angry that they aren’t taking a more proactive stance on this issue.

My Ewe lesson went fine, except that Jerome didn’t eat enough of the pâte I had prepared and left me with more pâte than I knew what to do with.

After the lesson, I went into my garden to weed/hoe it and worked until dark, managing, with the help of some small boys, to hoe the whole thing. As a happy side note, some of the moringa trees I planted around my garden are as tall as I am.

Today, Friday, I got up early amidst a steady drizzle. It had poured during the night with ferocious winds, so I guess I should have been thankful that it had now tapered to a drizzle. I packed my bike, trying to waterproof my things as best I could, closed up my house and biked to Agbatitoe in the rain. Lately, whenever I want to bike out, the rain has turned the road into a mucky, muddy mess. It took me more than double the time it normally takes me and I just kept thinking that leaving Giz at Ashley’s was a great move – if he had been riding with me in the rain it would have been torturous for the both of us.

My students’ presentations started late because of the rain, but they went well – one on self affirmation and another one on HIV/AIDS. I am relieved to have them over and done with. I biked out of Agbatit at 9:00 and was blessed by a momentary “cease-drizzle.” I arrived at Jerome’s village right on schedule; we had agreed the day before that I would stop by on my way to Notse to see his newborn baby girl (three weeks old). She is precious. I ended up spending more than three hours holding the sleeping angel in my arms while chatting with Jerome, eating bean beignets, pâte and sauce, and then some fried manioc balls.

I learned that the reason people in my village are talking about cotton and debt is that they receive fertilizer and pesticide on credit and some of them sell it for much less than it is worth just to make a quick buck (or a quick franc) and then the cotton they produce is not enough to cover their costs. What I don’t understand, though, is why they don’t realize that they are the ones who will pay the difference in the end. If it is a 11,000 cFA bag of fertilizer that they sell for 6,000, they themselves are out 5,000 cFA. It’s stupid.

Other than that we just chatted and I ooed and ahhed over the baby. The rain continued until finally, around 1:30 it seemed to be clearing and I took my leave only to find the front tire on my bike completely flat. Jerome helped me pump it up and it got me the rest of the way to Notse where I was happily reunited with Ashley and Giz (who just peed on my toothpaste, Giz, not Ashley. Anyone know why a cat might insist on peeing everywhere other than his litter box even though he poos in his litter box?)

Now I am going to try to make Ashley some hummus because she has been craving it and I failed in my mission to bring her some from Lome.

6/14/08 and 6/15/08

The last two days have been long, but stimulating (in both good and bad ways =0). We spent nine hours in the car yesterday and eight hours today. Yesterday Ashley and I got picked up in Notse around 8:30 and rode in the Peace Corps car all the way to Dapaong. Gizmo rode with us. At the beginning he was a little whiny, but eventually he calmed down and slept most of the way. I was proud of him until we got out at the maison (Peace Corps transit house) in Dapaong and he got into a tiff with a dog and scratched me in the face as I tried to lift him to safety. That’s what you get for trying to save a life.

The ride was long and tiring. I can’t imagine what it would be like in a bush taxi – I do not envy the volunteers who live up north and have to make the trip on a regular basis. Other than that, what can I say? We saw a lot of scenery. Northern Togo is definitely has less vegetation than southern Togo, but it is rainy season and so it is still pretty green (nothing compared to Burkina Faso which is brown brown brown even though it is rainy season – maybe the rainy season hasn’t even started here yet). The biggest difference I noticed in the north is that the villages are structured differently. The family compounds are very separate from other family compound and form these cute little rings of rectangular and round mud-brick buildings complete with grain storage and often surrounded by fields whereas down south, the fields are far away from the villages and all on the outside of the houses which are clumped haphazardly together. There is so much space between the compounds in the north that they resemble miniature villages in and of themselves. It is really quite picturesque right now with the brown houses against a vibrant grassy green background, you know, the green of new shoots of grass. Personally, Ashley and I don’t know what the northerners complain about in terms of scenery, but I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. Ok, enough about the grass.

Dapaong seems like a large, spread out town, with mostly mud-brick houses and washed out dirt roads. I didn’t get a great idea of the lay of the land because by the time we arrived and settled into the maison it was dark. I went to Helen’s house (another CHAP volunteer from my stage) to drop Gizmo off (she is babysitting him for the week; I kind of feel badly because I am not sure she knows what she is getting herself into; it is like when you have children and babysitters only come once and then run for their lives because your children are so poorly behaved =0). Ok, so he isn’t that bad, just hyperactive and pees on everything). We then walked to get dinner, but like I said, it was dark so I didn’t see too much.

Today we left Dapaong at 7:00 and headed north. The Togo-Burkina Faso border wasn’t nearly as crowded or difficult as either the Benin-Togo or Ghana-Togo borders and we didn’t have any problems crossing. Ashley and I were in the back of the land-cruiser for the whole trip today (sacrificing ourselves for the greater good, such martyrs that we are) and so it was a little uncomfortable and at times sickening, but we did alright. As we drove north, the landscape got more and more barren, to the point in which it was just rocks and trees. I couldn’t help but think that the people in Avassikpe have no idea how good they have it. Here (in Burkina Faso) the land is so rocky and infertile that they dig holes fill them with compost and then plant a grain of millet. Inevitably, the size of their farms ends up being much smaller because it is much more labor intensive to get the land to produce. I can’t imagine trying to hoe the dirt here – it is so hard and dry.

The other differences I have noticed so far are that there are a LOT of bicycles, a lot of women on bicycles (with babies on their backs =0) and perhaps less taxis and motos, interestingly enough. Even though Ouahigouya is a pretty big town, there is no public transportation. There are a lot of donkeys, though, which is something we don’t see too much of in Togo. Here they use the donkeys for transport and for plowing the very rocky ground (and so the raised rows are less pronounced than in Togo).

