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.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
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.
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.
11/18/08 through 11/29/08
11/18/08 through 11/29/08
11/18/08
The Tuesday of my college friend, Kim’s, arrival, I took an early morning bush taxi to Lome from Notse. I arrived mid-morning and met Effoh at a gas station near the Lome drop-off. We continued to the house where he is now living – by route taxi, and foot through a sandy maze of streets – in a neighborhood of Lome I have never frequented. He lives quite far from Kodjoviecope, where the Peace Corps office is located, in a spacious compound that must house some forty plus people. It was chance and luck that brought him there. The man who had promised to find him a room in Lome had placed him with a fetisher where Effoh, being Christian, was not at all comfortable. He couldn’t eat any of the food that the man prepared because it was killed over the sacrificial stone and he was having bad dreams. As he explored the neighborhood one morning he happened on his cousin (Mana’s sister) selling bouillie outside of her house and she invited him to stay with them. At least three generations live in the compound, all one family with ties to Avassikpe. As I entered the compound, I said “agoo” as is customary in Ewe and was met with hoots of appreciation. For the rest of the day, the mother-in-law recounted the story of how I said “agoo” upon entering the compound (it takes so little to please them! =0). They were tickled to death by my meager knowledge of Ewe and were extremely welcoming. Effoh and I talked for a while and then I talked with some of the women in the compound and played with one of the five-month-old twins. Neither Mana’s sister or her husband were present when I arrived. Mana’s sister was at church. They attend a church that I have never heard of – the Celestial Church of Christ (I think) – and she was there praying. Her second youngest child is sick with stomach pains and has been staying at the church for over a month now in hopes that the holy space and prayer will heal him. The members of the church wear flowing white dresses or robes (it kind of reminds me of the ethnographic videos I have seen of Afro-Brazilian or Haitian synchronized (animist-Christian) spiritual practices) and take their shoes off before entering the sanctuary. They are apparently know for their power to heal through prayer and holy water. Mana’s sister’s husband was at work. He does the metal work at construction sites.
I met Mana’s sister as she took a break from prayer between 12:30 and 2:30. She seemed very nice, although a little distracted as is understandable considering the sickenss of her son. She has four children, all boys. The oldest is, I think, thirteen and the youngest nine months old.
Because going all the way to Kodjoviecope and then back to the airport at 6:30 to pick up Kim seemed like a waste of money, I decided to stay at Effoh’s house until it was time to go to the airport. Around five, after eating rice prepared for me by a young girl from Avassikpe who had come to Lome to escape the monotony of the village, we spontaneously decided to go to Elise’s house (Effoh’s school friend from Notse who is also now in Lome attending university), pick her up, and continue to the airport together. Unfortunately, it was getting dark as we neared her house and we got hopelessly lost. After many phone calls and much wandering, she came to us on a moto. It was getting late and I was getting anxious. There is nothing worse than arriving in a strange country, where you don’t speak the language, and having no one meet you. It inevitably causes a feeling of panic and I didn’t want to provoke that panic in Kim after she had come half way around the world to see me.
As we pulled into the airport I thought I saw her. It was like a movie. I ran up to this girl who was bent over her luggage, rummaging in a pocket, and yelled, “Kim!” But it wasn’t her. Somewhat embarrassed, but even more relieved, I went inside to the receiving area and less than five minutes later she walked out of those mirrored doors looking fantastic as usually. We hugged, got out of the way, and hugged again. Amidst our non-stop chatter I introduced her to Elise and Effoh and we went to get a cab to Kodjoviecope. We first dropped Kim’s stuff off at Mammy’s and then when to a bar christened “the cheap bar” by volunteers. It was the first time that I was placed in the translator role. Usually Effoh is translating for me (from Ewe into French), but because Elise and Effoh don’t speak English and Kim doesn’t speak French, I had to translate everything both ways. It was nice though. We chatted about Kim’s trip (before coming to Togo she had traveled through Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Turkey), about school and career interests, about romantic relationships, about how Kim and I met and how Effoh, Elise and I met, etc. It was nice. Kim is the ideal guest; I told her she can come visit me anytime, anywhere and I mean it. She is friendly, social, adventurous, willing to try new things, a good sport, flexible, not too clingy. Perfect. It was such a fun visit. Tuesday night we talked until midnight and then finally showered and went to bed.
11/19/08
Wednesday morning I had a few things to do around the bureau. Strangely, there were no other volunteers there; it is almost always crowded! We checked mail and visited the MedUnit (I got a flu shot and an HIV test. I asked for the HIV test. Effoh had been telling me the day before that he had to have a medical exam and an HIV test to register at the University. He was going to pick his results up on Wednesday and was a little nervous about it; he asked me if I was HIV positive or negative and I answered automatically, “negative,” but then started second guessing myself because of an incident in which I came in contact with someone else’s blood and later realized that I had a small cut on my thumb. Usually, if someone gets hurt, I talk them through taking care of their injury (because, as a PCV, I’m not allowed to care directly for people), but this man had cut himself with a coupcoup and was spurting blood and didn’t speak French and my Ewe isn’t good enough to communicate in that sort of situation. I tried to explain in Ewe, but ended up just putting pressure on it myself and I got a little blood on my hands. Anyway, I just asked to have the test to ease my mind and it came back negative, but Ashley says that unless the contact was more that six months ago, it isn’t 100% reliable. So . . . my mind still isn’t completely at rest).
Midmorning we left Lome in a bush taxi and arrived in Notse just in time to go have fufu at Bar Marantha with Ashley. As we walked to the restaurant, I was feeling nauseous, but then Jorge called me and told me that he had been granted the visa to Italy (YAY!!) and so I was then very very happy, albeit still nauseous. I’m not sure why I ate lunch anyway, but I did, and then I had to rush off to my Peer Educator course in Agbatitoe. Kim accompanied me (very nice of her). The class was much more successful than the first. I had never seen the woman teacher, who is my counterpart for this course, teach a class, but I was very pleased with what I saw on Wednesday and it made me feel more relaxed about letting go of the reins a little. I now know that she takes the class seriously, prepares for it well, and doesn’t feed the students false information. She taught the first part of the class and I taught the second. The students participated a little more than last week, so that was good.
After the class we watched a bit of a soccer game and then hopped into a taxi and headed back to Notse. We went to ADAC to rescue Ashley from a meeting with her homologues and then I left Ashley and Kim at the bar with Jake (the volunteer in Tohoun who was also in town) and went to the internet to organize the buying of Togo-Italy tickets for Jorge and myself (Yay! Yay! Yay!). The tickets were still available and so my Mom bought two tickets for $1700. What a relief! I love it when everything falls into place! I only wish I knew it was all going to turn out from the beginning so I wouldn’t lose so much sleep over it! I am extremely excited about meeting Jorge in Italy and spending Christmas and New Years with his Mom (I haven’t spent time with his Mom in more than five years) and finally having a set date for our reunion: December 21st. YAY! Jorge arrives in Rome late on December 19th, but I couldn’t find a ticket leaving Lome until the 20th, so the 21st it is. Either he’ll meet me in the airport in Rome, or he will go ahead to Milan (to start getting quality time in with his Mom) and I will meet him there. My plane gets into Rome at 10 something in the morning, so I would have time to get to Milan before dark. We will see. I kind of want him to meet me at the airport in Rome, but I also think he should make the most of his time with his Mom, so . . .
Thursday
On Thursday Kim and I got a late start biking out to Jerome’s village, but she was a good sport even though it was terribly hot. Jerome, of course, treated us to a wonderful day and wonderful food. Soon after we arrived we ate fufu and then we chatted and rested our stomachs before going to visit a sodabe distillery. I think it is neat for people to try palm juice, then palm wine and then sodabe and taste the different degrees of fermentation and distillation and see the process. Palm trees are so useful and Jerome and I got into a discussion as to why people in my village don’t plant more palm trees. My area is largely deforested and palm tree products– indoor brooms, outdoor brooms, red palm oil (made from the palm fruit), white palm oil (made from the palm kernel), palm wine, sodabe, fencing, baskets – are expensive (because there aren’t many trees even though most people own their land and could easily plant them).
Our departure from Zitsou (Jerome’s village) was delayed because we had to go greet the chief and eat the beans and gari that Jerome’s wife had prepared. He really wanted us to spend the night, and lay on a bit of guilt when I refused, but finally accepted our thanks and allowed us to take our leave. I felt that we would be more comfortable at my house where I have a latrine and my own space and where no one would be bending over backwards to boil water for us to drink and take care of our every need.
We decided to take the “short-cut” to my village to avoid the dangers of the route national (big speeding trucks). It is a small path that, although shorter, takes about the same amount of time to bike because it is somewhat rough terrain. It is prettier though and we biked through the sunset, arriving in Avassikpe just after dark.
Of course the children were very excited by our arrival, but they eventually calmed down and left us alone to shower, eat pineapple and install ourselves under the paillote to chat and be cool.
Friday
Friday morning we made the rounds greeting everyone and their mother, father, brother, sister, grandmother, aunt, uncle and cat. And the chief too. And Lili and the Infirmier (whom everyone calls “Major”). Then we rested (greeting people is exhausting!).
