7/7/07 through 7/11/07

7/7/07/ and 7/8/07

So, just after having spoken with Jorge and told him that I hadn’t cried yet, I broke my record and shed a few tears on Togolese soil, but don’t worry, it didn’t really have anything to do with Jorge except that I was perhaps feeling a little more vulnerable after having spoken with him. What caused my tears was that the guard of the cabine (the man who unlocked the little telephone booth for me) told me that I had used the phone for too long and that lots of people had come to use the phone and gone because I was using the phone and he told me that I owed 600cFA (over a dollar). Even knowing that technically I shouldn’t owe anything because I had just received and not made any calls, I paid him the 600 francs without arguing. Those 600cFA he could probably have just put in his pocket because nothing would have been charged to the phone because I didn’t make a call, but he just wouldn’t leave it at that and kept repeating that lots of people had come to use the phone while I was talking and that I had talked too much. It made me angry because he kept repeating it and repeating it and because I hadn’t been paying attention and I had the door halfway closed, I couldn’t argue with him and tell him that he was lying, that no one had come to use the phone, but in the half an hour I was sitting there waiting for Jorge to call me (I arrived early) NO ONE came to use the phone. He made me so angry I asked him exactly WHAT he was charging me for since I didn’t make a phone call and the number that ticks as you make a call (to calculate what you owe) hadn’t changed at all. He fumbled a bit and said that it would be 100cFA for ten minutes (I think he pulled that number out of his ass), so then I said, well I only talked for 30 minutes so give me back 300cFA and he did. At the end of this argument another one of the trainees walked in. She was going to use the phone and then left because she saw that he was not being friendly – I couldn’t help a few tears. I don’t like confrontations. Anyway, I am in my tech house right now and I am going to stay here and update you on yesterday and today because last night I watched half of a movie with my family and so I ran my computer battery down and couldn’t write to you and tonight I am going to watch the other half with them so I want to write to you before.

Yesterday morning we had a session called “Sharing American and Togolese Culture.” We performed the skit that we had prepared for our host families. In our skit we emphasized how sometimes in American culture the men stay at home more and cook and the women go out and work at offices. We also had fun with the place of pets in the American family (some of the trainees have been having a hard time with animal rights issues because they have seen their families abusing animals – for example: catching a little bird and giving it to the children to play with – the children, not knowing how to handle such a tiny and fragile animal, end up hurting it or keeping kittens in bags). In our skit, one of the girls played a dog who slept on the bed and was well loved. We also wanted to show how our education is participative and how we have a wide variety of after-school activities. We also depicted how our dinners are often a family affair where parents and children eat together and ask each other about their days. Our last scene (the one I was in) was a restaurant scene where the girl offered to pay for the couple (rather than the boy) and the single people each paid for their own consumption (rather than the person who invited the others having to pay for everyone as it is here).

Our host families seemed to enjoy our skit, so that was gratifying. Then our host moms performed their skit. It was a skit about the problems and jealousies between two co-wives. One of the wives only has one child and the other had several, plus one on her back and one in her belly. In the skit, there was a problem with the child of the first wife being favored and I don’t know exactly what happened, but for some reason the husband beat the wife and so the wife left for her parents’ house with all her children. Eventually the husband came to ask forgiveness and get his wife and children back. The mother of the wife said that he could only have the wife back if he promised not to hit her anymore and to take her to family planning so that she wouldn’t get pregnant again because it wasn’t good for her health (or the baby’s) to be constantly pregnant. It was also funny at times (even though the subject was pretty serious) and it was really fun to see our host moms acting. I think people here really like theater, so maybe I will get a chance to experiment with it more than I ever have before. I am not a huge fan of participating in theaters, but it IS a good creative mode of expression and communication that I think I could get really into if I put my mind to it.

After our respective skits came the fashion show part of the morning’s events. First a couple of the girls came out in American clothing. Because my French is good, I described what they were wearing and what occasions those clothes might be worn on. We had a girl in a jogging outfit, a girl in an evening dress, a girl in a business suit, a girl in hiking clothes, a girl in casual every-day clothes and a girl dressed as a skater (with her pants around her knees, a wife-beater (white tank-top) and a side-ways hat. It was very funny (she played the “brother” in our skit and was hilarious).