Other than that, we ate some wild grapes. Well, ate is a bit of an overstatement, sucked on because you can’t really eat them. On the topic of food, some volunteers told us that you could get great hamburgers, French fries, and milkshakes at the American cultural center and the other people in the car (NRM – Natural Resource Management – APCD and Togolese homologues and drivers) led us to believe that we would stop there for lunch, but we didn’t. Ougagdougou .looks really nice, but we had no time to explore and just drove through it. There is a big ecological reserve inside the bounds of the city, lots of nice buildings, a cool looking museum, and working traffic lights (but the streets are more congested than in Ghana). The others promised that we will have hamburgers on the way back and explore a bit; I’m not holding my breath.

Our conference is at the Burkina volunteers’ training center and it is quite nice (although a dump compared to the hotel with a pool where the APCDs are staying; go figure . . . =0). The best part, perhaps, is having the opportunity to speak with volunteers from all the surrounding countries (Benin, Ghana, Niger, but, oddly enough, not Mali) and share stories and experiences. We just got back from dinner and lots of chatting, but are pretty pooped from the ride and are planning to crash. Ahead: three days of moringa, but I am excited and hope to learn a lot even though it is much more of a workshop than a conference. In fact, I heard that there really isn’t anyone from outside leading the conference, just a facilitator to make sure things run more or less smoothly.

6/16/08 and 6/17/08

Two days down. Aside from the water conference in Ghana (and that was a REAL conference, not a Peace Corps event), this is by far the best training I have attended since being in Togo. Even though we have to translate everything into three languages (English (for the Ghana volunteers and counterparts and some of the Niger volunteers), French (for Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso and Niger) and Zarma (for two Niger counterparts who don’t understand any French), the topics of discussion manage to keep my attention and interest. On that note, I am really impressed by the Niger volunteers. Of all the volunteers, they are the only ones who have serious local language skills. Perhaps they can’t speak French (some of them honestly can’t), but they can speak either Zarma or Hausa and to me that is impressive. I don’t know if they are showing off just a little, but they even speak local language amongst themselves. They are started on local language as soon as they step foot in country and don’t really receive any French training at all because local language is so much more important. Apparently Zarma is a little like Ewe in that it is a relatively “simple” language (no verb conjugation, composite, few tenses, few pronouns), but Hausa is more “sophisticated” – this is one of the things that I like most about this conference – the volunteers are amazing, really an amazing group of people. There is none of the pervasive negativity and cynicism that sometimes gets overwhelming in Peace Corps Togo (and the other countries as well I am sure). Everyone is excited and more or less positive (they aren’t naively idealistic, but they are well settled into their Peace Corps service, more-or-less comfortable in their roles and maintain a more-or-less positive outlook) and that is a very refreshing change from the “b*tchfests” that often monopolize conversation in Togo. It is exhilarating to hear about everyone else’s experiences, interests, and activities and meet fascinating new people. We have a lot of similar experiences, but a lot of different experiences as well and right now I am most thankful for having had the opportunity to interact with such a great group of people while attending this conference (that sounds a little cheesy . . . oh well, its true).

In addition to interesting volunteers, there are interesting counterparts. We have among us the uncle of the King of the Ashanti people of Ghana who is himself an important chief. He wears an extremely thick (thicker than my thumb) gold chain around his neck and a huge gold turtle ring (the Ghana volunteers say that it may just be real gold), a special pagne that he wraps around himself and over one shoulder and funky black leather sandals with a black leather pom-pom (it looks like a spider) on top. We also have two men from Niger, one of whom is from a certain ethnicity that, according to cultural norms, must cover their heads with a turban (apparently rather common in Niger), but also, when around strangers, their mouths. There are only three women counterparts attending the workshop, two from Niger and one from Burkina, and, actually, they are not counterparts, but rather Peace Corps staff.

Now about the content of the workshop itself – yay moringa! Surprisingly, I haven’t yet (there’s still tomorrow) had an insuppressible desire to shoot myself in the head during this workshop as I frequently do during other Peace Corps trainings. Yesterday we spent the whole day talking about what everyone is doing in their respective countries, at their respective posts. For the most part, that was very interesting. The APCD from Niger is a little overbearing (apparently she was recently promoted to the position of APCD and is trying to “prove herself”). She was dominating the dialogue for a while which was grating on the nerves not only because we wanted to hear from everyone, but because every five seconds she punctuated her speech with “you know, I mean.” I actually counted and in one minute she repeated that phrase thirteen times! It seems as though Benin and Niger have been riding the moringa train for the longest and so their programs are more advanced and well-developed. Togo and Burkina are in the same car and Ghana is just getting on board (not to say that there isn’t moringa production in Ghana, but Peace Corps volunteers are just starting to get moringa training).

We have been discussing the technical aspects of moringa production, but also how to most effectively train Peace Corps Volunteers to work with moringa and how to develop a comprehensive Moringa manual with all the resources currently available. We also talked about the medicinal properties of moringa in treating diabetes, hemorrhoids, tape-worm, eye/ear infections, amoebic dysentery, typhoid, arthritis, snake bites, asthma, etc, but were strictly warned not to try these home remedies on ourselves without PCMO authorization or to prescribe these remedies to others. It was made clear that our emphasis needs to be on the value of moringa as a nutritional supplement and not as a medicine. We spoke about pest control and some of the suggested concoctions include and combination of ash, pepper, tobacco, or neem leaves and soapy water. I also read in one of my gardening books that if you collect a couple of handfuls of any pest, mash them up, dilute with water, strain out the liquid and spray it on your plants that it will discourage the pest. Another person suggested spraying a manure tea on your plants for fertilization and to discourage goats and sheep from nibbling.

Today we talked a lot about the compilation of some sort of Moringa manual. We broke into groups and my group was assigned the topic of community involvement in moringa trainings. At first I thought it would be boring, but it developed into a good discussion even though two overbearing counterparts (the chief and one of the Nigerienne women) dominated the exchange.