After a bit, DaJulie came to my door with a tiny kitten in her hand. It’s eyes weren’t even open yet. She handed it to me and told me that she had found it in the field and that its mom was dead. We went back to her house and she brought out three more identical kittens. She asked me what she could do. I said she should try to feed them milk. She said she didn’t have any milk. I didn’t want to say that I would take them and feed them because I didn’t want to get stuck with them, but when Parfait picked up one of the kittens and dropped it, I realized that their only chance at survival was if I removed them from the clumsy grasp of children. I got someone to make it clear that I was only taking the kittens to feed them not to keep them (Gizmo is enough of a hassle!) and then Kim and I carted them off to the house. I made up a solution of powdered milk, found an eyedropper and tried to feed them. Three of them started to suck on the eyedropper easily and hungrily, but the forth took a bit of coaxing. By the second feeding (Tig had advised us to feed them every two hours and then wipe their butts with a damp cloth so that they could pee and poo) they were all eating. I love it how they curl their tongues around the eye-dropper and suck the milk out! Mostly they just ate and slept and for the next three days our activities were punctuated by the feedings and but wipings. Somehow Kim got stuck with the butt wiping job. When we left on Sunday, I showed DaJulie how to feed them and wipe their butts, gave her the rest of my powdered milk, the eye-dropper, and some filtered water, and told the children that they were not allowed to touch them. I hope they are still alive when I get home.
Late Friday morning we went to the market. Kim bought three pagnes and we got soja and bean beignets for lunch. We were going to make sweet potato koliko, but the food we bought at the market was more than enough.
We spent the afternoon sitting under my paillote catching up on each others’ lives and future plans (the last time we saw each other was at Feb Graduation at Middlebury in February ’07). I thought that it would be interesting (she was also an anthropology major) to chill in my village and get a taste of village life; I just hope she wasn’t bored. Had she planned to be in country two weeks, we could have traveled more, but with just one week we risked spending the bulk of the time cramped in a bush taxi. Anyway, I enjoyed it and hope she did too.
Friday evening we walked to Midojicope and brought two of her pagnes to Mana to be made into wrap skirts.
Saturday
On Saturday we had tentatively planned to go with DaMarie to the field to pick soja, just for a few hours to witness the process, but it never ended up happening. We made lunch together – moringa, sesame, pâte sauce – I made her work crushing the tomatoes and moringa leaves with my crushing rock, and were going to eat it with pâte but the miller wasn’t around and I didn’t have any corn flour. We ended up eating it with rice which was good too.
Sophie’s mom came through Avassikpe on her way to Notse to take Pelagie (the eleven month old little girl who only weighs 4.7 kilos) to the hospital. I had tried to convince Mamane (Sophie’s mom, Effoh’s sister) to take her because I was/am afraid that she has a medical condition that prevents her from swallowing or sucking easily. For a while I debated accompanying them so that the staff at the Notse hospital would take the case more seriously (sad, but true), but decided against it. She stopped through again later that evening on her way back to Komlacope (her husband’s village) and said that the doctor’s hadn’t found anything irregular with her esophagus or heart, but had prescribed an appetite stimulant. Hopefully it will work. I am so worried about her development (or lack thereof).
Late Saturday afternoon we walked out to my moringa field, but the rest of the day was again spent in my place of choice: under my paillote. It was so nice to talk to a friend who has known me for so long.
We spent a lot of time talking about Italy (Kim studied abroad in Italy for a semester) and the places I should visit, but then Jorge’s mom called and, when I told her our arrival and departure dates, she expressed disappointment at the shortness of our stay. I thought a month was a pretty good amount of time (it eats up all the vacation days I have accrued to this point), but apparently she was hoping for more and I got the impression that she would like us to stay close to Milan for the majority of our visit. At first I was disappointed, but then I tried to look at it from an unselfish perspective and understand that she hasn’t seen her only child for three years and that she doesn’t know when she will see him again. I think this trip needs to be more about her than about Italy and even if I don’t get to travel all around Italy and see a lot of the sites, Milan is Italy and it is going to be amazing. AMAZING.
Sunday
Sunday morning we woke up early to go on a walk before church. I made Kim sit through church so that she would get a couple more drops for her bucket, but it was long and tiring and somewhat less animated than usual.
After church we made a sweet potato and egg scramble for lunch and then rested a bit before taking motos to Agbatit and (after a significant wait) catching a car to Atakpame. Once in the car, we arrived quickly in Atakpame, but were held up by a parade in honor of a Catholic holiday. There was a huge crowd and as we were waiting for the road to become passable, we heard a rumor that a car had hit and killed one of the participants in the parade. I’m not sure if that is true or not, maybe the person was just injured, but later, as we tried to make our way through the crowd on foot, I again heard murmurings about someone having been hit by a car. Yikes. On the other side of the throng of people we hopped in another car to take us closer to the transit house.
I was rather hoping that there would be a few nice volunteers for Kim to talk to at the Atakpame maison (she is considering applying to Peace Corps!), but there weren’t many people there. We dropped off our stuff and went to Pentagon for a nice, quiet dinner for two. That bar/restaurant is a favorite of PCVs because it is on the third story of a building and has a nice panoramic view of Atakpame.
Monday
Monday morning we had egg sandwiches and then went to the market and walked around a bit before going back to the house, picking up our stuff and heading to Notse. We got lucky and had a relatively quick, smooth, not crowded ride to Notse.
Upon arrival I immediately tore into a birthday box from my parents and found 8 pounds of cheese (HEAVEN!), oreos, nutrigrain bars and candy and the brainstorming started. What to make . . .? We decided on fajitas: tortillas, chicken, salsa and CHEESE. I headed off to the market to buy supplies and when I got back put Ashley and Kim to work while I looked at the pictures from Elizabeth’s wedding (a friend from high school who got married last May). We ate around 4:00 and it was delicious! (Thank you Mom and Dad!) – One of the best meals I’ve had in Togo. Absolutely delicious!
Tuesday
Tuesday morning we headed off to Lome, arriving there mid-morning. We checked into Mammy’s and then went to the Bureau to see if we could change Kim’s ticket to Thursday (she was supposed to fly out Tuesday for a week in London, but we wanted her to stay and spend Thanksgiving with us). We eventually gave up, went and had the best burgers in Lome for lunch, and then came back to the Bureau to try again. Finally we found a number and I called and found out that she could change her ticket for 45 Euros (less than she would spend in London in two days!) and so we b-lined it over to the AirFrance office to make the change. I hadn’t really thought it would be possible, but was super glad it was.
That evening we went to the Cheap Bar with another volunteer and polished off the two pound block of cheddar cheese that we had started devouring the day before.
Wednesday
Wednesday morning I walked downtown and went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to see if I could get the man I spoke with several months ago to “make good” on his promise to write Jorge a letter so that the immigration officers at the airport would give him a one year visa right off the bat instead of a seven-day visa. It sounded too good to be true and it was. Apparently he recalled promising nothing of the sort and told me that Jorge would either have to apply for a visa from Rome or get a visa upon arrival in country and then apply to have it extended. He said that if Peace Corps writes a letter authorizing Jorge to stay with me, then it would be easy for him to get a visa for a year or two.
That stressed me out because I wasn’t sure Peace Corps would write a letter. Later that afternoon I went to speak with my Country Director. I asked her if we could get started on the background check portion of the “intent to marry” process now, before Jorge arrives in country, so that it will expedite the process. I feel as though my Country Director wouldn’t feel comfortable writing him a letter for a visa extension until he had been officially cleared through a background check. The Peace Corps manual that says that a volunteer may marry a third country national while in service IF the intended spouse satisfactorily passes a background check (the form is the same as that filled out by a person applying to a Public Trust position) and is approved by the Country Director with respect to three main points: that the intended spouse agrees to live the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer (no marrying and moving into an expat house with a pool and three cars; not a problem in our case); that the intended spouse shows adequate knowledge of the host country language and culture (Jorge doesn’t speak French, but neither do a lot of volunteers when they arrive in country, he has already started learning and will surely pick it up fast because of Spanish and he did his thesis on Ghana so I don’t think this will be a problem); and that the marriage will not interfere with the volunteer’s work in village (if anything I think Jorge will motivate me to do my work better because he will get me excited about it all over again and my village is very excited for his arrival).
I am pretty sure we can get “cleared” for marriage, but what I am not sure is whether or not we have to get married right away once we have been “cleared”. It is all so complicated what with Togo marriage laws (we need all sorts of documents – birth certificate, certificate of residence (3 months in Togo), premarital medical attestation, certificate of celibacy (what?), and a sworn notarized statement of eligibility to marry (is it this hard to get married in the States?) – and with the U.S. green card application process. I don’t know if it is better to get married in Togo and apply for the green card from here or apply for a Fiancée Visa and get married as soon as we get back to the States. There are pros and cons to both, but I guess it mostly hinges on whether or not we want to do a third year in Togo. We will see. It will be easier to talk about what we want to do when we are together and when Jorge has experienced Togo a little bit.