Then came the Togolese portion of our fashion show. Our host moms had donated two or three outfits that our trainers helped us put on. We walked out in front of the crowd and then read a couple lines about what occasions the outfit we were wearing might be used for. It was fun – I modeled two outfits – my modeling debut =0). Felicite had called it the Miss Togo competition and later I asked her if I had won and she (of course) said yes.

After the fashion component, our trainees handed out FanMilk, cookies and popcorn to all the people. We were so excited to get FanMilk because in our village there isn’t any. I had two – a chocolate one and a yogurt one. My favorite is still the vanilla one (and I had TWO of those later in the day when we went to Kpalime). After everyone had eaten some snacks, there was a band (with drums and a trumpet and I’m not sure what else) and we danced around in a circle with our host moms. By “we” I mean the other trainees danced around while I took pictures. I danced a little, but I am more comfortable in the role of photographer. The trumpet solo seemed to scream “time to shake your booty” because every time the trumpet blared out above all the other instruments our host mothers would bend at the waist and really shake it. It was fun – I got a lot of great pictures.

Right afterwards we went to Kpalime – we had to wait a while for the taxi. Internet yesterday was particularly frustrating. The place we usually go was closed, the second place was full and the third place wouldn’t let me use the CD I had burned my twenty page email and blog posts onto. I returned to the second and waited for a computer. When I finally got a computer it took 45 minutes just to LOAD the Middlebury webpage so that I could sign onto my email and another 15 minutes or so to actually sign on. Those of you who know how impatient I am would have been proud of me because I was surprisingly quite calm and still in a good mood – as long as I can get one email out to Jorge (and have him forward things to others) I am happy and reading the emails makes me very happy as well.

After internet I got TWO vanilla FanMilks (like milkshake in a bag) and then walked around the market a little with some other trainees. There are a lot of white people in Kpalime because it is one of Togo’s biggest tourist areas. I bought a mango which I devoured as soon as we got back to the tech house (It is pouring elephants and hippos right now (not cats and dogs)).

Then I got a little depressed because the mail had arrived and a lot of the girls had packages from home. It isn’t that I really even want packages from home it is just that being around people who have gotten packages (and the emphasis that the other trainees place on having gotten a letter or a package) makes it depressing not to have gotten anything. It was a big show as everyone who had gotten a package opened it in front of everyone else and emptied its contents. I think it will be much better once we are at post and none of us really knows who has received a package or not, but here it is so evident and so communal that it makes you feel the lack a bit more. (No one should interpret this paragraph as a plea for a package, I would prefer that people do not send packages – it is too expensive and I really have almost everything I need here – I am just sharing my feelings =0).

Then I went home and ate a wonderful fruit salad for dinner and then watched the first half of a movie (Bend it like Beckham – a movie about a girls’ soccer team) with my host family. Fidele fell asleep on my lap, but the others (my host mom and Felicite and two other neighborhood girls) seemed to be enjoying it until my computer battery ran out. We will watch the second half tonight I think (Even though it is in French I am not sure how much of the dialogue they really understand, but I am glad they enjoyed it).

This morning (Sunday, July 8), I woke up early (around 5:15) and headed out to learn how to make soja (tofu) with Valerie (this is the girl who saved me from the rain one day, who ended up being related to my family somehow and who I treated to a coke another day and who sometimes walks me home from school. She is really nice and I like her a lot (even if she did tell me that I have big hips). Another trainee and I went with her to the mill. Soy has to be one of the first things ground in a day because it isn’t good if it mixes with other flours and also it hast to be ground with water so it makes a mess of the mill. We watched them grind a huge basin of soja – the little beans came out looking like a paste. Then we went to Valerie’s house where they put a rice sack in a big woven reed basket (to act as a huge strainer) and then put the soy paste in the basket. They put the basket atop three sticks over a huge basin and then added water that slowly dripped through the rice sack and basket into the basin below. They kept adding more and more water and occasionally moving the soy around in the basket so that it wouldn’t block the little holes in the rice sack (it reminded me of our pool cover at home and how we try to get the water to go through it when there is all sort of sediment blocking the holes). This process went on until there was a huge caldron full of white milky liquid. This caldron was then put over a wood fire and allowed to boil. Once it had boiled, the foam was scraped off the top (and thrown away) and then Valerie’s father (they make tofu every day to sell) added fermented soy water (what is left after removing the tofu product is allowed to ferment for three days and then used to make more tofu – vinegar or lemon can also be used). This fermented soy water caused the soy milk to curdle – the curds floated to the top and Valerie’s father scraped them off and put them in a smaller caldron. He kept adding more fermented soy water and scraping off the curds until no milky soy was left, just yellow soy water. Then they put the curds back on the fire for a bit (I can’t remember why, I will have to ask). Then they took the soy off the fire, added salt and transferred it to a rice sack which they twisted tightly and then put inside another rice sack. They put the rice sack between two huge round pieces of wood and on top of the wood they balanced about six concrete blocks (A LOT OF WEIGHT) to press all the excess water out. Valerie’s father said that after about half an hour the tofu would be ready to cut. They sell it fried with hot sauce, but we tried some the other day before it had been fried and it was even better and without all the excess fat added by frying. The tofu here is better than any tofu I have ever had in the States, it is actually really tasty.