The best part of the day, however, was the cooking demonstration lead by the team from Niger. They made a moringa bouillie, moringa beignets, and two variations of a dish called copto. The bouillie was pretty much just enriched bouillie (corn or millet flour, milk powder, peanut butter, sugar, water) that was further enriched with moringa powder. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to taste it. The beignets were plain wheat flour beignets with moringa powder and were good with sugar. They sort of tasted like a tea doughnut if you can imagine such a thing. I think it might be a good addition to a slightly spicy bean beignet. The copto, however, was my favorite. First you steam the moringa leaves and then, after letting them cool, you mix them with white hibiscus flowers (that have been boiled to reduce bitterness), peanut butter, pounded garlic and hot pepper, thin slices of onion, pounded chicken stock and perhaps a little water. The variation is to add couscous or gari and tomatoes to that mixture. Perhaps it doesn’t sound too appetizing, but it is delicious and would be a fantastic spread on crackers or bread (for Americans) and perhaps a new meal for Togolese. I am excited to experiment with moringa in my cooking and slowly introduce it to the people in my village through the women who engage me in battles of culinary reciprocity. I ate so many moringa packed products that I wasn’t hungry for dinner – I probably got a weeks’ worth of vitamins this afternoon =0).

Two other tidbits that I learned today: every year at the beginning of the rainy season you should cut your moringa tree off completely at its trunk (so just a stalk remains) and, you know that the seed pods are ready to harvest if you hit them with a stick and they explode sending seeds in every direction (apparently a fun activity to do with village children).

6/18/08 through 6/21/08

The last day of the workshop in Ouahigouya was ok, but not as interesting as the previous two days – it was more bureaucratic stuff and I have to admit I tuned it all out for a while; some discussion about Peace Corps Volunteers relationship with government policy . . . The main task for the third day was to design a table of contents for a moringa manual and divide up the different sections by country so that we will have a comprehensive document on how to grow, maintain and use moringa. Right now, as far as anyone knows, there is no such document. The information is out there, but scattered all over the place and so the task that we have given ourselves is to compile all that information in one, easily accessible place. A pdf document is our primary goal, but perhaps someday the document will be published. The task was complicated by differing views on whether we should have lofty or more practical goals. In other words, should we aim for a comprehensive manual or a more concise packet with the most important points. We decided to aim high. Ashley and I are going to work on the many uses of moringa – how all the different parts of the plant can be used, but also, for example how moringa can be intercropped with other plants, used as a live fence, used for animal feed or fertilizer etc. I wanted to do the Nutrition section, but a volunteer from Níger was selected; however, the uses will be interesting and not too complicated because there is a lot of information on how moringa can be used.

We ended the day around 3:30 after a visit from the local authorities so we could mutually pay our respects. The Niger volunteers left immediately, but Togo volunteers + one Ghana volunteer took a little tour of the town courtesy of Tomas, our driver. We went to see the tomb of an evil king who, according to local legend, cemented virgins into the pillars of his palace and had all the baby boys killed King Herod style. Apparently he died after a mother, who had been instructed to pound her baby boy to death with a mother and pestle, turned on him instead. Any king who makes a full circle around the tomb will meet the same death. None of the people in the car were royalty, but we only drove three-quarters of the way around the tomb just to be safe. We then walked around the market a little and went back to the hotel to join the rest of the volunteers for a drink. Ouahigouya is Burkina Faso’s Peace Corps training site and so the town was full of current volunteers who were helping with the training and also trainees who had arrived less than a week before.

We left Ouahigouya at 6:00 on Thursday morning so that we would have time for “the Quest for the Holy Hamburger” upon reaching Ouagadougou. We had been told that the hamburgers at the Rec Center on U.S. Embassy grounds were to die for and so we decided that we were up for the challenge. It didn’t matter that we ended up eating cheeseburgers and French fries (and milkshakes!) at 9:30 in the morning; it was the first hamburger I have had since being in Togo and it was DELICIOUS and not even overpriced. Afterwards we continued on our merry way, bellies full and happy. We (the PCVs) later regretted not having gotten one to go. =0)

Ashley and I sat in the way back of the landcruiser on bench seats that face each other and talked about our plans for a moringa social marketing campaign. We want to get funding through a Peace Corps Partnership to market moringa in and around Notse. Right now we are thinking along the lines of billboards, radio shows, perhaps a song about the virtues and multiple uses of moringa, skits, T-shirts, pamphlets, and maybe even a fair with different “booths” to demonstrate moringa’s multiple uses. All of this will depend on how much money we are able to raise. We decided that we will make a graduated budget, prioritizing on what we will do if we raise x amount, what we will do if we raise 2x amount and what we will do if we raise 3x amount, etc. A Peace Corps Partnership is a program by which you solicit funding from your family and friends, Girl-Scout cookie or Band-Trip style. I told Ashley that most of my family and friends already donate a large chunk of their income to various charitable organizations and that I might not be able to raise much, but even $20 here goes a long way and Ashley says that many of her friends and family have asked about ways in which they could “help out” so . . . we will see. We aren’t planning to market a particular moringa product, just moringa in general and so anyone who is forward thinking enough can hop on the moringa train and profit from the moringa social marketing campaign that we hope to stage. One of our primary obstacles will be convincing Ashley’s organization and homologue that they need to stay out of the campaign. Because ADAC (Ashley’s organization) is mostly known as an organization for people living with HIV/AIDS, we are afraid that if moringa becomes irreversibly associated with ADAC that, first of all, no one will want to sell it for fear that people will assume that they are HIV+ and, secondly, that no one will want to consume it for fear, obviously misplaced, of somehow contracting HIV through the moringa or just because it is associated with the disease. Unfortunately, Ashley’s homologue likes to have a hand in every pie on the planet and so our first challenge will be to convince him that, in order for the marketing campaign to succeed, ADAC needs to remain very low profile. It is unfortunate that we have to tip-toe around HIV/AIDS here, but the reality is that the stigmatization that accompanies the disease and the misconceptions that surround it could easily sabotage our efforts.