Moving on. Because Kim was staying two more days, she had time to accompany me to a HUGE shopping center called Lome 2 or Adjzrenawe (something like that) where they have piles and piles of second hand clothes. I was extremely glad she could be there with me because it would have been no fun on my own (I was a little nervous because I had never been there before, but it turned out not to be as crowded or chaotic as I expected) and because she served as my mirror, telling me what pants looked good and what pants didn’t. On my list were pants for Italy (I have no full length pants) and running shoes (my hiking shoes give me blisters when I try to walk in them). It was fun and I ended up buying six pairs of pants – one brown linen, two pairs of jeans, one pair of black and grey striped dressy pants, and two pairs of corduroys, one olive green and one khaki – for 6,000 ($12) and Asics running shoes for 5,000 ($10). The running shoes are, I think, $90 shoes in the states and are in very good condition.
After shopping we went to lunch with Ashley and then to the Bureau and then to the Beach Bar for drinks and the sunset. By this time there were a lot of volunteers in Lome and I was glad that Kim got the opportunity to talk to a wide variety of volunteers with a wide variety of experiences.
In the evening we went briefly to another and then camped out at the Bureau on internet until it closed.
Thursday
Unfortunately, Kim woke up Thursday morning with stomach issues and ended up spending the morning resting at Mammys. Ashley again refused to accompany me shopping (it isn’t her thing) and so I called Effoh to see if he’d like to meet me at Lome 2 for a second round of shopping (on the list were sweaters and long sleeve shirts and dress shoes). He agreed.
This time I made my way there for cheap (450 cFA instead of the 1500 I paid the day before) using route taxis and by the time Effoh arrived had already found a good sweater stand and picked a bunch of “possibles.” The man who owns the house Effoh is staying at (Mana’s sister’s husband) brought him to Lome 2 on his moto because he was afraid he’d get lost in the big city all by himself. I told him that he should let him get lost because that is the only way he is going to learn his way around. If someone is always driving him everywhere, he will never learn. The man was super nice, but it was awkward having someone I didn’t know following me around as I shopped. It made me feel rushed; I didn’t want to waste his time. We went back to the sweater stand where the man was holding my “picks” and I rooted through the pile again and then bought 17 sweaters (excessive, I know) for 4,000 ($8). Crazy cheap right? I bought all the ones that I thought might be good because I didn’t feel comfortable trying them on, Kim, my mirror wasn’t present so it would have been pointless, and figured I’d try them on at home and just bring my favorites to Italy. Then we embarked on the search for shoes which took the bulk of the morning. I wanted the Dansko shoes that everyone wore at Middlebury and that I could never afford (they cost around $120). I found one pair that was too small. Another pair that was reddish. And then another pair that was the right size and in relatively good condition except for a tiny slit in the toe (as though someone had stabbed it with a pocket knife). We continued looking, but finally went back for the pair with the slit in the toe and I bargained them down to 1,000 ($2). How cool is that? To thank Effoh for accompanying me and carrying my huge bag of sweaters around the whole morning, I told him to look for some shirts and eventually we found him some nice button up shirts and bargained them down to 4 for 1,000.
I then had to hurry back because I was going to be late for Thanksgiving Dinner at our Country Director’s house. Kim was feeling a little bit better, but not well enough to eat, so that was a pity. The food was good, but I didn’t stuff myself like I did last year (also a good thing). The company was very nice and I was glad to be with a lot of my friends and distracted from missing my family. Kim fit in perfectly and everyone kept assuming that she was a volunteer. I really hope she decides to go into the Peace Corps, I think she would make a great volunteer. After Thanksgiving dinner, we went to the Bureau and eventually hitched a ride to the airport with a Peace Corps driver who was taking a trainee to the airport (she was ET-ing). I hate good-bye’s, but it was still super wonderful to have Kim visit, I just wish she could have stayed a month =0).
Friday
I spent Friday morning running around getting an electronic copy of my passport and sending it to Afriqiyah Air (the Libyan airline Jorge and I are flying between Togo and Italy). They refused to issue my ticket before having a copy of my passport as a guarantee of my citizenship (unfortunately I had left my passport in village, but fortunately Ashley suggested that Peace Corps might have a copy and sure enough they did). Eventually I emailed them a copy and they issued my ticket so that is all taken care of and a huge relief.
I then messed around on the internet for the rest of the morning. We didn’t end up leaving Lome until around 4:00 and it took us several hours to actually get on the road (sometimes you’re lucky and sometimes you aren’t), so we didn’t arrive in Notse until well after dark. Ashley and I were both exhausted and just showered and went to bed.
Saturday
I was planning to go back to village today, but, big surprise, I’m still here and it is now 5:30, too late to make it back before dark. I hope my kittens are still alive.
This morning I went to the market and bought some socks for Italy (too bad I sent all my socks home with my parents) and supplies for village. Ash and I ate some of my canned tomato sauce over pasta for lunch and then I started writing (better to do it while it is still more or less fresh in my mind). I will head back to village early tomorrow morning because they are having a fundraiser at church that I should attend. On Monday I have an Ewe lesson and the Peace Corps bike repair guy is coming (I’m excited for that because the kids have totally messed up my gears). Tuesday I have nothing planned, but Wednesday I have a Peer Educator course. After my course I will bike into Notse so that Ashley and I can work on our Peace Corps Partnership budget so that we can get that online before Christmas.
In three weeks from tomorrow I will be in Italy with Jorge! Yay! I hope those three weeks go by quickly!
11/18/08
The Tuesday of my college friend, Kim’s, arrival, I took an early morning bush taxi to Lome from Notse. I arrived mid-morning and met Effoh at a gas station near the Lome drop-off. We continued to the house where he is now living – by route taxi, and foot through a sandy maze of streets – in a neighborhood of Lome I have never frequented. He lives quite far from Kodjoviecope, where the Peace Corps office is located, in a spacious compound that must house some forty plus people. It was chance and luck that brought him there. The man who had promised to find him a room in Lome had placed him with a fetisher where Effoh, being Christian, was not at all comfortable. He couldn’t eat any of the food that the man prepared because it was killed over the sacrificial stone and he was having bad dreams. As he explored the neighborhood one morning he happened on his cousin (Mana’s sister) selling bouillie outside of her house and she invited him to stay with them. At least three generations live in the compound, all one family with ties to Avassikpe. As I entered the compound, I said “agoo” as is customary in Ewe and was met with hoots of appreciation. For the rest of the day, the mother-in-law recounted the story of how I said “agoo” upon entering the compound (it takes so little to please them! =0). They were tickled to death by my meager knowledge of Ewe and were extremely welcoming. Effoh and I talked for a while and then I talked with some of the women in the compound and played with one of the five-month-old twins. Neither Mana’s sister or her husband were present when I arrived. Mana’s sister was at church. They attend a church that I have never heard of – the Celestial Church of Christ (I think) – and she was there praying. Her second youngest child is sick with stomach pains and has been staying at the church for over a month now in hopes that the holy space and prayer will heal him. The members of the church wear flowing white dresses or robes (it kind of reminds me of the ethnographic videos I have seen of Afro-Brazilian or Haitian synchronized (animist-Christian) spiritual practices) and take their shoes off before entering the sanctuary. They are apparently know for their power to heal through prayer and holy water. Mana’s sister’s husband was at work. He does the metal work at construction sites.
I met Mana’s sister as she took a break from prayer between 12:30 and 2:30. She seemed very nice, although a little distracted as is understandable considering the sickenss of her son. She has four children, all boys. The oldest is, I think, thirteen and the youngest nine months old.
Because going all the way to Kodjoviecope and then back to the airport at 6:30 to pick up Kim seemed like a waste of money, I decided to stay at Effoh’s house until it was time to go to the airport. Around five, after eating rice prepared for me by a young girl from Avassikpe who had come to Lome to escape the monotony of the village, we spontaneously decided to go to Elise’s house (Effoh’s school friend from Notse who is also now in Lome attending university), pick her up, and continue to the airport together. Unfortunately, it was getting dark as we neared her house and we got hopelessly lost. After many phone calls and much wandering, she came to us on a moto. It was getting late and I was getting anxious. There is nothing worse than arriving in a strange country, where you don’t speak the language, and having no one meet you. It inevitably causes a feeling of panic and I didn’t want to provoke that panic in Kim after she had come half way around the world to see me.
As we pulled into the airport I thought I saw her. It was like a movie. I ran up to this girl who was bent over her luggage, rummaging in a pocket, and yelled, “Kim!” But it wasn’t her. Somewhat embarrassed, but even more relieved, I went inside to the receiving area and less than five minutes later she walked out of those mirrored doors looking fantastic as usually. We hugged, got out of the way, and hugged again. Amidst our non-stop chatter I introduced her to Elise and Effoh and we went to get a cab to Kodjoviecope. We first dropped Kim’s stuff off at Mammy’s and then when to a bar christened “the cheap bar” by volunteers. It was the first time that I was placed in the translator role. Usually Effoh is translating for me (from Ewe into French), but because Elise and Effoh don’t speak English and Kim doesn’t speak French, I had to translate everything both ways. It was nice though. We chatted about Kim’s trip (before coming to Togo she had traveled through Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Turkey), about school and career interests, about romantic relationships, about how Kim and I met and how Effoh, Elise and I met, etc. It was nice. Kim is the ideal guest; I told her she can come visit me anytime, anywhere and I mean it. She is friendly, social, adventurous, willing to try new things, a good sport, flexible, not too clingy. Perfect. It was such a fun visit. Tuesday night we talked until midnight and then finally showered and went to bed.
