11/30/08 through 12/14/08

11/30/08 through 12/14/08

Busy or Lazy? Busy or Lazy? Perhaps a little bit of both. Maybe I’m just too excited about my upcoming trip to Italy and reunion with Jorge to write about the mundane details of my day to day life. Excuses, I know.
All of my kittens died. One the day before I arrived in village and the other three the morning I arrived. I never even saw them and didn’t care to ask what they did with their poor little bodies. I can’t help but think that if I had been there to care for them the whole time they wouldn’t have died.
That Sunday the Assembly of God church was having a fundraiser. The same kind Jerome held in his village a couple of weeks ago where everyone brings something to donate for an auction. I wasn’t in the mood for church after learning of the deaths of my kittens, and so I feigned illness, sent my donation (Ashley’s swear-in complet) with Tseviato.
I was only in village until Wednesday that week. I am sure an Ewe lesson factored in there somewhere, probably on Monday and I taught a Peer Educator course on Wednesday. It went relatively well, but that day I learned that the woman teacher who is supposed to be collaborating with me for the duration of the Peer Educator course (ideally so that she can take over when I leave), is being “affecte-ed” to the Maritime region. Teachers, nurses and other individuals on state salaries don’t have much control over where they are placed and they can be ordered to move at any time. So, half way through the academic year, she is being moved to another school and she isn’t being replaced. I feel like my Peer Educator course is rather sloppy this year and prefer to do it all myself, but that isn’t sustainable and so I will have to badger the Director until he finds me another collaborating teacher.
I spent several days in Notse because Ashley and I are working on our Peace Corps Partnership application. Peace Corps Partnership, as I think I have mentioned before, is an official Peace Corps vehicle for hitting up your friends and family (and any other voluntary victims) for money to support a project. Ashley and I are hoping to get our Peace Corps Partnership approved by our Country Director and posted online before Christmas so that all of our friends, family and acquaintances can spread the Christmas cheer and start the New Year on a good foot by donating $10 or $20 to our project. The goal of our project is to widely publicize the nutritional benefits of Moringa and encourage people in our area to plant Moringa and incorporate Moringa leaves into their diets. We plan to do this through as series of one-minute community service announcements (played on the radio three times a day), a Moringa song and four one-hour long Moringa talk-shows. We also plan to have three billboards constructed and adorned with informational messages about the nutritional value of Moringa. These will be strategically placed around Notsé. Finally, we plan to have a festival celebrating Moringa in late May, near Arbor Day, during which we will hopefully hand out seeds to be planted on Arbor Day, and have demonstrations on how to plant and maintain Moringa, how to transform the leaves into powder, how to extract oil and purify water with the seeds, how to cook it, etc. Leading up to this festival, we will go to all of the middle and high schools in Notsé to hold informational sessions on Moringa and to invite the students to participate in Moringa-themed sketch, poem and song contests. I think it is a very good project, I just hope it gets quickly approved and funded so that we can get started at the beginning of February. Don’t worry, as soon as I have a website address I will sent it out so that each and every one of you can help make “my dreams come true.” =0)
Anyway, we spent Thursday and Friday running around getting price estimates, arguing with the radio producer about how much we would pay for his services, buttering up the mayor, and hassling hospital personnel and anyone else who would help us gather the information we need to write our project plan and create our budget.
I went back to village on Saturday and on Sunday again skipped out on church. I don’t know why, but I have no desire to go to church lately. It is dizzyingly hot and all those praying, singing, dancing bodies don’t improve things any. Also, I feel like the sermons are frustratingly repetitive. Really, there are only three themes: “don’t cheat on your spouse or sleep around”; “don’t give in to sorcery, Jesus will protect you”; “give money to the church.” It gets quite boring.
Instead of going to church on Sunday, I built a shelf for my bathroom and replaced the screen on my door. Hopefully Gizmo won’t tear it up anymore now that he has his own, personal kitty-door.
Monday, World Aids Day, I was a bad Peace Corps Volunteer and didn’t even go to my EPP to talk to the students about AIDs. I know, I really deserve a slap on the wrist for that one. Instead, I got my bike fixed by the Peace Corps bike expert and had an Ewe lesson.