We got to Dapaong around 3:30 and then Ashley and I borrowed bikes and followed an older volunteer to a weavers co-op. They make absolutely beautiful hand-woven cloth. I thought some placemats would be a nice wedding gift for someone, but as of now, I don’t know anyone who is getting married and so I didn’t buy anything. Maybe another day.

Afterwards we went to visit Gizmo at Helen’s house. He was doing well and managed to get along, more-or-less, with Helen’s cat. Helen’s cat is full grown, but he tolerated Gizmo’s hyperactive childish play pretty well and was gentle with him. We went out to eat and have a drink and then we were going to watch a movie but we were all too tired and after only about half an hour we went to bed. Ashley, myself, and two other girls ended up talking to midnight, though, so needless to say on Friday I was exhausted. I felt as though I had been deprived (deprived myself really) of sleep for many consecutive days. Gizmo and I slept together in the back of the car on the way down through Togo. Ashley got off in Kara to visit Lauren, another CHAP volunteer from our stage. I wanted to stay, but I had Gizmo with me and didn’t want to pass up on the free ride down to Notse in a Peace Corps car. Also, I have been out of village so much lately and I am going down to Lome on Thursday for a AIDS Ride meeting so I need to get back and show my face in my village before they forget who I am =0) and plant my garden and get busy on my new projects: garden, water survey, baby-weighing, moringa social marketing campaign, my sections of the moringa manual, etc.

Yesterday I arrived in Notse around 3:00 and fixed the flat tire on my bike. It was a bit of a hassle because I had to take Gizmo’s cage off and then the tire etcetera, etcetera, but I was proud of myself for doing it successfully. I then showered and started to watch the movie Love Actually. Effoh stopped by after his study-group and I showed him pictures from Ghana and Burkina before he left. He is worn out because he has been studying really hard for his exam on July 7th. I really hope he passes. He has already failed once, and I don’t think his family will put him through another year of school. He deserves to pass.

I tried to finish watching my movie, but my computer was misbehaving and I tried Ashley’s but it didn’t work either and so I gave up and went to bed exhausted around 8:00.

Today, Saturday, I am planning on going to the market and then to do internet (I hope, I hope it is open and working!) and then I will bike back to village this afternoon.

5/21/08 through 5/31/08

5/21/08 – 5/23/08

I am reluctant to write because my funk persists in hanging over my head and I don’t have that many positive things to say, so I will just hit the particularly high and low points so that everyone knows that I am still alive. I have decided that my mood is not due exclusively to my monthly cycle (although its beginning stages may have been aggravated by that, but rather to the fact that I am in between projects, restless and ready to begin new endeavors, but held back by the prolonged completion of old projects, particularly my moringa seedlings and my peer educator course. I am anxious to be finished with both and to be freed to move on to different activities like baby weighing in surrounding villages to identify malnourished children and work to improve their health.

The good news is that I am pretty sure my funk will go away once my moringa trees are in the ground and my P.E. certificates in the hands of my students. In the mean time, my mood is bungy jumping off cliffs every few minutes.

The last to days have been rough. I had a hard time getting out of Lome on Wednesday. After picking up my passport at the Ghanain Embassy, complete with a two year multiple entry visa that cost me $150.00, I tried to avoid the gare (taxi station where vans take hours to fill up) and waited for a car on the side of the road. Strangely, though, when the van was full, instead of heading straight north, up the route nationale to Notse, the chauffeur drove us to the gare where we all had to get out and buy official tickets and wait for the authorized car to fill. I climbed into the van when it looked like it was ready to leave and ended up suffocating in the far back corner for over half an hour. I had to experiment with calming breathing tactics in order not to scream or frantically make everyone move so as to escape my prison of metal and firmly packed, seating, stinking bodies. None of this improved my mood and I as also stressed about not getting to my PE course on time.

I ended up having to take a car to my course from Notse after a brief stop and shower at Ashley’s. It has also been uncustomarily hot and humid which added to my discomfort and annoyance.

My PE class was disappointing as well. When I arrived at 3:00, the class was empty. Eventually students trickled in, but all my troisieme (the highest grade level in my course) were in a class next door. I had been hoping to finish my PE course and my trees before going to Ghana to meet up with my Dad, but it isn’t to be. Due to exams and things, my students won’t be able to finish their final projects until the week after I return. Whatever. Every cloud, or almost every cloud, has a silver lining if you look hard enough. So now I will have more time to get my certificates signed by my APCD and the final projects hopefully won’t be rushed and mediocre. Unfortunately, I can’t help but wonder what, if anything, my students have gleaned from the course because they can’t seem to reproduce anything but memorized fragments of what I have tried to teach them.

After class, the Director got me a ride back to Notse with the local Director of the Ministry of Fish and Agriculture who told me where I could buy fertilizer for my garden. I spent the night at Ashleys and then did some errands – I went and bought fertilizer and foodstuffs. The fertilizer delayed me a while because I had to wait for the man in charge to return and advise me on how much fertilizer I would need and how to use it.

I also picked up the kitten carrier I had made. It had been grating on my nerves as well because it wasn’t exactly what I thought I wanted, but now that I have it mounted on my bike I realize that the metal-worker did a very good job. Not only is it functional, but also pretty and I have modified my mental vision to accommodate its non-conformity. Flexible of me, eh?

In the afternoon, after disposing of two batches of baby mice birthed in Ashley’s bedroom (I just put them in a field where they will probably die because they are not yet self-sufficient), and eating fried rice for lunch, we went to Heather’s to chat. Gizmo and Heather’s huger German Shepherd – Zemijan – began a rather rocky friendship. Zemi was very well behaved, friendly and not at all threatening, but Gizmo turned into a spitting cobra with a mohawk and bottle-brush tail. He kind of looked like he was being electrocuted because of the way his hair was standing on end.