11/19/08
Wednesday morning I had a few things to do around the bureau. Strangely, there were no other volunteers there; it is almost always crowded! We checked mail and visited the MedUnit (I got a flu shot and an HIV test. I asked for the HIV test. Effoh had been telling me the day before that he had to have a medical exam and an HIV test to register at the University. He was going to pick his results up on Wednesday and was a little nervous about it; he asked me if I was HIV positive or negative and I answered automatically, “negative,” but then started second guessing myself because of an incident in which I came in contact with someone else’s blood and later realized that I had a small cut on my thumb. Usually, if someone gets hurt, I talk them through taking care of their injury (because, as a PCV, I’m not allowed to care directly for people), but this man had cut himself with a coupcoup and was spurting blood and didn’t speak French and my Ewe isn’t good enough to communicate in that sort of situation. I tried to explain in Ewe, but ended up just putting pressure on it myself and I got a little blood on my hands. Anyway, I just asked to have the test to ease my mind and it came back negative, but Ashley says that unless the contact was more that six months ago, it isn’t 100% reliable. So . . . my mind still isn’t completely at rest).
Midmorning we left Lome in a bush taxi and arrived in Notse just in time to go have fufu at Bar Marantha with Ashley. As we walked to the restaurant, I was feeling nauseous, but then Jorge called me and told me that he had been granted the visa to Italy (YAY!!) and so I was then very very happy, albeit still nauseous. I’m not sure why I ate lunch anyway, but I did, and then I had to rush off to my Peer Educator course in Agbatitoe. Kim accompanied me (very nice of her). The class was much more successful than the first. I had never seen the woman teacher, who is my counterpart for this course, teach a class, but I was very pleased with what I saw on Wednesday and it made me feel more relaxed about letting go of the reins a little. I now know that she takes the class seriously, prepares for it well, and doesn’t feed the students false information. She taught the first part of the class and I taught the second. The students participated a little more than last week, so that was good.
After the class we watched a bit of a soccer game and then hopped into a taxi and headed back to Notse. We went to ADAC to rescue Ashley from a meeting with her homologues and then I left Ashley and Kim at the bar with Jake (the volunteer in Tohoun who was also in town) and went to the internet to organize the buying of Togo-Italy tickets for Jorge and myself (Yay! Yay! Yay!). The tickets were still available and so my Mom bought two tickets for $1700. What a relief! I love it when everything falls into place! I only wish I knew it was all going to turn out from the beginning so I wouldn’t lose so much sleep over it! I am extremely excited about meeting Jorge in Italy and spending Christmas and New Years with his Mom (I haven’t spent time with his Mom in more than five years) and finally having a set date for our reunion: December 21st. YAY! Jorge arrives in Rome late on December 19th, but I couldn’t find a ticket leaving Lome until the 20th, so the 21st it is. Either he’ll meet me in the airport in Rome, or he will go ahead to Milan (to start getting quality time in with his Mom) and I will meet him there. My plane gets into Rome at 10 something in the morning, so I would have time to get to Milan before dark. We will see. I kind of want him to meet me at the airport in Rome, but I also think he should make the most of his time with his Mom, so . . .
Thursday
On Thursday Kim and I got a late start biking out to Jerome’s village, but she was a good sport even though it was terribly hot. Jerome, of course, treated us to a wonderful day and wonderful food. Soon after we arrived we ate fufu and then we chatted and rested our stomachs before going to visit a sodabe distillery. I think it is neat for people to try palm juice, then palm wine and then sodabe and taste the different degrees of fermentation and distillation and see the process. Palm trees are so useful and Jerome and I got into a discussion as to why people in my village don’t plant more palm trees. My area is largely deforested and palm tree products– indoor brooms, outdoor brooms, red palm oil (made from the palm fruit), white palm oil (made from the palm kernel), palm wine, sodabe, fencing, baskets – are expensive (because there aren’t many trees even though most people own their land and could easily plant them).
Our departure from Zitsou (Jerome’s village) was delayed because we had to go greet the chief and eat the beans and gari that Jerome’s wife had prepared. He really wanted us to spend the night, and lay on a bit of guilt when I refused, but finally accepted our thanks and allowed us to take our leave. I felt that we would be more comfortable at my house where I have a latrine and my own space and where no one would be bending over backwards to boil water for us to drink and take care of our every need.
We decided to take the “short-cut” to my village to avoid the dangers of the route national (big speeding trucks). It is a small path that, although shorter, takes about the same amount of time to bike because it is somewhat rough terrain. It is prettier though and we biked through the sunset, arriving in Avassikpe just after dark.
Of course the children were very excited by our arrival, but they eventually calmed down and left us alone to shower, eat pineapple and install ourselves under the paillote to chat and be cool.
Friday
Friday morning we made the rounds greeting everyone and their mother, father, brother, sister, grandmother, aunt, uncle and cat. And the chief too. And Lili and the Infirmier (whom everyone calls “Major”). Then we rested (greeting people is exhausting!).
After a bit, DaJulie came to my door with a tiny kitten in her hand. It’s eyes weren’t even open yet. She handed it to me and told me that she had found it in the field and that its mom was dead. We went back to her house and she brought out three more identical kittens. She asked me what she could do. I said she should try to feed them milk. She said she didn’t have any milk. I didn’t want to say that I would take them and feed them because I didn’t want to get stuck with them, but when Parfait picked up one of the kittens and dropped it, I realized that their only chance at survival was if I removed them from the clumsy grasp of children. I got someone to make it clear that I was only taking the kittens to feed them not to keep them (Gizmo is enough of a hassle!) and then Kim and I carted them off to the house. I made up a solution of powdered milk, found an eyedropper and tried to feed them. Three of them started to suck on the eyedropper easily and hungrily, but the forth took a bit of coaxing. By the second feeding (Tig had advised us to feed them every two hours and then wipe their butts with a damp cloth so that they could pee and poo) they were all eating. I love it how they curl their tongues around the eye-dropper and suck the milk out! Mostly they just ate and slept and for the next three days our activities were punctuated by the feedings and but wipings. Somehow Kim got stuck with the butt wiping job. When we left on Sunday, I showed DaJulie how to feed them and wipe their butts, gave her the rest of my powdered milk, the eye-dropper, and some filtered water, and told the children that they were not allowed to touch them. I hope they are still alive when I get home.
Late Friday morning we went to the market. Kim bought three pagnes and we got soja and bean beignets for lunch. We were going to make sweet potato koliko, but the food we bought at the market was more than enough.
We spent the afternoon sitting under my paillote catching up on each others’ lives and future plans (the last time we saw each other was at Feb Graduation at Middlebury in February ’07). I thought that it would be interesting (she was also an anthropology major) to chill in my village and get a taste of village life; I just hope she wasn’t bored. Had she planned to be in country two weeks, we could have traveled more, but with just one week we risked spending the bulk of the time cramped in a bush taxi. Anyway, I enjoyed it and hope she did too.
Friday evening we walked to Midojicope and brought two of her pagnes to Mana to be made into wrap skirts.
Saturday
On Saturday we had tentatively planned to go with DaMarie to the field to pick soja, just for a few hours to witness the process, but it never ended up happening. We made lunch together – moringa, sesame, pâte sauce – I made her work crushing the tomatoes and moringa leaves with my crushing rock, and were going to eat it with pâte but the miller wasn’t around and I didn’t have any corn flour. We ended up eating it with rice which was good too.
Sophie’s mom came through Avassikpe on her way to Notse to take Pelagie (the eleven month old little girl who only weighs 4.7 kilos) to the hospital. I had tried to convince Mamane (Sophie’s mom, Effoh’s sister) to take her because I was/am afraid that she has a medical condition that prevents her from swallowing or sucking easily. For a while I debated accompanying them so that the staff at the Notse hospital would take the case more seriously (sad, but true), but decided against it. She stopped through again later that evening on her way back to Komlacope (her husband’s village) and said that the doctor’s hadn’t found anything irregular with her esophagus or heart, but had prescribed an appetite stimulant. Hopefully it will work. I am so worried about her development (or lack thereof).
Late Saturday afternoon we walked out to my moringa field, but the rest of the day was again spent in my place of choice: under my paillote. It was so nice to talk to a friend who has known me for so long.
We spent a lot of time talking about Italy (Kim studied abroad in Italy for a semester) and the places I should visit, but then Jorge’s mom called and, when I told her our arrival and departure dates, she expressed disappointment at the shortness of our stay. I thought a month was a pretty good amount of time (it eats up all the vacation days I have accrued to this point), but apparently she was hoping for more and I got the impression that she would like us to stay close to Milan for the majority of our visit. At first I was disappointed, but then I tried to look at it from an unselfish perspective and understand that she hasn’t seen her only child for three years and that she doesn’t know when she will see him again. I think this trip needs to be more about her than about Italy and even if I don’t get to travel all around Italy and see a lot of the sites, Milan is Italy and it is going to be amazing. AMAZING.
Sunday
Sunday morning we woke up early to go on a walk before church. I made Kim sit through church so that she would get a couple more drops for her bucket, but it was long and tiring and somewhat less animated than usual.
