11/30/07 through 12/09/07

11/30/07 through 12/2/07



Since I have been in Notse, I have been being lazy and not writing about my day, so today (Sunday) I have to type up the summary of my the last three days while I have electricity and a computer in front of me.



Friday morning we puttered around Ashley's house and then finally got organized enough to take a walk to the post office and the pineapple stand. On the way back to her house we were desperate for FanMilk and the honk honking of the mobile FanMilk venders was no where to be heard. The craving was so strong =0) that we braved the market scene. Actually, for once in my life, I wasn't really in the mood for FanMilk. Ashley asked if I was sick, but I reassured her by having at least a FanJoy (like a flavored ice pop; there are supposedly four flavors – orange, strawberry, mint and pineapple – but I have noticed that the whole country only ever has one flavor at a time. For example, in the past two weeks I have eaten FanJoy in three different cities – Kpalime, Lome and Notse and in all three only one flavor was available: orange. That is fine most of the time, but when it is mint's turn on the market I am out of luck.) I also bought some peanuts and peanut butter in the market to take back to village with me.



For lunch, I made my Mom's spaghetti sauce with crumbled soy (tofu) instead of ground beef. I finally have all the spices (oregano, basil, cumin, cinnamon, mustard, bay leaves) that I need to make it and so I was very excited because I have been craving it for a while now. So simple and yet so good.



Around three we headed over to the building where Ashley's skit competition was to take place. Her organization works with People Living with HIV/AIDS and they had organized a series of activities for the week leading up to World AIDS Day. Students at all the area high schools had been asked to prepare skits with educational messages about HIV/AIDS and they performed them Friday afternoon. The top three groups won small amounts of money ($20 and down). The skits were mostly very well done and topics ranged from fighting against the stigmatization of people living with HIV/AIDS to encouraging people to get tested to deconstructing common misconceptions on how HIV is transmitted. The students did well with getting their facts straight and making the skits short, entertaining and amusing. The funniest part was when a boy played the part of a girl (with a wig, a dress, and heels!). At first I didn't realize that it was a boy dressed up as a girl, but the way he walked gave him away immediately. In another sketch, our jaws dropped simultaneously as a boy (pretending to be a doctor) took "blood" from another boy. We weren't sure whether he had really stuck the boy or not and were about to be thoroughly appalled and go off on a tirade of "reusing dirty needles is one way of transmitting HIV" when someone reassured us that blood drawing had somehow, quite creatively I must say, been faked. The worst and most frustrating part was trying to get the large crowd to be quiet and respect each group's time on the stage. Fortunately, though, we had a sound system; otherwise it would have been utterly impossible to hear.



In between two of the skits we also heard the testimony of a woman living with HIV/AIDS which I thought was a very valuable addition. Poems, drawing and songs were also collected, but we ran out of time and ended up promising to schedule another afternoon event for the exposition of those creative expression. I was impressed with how smoothly it went considering that it was thrown together sort of last minute (not at all Ashley's fault, but rather the result of big ideas and no funding).



In the evening we went to the internet and literally the second we walked into the internet café, the electricity went out and so of course we received the brunt of some snide comments: "yovo . . .". Oh well. As we were walking back to Ashley's house, though, the electricity came back on and so we got to use internet after all.



Saturday (December 1st) was World AIDS Day and we woke up bright and early because we had promised that we would be at Ashley's organization at six in the morning. A march was planned starting at seven at the high school to the market and the center of town where the winning skits were to be performed. Apparently, ADAC (Ashley's organization) had received some t-shirts and baseball caps from PSI (Population Services International), but they had to set half aside for the "notables," leaving only twenty-five shirts to hand out to the participants in the march. That of course left many unhappy and reluctant participants. Nonetheless, our small parade (complete with a live brass and percussion band) and some energetic high schoolers marched through the streets of Notse for several hours. We marched all over town, which I suppose was good because we at least alerted people to the fact that it was World AIDS Day even if the awareness raising sort of stopped there.



By ten I was hot and tired and ready for, you guessed it . . . FANMILK! We spent the rest of the day recuperating (aka not doing much of anything at all), except for watching movies, puttering around the house, and trying to stay connected to gmail on a spotty internet connection.



On the way back from the internet café, I ran some girls from Avassikpe and shortly afterwards Efo joined us. It was drizzling a bit and so the girl invited us into her house where she and I chatted for a long while about differences between the States and here. One funny thing she said was that even if she ate a ton (literally) of rice, she wouldn't be full – she insists that she always needs to eat a little pâte to be completely satisfied. And here I was thinking that they eat that stuff because it is all they have. No, they really love it.



When it started to get dark I walked home and in the evening we watched a movie.



This morning (Sunday) I got up early, washed the dishes, and made pancakes. I used measuring cups and spoons for the first time (thank you Mom and Dad!) to make my pancakes and they turned out lighter and fluffier than ever. Hooray for exact measurements!



Regina left right after breakfast. I should have gone home today, but Efo informed me that our Children's Rights Club was holding a meeting this afternoon and so I decided to stay. I am always reluctant to go back to village after being away for a while – it is a feeling of nervous anticipation even though I am quite confident that I will be perfectly content once I am there.