I biked back to village with Gizmo in his new chariot. He didn’t love it, but he didn’t hate it. It was a little difficult because I have to adjust my balance to accommodate the unusual weight on the front of my bike, but we did alright. Halfway to Agbatitoe, a car with two screaming yovos, Heather and Ashley, pulled over in front of me. After asking “what are you psychos doing?” I realized that Ashley had my purse, including my keys and wallet, in her hand. Ashley really saved my butt, I don’t know what I would have done when I pulled up to my house as it was getting dark and realized that I didn’t have my keys.

While at Heather’s, Ashley and I fashioned a harness and leash for Gizmo out of strips of pagne and so, after settling back into my house and showering, Gizmo and I went to lie in the hammock. It was very refreshing.

Today, Friday, I don’t have much to do. I am pretty much just hanging out until the afternoon when I have a peer educator course. I think I will study Ewe for a bit, make lunch, go to the market and just bum around.

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I went to the market in Agbatitoe and found a fish pagne to use to make a protective padding for Gizmo’s carrier. I like it. I also bought a heavy duty mosquito net for drying fruits and vegetables. My parents brought me a tent-like structure with shelves in it, but it is pretty airtight and so I am going to ask Mana to copy it with this mosquito netting. Keeping bugs out while allowing air circulation is what is most important I think. We will see.

I also paid a long overdue visit to the dispensaire in Agbatitoe to ask permission for my PE students to give a talk on diarrhea. I felt a bit sheepish because I really should have gone and introduced myself months ago.

My PE class was just ok. Even with the detailed lesson plans that I made for each of the groups, their presentations were mediocre and I made each group except one do it two, three times.

5/24/08

Today Ashley came to Avassikpe on her own for the fist time and distracted me from what might have otherwise been a depressing day. It is my mom’s birthday and one of my good friends from high school’s wedding. Ashley was specifically coming to Avassikpe to pick up cookies that I made for Tig as a birthday present. Her birthday is May 27th and the girls are all going to Ghana to celebrate. I decided not to go because with Dad’s visit a week later it would be too much vacation and too much Ghana. And so I sent cookies in my stead. Craisin, almond, oatmeal cookies and chocolate chip. The cookies might even be more appreciated than my presence =0). I started baking at 6:00 this morning and finished around 2:00. In between I neatened my house. Ashley arrived around 11:00 and we chatted, finished baking and then made spaghetti and garlic bread and had a delicious lunch.

I tried to convince her to spend the night, but she is going to Lome tomorrow and had some things to do at home first. She left around 4:30.

Around noon I called my mom to wish her a happy birthday. In the evening, after Ashley left, I received a call from Jorge’s mother which was very nice. She is delighted by the prospect of Jorge and I visiting her in Italy.

For some reason I feel as though this week is going to be a long one. Perhaps because I don’t have much to do. Maybe I ill make the “beds for my garden. If only the seedlings weren’t in the way . . .”

5/25/08 and 5/26/08

This is decidedly my longest lasting funk since coming to Togo – right about at the year mark. I guess I was long overdue for a funk that lasts more than a day or two, everyone else has had them.

My motivation to write is just about non-existant but I will make an effort.

Saturday night we had a violent rainstorm around 2:00 in the morning. The wind was blowing so hard that the rain was coming in through the cracks in between the window and the frame and dripping through the roof. The leaks weren’t too too bad, but the next day I saw the real damage – the wind had blown one side of my garden fence down. Luckily, the thick brambles around my garden prevented the sheep and goats from feasting and the cistern caught the fence before it totally flattened my little trees. As is, they were just bent, not broken. Tsevi helped me prop the fence back up until later in the day when he and Effoh restaked it.

Effoh arrived unexpectedly in village Sunday morning. When I asked why he came and how long he was planning to stay, his response was vague and elusive. He finally told me that he hadn’t been able to pay the last of his school installments and he wouldn’t be able to go back until his brother could come up with the last 10,000 cFA (approx $25). The problem is that now is the moment that everyone’s finances are particularly tight because they are using the last of their food reserves to plant next season’s crop. I didn’t need to think twice. He only has a month left and it would be stupid to miss critical class time that will help him prepare for the exam he will take in July that will determine whether or not he receives a high school diploma. I told him that I would lend him the 10,000 francs. $25 is relatively insignificant to me and to them it is an impossible sum. It made me stop and think about how well off I am, on a PCV salary of $4 a day in comparison. I have no idea what the yearly income is for people in my village, but I would be curious to find out.

I went to church – it was unremarkable except that the Pastor asked me to say a prayer. I did it in English so that no one would understand. He also invited me to participate in the women’s day festivities next Sunday by buying the matching outfit (pink skirt, white top) and singing a song. Me? Sing? Right. I considered the whole business for about two seconds because I was touched that they thought to include me, but I have decided to use my trip to Ghana as an excuse to get out of the whole affair. I don’t particularly want to waste money on an outfit I will never wear again and I definitely don’t ant to sing in public even if it were in English and a song they have never heard before.

After church, Effoh and Tsevi fixed my fence and then I fed them rice and beans with burnt sauce. Yes, unfortunately, I burned the sauce, but they didn’t complain. Tsevi tried some of Gizmo’s dried cat food and then, at Effoh’s suggestion that it probably had lizard meat in it, went outside to spit it out. I doubt it, but it was still pretty funny to see Tsevi’s whole demeanor change visibly as he considered the possibility and then got progressively more disgusted by the thought.

In the afternoon I did laundry and chatted with the infirmier who is bored by the lack of work. I try to encourage him by telling him that even if he only sees two patients a day, they are to people ho more desperately need his services than the ten or fifteen people he might see in a larger town because they might not have the funds to go any further than Avassikpe in search of medical care. I also tell him that perhaps after high-planting season passes and more people become aware of his presence, more people will come for consultations. It would be terrible for him to get so discouraged that he actively wants to leave. Avassikpe has waited so long for a nurse.