As a side note, Valerie is fifteen and she helps her parents make tofu every day (at least during the three months of vacation – I am not sure what happens during the school year), but she has an older brother who is eighteen who doesn’t even know how to make soy (just to illustrate the division of labor here – the girls do a large quantity of the work).

I also learned that all the soy they made would sell for around 2,000 cFA and if I understood correctly the soybeans cost them $1000, so they aren’t making that much money, but they are making some.

Valerie’s little brother (he looks about three or four perhaps) was scared to death of us and started screaming and crying every time he had to walk past where we were sitting. Each time someone had to hold his hand as he walked past or he wouldn’t go.

Also, somewhere in this process, I asked what they do with the leftover soy product (what was left after flushing it with water and collecting the soy milk. Valerie said that they sell it as food for animals. I asked if you couldn’t make some sort of people food with it and she said yes, that you can make beignets (I don’t know how to spell that, but they are fried dough balls) with it and so I asked why they don’t do that (I meant in general – I thought it might be more lucrative to make and sell beignets as well rather than just selling the leftover soy for animal feed). Valerie said that they don’t make it (I don’t know if she meant in general or that they weren’t making it today) because they she didn’t have the money to buy flour. I got the impression that she was suggesting that we could buy the flour and then we could make beignets and so I asked the other girl with me if she wanted to and she said yes. I asked if we needed any other ingredients and Valerie said eggs – after consulting her mother we decided that we needed ½ a kilo of flour and three eggs and so we said we would buy that and then tomorrow afternoon after class we could make the beignets. So we went to the store and there Valerie said, well, we need oil as well and I think she threw an onion into the bag and then she had us by charbon (burnt wood pieces). Then a bit later she came back to my house and said that her mother said that we needed butter and sugar as well, so all in all we have spent 2000 cFA on these beignets between the other girl and I – (that is $4 which is a lot here) and the whole thing has left me with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth because I sort of feel as though they are taking advantage of us and milking us for every penny they can get out of us. It isn’t about the money, it just isn’t a nice feeling to think that people who are supposedly your friends are trying to cheat you. On the other hand, I would like to do something to thank them for showing us how to make tofu (they don’t usually make tofu on Sundays, I think, but they made it today because it is the only day that we are free to come watch) so I don’t really mind if they benefit a lot from these beignets as well. I want them to have lots for their family to eat and I would like to be able to bring some to my family as well, but I just don’t like feeling as though I am being taken advantage of by people I consider my friends. AND, on top of all the expenses for the beignets, right after buying the sugar and the butter today, Valerie said “buy me some bread so that I can drink some milk.” I didn’t know exactly what that meant and later asked some of my trainers – apparently it means that the person wants you to buy them bread to accompany the milk that they have, but I had just spent a lot of money on ingredients for these beignets and didn’t really appreciate her asking me to buy her bread (especially after she had just eaten three pieces of the French toast I made for my family). So I guess tomorrow we will see if these beignets were worth all the expenses. I just really hope I can bring some home to my family.

This morning, after watching the tofu-making process, I went home to make breakfast for my family. I got there around 8:30 in the morning and there were already lots of people in the compound. Apparently what Felicite calls a “marie” was taking place. It happened once before and from what I understand it is when the families of two betrothed people meet each other for the first time. So my host Dad’s sister is getting married and her husband-to-be was meeting my host family for the first time. I said hello and then went inside and made French toast. I think it was quite a success. We didn’t have syrup, but it was still quite yummy all by itself and my host family seemed to enjoy it even though they were already sort of busy preparing lunch (fufu) for their guests. I might have enjoyed the French toast more than anyone else, but that is fine with me. Just making the effort to cook for them made me happy.