Like I do at home (my Mom always says that she knows when I am home because the house is a mess and my stuff is all over the place), I had cluttered up Ashley's house with my things and so after I repacked the big green army duffel bag that Dad brought me and some things (mostly beans) that I bought in Lome, I helped Ashley clean the house. After her, I am the one who spends the most time in this house and so I figure I can at least help out with the maintenance and cleaning; especially since I do tend to be messy and a little dirty to boot. We cleaned all morning. There was a major ant infestation in the kitchen that we exterminated and we organized, neatened and swept out the whole house. It is hard to keep things clean here and with all the sand and walking in and out of the house it gets quite dirty.



We wanted to have egg sandwiches for lunch – something quick, easy and filling, but eggs were no where to be found (for some reason all of Notse runs out of eggs on Sundays; I guess that means that Monday is the best day to buy eggs anyway because they will be the freshest – straight from the farms). We ended up using one of Ashley's emergency meals (a "just add water" pasta alfredo dish). It was pretty good – a different flavor than the ones we get all the time.



At two-thirty we walked over to Efo's house (Ashley accompanied me and I was proud of myself for not getting lost). Of course we had to wait for an hour under the constant gaze of neighborhood children for the other club "members" to arrive, but the meeting itself went well. It is strange, though, because it almost seems as though the meeting is hinged on the arrival of "les blanches" (the whites) because right after we got to his house Efo left to rally the troops. He came back about half an hour later with a couple of girls and boys in tow and these were the never before seen club "members." Sometimes I can't help but wonder if he didn't just pick these people up off the street, bribe them with 50 cFA to attend the meeting and that it is really all an act for my benefit. I am kidding, obviously, but I DO think that if I weren't there to nag and schedule and prod the meetings along they, and consequently the club itself, would never take place.



As I said, the meeting went very well. We talked about the scenario of a girl trafficked in Togo and assigned roles – a mother and a father with many children who send their boys to school and don't know what to do with their girls, contrasted with a family who has only two children, a boy and a girl, and sends them both to school; a woman who comes to traffic one of the large family's girls and take her to Lome to work for a market mama; and, of course, the girl who is trafficked. The students came up with names for their characters that would be humorous or ironic depending on the personality or role of the character (of course they are in Ewe, so I don't fully understand, but I get what they were trying to do). We also set the date, time and place for our next meeting (Sunday mornings at 10:00 at ADAC – Ashley's organization) and there was a motion to come up with a name for the club, but no one had any creative suggestions and so we let it slide for the meantime. I was very pleased with the way the meeting came together, but I did find the persistent bureaucracy of it all amusing. Everything has to be written down, formally and officially, and they want me to type it up =0) and along the same vein, everyone speaks formally and kind of stuffily, not at all like a casual group meeting might be run in the States. It is like everyone is already playing the part of a "club member" or how they imagine one might behave, taking as their model any sort of formal organization that they have come in contact with where the paper trail is of utmost importance. I am surprised they didn't suggest that we come up with membership rules and a constitution or mission statement =0). They probably will next time, I am still waiting for it.



In the evening we stopped over to visit Heather, eat some pineapple and get eaten in turn by the mosquitoes and now I am being a good little girl and catching up on my "devoirs" (homework).



By the way, I changed my cell phone number on Friday to 920-0885 and since then I have received three (yes, THREE!) phone calls from Jorge and it is just heavenly to be able to hear his voice at any and every moment in time. YAY!



12/3/07



Today was a day that was all over the mood map – it had some high points and some low points and some in between points. Like I said last night, I was feeling a little ambivalent about coming back to village especially because I was away for so long. I think in part I was feeling guilty and in part excited and in part just nervous to be back in my village, alone, after two weeks of constant companionship.



This morning I woke up extra early, showered and then started to run around like a chicken with its head cut off and spiral myself into a bad mood. I wasn't well prepared to go back to village – I think my two weeks away has upset my routine. I hadn't bought the necessary fruits and vegetables and I hadn't bought the flour, sugar, butter (margarine), eggs, that are staples for me but difficult to find in village. I especially should have bought the pineapples the day before because the pineapple stands are far away and I was very limited on time. I was scheduled to have an Ewe lesson in the morning and I couldn't get through to Jerome's (my Ewe prof.) cell phone to tell him that I might be delayed a little but that I was in fact coming. I did eventually get through to Lili, though, so that she might pass on the message were he to arrive before me.



In the end it all worked out, but I was feeling stressed for the second time since I've been in Togo. I am beginning to realize that the times I feel most stressed are when I try to pack too many commitments into too little time. It ended up working out wonderfully though because Ashley helped me carry my huge (and very heavy) green duffel bag to the taxi stand – she was heading to Atakpame, our taxi filled up and took off after only about half an hour of waiting, and, then, as I was waiting in Agbatitoe for a zemidjan (moto driver) to take me to Avassikpe, Jerome pulled up. I rode with him and another moto driver that Emmanuelle recommended to me took my duffel bag. It might have been feasible to put it all on the same moto, but I didn't really want to try. Anybody who knows how I pack (especially when I don't have an airline imposed weight limit) can imagine how heavy it was after I had repacked it with all the things Dad brought me plus six varieties of beans, peanuts, pop-corn kernels, flour, sugar, small cans of tomato paste and who knows what else.



