1/17/09 through 2/28/09

I can’t even remember the last time I wrote and don’t know where to start. A lot of things have happened in the past two months, so much that I think it would be better just to start with what is fresh and let it flow naturally rather than try to catch up play by play.

First, I just found out yesterday that Ashley and my Peace Corps Partnership Project: “Plant. Eat. Live. Moringa for Improved Nutrition” got fully funded. We are very excited to finally get started and our heartfelt thanks go out to everyone who donated to our cause. We have created a facebook group where we will post pictures of the implementation of the project. I think even people who don’t have facebook can view the pictures at: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=128596800369&ref=mf

Moving on. Having Jorge in village pushes me to analyze life in Togo, first of all because Jorge is very curious and analytical, and second of all because I have a person to share my reflections with and the verbalization of those thoughts draws them out and develops them more than if they just stayed in my head. In addition, the last month and a half in Avassikpe has leant itself particularly to the analysis of the state of development in Togo and what sort of future outsiders (like myself and Jorge) have in future development.

After being in my village for a year and a half I feel as though I have lost some of my capacity to criticize and I am almost too accepting of the way life is in Avassikpe. Jorge has, to a certain extent, snapped me out of my complacency. He is shocked by the underdevelopment and stagnation of Avassikpe, while at the same time he is fascinated by the integration of certain elements of modernity like cell phones and motos. Why, he wonders, do people not use animals to plow their fields or simple wheeled carts to transport goods instead of their own manpower, but they are huge fans of radios, cell phones and motos?

It is very interesting to ponder what factors contribute to the incorporation of new behaviors or objects. Jorge views the lifestyle of the people in Avassikpe as quite primitive on an evolutionary scale. Although they have incorporated plastics, metals, glass, motos, radios and cell phones into their lifestyle, they are still hoeing their fields with an instrument that Jorge and I saw in a natural history museum in Milan and drinking dirty water when they have been told over and over that boiling their water kills microscopic pathogens. Why? Because boiling drinking water isn’t part of their daily habit. Ever since they were children, women have heated water for bathing in the evenings but not for drinking and so even though they have heard that boiling drinking water would improve their health and that of their children, for some reason a gap exists between the knowledge and the actual change in behavior. Why? I think it is because the idea that their children’s diarrhea is caused by those microscopic pathogens hasn’t really taken root. Their children’s diarrhea is caused by the jealousy of their sister-in-law. But I’m gettting ahead of myself. I think that in order for change to be worth the effort, the benefits of that change (be it behavioral or material) need to be obvious. Part of the problem, though, is that unequal rates of development and the shrinking size of the world have created a time warp of sorts. I remember my Dad once telling me of a professor who suggested that perhaps the introduction of certain vaccines in Africa was actually a disservice to the continent because it wasn’t prepared to deal with the surplus population. I didn’t understand then, but I am beginning to understand now. I don’t believe in one universal process of developent, but I think that development is needs to be at least somewhat linear. For example, mosquito nets weren’t invented until we understood the way in which malaria is transmitted just like filters weren’t invented before we understood that parasites in water can make us sick. Public schools weren’t built until society placed value on universal formal education and hospitals weren’t constructed before the fundamentals of modern medicine were widely accepted. It is human nature to look for solutions to immediate needs, but because of different rates and stages of development, the West is providing “solutions” to needs that, in Togo for one, are not yet widely recognized as such.

During a week alone in village (Jorge was in Notse working on an annotated bibliography and finishing up his internship with Dad), missing Jorge’s company terribly and remembering how much I dislike going days at a time without having a meaningful conversation, I was watching a woman scrub her pots with sand and wondering why women would preserve that practice when a metal scouring pad costs only 25cFA (US$ 0.05)? I concluded that sand must work well enough that village women have not yet assigned a monetary value to a replacement. Cell phones and motos, on the other hand, fill a need that wasn’t met before. For whatever reason, a hoe must work well enough for the time being. The old adage, “need is the mother of invention,” seems to hold true and where there is no percieved need, there is no motivation to improve on existing methods.

Taking the time warp idea even further, things like television and photos and internet, give people here in Togo (and other “underdeveloped” countries) a glimpse of the “developed” world, creating a disconnect between what people here feel they need and what should be the next logical step in development. Let me see if I can explain myself. I think that, because of the “interferrence,” if I can call it that, of the products of modernity, people here feel a need for motos, cell phones, radios, cameras, televisions, etc. causing them to leap frog what, in my humble opinion, should be more pressing needs like access to clean water, improved nutrition, schooling for all children, and medical care. So you have a man with a moto and a cell phone who still can’t afford to take his children to the hospital when they have malaria. Or, in another example, farmers who are blinded to the use of animal power in their fields because all they can think of is the horse power of a tractor that they will never be able to afford. So instead of making minor improvements in efficiency, they are paralyzed by the knowledge of the existence of more sophisticated technology that is way out of their grasp, and the end result is that they continue using the same hoe that their great great grandfather used.