Then I went out and watched them pound fufu (they were making it with a combination of cassava, ignam and plantain). I wanted to do my laundry and shower, but I didn’t feel comfortable doing either with all the goings-on. At eleven I went to the tech house and worked on a group project for a bit. We are leading a jeopardy-style game on the information surrounding Hearth or FARN as it is know in French which is a method of rehabilitating malnourished children through teaching mothers how to prepare more nutritious food with the foods that are available to them. It sounds really interesting and like something that I might try to implement at my village eventually. To give you a very brief outline (anyone really interested could google it I am sure), you first way the babies in your area to identify the malnourished children and also several mothers (who have average levels of education and income) who have healthy children. These mothers are called positive deviants or “maman lumière” and the idea is that they work with the PCV and health workers to see what they are doing “right” and working with them to change the habits of other mothers so that their children will be healthier as well. The families of the children who will be directly involved in the FARN have to commit to twelve consecutive daily sessions in which they learn how to make an enriched porridge and learn a health lesson.

After about an hour of group work I went home again and pounded fufu for my own lunch. The fufu is quite sticky and so the difficult part isn’t really slamming the pestle down (especially because you have gravity working in your favor at that point), but pulling the pestle out of the gooey sticky fufu so that you don’t get hit by your partner’s pestle (you pound fufu in pairs). Felicite took pictures of me pounding it – I only pounded two little batches which took a maximum of five minutes of actual pounding time and I got two blisters. I didn’t show my family the blisters because they would have laughed at me and maybe not let me pound ever again. They got a huge kick out of me pounding fufu.

I forgot to tell you that an eighty year old man proposed marriage to me today. It was my host dad’s oldest brother – apparently my host dad’s father had five wives and over sixty children of which about thirty are left. Anyway, this very old man asked me to be his wife and was giving me a lecture on the virtues of Jesus Christ. I just laughed and said that it wasn’t possible for me to marry him, that I already had a “husband.” He let it go at that.

The fufu is just this big ball of dough that you break sticky pieces off of and dip into a sauce. The fufu is fine – I don’t love it, but I don’t dislike it either and my mother served it to me today with the peanut sauce which is my favorite.

After lunch I did my laundry with Felicite’s help and then I took a shower. Then I swept out my room and went to talk with Jorge for the first time since I have been in Togo. It was wonderful. It actually worked and it made me both happy and sad to hear his voice, but it was wonderful and we were able to talk for thirty minutes which then got me in trouble with the cabine guy who tried to cheat me out of 600 cFA – and so, as you can see, this story has come full circle.

7/09/07

Last night, right after I shut down my computer, my friend who had happened by the phone booth as I was arguing with the guard walked into the tech center almost in tears. She said that, as a last resort, she had gone back to use the same phone that I had used because none of the other public phones in the village were working. She asked how much it would be to call the States and the guard said that it would be 50 francs she asked, “a minute?” and he said yes. Well it must have been a “click” – on a little apparatus that clicks away while you talk and then you get charged based on the number of clicks and she talked for fifteen minutes and was told she owed 24,000 cFA (around $50) which of course she didn’t have and she also thought the guard was probably trying to cheat her (which he probably was in some way or another – don’t mistake me, I am not saying Togolese people are cheats, just this particular man seems to want to cheat us). The guard walked into the tech house just about a minute after my friend and he started to explain to the Peace Corps guy in charge here . . . anyway, there wasn’t much that my friend could do but pay, but now I have a good idea of how extremely expensive it is to call the States from a phone booth here.

I have a few things that I want to tell you before I tell you about my day – things that I forgot to tell you on previous days. First of all, Felicite told me that black is the color a woman wears when her husband has died and that I shouldn’t wear black.

I also learned the other day that Felicite failed fifth grade and will have to repeat it. That makes me very sad because I think she is quite an intelligent little girl and I don’t understand why she would have failed. I saw her report card and she got a total of about 40 out of 120 possible points. When I asked her if she did well, she said “no, I played.” She didn’t seem too upset about it and her parents didn’t either even though I feel as though they really value a good education (Felicite goes to the private evangelical school in the village). Maybe I just don’t know how to read their reactions yet and maybe they have a way of showing their displeasure that I don’t recognize. Either way, it makes me sad that she failed.