After church we made a sweet potato and egg scramble for lunch and then rested a bit before taking motos to Agbatit and (after a significant wait) catching a car to Atakpame. Once in the car, we arrived quickly in Atakpame, but were held up by a parade in honor of a Catholic holiday. There was a huge crowd and as we were waiting for the road to become passable, we heard a rumor that a car had hit and killed one of the participants in the parade. I’m not sure if that is true or not, maybe the person was just injured, but later, as we tried to make our way through the crowd on foot, I again heard murmurings about someone having been hit by a car. Yikes. On the other side of the throng of people we hopped in another car to take us closer to the transit house.
I was rather hoping that there would be a few nice volunteers for Kim to talk to at the Atakpame maison (she is considering applying to Peace Corps!), but there weren’t many people there. We dropped off our stuff and went to Pentagon for a nice, quiet dinner for two. That bar/restaurant is a favorite of PCVs because it is on the third story of a building and has a nice panoramic view of Atakpame.
Monday
Monday morning we had egg sandwiches and then went to the market and walked around a bit before going back to the house, picking up our stuff and heading to Notse. We got lucky and had a relatively quick, smooth, not crowded ride to Notse.
Upon arrival I immediately tore into a birthday box from my parents and found 8 pounds of cheese (HEAVEN!), oreos, nutrigrain bars and candy and the brainstorming started. What to make . . .? We decided on fajitas: tortillas, chicken, salsa and CHEESE. I headed off to the market to buy supplies and when I got back put Ashley and Kim to work while I looked at the pictures from Elizabeth’s wedding (a friend from high school who got married last May). We ate around 4:00 and it was delicious! (Thank you Mom and Dad!) – One of the best meals I’ve had in Togo. Absolutely delicious!
Tuesday
Tuesday morning we headed off to Lome, arriving there mid-morning. We checked into Mammy’s and then went to the Bureau to see if we could change Kim’s ticket to Thursday (she was supposed to fly out Tuesday for a week in London, but we wanted her to stay and spend Thanksgiving with us). We eventually gave up, went and had the best burgers in Lome for lunch, and then came back to the Bureau to try again. Finally we found a number and I called and found out that she could change her ticket for 45 Euros (less than she would spend in London in two days!) and so we b-lined it over to the AirFrance office to make the change. I hadn’t really thought it would be possible, but was super glad it was.
That evening we went to the Cheap Bar with another volunteer and polished off the two pound block of cheddar cheese that we had started devouring the day before.
Wednesday
Wednesday morning I walked downtown and went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to see if I could get the man I spoke with several months ago to “make good” on his promise to write Jorge a letter so that the immigration officers at the airport would give him a one year visa right off the bat instead of a seven-day visa. It sounded too good to be true and it was. Apparently he recalled promising nothing of the sort and told me that Jorge would either have to apply for a visa from Rome or get a visa upon arrival in country and then apply to have it extended. He said that if Peace Corps writes a letter authorizing Jorge to stay with me, then it would be easy for him to get a visa for a year or two.
That stressed me out because I wasn’t sure Peace Corps would write a letter. Later that afternoon I went to speak with my Country Director. I asked her if we could get started on the background check portion of the “intent to marry” process now, before Jorge arrives in country, so that it will expedite the process. I feel as though my Country Director wouldn’t feel comfortable writing him a letter for a visa extension until he had been officially cleared through a background check. The Peace Corps manual that says that a volunteer may marry a third country national while in service IF the intended spouse satisfactorily passes a background check (the form is the same as that filled out by a person applying to a Public Trust position) and is approved by the Country Director with respect to three main points: that the intended spouse agrees to live the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer (no marrying and moving into an expat house with a pool and three cars; not a problem in our case); that the intended spouse shows adequate knowledge of the host country language and culture (Jorge doesn’t speak French, but neither do a lot of volunteers when they arrive in country, he has already started learning and will surely pick it up fast because of Spanish and he did his thesis on Ghana so I don’t think this will be a problem); and that the marriage will not interfere with the volunteer’s work in village (if anything I think Jorge will motivate me to do my work better because he will get me excited about it all over again and my village is very excited for his arrival).
I am pretty sure we can get “cleared” for marriage, but what I am not sure is whether or not we have to get married right away once we have been “cleared”. It is all so complicated what with Togo marriage laws (we need all sorts of documents – birth certificate, certificate of residence (3 months in Togo), premarital medical attestation, certificate of celibacy (what?), and a sworn notarized statement of eligibility to marry (is it this hard to get married in the States?) – and with the U.S. green card application process. I don’t know if it is better to get married in Togo and apply for the green card from here or apply for a Fiancée Visa and get married as soon as we get back to the States. There are pros and cons to both, but I guess it mostly hinges on whether or not we want to do a third year in Togo. We will see. It will be easier to talk about what we want to do when we are together and when Jorge has experienced Togo a little bit.
Moving on. Because Kim was staying two more days, she had time to accompany me to a HUGE shopping center called Lome 2 or Adjzrenawe (something like that) where they have piles and piles of second hand clothes. I was extremely glad she could be there with me because it would have been no fun on my own (I was a little nervous because I had never been there before, but it turned out not to be as crowded or chaotic as I expected) and because she served as my mirror, telling me what pants looked good and what pants didn’t. On my list were pants for Italy (I have no full length pants) and running shoes (my hiking shoes give me blisters when I try to walk in them). It was fun and I ended up buying six pairs of pants – one brown linen, two pairs of jeans, one pair of black and grey striped dressy pants, and two pairs of corduroys, one olive green and one khaki – for 6,000 ($12) and Asics running shoes for 5,000 ($10). The running shoes are, I think, $90 shoes in the states and are in very good condition.
After shopping we went to lunch with Ashley and then to the Bureau and then to the Beach Bar for drinks and the sunset. By this time there were a lot of volunteers in Lome and I was glad that Kim got the opportunity to talk to a wide variety of volunteers with a wide variety of experiences.
In the evening we went briefly to another and then camped out at the Bureau on internet until it closed.
Thursday
Unfortunately, Kim woke up Thursday morning with stomach issues and ended up spending the morning resting at Mammys. Ashley again refused to accompany me shopping (it isn’t her thing) and so I called Effoh to see if he’d like to meet me at Lome 2 for a second round of shopping (on the list were sweaters and long sleeve shirts and dress shoes). He agreed.
This time I made my way there for cheap (450 cFA instead of the 1500 I paid the day before) using route taxis and by the time Effoh arrived had already found a good sweater stand and picked a bunch of “possibles.” The man who owns the house Effoh is staying at (Mana’s sister’s husband) brought him to Lome 2 on his moto because he was afraid he’d get lost in the big city all by himself. I told him that he should let him get lost because that is the only way he is going to learn his way around. If someone is always driving him everywhere, he will never learn. The man was super nice, but it was awkward having someone I didn’t know following me around as I shopped. It made me feel rushed; I didn’t want to waste his time. We went back to the sweater stand where the man was holding my “picks” and I rooted through the pile again and then bought 17 sweaters (excessive, I know) for 4,000 ($8). Crazy cheap right? I bought all the ones that I thought might be good because I didn’t feel comfortable trying them on, Kim, my mirror wasn’t present so it would have been pointless, and figured I’d try them on at home and just bring my favorites to Italy. Then we embarked on the search for shoes which took the bulk of the morning. I wanted the Dansko shoes that everyone wore at Middlebury and that I could never afford (they cost around $120). I found one pair that was too small. Another pair that was reddish. And then another pair that was the right size and in relatively good condition except for a tiny slit in the toe (as though someone had stabbed it with a pocket knife). We continued looking, but finally went back for the pair with the slit in the toe and I bargained them down to 1,000 ($2). How cool is that? To thank Effoh for accompanying me and carrying my huge bag of sweaters around the whole morning, I told him to look for some shirts and eventually we found him some nice button up shirts and bargained them down to 4 for 1,000.
I then had to hurry back because I was going to be late for Thanksgiving Dinner at our Country Director’s house. Kim was feeling a little bit better, but not well enough to eat, so that was a pity. The food was good, but I didn’t stuff myself like I did last year (also a good thing). The company was very nice and I was glad to be with a lot of my friends and distracted from missing my family. Kim fit in perfectly and everyone kept assuming that she was a volunteer. I really hope she decides to go into the Peace Corps, I think she would make a great volunteer. After Thanksgiving dinner, we went to the Bureau and eventually hitched a ride to the airport with a Peace Corps driver who was taking a trainee to the airport (she was ET-ing). I hate good-bye’s, but it was still super wonderful to have Kim visit, I just wish she could have stayed a month =0).
Friday
I spent Friday morning running around getting an electronic copy of my passport and sending it to Afriqiyah Air (the Libyan airline Jorge and I are flying between Togo and Italy). They refused to issue my ticket before having a copy of my passport as a guarantee of my citizenship (unfortunately I had left my passport in village, but fortunately Ashley suggested that Peace Corps might have a copy and sure enough they did). Eventually I emailed them a copy and they issued my ticket so that is all taken care of and a huge relief.