And so one of my biggest worries – how I would get my duffel bag to Avassikpe without dishing out a small fortune turned out not to be a problem, but just as I was getting off the moto and unlocking my door, about to breathe a sigh of relief at being "home free" I realized that I had left all my pineapples in the taxi. My pineapples for which I had walked half an hour, bargained hard and endured three fou encounters (one of whom tried to grab me). In the end I think that will work out as well as Ashley kindly took my pineapples and tomorrow, on her way from Atakpame to Notse, she will throw them out the window to me as I stand waiting on the edge of the route nationale. If the driver is nice, maybe he will slow down a bit as they go by. The downside now, though, is that I have nothing for dinner and so I ate candy corn. Lots of it. And now I have a candy corn head ache. Healthy, I know.



I was pretty exhausted when we arrived, but luckily my Ewe lesson wasn't too painful or long. At the end I asked about the local Ewe cry for help which inspired a very theatrical account of a time a couple in Jerome's village was robbed. They sounded the cry for help and everyone came rusting to the spot, coupcoups in hand. The men circled the village and waited until dawn to track the thief. They found him and apprehended him and then beat him thoroughly (apparently the women stripped him naked and spread crushed hot peppers on his penis and apparently up his anus as well – how do you like that for cruel and unusual punishment?) Then, they made him walk to the gendarmerie carrying all of the things he had stolen. Jerome said that sometimes people will take "justice" into their own hands, because of lack of faith in the official and legal system, and they will kill thieves by putting the pesticide for cotton up their anus and leaving them in the woods to die.



Now on to lighter topics – I hadn't thought of anything for lunch, so I brought out some raw peanuts and made some tapioca pudding – it was a strange lunch, but it was food and I think we were both hungry . . .



Afterwards Jerome went to give the other man his lesson and I showered and went to say hello to Lili. On the phone, she had told me that she was "mad" at me for being gone so long, but she received me well. We talked for a while about this and the other and then I went to speak with the director of the school. He wasn't in his office, but one of the teacher's called out to me as I was walking away and told me that he was teaching under the paillote in the far corner and that I should just go interrupt. So I did – we fixed 10 am on Wednesday as my time to talk to the older students about HIV/AIDS. I'm not nervous about it yet, but I think perhaps I should be.



I went home, started to do some laundry and had a visit from Nasir, the catholic catechist who is Jerome's other Ewe student in Avassikpe and the man who helped me cut down trees for garden posts and who is helping me get fencing for my garden. I had been given a heads-up by Jerome (otherwise I might have been completely taken aback by the request) – Nasir would like me to go speak with a man who refuses to send his children to school any longer even though the Catholic catechists and Lili have offered to foot their costs. It is a strange situation but I think the father feels as though is authority is being threatened by the meddling of others. If this is the case, I am not sure that getting me involved will help the situation any, but I am going to speak with him tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully I will think of a convincing argument before then . . .



I received a nice welcome from my favorite families in front and their children, but it was a bad day for wild animals it seems. They boys had killed (I assume with their sling shots) a mouse and a very large lizard (not the normal kind, but the exotic pet kind). And then, as I finished up the laundry, I saw some other small children playing with a baby bird. I don't think they were trying to be mean, but I am sure their clumsy handling of it eventually killed it. It was still alive the last time I saw it, but I don't have much hope for its long-term survival. I think they are more curious than cruel, but their parents don't make any move to save small animals from certain death in the hands of children.



I didn't yet get a chance to unpack. Laundry was a priority and I will unpack and organize tomorrow.



12/4/07



So I am reading this book called "What Color is Your Parachute?" in hopes of taking advantage of the time I have while in Peace Corps to figure out what I want to do with myself afterwards. I think it is terribly written, but I am trying not to write it off entirely. Just because the guy's way of presenting the information is awful doesn't mean that he has nothing useful to say. So far, though, I have had no epiphanies.



Today was kind of boring and I am in a little bit of a funk so I don't feel like writing in great detail. I did laundry, rode out to Agbatitoe, hung out with Mana and watched her make an outfit after we ran out of conversation topics. I did learn, though, that even though she talks about getting married, she hasn't actually got a guy yet. No biggy. I wonder if she is really pregnant like she told me or not.



I met up with Ashley and got my pineapples (yay!) and then I went back to Mana's lodgings at the priest's house for a lunch of pâte and fishy okra sauce. It wasn't bad – I might start adding little fishies to my food soon! =0) Then I sat there, bored and sleepy while she made the sleeves for an outfit in a criss-cross pattern. It was interesting at first because I like that technique and want to get a top made like that, but I watched the whole process twice and so it got boring quickly. (First she cuts strips of pagne, then she folds them over on themselves and irons them in place. Then she cuts a pattern out of a cement bag and actually sews the strips of pagne to the cement bag pattern, first long-wise and then cross-wise). I was sort of waiting for Lili to arrive, sort of waiting for it not to be too too hot out and sort of waiting for it to be a good time to say "I have to go".