That is one dilemma Jorge and I discussed; the second has to do with belief systems. In a short period of time various incidents occurred that made us think about the role of organized religion and animist beliefs in development or the impediment thereof. I believe in God and consider myself loosely Christian, but more and more I see religion as just a tool for manipulating people. God’s intentions seem to always be interpreted based on the needs of the time and place. When the need is for consciousless masses, God’s word promises rewards in the afterlife for silent suffering. When the need is for a motivated work force, God will reward hard work and good use of the talents and opportunities he gave us. But the question is whose need? The need of the rich and powerful of course. That was one thought Jorge and I had (all these reflections are products of us bouncing ideas off each other). The other was the role of grigri (the Togolese voudou) in maintaining the status quo and essentially keeping people from advancing. Anyone who succeeds in any way inevitably has two fears – either being accused of using grigri to secure success or of becoming the victim of grigri sent by jealous neighbors. For example, if you have a bumper crop because you used fertilizer and worked really hard, everyone will chalk it up to grigri. Either you paid some charlatan to ensure a good crop or you are making spiritual trips in the middle of the night to steal the crop of your neighbors and pass it off as your own. The Losso, an ethnic group from the northern part of Togo, are notorious for their spiritual midnight flights. Jerome, my Ewe professor, told me the Ewe people don’t like to buy the ignam heads for planting from the Losso because after all your hard work they will spiritually steal your crop and leave you only with puny worthless ignams in your field.

The Losso were also the principal actors in a mysterious incident that happened last month. One day, Ashley called me and told me that 9 people had died and 30 more were being treated at the hospital in Notse because someone who had been trying to kill Fulani cows (the animosity between the Fulani and other ethnic groups is another story altogether), inadvertently poisoned and killed people. That was the first interpretation of the mysterious deaths. Then we heard that it was, in fact, an unidentified viral outbreak and that the Notse hospital had sent samples to Ivory Coast and Senegal for analysis. Apparently the hospitals in Abidjan and Dakar didn’t find anything conclusive and neither did the WHO and so the final conclusion and the last I heard about the affair was that the cause was neither poison nor a virus, but a spiritual Losso airplane that crashed in the night killing 9 and injuring 30. Ashley woke me up one evening to call me out onto her front porch to listen to Papa’s explanation of the spiritual Losso airplanes, but her real indignation came when the DPS (Prefectural Director of Health) gave her the same story. For lack of a better explanation, all the Notse hospital staff (the DPS has a masters in Public Health . . .) was of the opinion that the deaths were caused by the crash of a spiritual Losso airplane; no one questioned it.