I then messed around on the internet for the rest of the morning. We didn’t end up leaving Lome until around 4:00 and it took us several hours to actually get on the road (sometimes you’re lucky and sometimes you aren’t), so we didn’t arrive in Notse until well after dark. Ashley and I were both exhausted and just showered and went to bed.
Saturday
I was planning to go back to village today, but, big surprise, I’m still here and it is now 5:30, too late to make it back before dark. I hope my kittens are still alive.
This morning I went to the market and bought some socks for Italy (too bad I sent all my socks home with my parents) and supplies for village. Ash and I ate some of my canned tomato sauce over pasta for lunch and then I started writing (better to do it while it is still more or less fresh in my mind). I will head back to village early tomorrow morning because they are having a fundraiser at church that I should attend. On Monday I have an Ewe lesson and the Peace Corps bike repair guy is coming (I’m excited for that because the kids have totally messed up my gears). Tuesday I have nothing planned, but Wednesday I have a Peer Educator course. After my course I will bike into Notse so that Ashley and I can work on our Peace Corps Partnership budget so that we can get that online before Christmas.
In three weeks from tomorrow I will be in Italy with Jorge! Yay! I hope those three weeks go by quickly!
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Ash and Dan's Peace Corps Partnership Cover Letter: Moringa for Improved Nutrition
Hello Everyone!
For those of you who haven't heard, "Ash and Dan" is the latest in a line of famous duos, up there with Batman and Robin, but instead of fighting crime, we fight malnutrition (oh yeah, and we're both women). It is unusual for two Peace Corps volunteers from the same training group (we are both Community Health and AIDs Prevention volunteers) to be placed near each other, but luckily for us we are only separated by an hour bike ride. Both interested in a tree called Moringa (google it!), whose leaves are packed with vitamins and minerals, we collaborated right from the start. We each saw a need for a response to nutritional deficits in our respective communities: Ash in the large town of Notsé and Dan in the small rural community of Avassikpé. In collaboration with a local non-governmental organization working for community health and development, Ashley started a plantation of 1,200 Moringa trees with a group of people living with HIV/AIDs (PLWHA). At the same time, Danielle planted 1,000 trees with her Village Development Committee. The projects were intended to meet two goals: improved nutrition and income generation for the community.
After attending a Peace Corps conference in Burkina Faso and sharing ideas with volunteers from five West African countries, we realized how important it was to make Moringa available to everyone. Also known as the "Miracle Tree," Moringa is one of nature's most incredible gifts to mankind. We plan to devote the last eight months of our service to promoting Moringa's nutritional benefits in Togo.
Through public service announcements, songs, and talk shows on the local radio station, strategically placed billboards, and a Moringa festival we hope for the heart of our information campaign to become a reality in the region by the end of 2009: "Plant. Eat. Live." ("Plantez. Mangez. Vivez").
Plant. Moringa is a fast growing, resilient tree that can provide an easily affordable, easily accessible and sustainable year round source of leafy greens for local families.
Eat. Gram for gram Moringa leaves contain 7 times the Vitamin C of Oranges, 4 times the Vitamin A of Carrots, 4 times the Calcium of Milk, 3 times the Potassium of Bananas and 2 times the Protein of Yogurt. In addition, Moringa leaves contain all the essential amino acids and, if incorporated into the local diet, could respond to many nutritional deficits.
Live. A cornerstone of good health, adequate nutrition is essential for a good quality of life. Moringa not only has the potential to improve the lives of people, but it is an indefinitely renewable resource that could help provide food security in upcoming times of global food crisis.
The community and their needs are the driving force behind this project and they will participate in every aspect of the design and implementation. In an impressive show of support, community members ranging from hospital staff, radio producers, musicians, traditional and elected authorities, and motivated individuals are donating their time, talent and services, covering 38% of our overall budget with community contributions and leaving our Peace Corps Partnership request for donations at an achievable $3,531.00. If only 100 people contribute about $35.00, the knowledge of Moringa's impressive nutritional benefits will be disseminated throughout this entire village in Togo.
"How can I help?", you say? What a wonderful question. Thank you for asking. =0)
If you are interested in supporting our project please go to www.peacecorps.gov and click on "Donate Now," and then on "Donate to Volunteers Projects" and finally, search for Togo and Danielle Naugle. Shortcut: https://www.peacecorps.gov/
Akpé kaka ("Thank you very much" in Ewe),
Efe nuyie loo ("Happy New Year")
Ash and Dan
Thursday, November 27, 2008
11/13/08 through 11/17/08
11/13/08 through 11/17/08; Highlights =0)
The past four days of my life, from Thursday through Sunday, were spent cleaning my house from top to bottom. Sometimes I think small houses are harder to keep clean than big houses because one often has just as much STUFF and so floor space inevitably becomes storage space making it hard to walk much less sweep or mop. And who wants to dust when cleaning one thing means dirtying another? It is just starting to be Harmattan, so I barely hit the end of my cleaning window; for the next couple of months, as clouds of dust roll in and over, cleaning won’t be worth the effort. Even now, dust already coats my shelves.
One of the great things about visitors is how they force you to clean your house. I probably never would have gathered the momentum to engage in battle with the spiders if it hadn’t been for the impending visit of a close college friend. The excitement of the visit dulls the pain of cleaning and provides an objective above and beyond just having a clean house (which sometimes isn’t enough to get one out of the hammock).
Breaking the monotony of my cleaning was a visit from one of my neighbor’s, Tseviato’s older sister. She asked me for some band-aids. When I asked if she was hurt, she pulled her pagne down, revealing her breasts and told me that she wanted to put band-aids over her nipples in an a attempt to trick Parfait (her two year old) into not breast feeding. I guess she wants to wean him and he is fighting it. It was hilarious. She put the band-aids over her nipples then and there and pretended that they hurt, but she wasn’t very convincing because she couldn’t stop laughing. Parfait crossed his little arms over his chest and pouted, not knowing what to make of it all. In the end, it wasn’t very effective because I saw him hanging off her breast later in the day.
The only other thing worth recounting was a conversation that I had with Jerome today during my Ewe lesson (by the way, I forgot to mention that he has started holding Ewe literacy classes for three village women before my Ewe class. We are only in the third week, but it is exciting to watch women who have never been to school begin to read and write). The women were still under my paillote after their literacy class when Jerome and I sat down to eat. After praying, he stood up and said that he forgot to “dire aux femmes qu’on a gagne un peu” (tell the women that we had “won” a bit to eat). He went to the door and called out to them to come and eat and they responded “nezo,” as expected. This exchange initiated a conversation on the very peculiar Togolese habit of always inviting people to share in your meal if you happen to be eating (anything from peanuts to a full meal) in the presence of others. As Jerome explained, it is customary always to invite others to join you (“mangions” – “let’s eat”). For the most part, however, the offer is an empty one. People don’t expect you to accept. This makes it particularly confusing for an outsider to know when an offer to partake in a meal is genuine. I was once criticized, after refusing such a call to eat, for never wanting to eat “their” food, but according to Jerome, I was right to refuse. A good rule of thumb, he says, is that if someone goes out of their way to make you aware of the fact that they are going to be eating and to invite you to join, then you know the invitation is sincere and that you should accept (for example, when Tsevi, Lili, or Effoh came to my house to call me to their homes to eat). If you happen upon people eating, however, it is obvious that your presence was not taken into consideration when the calculations of how much to prepare were made and you should refuse. If you were to happen upon someone eating and accept their invitation, even if you only took a few bites, the symbolic gesture of desiring to share a meal with someone means that you hold that person particularly dear. The logic is that you must really cherish the person to stop whatever you were doing and accompany the person during a meal however meager it may be. Jerome advised me not to accept casual invitations, however, because if I accept from one person and refuse another people will think I am playing favorites (so complicated!). After Jerome explained the custom, I explained my inability to invite people to eat unless the offer is genuine. I know it is the culturally correct thing to do, but I can’t get the words out of my mouth unless I really want the person to share my food. Mostly, if I have only prepared enough for myself, I don’t feel it is right to offer what I don’t have. What if they accept? I know it is unlikely, but when one invites someone to eat, from my point of view, one should have prepared enough so that the guest can eat his or her fill. I would find it terribly embarrassing to invite someone to eat, have them unexpectedly accept, and then not have enough food to share. In my head, I wouldn’t be able to help chastising myself: “why on earth did you offer if you didn’t have enough?” But, for a Togolese person, there is always enough to share – Tsevi once told me that if I shared a meal with him, he could eat more (that goes directly against an American, mathematical sense of logic, but makes total sense if you think about how sharing a meal with someone increases the enjoyment and makes eating more of a social event than just a means of satiating a basic bodily need).
You might commend the Togolese behavior as remarkable hospitality (and I wouldn’t completely throw that thought out the window), but when Jerome elaborated on the “why?” behind the practice of always inviting others to share your food, he likened it to the practice of greeting people you pass on the street. He said, if something happens to you while you are eating and you didn’t offer to share your food with the people around you, would they help you? Or, if you have an accident on the road and you didn’t greet the person you most recently passed, would he help you? And so, the way in which he explained it betrays an essentially selfish motive and harks back to a discussion I was having with another volunteer a couple of weeks ago in which we were debating the question: Are any human actions truly altruistic or does everything ultimately boil down to self interest?