Last night as I was eating dinner, Felicite told me that her aunt (the one who is getting married) offered to take her back to Lomé for a vacation, but that when she (Felicité) realized that I would be left alone she told her aunt that she didn’t want to go. I of course said thank you, but it makes me feel even more indebted to her and as though I ought to make the fact that she stayed here worthwhile by doing even more things with her than I already do. I suggested that maybe she could go to Lome the same week as my post visit. That way she could have the benefit of spending time with her aunt in Lome without feeling as though she were abandoning me.

I think those are all the miscellaneous things I wanted to comment on. Last night we watched the rest of the movie – it was good, I think they enjoyed it. Unfortunately, my friend who lent me the dvd only has a certain number of movies that can be played in French and most of them probably aren’t a great choice when all age groups are present, so I am not sure how many more movie nights we will be able to have. She does have Finding Nemo in English, though, so that might be worth watching even though they won’t understand everything. They can make the story up as they go along.

Today my bladder woke me up early like it does every day. I showered (and by showered I mean took a bucket bath) ate breakfast and went to the tech house an hour early to do some reading. This morning everything was boring to me for some reason. It started with my language class which bored me to tears (almost literally). We were covering the gender of certain words, but it was just so pointless because I am not really going to retain any of that information and we could have accomplished just as much with a five minute review of a handout and instead it took over an hour. At the end of the class I told the professor that I would like to do more cultural activities and discussions rather than grammar, grammar, grammar. I don’t like our new French teacher, as a French teacher, he is perfectly fine as a person.

Technical (health) class bored me as well today. For some reason everyone seemed impatient and irritable and I think it was contagious. We talked about income generating activities, but we didn’t really CONCLUDE all that much.

In the afternoon we did soy transformation. I carried all the soybeans up to the mill on my head and got a lot of laughs from the villagers as I walked through the town. I couldn’t let go of the bucket, though, so I will have to practice with something that I am not afraid of dropping. Then I carried the ground soy paste back to the tech center on my head. At the tech center we pretty much repeated the process that I described yesterday except that first we made soy milk which is just the first part of the process towards making tofu. The soy milk with sugar is absolutely delicious. I don’t understand what they do to soy milk in the States to make it taste nasty (and tofu as well) but here it is really delicious. They put some citronella grass in the soy milk as it boiled, but I prefer it without I think (here they put citronella grass in everything – tea, coffee, hot chocolate). Some of the girls described the taste of soy milk with citronella as the milk leftover after you have eaten a bowl of fruitloops =0).

In the second half of the process I spent a lot of time cooking the by product – what is left after you flush the soy milk out of the soy paste. I cooked it to break down the tripson inhibitor and so that we could use it to make the beignets. It took a lot of effort and stirring (I sort of felt like a witch stirring a sticky brew because we were cooking in huge cauldrons) and when we eventually got to Valerie’s house she told me that actually her mother said that we can’t really make beignets out of that byproduct and that she had roasted some soybeans and had them ground into flour so we could make beignets. I was quite disappointed, not only because of all the work I had put into cooking the byproduct, but mostly because the whole point of the exercise was to USE the byproduct in something rather than just feeding it to the pigs. So to humor me I think, they mixed up a batch of beignets with soy flour and then they mixed up a batch of beignets with the byproduct. They were both really good. I think even Valerie and her family were surprised at how good the experimental beignets were. Do I think they will stop selling the byproduct as animal feed and go into the beignet making business? No, I don’t. But I am excited to experiment a bit with all soy products once I get to post and I can’t even begin to express how excited I am that I actually know how to make soy milk and tofu from scratch. I feel so industrial!

Tonight, though, I am pooped. I am glad that I had enough inner strength to say no to Felicités UNO pleas and to just sit down in my room to write. I am quite tired and think I will get ready for bed and then read a bit until I get sleepy enough to fall right to sleep.






7/10/07

I forgot to tell you that yesterday, while we were in the yard in front of our tech house making tofu a fight broke out between some teenage boys. I got really angry because the men (meaning our teachers who were there) didn’t do anything to stop the fighting, so a woman with a baby on her back got between the two boys who were fighting to try to make them stop. It made me so angry that the men would just stand around and watch while a woman with a baby on her back tried to break up the fight and they were hitting and grabbing her as well. Finally one of the other trainees – she is very tall and very big – went out and stood next to the woman and the boys stopped fighting and went away.

