3/4/08 through 3/19/08

3/4/08 and 3/5/08
I can smell roasting mice from where I sit outside my little house in Avassikpe writing. It is not a pleasant smell – a mixture of burning hair and burning flesh.
The past two days have been somewhat unpleasant and frustrating so I am just going to recap certain aspects.
I was sick on Monday, fine on Tuesday and sick again this morning. I think my sphincter is broken – I pooped my pants. Don't laugh, all the other volunteers in my stage suffered that embarrassment long ago. Monday I was terribly nauseous and today I had nausea and explosive diarrhea. I went to the bathroom like twenty times. Anyway . . .
Ashley had another sick house-guest as well. There is a volunteer here visiting for a month; she COS-ed (close of service) a year ago. She was in a village between here and Notse called Akame and stayed for three years. She was a NRM (Natural Resource Management) volunteer and when people yell Ablavi at me as I rice down the Route Nationale, they are mistaking me for her. We don't really look alike, but even Jerome insists that we are the spitting image of each other. It was interesting to get a chance to talk with her – I found it particularly interesting to ask her what it is like to date a Togolese man because she is in a relationship with one and has been for four years. It isn't that the Togolese are so very different from us, but the overwhelming and ingrained gender inequality and rigid gender roles makes it difficult for me to see how an American girl could be happy with a Togolese man. Of course, I am sure there are exceptions – Togolese men who don't think God made women to serve men, but I think it would be easier, in any case, for an American man to find love and happiness with a Togolese woman than an American woman with a Togolese man. I think this ex-volunteer found, perhaps, one of the exceptions, but I don't think she is sure she wants to marry him and problematically, that is the only way she could get him to the States. I think sometimes volunteers here get themselves into complicated situations because they are lonely here, find a nice guy, start a relationship and then, all of a sudden, as the COS date approaches, they essentially have to chose between marrying the guy and breaking up with him. I don't think Togo is all that bad, but volunteers don't even want to leave their dogs here, so imagine how hard it is to leave someone you love on any level here. I think that sentiment sometimes leads volunteers to get married for perhaps the wrong reasons.
On Tuesday, I spoke with someone at the hospital about the shisto (shistosomiasis) problem in Avassikpe and ended up talking about latrines. But one thing at a time. . . for the shisto I have to figure out what age range is most affected so that we can try to organize a mass testing of the target population. Then the problem will be how to make sure everyone who is infected gets treatment. Money, money, money. I wonder if shisto can survive without the human host? So then we got on the topic of latrines because shisto is transmitted by infected people peeing in or near water sources. I mentioned wanting to work to build community latrines and he immediately said that family latrines are much better (because then the latrine is a family's property and responsibility and they will try to maintain it) and that my estimated cost for public latrines was insanely low. Go figure. He then explained a new sort of latrine (I actually don't think it is new, just newly introduced in Togo) that grabbed my interest. It is called an EcoSan Latrine and it is all above ground. The only part that needs to be of cement is the bottom – the base/containers of the fecal matter. The latrines are designed for use by 8-10 people and there are two stalls. First one is used for a year and then it is closed up and the second latrine is used while the poop in the first is heating (with the help of a slanted painted black hatch that attracts solar heat) to a temperature that kills all the dangerous microbes and makes the poo safe to use as fertilizer. When the second latrine is full, the poop is removed from the first and brought to the fields and the first is again opened and the second one closed. Another interesting and important detail is that the toilet has two holes – one for poop and one for pee. The poop goes into the concrete holding tank and the pee down a tube into a bidon. Apparently, after being left a certain amount of time (45 days I think) the pee is also safe and beneficial for the soil. The separation of the pee and poop also apparently reduces the smelliness of the latrine. The idea is to get people to consider their excrement as a resource that they are currently wasting foolishly. My interest is piqued. I will look into how much they would cost to make. The base needs to be of cement, but all the rest (the toilet stall and roofing itself) can be made of local materials – mud brick, paille roofing). I wonder about the divided pee/poop toilet itself. I will have to ask. The other good thing is that the hospital's hygiene and sanitation department would bring a mason out to teach local masons how to build these latrines and then leave them to it – capacity building – yay! I'm on it, I'm on it, I just have to convince the pastor to get on board. I would still like my church, people at home, to collaborate if they are willing. Maybe we could still somehow encourage families to scrounge up the money to build their own EcoSan latrines by contributing a percentage of each latrine. The cost will be for the outside materials – the cement and that is it – the rest they can figure out themselves – a good dry season project as that is when all the construction takes place.
I am seriously loading up on projects. Now – PE classes, moringa, winning the shisto battle; Planting Season/School Vacation – baby weighing in villages, garden, health coloring book for children, sensiblizing against child trafficking; Next Dry Season – moringa drying and selling, class in primary school, latrine project.
I was supposed to have an Ewe lesson Wednesday morning, but I woke up nauseous and with liquid diarrhea so I frantically tried to contact Jerome. His cell phone batter was apparently dead, so I ended up having to send a moto driver out to his village with a hand-written note. I couldn't have him going out to Avassikpe in vain, but I didn't think I could make it as planned in my state.
I spent the morning lying on the couch watching movies (R.V., Stepmom – again – hey you've gotta make do with what you've got) and dashing to the bathroom every fifteen minutes. Like I already said, once I didn't make it.