9/30/08 through 11/11/08
Um . . . so . . . October, eh? Usually it is one of my favorite months, the trees are changing colors, it’s my birthday, Halloween, lots of candy . . . the only constant this year was my birthday, but even though my friends tried to make it special, it didn’t really feel like my birthday.
This year October was hijacked pretty much entirely by AIDS Ride. In the beginning of the month, Ashley and I took motos and rode (as passengers) the entire
Just after spending 15,000 cFA a piece (≈$37.50) to moto our route in final preparation we learned from one of our national AIDS Ride coordinators that the budget had been cut and that PSI was cracking down on spending and legitimacy of receipts because last year they were audited. In hashing it out with an ONG that PSI hired to make sure the AIDS Ride budget reports were audit-proof this year, we discovered that the problem wasn’t budget cuts, but rather imprecise and completely lacking line items. Last years coordinators assured us that the budged was adequate and so this year’s national coordinators submitted and identical budget. Last year, however, regional coordinators had the freedom to move money around to accommodate gaps and deficits, but this year PSI wasn’t tolerating sloppiness. They demanded legitimate receipts (meaning with the name, address and phone number of the retailer printed at the top and with the retailer’s personalized stamp) or money back. For certain purchases, like the 30,000 500mL bags of pure water and the gas for the chase car, that wasn’t a problem, but for most of our food it was impossible. The women selling peanut butter in the market don’t have a receipt book at all, much less one with a proper heading and a stamp. We were lucky if they even knew how to sign their own name and had some women just scribble in the signature box, make an “x” or a funny squiggle and we had to present those receipts to the ONG guy working with us. He would just shake his head and repeat over and over “ce n’est pas bon” (it’s no good). For transportation, they wanted us to go to the syndicates and get officially stamped receipts; in our better moments Ashley and I joked that next year they need to include a budget line for getting receipts because when you need a receipt and have to go through the most official channels, everything costs more. In our worse moments, we stressed that we were going to lose large quantities of money to AIDS Ride and end up giving money back to PSI that we had spent but didn’t have “legitimate” receipts for. What you will learn, however, when working in a country like
It was extremely frustrating and stressful at times, but in the end a great learning experience. I have never received any formal instruction on how to prepare a budget and report on expenditures and I learned what constitutes a legitimate receipt, what can cause problems in activity reports (for example participants initialing instead of signing), and how to bend the rules just a little bit. I spent the morning of my birthday nervously fidgeting in the office of the ONG’s financial expert as he reviewed our receipts and reports, but it all worked out and Ashley and I were reimbursed for the thousands of francs we had fronted for the project.
Amid all the budget concerns, Ashley and I had to organize for a chase car, buy mats for sleeping, arrange for food (in some villages no food was available on the streets and so we asked a woman to prepare us beans and rice), stock up on water for 18 people over five days and make last minute homologue substitutions. We were particularly stressed by the condition of the roads as we moto-ed them – after two months of rains and traffic they were gutted with ruts that in some places were several feet deep. We bought a shovel in anticipation of having to dig the car out of the mud on more than one occasion, and discussed the possibility of having to cancel our AIDS Ride half way through because of impassible roads (that would have been catastrophic for our budget report, not to mention all the people we would disappoint).
The night before biking out, a torrential downpour left me sleepless with nervousness about the condition of the roads, but in the end AIDS Ride went more smoothly than we could have hoped. It didn’t rain all week and the car only got stuck once (that mishap was the driver’s fault for recklessly and forcefully reversing the car to scatter school children). All of our sensibilizations took place more or less on time and with a significant audience. No one greeted us with blank stares that soundlessly inquired “what are you doing here?” Everyone was prepared to receive us, in some places with music, food, and dance, and listen to our message. Our sensibilizations, even our first, went really well. The volunteers and homologues took the task at hand seriously and made an effort to make every sensibilization a good one. Each sensibilization lasted about two hours and included lots of questions, games, skits and demonstrations. We began with basic questions to test the knowledge of our audience and then explained the difference between HIV and AIDS. That was followed by a game – in which the body is compared to a chick, the immune system to mother hens, HIV to a snake, and opportunistic infections to hawks – to illustrate how HIV attacks a persons immune system making him/her particularly vulnerable to common diseases. We continued with the modes of transmission and sketches to illustrate the ABCDE’s (Abstinence, Bonne Fidelite (faithful), Condom, Depistage (HIV test), Education) – modes of prevention. Then my infirmier (one of our homologues) explained how multiple concurrent sexual partners facilitate the spread of AIDS. New studies show that having more than one partner at a time (as opposed to many consecutive partners over the course of a lifetime) greatly increases the spread of AIDS because directly after infection a person is more infectious. If that person is having sex with five people at that time, he/she will likely transmit the virus to all five people before he knows he is infected. After “multipartenariat,” we did condom demonstrations, calling both girls and boys out to help us put banana flavored PSI condoms on wooden penises, stressing the need for girls to take responsibility for their own health and future by knowing how to use a condom and by bringing condoms to sexual encounters. Finally, we wrapped up with a sketch and discussion on the effects of discrimination and stigmatization and the answering of questions from the audience. Before leaving we sang a song that evoked, once again, the ABCDE’s (modes of prevention).
It was divided (albeit unintentionally) so that Ashley’s group got most of the village sensibilizations (which tend to be smaller and somewhat simplified due to the lower previous knowledge about HIV/AIDS (in comparison to middle and high school students) and the need to translate into local language) and my group got most of the CEG sensibilizations (from 200 to 500 students at a time). The students were for the most part well behaved, although we had a couple of schools in which the students mocked the volunteers’ French, which was unfortunate, but in general, our sensiblizations were relatively orderly. At two schools we had to stop handing out condoms as rewards for correct answers to questions and active participation during the sensibilization because the students would go wild yelling and laughing each and every time. But we avoided getting mobbed at the end of the sensibilization by giving boxes of condoms to the directors of the schools and instructing them to divide the condoms among their students. In doing it that way, we run the risk that the directors will “bouf” the condoms (keep them all for themselves, sell them, etc.), but we tried to minimize that risk by announcing how many boxes of condoms we were leaving with the director at the end of the sensibilization and threatening that we would send a volunteer (we have three volunteers on our route) to ask CEG students if they received condoms. It worked better than trying to hand out condoms to 500 yelling, pushing, shoving students and I am pretty confident that they will have all received at least one or two. You do what you can.
In my group I had a bit of an issue with a homologue (not my infirmier, but another homologue) who repeatedly went against my instructions not to hand out condoms at the end of a sensibilization. The first time I asked him about it, he lied and said he hadn’t handed out condoms. Then one of my volunteers said they had seen him handing out condoms and then I myself saw him handing out condoms and called him out on it. He acted all remorseful, insisting that he would go to a boutique and buy condoms to replace the ones he handed out. I retorted that it wasn’t a question of condoms (PSI had given us more than a million condoms), it was a question of following instructions and of how one person’s actions affect the whole group. When one of the members of the team hands out condoms after a sensibilization, the students inevitably swarm the other volunteers begging for condoms. Of course everyone has a sob story about how they don’t have the money to buy condoms, but at one point or another each person has to decide that their life is worth 25cFA for a condom because we can’t provide a lifetime supply. What angered me most is that I know he wasn’t handing out condoms because the students’ plea touched his heart, but rather because of the “big man on campus” syndrome. Here, as in many other cultures, important people prove their greatness by redistributing resources, and this homologue enjoyed having controlling the distribution of commodity that other people coveted; it made him feel important, special, powerful.
That wasn’t the only issue that I had with this homologue. He came with high recommendations, but I had never met him before AIDS Ride and wouldn’t recommend him again. While very animated and energetic, he butted in during volunteers’ parts of the sensibilization (I wanted everyone to have a chance to participate – AIDS Ride is a great chance for new volunteers to gain confidence – and I wanted my new volunteers to have the same opportunity to participate that I had last year). His attitude worsened over the course of the week and he started biking off ahead or leaving the sensibilization half-way through so that we had to sub-in for his parts, etc. We also had a transportation reimbursement issue. He and another homologue came from the same town but he asked for almost double reimbursement. I told him that I would only reimburse him the official tariff and that if he did, indeed, spend that much getting to and from AIDS Ride, it was his own fault for taking a more expensive route. Needless to say he was not happy. Oh well, you can’t win them all.
Our other homologues were relatively cooperative. I was really happy with my infirmier for the whole of AIDS Ride. He didn’t complain when the other homologues were complaining about the food (apparently bread and rice and beans is not adequate nourishment) or the sleeping arrangements. I wanted to admonish some of the homologues for complaining for going a week without eating pâte when we leave our homes for two years and come to a country where we can’t get any of the foods we are accustomed to. They even had one “free” meal a day that we had given them 500cFA for so they could go find whatever food they liked, but still they complained.