I was doing really well with not getting bitten by bugs, I wasn’t even putting on bug repellent because I didn’t find it necessary, but right after we did the home visits I noticed that I had a lot of itchy bites (I don’t think they are mosquito bites, but something else) around my ankles and since then I feel as though I have been getting bitten a lot more. It is almost as though once they discover that you are tasty, the insects spread the news to all their friends and now all the insects bite you. This morning I woke up with more that twenty bug bites on each of my legs. I hope they are not in my bed, but I am not sure where else I would be getting bitten.

This morning we had a technical class first and four of us led a jeopardy game that we had prepared on today’s topic – FARN – the nutritional rehabilitation program that I talked a bit about in an earlier email this week. It went well and made the time pass a little faster. Afterwards, the three of us who are in the highest level language class went to the other village to do local language training. I guess they aren’t going to start the other students on local language until their French is pretty good because French is the first priority. I really need to start focusing and practicing my Ewe. It is hard because I have so little free time – whenever I am free Felicite wants to do something with me.

In the afternoon we went to the other village to have a health session on good nutrition – it was interesting to hear about what foods are available here and what foods the Togolese use to prepare more nutritious meals. I am excited about experimenting with new ingredients. We also got our “Where there is no Whopper” cookbook – specially prepared by PCVs in Togo for other Togo PCVs. It looks like it is going to be a fantastic resource and not only has recipes for yummy meals, but also tips on ways to keep insects out of your food supplies, ways to kill certain insects, ways to preserve certain foods better, recipes for shampoo and all sorts of other things – so that is very exciting and I can’t wait to have time to sit down and read through it all. There are so many things I want to read, but I just don’t have all that much free time.

After the health class, we got our third rabies shot and then we came back to our village. Nothing exciting happened after dinner – we just played UNO for a while (Felicite, Fidele, Maman and I and then later two other kids). They brought a dvd to watch on my computer, but I said that it wasn’t charged enough for a movie. I don’t know if it will even work, though – I am not sure what region it is.

That is about it for today – not a super exciting day.


7/11/07


Tomorrow we leave on our field trip and that is very exciting because we are going to see more of the country and it is also good to have a break from our host families and allow them to have a break from us. We are leaving around 6:30 in the morning and we are going to Atakpame and then to Sokode and then to Bassar. We will spend both nights in Bassar and then we will go to Kara Saturday morning and we will arrive at our training site Saturday evening.

Today was a relatively uneventful day – we spent the whole day at the other training site and we had first a health session on insect and animal bites and skin care. Then we had a safety and security session in which we talked about filing incident reports if something happens to us and what we should do and then the U.S. ambassador came and spoke with us for about an hour – none of which was too exciting. I spent a lot of the time making Ewe flashcards.

At lunch I washed my sandals with Felicité’s help – she wouldn’t let me do it all by myself. I also washed my stinky watch and put my solar battery charger in the sun. I think/hope it will work really well because when it is in direct sunlight the little meter goes up to the highest bar, but I haven’t been able to leave it out for a long enough time to really charge the batteries because I can’t leave it out if I am not there to watch it because it could either get stolen (it is not fair to ask my host mom to watch over it) or it could get rained on, so . . .

In the afternoon we went back to the other training site and had a session on our post visits. We leave for a one week post visit on Saturday, July, 21st. We just talked about the logistics of the post visit, it wasn’t too too exciting. Hopefully I will have more exciting things to share from our fieldtrip, although I am not sure when we are going to have internet access.

I had two yummy semi-new things to eat today – one was corn on the cob grilled over the fire. It isn’t sweet corn, but it is still tasty. The second was fried plantains which I have had before in Bolivia, but I had almost forgotten how yummy they are.

After dinner I packed and then played a couple games of UNO with Felicite, Fidele and another little girl.

I keep getting more and more insect bites on my legs – I am afraid I might have bed bugs.

Felicite sort of asked if she could come stay with me (permanently) in my village. I said no and explained that there isn’t a good school there, that there isn’t a hospital or even a nurse at the dispensare and that I will be working and can’t take care of a child. I told her she was more than welcome to come and visit, but I am a little worried about subtle suggestions (coming from both Felicite and her parents), that Felicite would come live with me. I think the idea is that she would take care of (helpless, little) me, but all around the suggestion makes me uncomfortable and even if they might believe that she would have better opportunities living with me, that is not the case and either way I can’t be responsible for a ten year old no matter how mature she (sometimes) seems. So hopefully the idea of her staying with me permanently won’t really be brought up again. Luckily I am going to such a remote place that there are many good arguments of why she should absolutely definitely not come stay with me for more than a week or two.