That whole affair was shocking enough, but it wasn’t personal. The real smack in the face came the very next day when a huge commotion broke out in village. We saw people running around with sticks but had no idea what was going on. I didn’t think much of it (maybe they were going to burn brush and hunt mice) and went to Agbatitoe to teach my Peer Educator class, leaving Jorge alone in village for the afternoon. He biked to Agbatit around 5 to accompany me back to village and told me of more commotion – lots of yelling – and when we arrived in the village everyone and their brother and sister and father and mother was gathered in a circle around a tree in front of the chief’s house. We avoided the gathering (I hadn’t been invited and so figured it didn’t concern me) and went home. Curious, though, I asked Effoh what was going on and this is what he told me: The day before a little girl with spiritual powers was carrying a smaller child on her back when a woman approached her and tried to steal her soul and that of the baby. She cried out, accusing two village women (both Kabiye, from the North, how convenient) of being sorcerers and stealing souls. The case was brought before the chief and one of the women quickly confessed her guilt, directing villagers to the field where she had spiritually buried some of the forty plus souls she had stolen. Digging in the field they uncovered the stolen souls in the form of spiders (a certain type of spider that always represents human souls but that apparently only the charalatan (person with special spiritual powers) can see) confirming the woman’s confession. The other woman, however, denied her guilt. Guilty until proven innocent, she was told to come up with 40,000cFA ($80) to hire a charlatan to determine through spiritual powers her guilt or innocence. She scrounged around for 20,000cFA and they took her to a charlatan who, in order to judge her, put a woven palm basket on her head and asked her whether or not she was a sorcerer. She continued to deny the allegations. The charlatan then poured water into the basket. The water ran through the basket and she was declared guilty as charged (apparently if she were innocent the water would have stayed in the woven basket. Jorge and I later decided that this was on par with mideval witch hunts in which suspected witches were thrown, tied up, into a body of water. If they drowned, they were guilty (convenient). If they somehow managed to save themselves, they were innocent.) I had been doing pretty well, but at this point I couldn’t help but protest. She was declared guilty because water ran through a WOVEN palm basket?!?! Effoh assured me that they do a test run first, asking a question of an obviously innocent person and the water stays in the basket. Right. Then he continued relating what had happened. After declared guilty by the charlatan, the woman was beaten with sticks and ordered to reveal where she had buried the stolen souls. She started to waver and hinted that she had stolen the soul of her grandchild and buried it near her house. The whole operation was moved to her house and after much deliberation, digging, shape changing (what?!) and spiritual battles between the woman and the charlatan, spiders (souls) were uncovered. The woman was beaten until she couldn’t walk and her adult children were instructed to sell off all her belongings in preparation for her banishment. The next day, the two women sorcerers were forced to name all the othe sorcerers in the village so that the village could be purged of sorcerers. I guess they squeezed a list out of the women because Sunday at church the pastor said that he knew who all the sorcerers in the church were and that he was giving them one week to come to him and confess or he would take them before the chief. He also said that the villagers had wanted to burn the two women alive, but that he had begged them not to (I don’t know if that was just a dramatic touch (as if this story needed embellishment) or if it was true). Anyway, the two women were kicked out of the village, burdened with everything that had gone wrong in the past year (including several deaths, infertility, and bad crops).

After we got over our initial feelings of shock and disgust that the lives of two women had just been ruined, Jorge and I started a discussion about how these sorts of beliefs impede development. Everything is blamed on sorcery. It is an ever-available scapegoat, stripping people of all responsability for everything that happens to them. Bad crop? Sorcery. Child’s sick? Sorcery. Failed your exam? Sorcery. Lost your job? Sorcery. No one buys your goods? Sorcery. The sorcery card also strips people of all motivation to succeed or stand out in any way. Adjo, an eighteen year old girl from the village, said that her father wouldn’t allow her to sing in church because he was afraid people would be jealous of her talent and grigri her. Educated young people run away from the village as fast as they can to avoid grigri from the less successful. People are afraid to call attention to themselves and so mediocracy reigns. What can you do in the face of such a belief system?

My doubts about being able to positively impact life in “developing” countries like Togo were reinforced again when Jerome told me how the government purposely keeps the people in the South underdeveloped and dependent on the failing cotton industry because that is how they (the government) makes the most money. Jorge purposefully put Jerome on the defensive (for the purpose of generating a good discussion), by commenting on how the people in the North were much more hard working than the people in the South. Jerome, took the bait, and started to explain that the reason that the people in the South appear less hard-working and less motivated is because every time an NGO tries to “develop” the people in the South (and he gave the example of the introduction of soy as a cash crop), the government creates so many obstacles for the organization that it is just easier for them to move their efforts north. He said that an agricultural organization in Notse was encouraging farmers to plant soy. When the farmers realized how profitable soy was compared to cotton, they started to decrease their cotton production in favor of soy. The government noticed that the peasants dedication to cotton was waning, investigated, and forced the agricultural organization to stop promoting soy.
I have to admit I was shocked. No wonder things don’t progress here. How can I hope to make a difference in the face of so many uncontrollable obstacles? First, there is the question of whether or not “development” even helps. Might it not be best just to let things develop at their own pace? I don’t want to be selfish and make everyone re-invent the wheel for themselves, but is it really that helpful to throw futuristic technology down from the sky when the people you’re throwing it at don’t even understand the way it works or what its purpose is? Add to that, beliefs that make maintaining the status quo the only “safe” option and governments that economically enslave their population to enrich themselves, and my certainty that I want to do a masters in health communication and work in “development” goes flying out the window. Yikes. Funny how one month you can be so sure and the next month totally lost.

That summarizes the most interesting and thought provoking happenings in the last month or two. I have to say that I love having Jorge here and love the way he makes me think about the same old things in different ways and consider them from a different perspective. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending how you look at it =0), now that he is here my number one motive for writing daily accounts of my experience in Togo has disappeared, but I will try to write every once in a while to keep you abreast of the big stuff. For now, I am looking forward to getting Moringa billboards up in and around Notse and working on radio communications about the nutritional benefits of Moringa.