In terms of food and lodging, everything went more or less smoothly. We had a place to stay, a roof over our heads , and showering accommodations every evening. The first night, was the nicest – a new dispensaire. The next two nights were in CEGs and the last night, the worst – a primary school with a dirt floor, a makeshift shower and slimy pond water. The volunteers were really good sports about showering and bathroom arrangements (or lack thereof). No one complained, for which I was thankful. We also had very good luck with our rice and beans. In each of the four places we asked for someone to prepare us rice and beans (no small feat for 18 people) we were met with well prepared and sufficient food. Again, even though the homologues complained, volunteers agreed that rice and beans was probably the most economic and nutritious option. We had a little bit of a problem with breakfast; we had bought one loaf of bread per person per day and twice we ran out because people were consuming more than their allotted amount of bread, but I found bouillie (porridge) ladies to supplement our fare so that no one would go hungry.
We only had one serious accident, a volunteer who on the second day of biking fell off her bike, hitting her head, and momentarily losing consciousness. She wasn’t in my group and I didn’t witness the event, but the MedUnit wanted her in Lome as soon as possible so they could monitor her injuries and recovery and we had no way of getting her there. Besides our chase car, there were no cars on these roads and sending her on a moto was out of the question. There was a bit of discussion as to why our chase car couldn’t take her to Atakpame, but if that had been necessary, we would have had to call off AIDS Ride as our chase car had all our water and supplies and we had other volunteers in delicate states. She stuck it out with us until the second to last day when we finally found a car, but the MedUnit was not pleased and partially because of our AIDS Ride I think, we have been directed to suspend all organized rides until Peace Corps can look into the safety and security issues. What I don’t understand is why Peace Corps didn’t send one of their cars to come pick her up if it was that urgent.
Ashley flipped over her handlebars as well, but in true Ashley style, just got up and continued biking. She had some impressive bruises to show for her fall.
Lastly, we biked with a really great group of volunteers. Although it sometimes felt like I had just adopted ten children (“Danielle, where do I go to the bathroom? Danielle, where’s the toilet paper? Danielle, when will dinner be ready? Danielle, where are the matches, the spoons, etc?”), everyone was a great sport, working together as a team to make things go as smoothly as possible. When you’re trying to organize so many people, everyone’s individual efforts make a huge difference and I am happy to say that all of our volunteers contributed to the success of our AIDS Ride. The volunteers were also vey appreciative of our organizational efforts and as anyone who has ever tried to coordinate anything knows, a little bit of appreciation goes a long way and makes all the headaches worthwhile. And finally, it was a great opportunity to get to know some of the new volunteers (and get to know old volunteers better) that I wouldn’t have had otherwise (because I avoid big social gatherings like the plague). All in all, I am very pleased by how AIDS Ride turned out, but happy that it is over.
After AIDS Ride, I contracted a terrible cough that I am still recovering from. Ashley and I have decided that her weakest link is her digestive system and mine is my respiratory system.
Other than AIDS Ride, what stands out about this October is death and birthdays. I’ll go for birthdays first. One of my stagemate’s (a small enterprise development volunteer) birthday was on the 16th and we gathered in Atakpame to celebrate. It was a nice small gathering that provided a brief respite during the hectic AIDS Ride planning phase. And then, of course, my own birthday – a quarter of a century, yikes. I feel like 25 is really old. Closer to 30 than to 20. I feel like at some point I need to get serious, get a job, make money, get married, start a family, but then another part of me just wants to let it all happen in its own good time and I don’t see a real job or children in my near future. I would like to go to grad school, so . . .
On the Friday after AIDS Ride, Alicia made me (and another volunteer who shares my birthday) a surprise birthday cake and we celebrated with s’mores – it was a really sweet gesture. On my birthday itself, Ashley made me chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast (we were still hanging out in Atakpame due to AIDS Ride budget work) and took me out to dinner, so that was also really nice. I also got a chance to talk with my parents, with Jorge, and with Jorge’s mom – phone calls make any day special – and that was my birthday.
And now for death. I don’t know why, but October was a month for accidents. Jerome told me of a young man who died in a motorcycle accident – he was decapitated as he hit the curb. And then, right before AIDS Ride, Effoh texted me to tell me that two teenagers from my village died in a motorcycle accident. That one really upset me because I knew the boys. I didn’t get the details until much later, but apparently it was their fault because they were driving fast on the route nationale after dark without a headlight. An oncoming car forced them to the side of the road where, for lack of a headlight, they didn’t see a parked truck and ram-ed into it. And yet I still see twelve and thirteen year olds driving their fathers’ motos around village. It drives me crazy. Then, my Ewe lesson two weeks ago was based on another accident in which a young person from Jerome’s village was crushed by a huge teak tree that he was helping to transport. So many needless deaths.
On a different note, a longstanding mystery was resolved during another Ewe lesson. When I make my early morning rounds greeting my neighbors, I use the greeting “etsobedo” meaning that the last time we greeted each other was yesterday. But then, if and when they came by my house later in the morning, they too would greet me with “estobedo” and I couldn’t help but wonder if they had forgotten that we had already greeted each other once that day. Then I witnessed the same exchange one day with Jerome. He went to greet DaJulie and then she came by the house to greet him and when I asked him about it he said that it is a two way street, that if the person really likes and respects you, it is not enough for you to go to their house to greet them, but they should return the gesture and come to your house to greet you. Interesting.
Between AIDS Rides plans, I was also brainstorming an income-generating activity with Effoh. The idea was that I would lend him money to buy some animals (sheep, pigs and chickens) so that he could get into the animal raising business. I made him come up with a project plan and a projected budget with expenditures and conservative estimates of projected revenues. We figured that with a substantial initial investment, if all went well, he could make enough to pay me back in about a year an a half. If I didn’t extend, or if some disease ravished his animals, that would present a problem. (I later learned from Jerome, who’s help I had enlisted in the planning phase because he is someone I trust and an experienced livestock raiser, that one way for people who don’t have money to get into the livestock raising business is to ask a friend or acquaintance who does have animals to give him one to raise. The person is then in charge of feeding and taking care of the animal and the offspring are split between the owner and the person who is raising the animal. It is kind of like the “sharecropping” of animal husbandry except that in this situation, at least when it is Jerome doing the lending, it seems like a pretty advantageous deal for the borrower).
In the end, I was freed from having to make the decision “to lend or not to lend,” because Effoh decided to go to University in
On an entirely different front, the drama with Jorge’s visa to
Changing topics to a more hopeful subject – how about that election? It still fills me with a giddy glow when I think about it. A group of girls got together at a volunteer’s house in Atakpame to watch the election unfold on CNN. It was so exciting and I felt so lucky to have the opportunity to participate in this historic process even from
It is interesting experiencing the election in Africa (
My high from the election was temporarily extinguished by a mishap on the way home from Atakpame. I had brought Giz to Atakpame to get him (FINALLY) vaccinated against rabies. The vaccination itself went well, the vet knew how to hold him and administered the shot successfully on the first try. It was such a relief after the
The next day (and for the next several months I am sure), I had to laugh at myself for crying over my cat (even though I am sure I would cry again were it to happen again) as the Director recounted the incident with all the theatrics typical of a Togolese story-teller to a teacher and the priest. To boot, all the 500+ students at the CEG now call “Gizmo” at me when I pass or ask, in mock concern, “ou est Gizmo?” (where is Gizmo?). Whatever, I am just glad to have him back.
As for what I have going on in village, not much. I am distressed by the fact that the now eleven month old little girl I have been giving Moringa powder to has not gained so much as
Other than that, I will be starting Peer Educator classes tomorrow in conjunction with the woman professor at the CEG in Agbatit. We will be sharing the task so that she can take over the classes when I am no longer present. I hope it will be less of a burden on me and my time this year and, unfortunately, am not particularly excited about it. It is good that I am doing it with someone, though, because she will sub in when I am not present and will allow the class to progress more smoothly.
I hope to start health classes at the primary school in Avassikpe soon. I have 21 health related drawings that a Sunday School at home might help me photocopy so that each student can have a drawing to take home and ideally share the message with their family.
I have been emailing back and forth with a man I met at the Household Water Treatment and Storage Conference in
I spoke at church on Sunday about starting a workshop for married couples; we will see if there is enough interest to actually go through with it.
I am feeling a bit unmotivated and at loose ends. Because AIDS Ride occupied so much of my time in the past couple of months, I didn’t start any new projects in village and now don’t feel as though I have much going on. At least not much that excites me. I might try to organize a HEARTH workshop (ten day long workshop for mothers of under nourished children) in one or two of the villages around Avassikpe, but that will take several months to realize. Ashley and I are also planning a sensibilization campaign for Moringa (using the radio and billboards and a Moringa “festival” or “fair”), but she is busy currently with a different project and isn’t free to work on it yet. Right now I feel as though much of my energy is being drained in missing Jorge and worrying about how and when we will be together again, and I am hoping that his arrival in
I feel like I am just trying to get through the next couple of months (weeks now?) until Jorge gets here and then I will start living again. Is that sad?
To end on a happy note, I have a college friend coming to visit for a week on the 18th of November. It is almost unbelievable that she is coming all the way out here to visit me and I am really touched by the gesture. She will provide a much needed distraction. After her visit and after Thanksgiving, I will hopefully only have three more weeks (if we get visa and airline issues figured out) of suffering left before Jorge and I will be reunited. If the visa to
That’s it for now. Maybe I will be better about writing in the coming weeks, but somehow I doubt it. Later gaters.
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