Back in Avassikpe, I showered and was organizing my newly acquired beans in voltic bottles when Nasir came to get me to go talk with a man who had apparently refused to allow his children to go to school even though people had pooled the funds for their school fees. I went and gave this whole long spiel about the importance of taking advantage of the village primary school, of basic reading, writing and arithmetic, of the values of a good education . . . The whole speech turned out to be completely unnecessary, not because it fell on deaf ears, but because the father fully understands the value of education, but he finds himself in a situation in which he needs the two older boys' help in the fields or his family might go hungry. For some reason or another, he and his wife are not on good terms so she is not helping him with the harvest and apparently his corn was ruined . . . plainly stated, he needs the older boys' labor to feed the family as a whole and there is no easy solution to that problem. He isn't being thick-headed; he wants/wishes he could send his sons to school, but securing a food supply takes priority. I couldn't argue with that even though I did my best to make sure that he had weighed out his options as best as possible and thought through all the potential consequences. You can't study if you're hungry, though, and so ultimately, it is a sad situation, but one people deal with all the time here. Now, I am not sure whether this situations advocates smaller or larger families. If there were only two children, the resources wouldn't be spread as thickly, but then there wouldn't be older children who sacrifice their own educations so that their younger brothers and sisters can eat well and go to school. Hm.



It is raining (apparently not great for the beans, soja or cotton harvests) and quite cool. I am going to go to bed and read and hopefully my ideal job/career will come to me in my dreams.



12/5/07



Today I was privy to some juicy village gossip as I helped Lili check and double check the dispensaire's budget report. It is the job of the COGES (village health committee) to help her file the budgets, but they, as usual are shirking their duties and leaving Lili to do everything herself. This raises another topic, but first I will share the gossip. Apparently my evil neighbor lady is no longer my neighbor. Come to think of it, the past two days have been unusually peaceful and quiet. According to Lili, her husband, who is also Yolke's husband (he supposedly has five wives – Lili says that he has that many to help him work the fields) and the son of the proprietor of my house, kicked her out. I can't say that I am particularly sorry – I think this will greatly improve the value of my real estate. Just kidding, but it will be nice not to have those particular children around 24 hours a day. Someone is apt to move in though . . . I also learned that Kassim (Lili's brother who is a nurse and sometimes takes over at the dispensaire in Lili's absence) left Avassikpe because "people were starting to talk" – something about some injection he gave that caused an infection.



The other topic I alluded to before when I made reference to the COGES is that you can't help people help themselves if they are not willing to make a real effort to help themselves and in my very short time here I have decided that most people are not either willing or able (not sure which) to make that extra effort to help themselves or their community. I don't know whether to give them the benefit of the doubt and conclude that their subsistence needs don't allow them to go the extra mile or whether to write them off as unwilling.



As I sit outside taking advantage of the last few rays of sunlight, I notice two things in particular – some of my neighbors are just coming back from the field (it is literally almost dark which confirms my suspicion that the workload in the fields is really heavy right now) and second, the sheep under my paillote. My paillote is essentially an animal shelter and I am not pleased. If it isn't one thing it's another. I don't really want to fence it, but I think I am going to have to look into possible fencing materials. If I'm going to go to the trouble of fencing it, though, I almost want to make it mosquito proof and make a cement floor. We will see.



Today was a busy, productive day. I got up early and ate a quick breakfast of peanut butter and honey on bread and then I went and weeded and mulched around each of my small moringa trees in Lili's garden behind the dispensaire. I know I should probably water them, but I tried to lift the big yellow plastic canteen I have for porting water and I could barely lift it, much less carry it long distances. I don't want to use the dispensaire's water either, though, because we are getting into the dry season and soon Lili will have to pay someone to bring water. I really should water them though because I also transplanted some from the spots where tow or three seeds sprouted to the spots where none sprouted at all. I worked and sweated until 9:00 when I ran home, showered, ate a pineapple, went to a boutique and bought chewing gum, and then went to the school where I was scheduled to give a talk about HIV/AIDS. I think it went pretty well. Again, I have to be thankful for the people who I work with. Amongst the school directors I have come in contact with, I think the one here in Avassikpe is among the best. He is nice, not pretentious or condescending with the students, open, honest, well-informed, frank and seemingly very well-intentioned. The teacher who helped clarify bits and pieces of my talk seemed ok as well. I ran through the whole gamut of topics we covered during AIDS Ride. The students (I was talking to the CM1 and CM2 levels – roughly the equivalent of fifth and sixth grade but with students from ages ten through sixteen or seventeen perhaps) seemed to know very little about HIV/AIDS and I am somewhat doubtful as to how much they retained, but they listened politely and respectfully which is something. I left the classroom feeling good about how it went (even though the question and answer – me asking them questions to recap what we just covered – was like pulling teeth) and interested in doing more classes/activities at the school.



I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to make lunch because the children would be clamoring at my door (especially considering the fact that yesterday I told them we would play UNO today), but they left me pleasantly alone and I made myself a lunch of rice and chili (with just beans, no carne here). IT was very good and I was just finishing when the children arrived so it was perfect timing. We played for about an hour. I think most of the village children went to the field after school as there aren't classes Wednesday afternoons and there is so much work to be done in the fields.



I would like to go to the fields tomorrow with Da Julie, but for some reason every time I try to go the field with her it falls through and I can't help but wonder if she doesn't want me to go from some reason or another and so I am a bit reluctant to ask.