We talked about how stigmatized couples who can’t have children are here and about what we could do in terms of educative/preventative campaigns and a bunch of other things like immigration to the U.S. and the visa lottery that I don’t have the energy to detail.

He left as it got dark and Effoh came back from the field. He told me that his older brother had danced with joy at the news that I would lend them the 10,000 francs. I asked them to be discreet about it because it is not a gesture I am willing to repeat with anyone and everyone. His brother also came to thank me. Being thanked so profusely embarrasses me a little, but again signals the different relative values of the sum to me and to Effoh and his family. No wonder people think I am filthy rich. It is all relative.

In the evening, I chatted with Effoh a bit and then we helped Tseviato with her math homework. Mostly Effoh helped and I looked at the stars.

Today I didn’t do much. At least, I don’t feel very productive. I went to visit Mana and then she came back to the house to see the tent I want her to replicate and take the Niger pagne Dad brought me. I wanted a bubu like the one she had made for me with material Lili bought me for my birthday, but tomorrow I will have to take it back to her and ask her to reduce its size. Feeling fat and lazy is part of my current funk and I didn’t particularly need her to make me a dress the size of a tent to exacerbate it. Maybe she confused the two projects I want her to do. What annoys me is that she uses way more material than necessary.

The resteof the day I studied Ewe, played with Gizmo, read a book called “Out of Poverty” that Dad brought me and sweated. I really wish the stupid trees were out of the stupid garden so I could make my beds and at least feel a tiny bit active and productive. Grr. I would move them, but I am not sure it is worth the aggravation if we are planting on Thursday. Seriously, I’m going to get rid of whatever is left if they don’t plant all the trees on Thursday. (Yeah, you are . . . )

And that is it. That was my day. If it weren’t for Gizmo . . .

5/27/08

Today is Jorge and my 6 year anniversary. 6 years! I just calculated and we have been physically in the same place for only 25 of those 72 months. Just over a third. Crazy. I can’t help but hope that this will be the last (it is already the longest) separation.

The highlight of my day was, of course, a thirty minute phone call from my Love. That is always a special and treasured treat.

Other than that, my day has been unremarkable (I am noticing as I retype this that “unremarkable” describes most everything about my week. Ok, that is not true – Jorge’s phone call and Ashley’s visit were out of the ordinary). I spent the bulk of the day lying in my hammock finishing “Out of Poverty” and starting “Ripples from the Zambezi.” Both are books about small enterprise development. My problem in deciding what path to take for the rest of my life, what grad school course to embark on is that everything excites me. Moringa excites me, public health excites me, even small enterprise development excites me when the right people write about it. I just want to do something that really helps other people because I feel that that is the only way I will feel fulfilled in life. I am not adamant about how or where, I just really want to spend my time and effort working to make a positive difference in the lives of others. That has remained a constant in my mind since about the age of twelve when I reneged on veterinary medicine after concluding that I’d rather help people than animals. Now I just (JUST?!?!?) have to decide how I can best use my particular talents (yet to be defined) and interests (too many to be defined) to accomplish that task. Any enlightened suggestions?

5/28/08 and 5/29/08

Yesterday I didn’t do anything. Really. Ok, well to give myself some credit, I studied Ewe for a while. Other than that, I slept (yes, during daylight) and lay in my hammock reading Newsweek.

Today is Thursday. I don’t know why I ever wake up in a good, optimistic mood on a Thursday because invariably it is all down hill from the moment I open my eyes. Thursday is the day I try to coerce and/or cajole people into planting the moringa seedlings. I was really hoping we would finish planting today. I don’t know why I hoped that, even two-hundred trees appears to be too much to ask. Only a couple of people came out to help. Ok, to be fair, a couple times 3 = 6 people. I was oscillating between anger and tears the whole morning, but a quote from the book I am reading kept reverberating in my ears: “don’t ever initiate anything and don’t ever motivate anybody” (Ripples from the Zambezi, p.42). The more I think about it, the more I think he’s got the right idea. The author, Ernesto Sirolli, calls his approach to development Enterprise Facilitation and people come to him with a business idea or problem and he helps them realize it. That is exactly what all the small enterprise development volunteers should be doing and I should probably be staying out of that arena entirely because I have been asking to get my butt whupped from the very beginning by tackling things I know nothing about. I am trying to appreciate the whole business as a learning experience. Very important lessons: 1 – Community projects are very challenging (not to say impossible. Even if some people are enthusiastic at the beginning, the lack of participation by the rest of the community will discourage them); 2 – I think Sirolli has got it right – don’t initiate; don’t motivate, just facilitate. Two strikes on that level. It is going to take me a while (and probably more frustration and failure) to really internalize that, but I think it is wise. Still, where exactly are the boundaries? Can you suggest? Inform? I will have to keep considering his approach, but, even so, what I am doing right now is half cheerleader, half disappointed mother and certainly not what Sirolli has in mind.

After planting a few trees I made beans and rice for lunch and welcomed Jerome and Nicolas into my home shortly after. My Ewe lesson was good as usual, not spectacular. After eating we talked about my plans for a vegetable garden, Nicolas’ gardens, and birthing babies. Jerome’s wife had a baby girl about two weeks ago and he said his wife went to the field and carried home a load of firewood right before (by right I mean, like an hour) giving birth all by herself. Only after the baby was out did she call for another woman to help tend to it. Yikes. When I think about it, it is so different from our coddling of pregnant women (don’t get any ideas Love, I want to be coddled!). Here I see extremely pregnant women lifting water and wood onto their heads and going about their daily tasks as if they didn’t have a bowling ball, watermelon, whatever you like, in their belly. Jerome says keeping active makes the pregnancy easier and some women just pop the baby out on their way home from the field. Nicolas shared a sad story, though. He said that his wife lost her second baby because she was delivering alone and the baby hit its head on the ground when it came out.