Tuesday kicked off a nation wide campaign to distribute free impregnated mosquito nets, Vitamin A and Albendazol (a de-wormer) to all children under five. Unfortunately, Lili and the Infirmier had a disagreement about transport costs that lead to a falling-out. Lili went over the Infirmier’s head and called his superior, angering the Infirmier, and then she childishly boycotted the campaign entirely (all because the Infirmier had said that there wasn’t a budget line for transportation costs). As a result, I was sent to hell on Tuesday. It became my task to fill in for Lili who was sulking at home (completely unprofessional) and go into the villages with community health agents to distribute the mosquito nets and medecines. It was a terrible day. I spent from 8:00 in the morning until 4:30 in the afternoon, surrounded by pushing, screaming women and children who absolutely refused to allow the process to be a calm, orderly and pleasant one. It is a miracle no children died and no pregnant women miscarried with the way in which they were pushing and shoving. When I would finally take a woman’s card to administer the Vitamin A and albendazol, I would say “where are your children?” and she would reach a hand back into the crowd of pressing bodies and drag a child up to the front. Sometimes children were passed over the women’s heads. That is how impossible it was. We tried everything from making a pathway with wooden benches to wielding sticks to stopping the distribution, but nothing made them calm down. By the end of the day I was near the verge of tears and the fact that curious hands had screwed the gears on my bike up to the point that the chain fell off and got wedged between the gears and the lever really didn’t help.
Thankfully, for the next two days of the campaign I stayed in the dispensaire in Avassikpe where doors shut out all the pushing and shoving and only five women with their children were allowed in at a time. It was a hundred times more pleasant and efficient.
Fiver years or so ago there was a campaign to distribute insecticide treated nets for 500cFA, but this year it was free (I’m not sure that was a good idea). Aside from the normal difficulties of mothers not knowing their children’s dates of birth, the biggest problem with the campaign was that certain families got up to four mosquito nets (because they had four children under five), making it so that some families got none. I can assure you that those four children don’t sleep in four different beds and think that the distribution should have been capped at two per mother. Curiously, part of the campaign instructions were that each carefully sealed bag containing the mosquito net should be ripped open before being given to the mother. The rational behind this was that women would be less likely to leave the mosquito net unused in a corner if its pretty packaging was still in tact than if it was opened. It doesn’t stop them from reselling the mosquito nets, however.
We had a freak rainstorm Thursday afternoon which delayed my departure for Notsé until Friday morning. Today is Sunday and for the past three days Ashley and I have continued working on our Peace Corps Partnership, finalizing price estimates and writing out the project proposal.
I will go back to village this afternoon. Tomorrow I have an Ewe lesson and will say “good-bye” to Gizmo. Jerome is going to keep Giz at his house until I get back from Italy. I hope that works out ok. Ashley can’t keep him because she has a friend coming from the States and is planning a trip to Ivory Coast with Natasha and Tig and even if Effoh comes back to village for the holiday’s, he still won’t be there to take care of Giz the whole time I am gone, so I think Jerome is the best option.
On Tuesday I will clean my house (I am so very glad I got the major, nitty-gritty cleaning done before Kim got here) and make sure everyone in village knows that I am leaving for a month but that I will be coming back. I have had mixed reactions so far when I tell people that I will be gone a month. Some people flat out don’t believe me. Others express disappointment that I won’t be spending the holidays in village even though I can guarantee I wouldn’t see most of them on Christmas or New Years even if I were to stay in village because they would be too busy fête-ing with their own friends and family. However, when I say that I am going to my husband’s mother’s house, most seem to find it only natural after such a long separation, and everyone is excited when I tell them that Jorge will be coming back with me. I think half the people think I am making him up. It will certainly be an exciting to have him in village. I think being with Jorge in Togo is going to change my whole experience here, but I am ready for that and awaiting it with anticipation. I am ready for a change, even if some of them are difficult to get used to, and ready to share this experience with him. Very, very ready.
On Wednesday, after my Peer Educator course, I will come to Notsé, finish packing and, with Ashley, put the final touches on our Peace Corps Partnership application. On Thursday we will go to Lome (I am hoping Ashley will accompany me). I have some things to do in Lome before my plane leaves on Saturday (I don’t know at what time, but I am guessing the afternoon). I arrive in Rome at 10:30 on Sunday morning. Jorge will meet me at the airport (he arrives in the evening of Friday the 19th) and, perhaps after enjoying my first REAL Italian meal, we will take the train to Milan and meet up with his mother. Words can’t express my excitement and “mélange” of feelings.