In the afternoon, I helped Lili with the budget and now I am going to work on discovering my dream career before bed. No epiphanies yet.



12/6/07



This morning I made myself a yummy egg sandwich for breakfast and I also made two pineapple upside down cakes to bring to Atakpame for Ashley (not Notse Ashley, Elavagnon Ashley's) birthday and I left them cooking in the dutch ovens (one on each burner) as I went out back to weed my garden. I worked virtually non-stop from 6:30 until 11:30. At first I tried to hoe the weeds out, but then I reverted to pulling them out (I was very thankful for my new gloves because 80% of the weeds are pricker bushes). I feel like pulling out the weeds is just more energy efficient, especially if they are big weeds which they were (waist high). I made a dent, but it isn't neat and tidy as I would like and I won't be able to work on it again until next week and by that time the weeds will probably be pretty near waist high again and I will be back to square one.



I made myself a combination of split pea and lentil soup for lunch and it was very good. Meanwhile, the little boy who often helps me in my garden (and to whom I once gave a pen as thanks) insisted on working in my garden and when I refused to give him the hoe or a coupcoup, he found his own coupcoup and literally weed-whacked my garden. Not particularly helpful considering that I wanted to pull those weeds out) . . . I didn't' give him anything for his effort because I knew that this time he was expecting it and that is probably why he so stubbornly insisted on working in my garden in the first place.



I played UNO after reading bits and pieces of Newsweek and afterwards I cleaned my house and burned garbage (gone is all trace of the candy – mini twix, snickers, milky way and 3 musketeers – the best candy bag mix ever!) that I mauled this week. =0)



I went to the dispensaire, but Lili was in the middle of assisting a birth (which she eventually had to evacuate to Notse because the girl couldn't seem to push the baby out) so I wandered around the village with a trail of little children yelling "run, faster, faster" at them as they held my hands or any part of me they could grab ahold of and their little two-year old legs tried to keep up with my long strides. I went to speak with Tsevi and watched DaJulie winnow the shells off the beans and then I returned to the dispensaire, still faithfully followed by my entourage of toddlers.



After saying hello to Lili, I came home and started to try to hang my hammock, but there were too many little children around and I really don't want their grubby little fingers getting it all dirty. If they were clean, I wouldn't mind so much, but they and especially their hands, are never clean.



Yesterday I forgot to mention that I saw on one of Lili's budget papers that Avassikpe's population (how it was counted or estimated and by whom I don't know) is 1,762 people and that the dispensaire serves nine villages and a total of 7,366 people with distances ranging from 3 km to 12 km from the dispensaire. Interesting. Avassikpe is the largest of these villages followed by Azakpe with 1,556 people, 6 km from the dispensaire; Komla cope (1,092 people, 6 km away); Abourdikpe (787 people, 6 km away); Kpegadja (708 people, 11 km away); Djakpata (696 people, 12 km away); Hake est (391 people; 7 km away); Djato cope (218 people; 3 km away); Kodjovi cope (156 people; 3 km away). I just thought it was interesting to see some figures.



I don't know why but my house seems to be holding more heat at night.



One of Efo's older brothers killed another really large lizard today. I had to get close to reassure myself that it wasn't a small crocodile. I wonder if they eat them. He said he killed it with a coupcoup, not a sling shot. I wonder how he got so close. . .



12/7/07 to 12/8/07



It is now noon on Sunday and I have been lazy again about writing for the past two days. I was in Atakpame celebrating a friend's birthday and as I get nearer to having computer access I am tempted to not write the recap of my day out on paper so as to save myself a step. Lazy, I know.



I had a terrible day on Friday and it seemed like the culmination of a rotten week. I felt as though I had started the week out on the wrong foot, as if I had gotten up on the wrong side of the bed but where the repercussions last a week rather than a day. At least I hope they just last a week because I am getting tired of feeling disoriented and all out of sorts.



I didn't sleep well Thursday evening because I unexpectedly found myself in a disco complete with throbbing African pop music. You ask yourself what on earth was she doing in a disco and where would one find such an establishment in or around Avassikpe? Well the disco came to me and invaded my slumber. At about 4:30 in the morning I finally awoke enough from the fitful sleep that was nevertheless compromising my ability to reason clearly and identified the source of the disturbance. Not too far from my house someone had rigged up lights and was blaring (BLARING) music. I lay in bed for a few more minutes and then I got up, got dressed and ready for the day and then, as the sun's first rays glowed dully on the horizon I went to see what the commotion was all about. At first I thought it was a funeral, but when I arrived in front of the chief's house I saw that there were mostly children and two or three adults dancing wildly to the overbearingly loud music. Tsevie soon appeared and I asked him if it was a funeral and he said no, that it was a celebration of the birth of a baby. It seemed like a very joyful affair and one that particularly involved children which was nice considering that very few events seem to be organized around or for children. The kids were having an absolute ball and I love watching them dance because they are so little but already such great and talented dancers. I watched them until daybreak and then I went to get my camera, but it is almost pointless to try to take pictures in my village because people get so excited by the presence of a camera that I can never get any candid photos. The kids always want to pose as ninjas in mid karate chop. What is up with that anyway?