The carpenter was supposed to come yesterday morning to install my gutter out back but he never showed so this afternoon, after Jerome and Nicolas left, I did it myself. It was hard – especially cutting the corrugated metal sheet into four pieces. Luckily, I had my wolverine gloves that my parents brought me that protected my hands from being completely shredded. I then rolled the metal strips to flatten them, shaped them into gutters and found a way to mount them all by my lonesome. It took me four hours, but I did it and saved myself 500cFA ($1.25). Yay me. And I get to feel productive to boot which is worth even more than the 500 cFA. =0)

Tomorrow I will pour water on the roof and see if it actually works. I am a little worried that I haven’t sloped it enough.

5/30/08

Today I did random tasks until 10:30 when I went to Agbatitoe. One of my PE groups was scheduled to do their presentation for the women gathered at the dispensaire in Agbatit for the weekly vaccinations. We had to wait over an hour for ten or so women to accumulate, but I was pleased with the way my students really rose to the occasion.

Afterwards I wandered around the market, found none of the things I was looking for, and then went to the school to read and wait for my students to arrive. Luckily, they had all made an effort to learn their respective parts of the presentations and we were finished by 4:00.

I spent the rest of the day getting ready for my VAY-K (vacation): Notse, Lome, Accra, here I come!

5/31/08

I got a late start this morning a cause de la pluie (the rain), and didn’t arrive in Notse until around 9:30. I also underestimated the challenge that is biking through mud. It is much more difficult than biking through sand because it sucks you in and then doesn’t give way as easily. Gizmo, true to his nickname “biggest crybaby in the whole wide world” (BCB3W for short), meow-ed the whole way. I mean, I get it, he is bouncing around in a cage and probably scared, but I wouldn’t mind trading him places. He can sweat while I alternate between dozing and enjoying the scenery. And sweat I did. It was exceptionally humid (it had rained all night) and for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to wear a long-sleeved shirt AND I had to pump up a flat tire right as I was leaving village.

But we made it. Shortly after arriving and getting Gizmo settled, I went to find Effoh. We had agreed that he would take me to see the wife of my proprietor who is sick and has been staying in Notse for the past couple of weeks. I first thought I should probably visit her when I encountered a group of five women from my village walking back from Agbatit one day as I biked out towards Notse. When I asked why they had gone to Notse, they said to visit the “mama.” If they went all the way to Notse to visit her, the least I could do is pay the same respects on one of my frequent trips to the “grande ville.” Effoh waited as I showered and then I bought some hearty staples like eggs, canned evaporated milk, sardines and avocados (we were trying to come up with nutritious foods that would put some meat back on to the emaciated woman’s bones). We walked to the house which was out near Effoh’s house. We stayed for about an hour an a half. The visit and gifts were very much appreciated, but the visit was painful at times. Later I talked with Effoh about the cards people will always play for amusment’s sake. The first: “I want to marry you;” the second: “give me money;” the third: “take me to the United States.” According to Effoh, the first is used on Togolese women as well; the last two are reserved for yovos. Apparently, Togolese women will just agree with a lighthearted “yo-oo” to the marriage request thereby ending the conversation. He says that when I engage the speaker by refusing, it creates the opportunity to push the merriment a little further. Maybe I will try accepting the next marriage proposal and see if that works for me.

When we finally escaped I was a little weary of the fun and games and it was high-noon. I waited out the hottest part of the day chatting with Effoh in the shade of his house and then returned to Notse-center to order the padding for Gizmo’s car. I tell people that it is his car and that I am his driver (chauffeur) and they get a big kick out of that.

This evening we were going to go see one of the students in my children’s rights group who has been gravely ill, but we got rained out (by the way, while chatting with Effoh this afternoon I learned that DaJulie has an eleven or twelve year old daughter who is working in Lome. I was shocked. Here he is the president of a group advocating children’s rights and his niece is currently working in Lome as a trafficked child. Fantastic.). Effoh came by on his way home from the market amid scattered thundershowers and we chatted until the next break in the clouds.

5/24/08 through 5/20/08

5/14/08 and 5/15/08

The last two days haven’t been particularly interesting. Mostly I have been pensive because many of my friends relationships (with people back home) are reaching their breaking points. Perhaps because we are nearing our one year mark and the prospect of having to endure another year of painful separation is too daunting for most. Anyway, I have been thinking a lot about it and been a little morose as a result.

Yesterday morning I went to see the Chief of Hygiene at the Hospital in Notse to speak with him about the shisto problem in my village. I guess the best I can hope for is to make the treatment available to those infected without requiring that each and every person go to Notse for a lab test.

Afterwards I did some shopping and ordered a kitten carrier to be made out of wrought iron for my bike. I hope it isn’t too heav.

Nori, one of the CHAP volunteers from my stage and a good friend that we hadn’t seen in a while surprised us for lunch. We spent several hours catching up before Gizmo (my kitten) and I headed back to Avassikpe. My PE class had been canceled because the students have exams this week.

Today, Thursday, we planted trees. “We” being me and five or six other people. I was annoyed by the low turnout. I worked in the field from 5:30 until 9:30 and then came home, neatened up the house, showered and made pâte in preparation for Jerome’s visit.

Our Ewe lesson was good but unremarkable and afterwards I brought the remaining pâte and sauce over to the dispensaire (for Lili and the new infirmier) and then I pushed corn off the cob and bruised my thumb with Tseviato’s older sister (Parfait’s mom, Kodjovi’s wife).

In the evening I took a walk around the village with the infirmier – I think his name is Emmanuel – watered my trees, showered and am writing and now I’m going to go to bed. Fascinating I know. I’m thrilled as well.

5/16/08

Today was rather boring and I am in a bit of a melancholy funk so I’m recounting the quick and dirty – planted trees in garden, filled big trash bucket with sand for kitten’s litter box, filled jar with water in case it doesn’t rain, neatened my house, showered, painted my toenails, ate lunch, went to Agbatitoe to teach my PE class, came home. I’m not sure if I’m PMS-ing or what, but all day I have been feeling out of sorts. So, in brief, that was my day.