The music stopped around dawn and I went back to my house and began to prepare a lunch of sweet potato koliko (fries) and fried plantains for my Ewe teacher. I then packed my bag for my weekend in Atakpame and puttered around the house. Jerome was supposed to arrive early, but he didn't and so I wandered back and forth between the dispensaire and my house. On one of those trips I decided to check on my moringa plants and to my great disappointment (it just goes to show how little I know about gardening, especially in Togo – live and learn) all the plants I had transplanted were wilting. Lili wasn't surprised. She said I should have waited until rainy season to transplant the trees because I disturbed their root systems and now, unless I water them every day they will surely die. She seemed pretty sure that they would die regardless, but I was determined to make every effort to keep them alive (do your best, that is my motto) and so I went home, changed into my dirty garden clothes and made a trip to the marigot (the swampy water source that is now a quarter of the size it was a few weeks ago). For purely selfish reasons, I prefer the marigot when it is mostly dried up because it means that I don't have to wade through nasty (and probably snake infested) water to fill my canteen. Thankfully, a neighbor woman accompanied me and filled my canteen for me and helped me lift it to my head where it promptly began to compress my spine. The good thing about a bidon (canteen), though, is that it has a cap and so the water can't spill out. The bad thing is that it can hold an awful lot of water and you can't fill it while it is on your head and so, unless you have crazily strong fufu pounding arm muscles like the women here you can't possibly lift a full bidon onto your head by yourself. I mean, I can barely lift it period and so I asked the woman to stop filling it at the two-thirds point. And even so I could literally feel it compressing my spine. I wonder if that has anything to do with why a lot of people are short here? But they aren't particularly bent over . . .



I carried my water the field behind the dispensaire and watered my dying moringa plants. I think they will probably die anyway, but I just had to try to save them. Maybe if I could be there to water them every day . . . I was really sad about my plants because I had worked hard to transplant them, but I am trying to focus on the fact that I still have some healthy looking seedlings that will hopefully make it through the dry season. If they die as well I will be REALLY sad.



Jerome arrived around 10:30. I wasn't in the mood for either him or the lesson – I was bummed about my plants – but in any case the lesson didn't require a great deal of attention because it was mostly a review of the greetings that I already know. It was short, sweet and to the point which matched my restlessness and momentary lack of tolerance. We then ate a feast of sweet potato fries, fried plantain, fried eggs and an onion and tomato sauce – I can feel my arteries clogging up as I write.



After he had left, I cut up the two small pineapples I had left and put the juicy chunks in a ziplock for a snack later and then started to close up my house. On my way to dump out my compost bucket (including a whole gallon ziplock bag worth of fermented (ruined) corn, I was intercepted by Yolke who, at my faltering attempts to explain what I was doing demanded to look in my bucket. I felt very embarrassed by the fact that I had wasted so much of the staple food source because I hadn't stored it properly. To distract them from my faux-pas, I ran back inside and brought them a plate full of left over sweet potato fries which they accepted and seemed to greatly appreciate. They said that it was tasty, "c'est doux," and laughed when I thanked them as if they found it odd that I should thank them for telling me that the food I had prepared was good. I am just now thinking that perhaps men don't comment on the taste of food because they take the cooking process for granted, but women, who are more familiar with the art of cooking, might know how to appreciate one another's efforts.



I closed up my house and biked off and that is where the little things started to pile up. I just feel like I don't have my head screwed on straight lately and that I am not my usual on-the-ball self. I forgot to fix my hair so that I could wear my helmet so I just braided it quickly (a really little thing, I know), but then I had also forgotten to fill my water bottles with drinkable water (a not so little thing) and then the children had changed the gears on my bicycle while it was stationary and so it was all out of whack not to mention the front tire was a little flat and my back pack on the back had upset the balance and airflow. Nonetheless, I biked to Agbatitoe and to the priest's house without incident. When I arrived and greeted Mana, she showed me the wrap-around skirt she had made me with the Peace Corps pagne Sue brought me from Niger. She said that there wasn't enough material and so she added a random pagne frill to the bottom. To give her some credit, she tried to find pagne pieces that matched vaguely in color, but I still wasn't pleased. And then I saw that she had put white buttons on my pants (where there was already one black button) which stuck out obnoxiously on the green and brown fabric. Again, anyone who knows me knows that I am not good at hiding my feelings, particularly my disappointment and so while I accepted the frill (I didn't see an alternative because if she removed it the skirt would simply be too short), I asked that she change the buttons to black. I think that for some reason I had expected her intuition to match my tastes – next time I will have to be more specific when I ask her to do work for me. After those two disappointments, the priest came and asked me about my talk with the "father who refuses to allow his children to go to school." I had already had a lengthy talk with Jerome about it that morning (in which he had concluded that I should become marriage counselor to this couple ?!?!) and wasn't in the mood to thrash the whole thing out again and so I gave him the abbreviated version which only resulted in him criticizing my acceptance of the father's reasons for keeping the children out of school. I got a bit annoyed and let my tongue run on a long leash. I told him that perhaps he or someone who is actually a member of Togolese society and could give context appropriate advice/suggestions/alternatives should go talk to the man instead of sending me, an outsider who has no idea how people here who feel as though they are torn between sending their children to school and profiting from their labor in the fields resolve that dilemma? I also told him that perhaps he shouldn't judge the man or the situation until he had talked with him himself. Then he went off on how it isn't the parents' right to decide whether or not to send a child to school, that the child has the right to go to school and that parents should think about the number of children they can support before having a whole pack of them. At that point he was just preaching to the choir and I was fed-up because in an ideal world it would be like that, but that doesn't help resolve this particular man's problem in that he already has more children then he can support and no one can come up with a practical suggestion for how he might both send his children to school and feed them. Although I know it wasn't the priest's intention, I felt attacked for not having come up with a neater solution to a problem that every average family in Togo struggles with. Most families rely on subsistence agriculture. When they have children, those children help in the fields. When the older children start school, the younger children help in the fields to help support the younger children. But then what to do when your youngest children reach school-age? Have more children? If even Jerome struggles with this with his own children, how am I supposed to come up with a concrete quick-fix solution?