5/17/08

And the funk continues. The good think about my funk for you all is that you have less to read. Today I prepared lesson plans to help my Peer Educators with their final projects – to teach one of the things we learned to a group of people of their choosing. That took me all morning.

I chatted with the Chef D’hygiene for a bit about our shisto problem and then chatted with the infirmier a bit before returning to the house to start studying for the GRE. Fun, fun.

I thought I’d study for a bit in my hammock, but the children invaded and I almost ended up beating them because they are disrespectful and badly behaved. The biggest mistake possible with the children here is to show that you are annoyed; they think it is hilarious which of course annoys you even more. “Don’t let it annoy you” needs to be my mantra.

In the afternoon the director of the EPP accompanied me out to the field to check on my trees. I decided that the ones we planted last Thursday were looking a little dry and so I watered them with the help of a young boy who works the cabine (public phone).

Jerome just called to inform me that his wife finally gave birth to a healthy baby girl. We have been expecting the baby since my parents visit.

5/18/08 through 5/19/08

Hm, can’t remember what I did on Sunday. All I know is that the funk still hangs overhead. It is lifting a bit now (Tuesday). Sunday I did laundry, went to church, studied for the GREs and wasted the afternoon tying strings to numbers for the vaccination day.

On Monday I woke up around 4:30 and got ready to leave for Notse. I didn’t start biking until around 6:00, though, what with making sure I had everything and boxing up my kitten.

Once in Notse I kitten-proofed Ashley’s house, went to the market to buy Gizmo some dried fish and check on his carrier. The young man is trying to make the wrought iron carrier pretty – I guess he took my comment about my kitten feeling like he was in prison to heart. Anyway, he is doing a nice job, but it will be more expensive than I anticipated.

I showered, made French toast, gave Effoh the corn his mom sent for him, closed up Ashley’s house, kissed my baby good-bye and went to catch a bush-taxi.

After an uneventful ride to Lome I walked to the U.S. Embassy. I was early and so I sat down to eat a sandwich of beans and avocado. As I was sitting there, a young man and young woman approached me wanting to speak English (and then Spanish) and “be my friend.” They were part of a group of people protesting outside the U.S. Embassy. Apparently they all entered the Visa Lottery and all won (I don’t understand how so many people from one tiny country can win the lotto). They invariably spent lots of money only to have the Embassy personnel refuse them their GreenCard without really explaining why. And so everyday these people come and protest with signs like “don’t leave us here to die.” A little dramatic, but I can see how they would be annoyed. I spoke with them for a little while and then went to the embassy to speak with a consular officer about eventual visas for Jorge. He has a visitor’s visa, but I am looking into getting him an immigrant visa (Greencard). The woman I spoke with was young and very nice, unfortunately, though, any way I swing it, it is complicated. After the Embassy I went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and good news from a man (I don’t know if he has the authority to promise me this) but he said that Jorge can get a visa at the airport and that he can write a letter so that it isn’t a problem for him to board the plane without a Togo visa. He also said that he can write a letter to see if they can give him an extended visa right at the airport. Otherwise, the visa would be for seven days, which I could get extended for one month and then three months and then a year and then three years and then five years and so on. That is very good news – I got the guy’s card because he is my new best friend if he can make it easy for Jorge to stay in Togo for a long period of time.

I then walked around the market, tried to go to the bank (but was ten minutes late), and walked back to Kodjoviecope to get a room at Mamys (aka the brothel). The evening, I spent chatting with Jorge in a refreshingly not crowded Peace Corps lounge.

I didn’t sleep well because I have too many things swirling around in my head. This morning (Tuesday) I walked to the office of Royal Air Maroc to check out prices to Italy. Jorge’s mom want him to visit her in Italy before coming to Togo which is great news for me because it means that I only have to pay for the Italy-Togo leg of his trip. I am also excited because I am going to see if I can afford to meet him in Italy and then we would stop in Morocco on our way back to Togo (Royal Air Maroc makes it easy for you to stop for up to two weeks in Morocco no matter where you’re flying). We are considering spending Christmas in Italy with his mom (about twenty days total in Italy) and then ten days or so in Morocco. That would be exciting. The ticket is about $1,500. Hm. We will see. I can’t get excited yet, but the wheels in my head are turning (My plan would be to leave Togo on the 10th of December, fly to Milan (Jorge plans to leave Uruguay November 30th so he would have some alone time with his mom before I crash the party), tour Italy with Jorge, spend Christmas with his mom and leave for Morocco on the 26th. Travel around Morocco until January 6th and then fly to Lome. Mom and Dad, are you interested in a trip to Morocco?

After speaking with the airline and going to the bank, I took a taxi to the Ghanaian Embassy to apply for a multiple entry visa and dropped 60,000 cFA (approx. $150 – ouch). Now I am doing some administrative things in the bureau and going to enjoy free high speed internet. I am heading back to Notse tomorrow after picking up my passport hopefully with a two-year visa to Ghana in it.

Oh, I forgot my very sad news (I’m trying to not dwell on it) – I can’t go to the Moringa conference. My APCD wrote me an email and for some reason it isn’t possible for me to pay my own way because of the way the conference is set up. Man, I wish they’d be organized enough to get their information straight to begin with. Oh well, Ashley will go and when she comes back, she’ll tell me all about it.

Now I’m going to go in search of some sort of cheap food because I am starving. And then I am going to chat with Jorge and research gradschools. Go ahead, ask me if I know what I want to study - ?? – no, not really, just checking out my options. =0)

Did y’all know that I am meeting my Dad in Ghana for a week from the 2nd through the 8th of June? I am super excited about that. Also, one of my close friends from high school is getting married on Saturday (May 24th) – I am really bummed that I am going to miss it, but have already asked my Dad to bring me lots of photos, so I will get to see pictures even before the blessed couple is back from their honeymoon.