Fortunately the priest left soon afterwards and Mana and I walked down to the market at the side of the road where she waited with me for a taxi. I got into a very full van and waved good-bye. First on my list of bush-taxi woes for the day was the fact that we got into a very near accident as the driver tried to pass a car and was confronted by a very quickly approaching on-coming car. I was sure that we were going to collide with one or the other of the cars and was literally bracing myself for the impact and wondering if the fact that I was in the middle of the car would cushion me and somehow protect me. The fleeting image of me wearing my motorcycle helmet in bush-taxis also flickered across my mental screen. I have no idea how we avoided a nasty crash and seconds afterwards I realized that I had been holding my breath.



A ways down the road, we picked up two passengers and for some reason they started passing around pictures of a young Togolese woman whose body had been found on Monday (I am not sure where). My understanding of the case is splotchy at best because most of the conversation was in Ewe, but from what I understood, someone took the girl from Lome, cut off her head and removed her heart through her back. Of course the passengers were blaming the Beninois (people from Benin), but it was just really surreal. The man had snapshots of this young woman's headless corpse sprawled out on the grass wearing only black lace panties. I have only ever seen images of brutal killings in magazines like Time or Newsweek or in movies and it was extremely disturbing to see a Polaroid-like photo of a body that had been hacked to pieces. It felt like the very picture that was in the car, the physical thing itself, was somehow tainted by the grotesque horror of it all. The pictures were passed all around the vehicle and the passengers were obviously outraged by the killing, but I couldn't understand the specifics.



A little later they made me and a couple other people get out of the one bush-taxi-van and get into another less crowded one. I was told to pay the first driver and he would "strike a deal" with the second driver. He tried to make me pay 1500 cFA, but I told him that I would only pay 1000 francs. I paid and got in the other car. It was stupid of me and I should have known better because once you pay the driver you lose all leverage. When we reached a small market on the outskirts of Atakpame, a half an hour's walk from the Atakpame station and the usual drop-off point, the driver stopped the car and told everyone to get out. I refused. I told him that I had paid to go to Atakpame and that I wouldn't get out there unless he gave me back 200cFA. At first he seemed amused, but he just kept telling me to get out of the van. It frustrated me that all the other passengers were meekly climbing out of the car (including a woman on crutches!) when essentially he should have brought us all the few remaining kilometers to the station. I kept insisting that I wouldn't get out of the van unless they gave me my money back, but I roundly lost the battle of the wills because he finally said "je m'en fou" (essentially, I don't give a damn) and started to drive north, away from Atakpame and towards Kara. I said, "what, you're just going to take me to Kara?" and he pretty much said, "yup." And so I had to back down and get out of the van because I was just getting further and further away from my destination. I was extremely frustrated, more because of the injustice of it, because of my own impotence and stupidity for getting myself into that situation in the first place, and bruised pride, that because I would have to walk for half an hour. Luckily I wasn't carrying a lot of baggage. As icing on the cake, though, the ziplock full of pineapple chunks that I was carrying leaked all over my bag and my pants and so I took it out and chowed down as I walked, earning me several snide "mangeons" 's from the passing students who had just been let out of class. Great timing. I wasn't in the mood. (It is custom here to invite people to share your food even if the offer isn't sincere and so the high school students were calling attention to the fact that I was eating and not offering to share). Like I said, I wasn't in the mood.



When I finally got to the maison I was pleasantly greeted by silence and darkness. I was able to get settled and shower and try to wash away my bad mood before seeing my friends. I took advantage of the lull to go to internet and I got a chance to chat with Jorge and unload some of my accumulated frustrations to a sympathetic listener. After our time ran out, he called my cell phone for a minute and it is just inexplicably special and lovely to be able to hear his voice at random intervals even if it literally just for a minute. My new cell phone number and server sometimes make it difficult for me to receive text messages from my friends, but I can receive phone calls and texts from Jorge and that makes all the difference.



When I finally did see my friends, my claws had retracted a bit and I was at least able to assume a mildly jovial mood fitting of the occasion. In the evening we watched episodes of Sex in the City and even though I had seen them all before, it lifted my spirits.



Saturday morning I woke up early as usual and had a nice long talk with Alicia, one of my CHAP stage-mates. It was nice to have a little quiet time before everyone woke up.



Saturday was Ashley's (Elavagnon Ashley, and not Notse Ashley) birthday and so we made banana walnut pancakes for breakfast. They were heavenly – a real treat. We even made our own syrup.



Then I headed off to the market and was content for the opportunity to wander around alone, following no one's agenda but my own. I asked about screen for my paillote and discovered that it is not as expensive as I was lead to believe (metal screen with small squares – not small enough to keep out mosquitoes, but small enough not to make my paillote look like a chicken coup or a jail cell is about 700 cFA per meter. Add to that 300 for the mosquito netting that I would probably want as well and I'm at about 1000 francs a meter. I don't know what the exact diameter of my paillote is, but it definitely wouldn't add up to the 80,000 cFA that Jerome had given me as an estimate. There is, of course, the cement to think about though and also what message all this would send to my village. . .). I found a pagne that I really love, a green-based version of a pagne that Ashley bought in red and that I have been admiring for weeks. I think I will get a wrap-around skirt and a top made out of it, but not a full on complet because the two complet designs that I want are a little elaborate and require a fabric that is less busy to begin with. In addition, I was only able to buy two pagne's worth of fabric and when I get my complets made I want to get three set complets again – a top, a skirt, and pants. Then I bought rice, milk powder, peanuts, tapioca, a grain called fonyo that is apparently good as a whole grain bouillie (cream of wheat like breakfast cereal), eggs, a tape-measure and hot-dogs. Yup, frozen hot-dogs. I have had a craving for hot dogs ever since the new stage's post visit party when we had hot dogs and I only had one and was left wanting more. And so I bought frozen hot dogs at a yovo store (store that caters to foreigners) and brought them back to the maison. We have a refrigerator with a freezer now and so I can leave what I didn't eat for the next time I am in Atakpame. Hopefully no one will eat them . . . I put my name on the bag, but as my block mates in Brooker know, putting your name on something and leaving it in a communal fridge doesn't always keep it safe.



I hung around the house and read trashy magazines for most of the afternoon while I baked a Dunken-Heinz yellow box cake. Not to brag or anything, but it came out perfectly – two beautiful layers that I later decorated with chocolate icing in the middle, vanilla icing on the top and sides and rainbow sprinkles. All the ingredients were contributed by Alicia from care-packages her parents sent – I just put them together.



In the evening we went out to a bar to watch the sunset. It was fun, but I started to get a little annoyed as my friends started to drink and that annoyance just blossomed as the night went on because, although you should spend your birthday the way you want to (and by no means all my friends were drinking or drunk), I hate it when people drink just to get drunk and lately I think my tolerance level is particularly low for that sort of thing.

When we got back to the maison, we started making calzone stuffed with tomato sauce cheese, pepperoni, onions and green peppers. Alicia insisted that they wouldn't take long to bake, but apparently she likes her calzone raw. They did of course take forever and I became responsible for monitoring their baking. By the time I actually ate one, I wasn't really hungry for it anymore and the crust was too salty anyway (it kind of tasted like play dough) so I might as well have just skipped the whole dough and baking process entirely. However the huge piece of cake I ate (we seriously split a whole cake into six humungous chunks) made me forget it all. It was delicious. More episodes of Sex in the City also helped dispel my annoyance. We stayed up until 12:30, way past my bed-time and I had to get up at 5:00 the next morning to shower and make my Children's Rights club meeting in Notse at 10:00.



12/9/07



This morning I got up, showered and packed up my things and then Ashley and I waited for the taxi driver to come and pick us up. It all worked out quite well – he picked us up at the maison, loaded the small wooden tables that Emmanuelle had left me into the car along with all our other stuff, and drove us pretty much non-stop to Notse. By 8:30 we were sitting in Ashley's house in Notse drinking blackberry tea. We went to say hello to Heather and to pick up some packages Ashley's mother had sent and then we went to the meeting. Efo and two girls were already there when we arrived, but although we waited around for over an hour and a half, Yawovi was the only other person to eventually show up. As a result, we weren't able to advance in any way, shape or form except to decide that we will try to sensibilize three villages – Avassikpe, Komla cope, and Hake – over their ten day long Christmas break. We spent the time chatting about different things – goats, lizards, cell phones, customs here and in the States, etc. – and then we all went our separate ways.



Oh, I forgot – (Dad, you'll be interested in this) – for some reason we got on the subject today with the three students from Avassikpe of the night when Dad was here and the villagers were circling the village and drumming, chanting, singing from 3:30 until 5:30 in the morning. The students said that it is believed that evil people who are involved in voudou take on the shapes of animals, most frequently birds, and they come out at night and terrorize the villagers. They insisted that the chanting was probably supplications to God to chase away the evil spirits/people in the form of birds. They thought I must have heard the word "yovo" when they were really saying something else. I asked how you can tell the difference between a regular bird and a bird that is a voudou practitioner in disguise and Efo told me that over the Christmas holiday he will point the evil birds out to me. I must admit, I am excited about that prospect.



I have spent the rest of the day typing and eating chocolate from Ashley's care package. In a few minutes we are going to go have a drink with Heather at the hotel behind Ashley's house and in the evening I will continue writing because I haven't even begun to type my emails up from the week yet.