I ended up feeling good enough to bike back to village by late afternoon. Had it not been for the community work day and the CVD meeting scheduled for Thursday morning, I probably would have stayed in Notse another night, but wouldn't you know, neither took place because half the village is in Kpedome (right outside Notse) for a funeral.

3/6/08
I keep doing stupid things that lead me to do gross things: eating bugs, reusing toilet paper and the latest? Today I scooped water from my cistern (in the dark) with the wrong bucket, with the pee, spit and waste water bucket. I scooped it into my shower bucket and even though I realized my mistake before showering, I couldn't see wasting the water and so I used it anyway. TO make matters worse, I did a lot of Togolese cooking today, which means a lot of fishy cooking and a lot of fishy waste water. I'm not sure if it is my imagination, but I think I (including my hair which I probably shouldn't have washed) smell like fish. I am trying to decide if smelling like fish is better than smelling like pee . . . At least I've never pooped in the bucket!!
From what Tseviato tells me, it hailed here the other day and she was so scared she cried – I have never seen this girl cry; I guess hail isn't a frequent sort of precipitation here. Today, as usual, I was busy from sun-up until sun-down and beyond (because it is dark out and I still have a lot to do).
I made pancakes and then started digging a hole for my compost. It is time and labor intensive because once the topsoil is removed, the dirt is really hard and I have to pick out all the trash – glass, metal, batteries, plastic, shoes, clothes – you name it – it is in my garden.
I took some time to police children's soccer games to make sure the little ones got a chance to play and tried to put a small child on my back like the women do here (a one year old – Raymond), but took him off almost immediately because I was afraid he would fall off.
I ended up staying out in the sun too long and getting burned and the children were making my job more difficult. The easiest thing would have been to give them the soccer ball to get them to go away, but I was trying to teach them a lesson which probably frustrated me more than them. I was annoyed that they don't bring the ball to me when finished playing and that instead, they stash it in one of their own homes (probably because they know that I allow the older kids to keep their ball). I told them that if they couldn't listen to my words and bring me back the ball when finished, that they couldn't have it at all. Of course they begged and whined and blamed each other and ultimately got in the way because they were trying to be "helpful" to convince me to give them the ball. I didn't. Not until later anyway.
I made a trip to the barrage, but I should have gone earlier – it was too hot. I think watering 1,000 seedlings twice a day is going to be a much more difficult and time/energy consuming task than I imagined. I think it will take four trips to the barrage to water them all once (ONCE!) and I say I think because I didn't even manage to water all the dirt once today. I know, I'm a failure of a tree mother. =0( Lucky for me it is raining now.
As if I didn't have enough work to do, I decided to make fufu for lunch and get the last two ignams off my floor (they have been occupying space since Christmas) and eliminate one more mouse-sustaining element (no sooner than I got rid of my ignams, Lili brought me a gift of four more – great). Fufu is a lot of work. Physical work. Tseviato was helping me and eve so I was exhausted by the time I had peeled, cut, boiled, crushed an pounded. I gave Tseviato a huge amount and shared an even larger quantity with DaJulie and her sister who were resting under my paillote. It was actually really good. And then I made pâte sauce to speed the cooking process tomorrow – not a quick process let me tell you (BTW, I need to reheat it now to make sure it keeps well). I think I put too much water and palm oil in, but I am proud of myself for dealing with the fish all by myself. The big smoked fish are actually really really good. I might just get addicted – I am already salivating at the thought of fish and rice with a spicy tomato-onion sauce. I even broke the heads and tales off the little fishies, washed them and threw them in, but I am not a fan – they are all scales and bone and not worth the effort.
By the time I finished cooking it was 4:00. I then tried to fill my jar-frigo with a sandy layer of insulation between the two jars which was more challenging than expected because it is too tight of a fit. We will see if I can make it work. And of course I have little children bugging me all the while about the soccer ball because the older children (no matter what the age range) inevitably monopolize the ball.
I managed to make two more trips to the barrage and water ¾ of the trees before dark and shower without getting hit by the lightning that was streaking between clouds.
Oh, I completely forgot: while I was working in my garden, my APCD called and told me that the lady from UNICEF who gave me the scales requests my presence at a formation on child nutrition taking place in Tsevie next Monday through Firday. While I am touched to be included and interested in attending, a little more notice would have been good and now I will really put my village to the test and see if they can manage to continue clearing the field and watering the seedlings daily without me there to prod them along.
3/7/08
Once again I am exhausted. It seems I never have enough time in a day to do everything – the unbarred items on my "to do" list go on and on. Today I prepared my Peer Educator course first thing in the morning and then went to see about my 1,000 cFA that this guy who was supposed to make my bongos (woven paille fencing) and never did has yet to return to me – a pain in my ---, that is what it is. I would just forget about it, but I can't just on principle. Aggravation; waste of precious time; no luck. Apparently he travels a lot and when he was here, his mother was sick . . .
I made pancakes and policed soccer games and before I could make even one trip to get water for my dirt, Jerome arrived. He never gets here before 10 and he chose today to show up at 8:00. Of course he didn't leave any earlier. It isn't that I mind his visits, but today my list was looming and making it hard for me to concentrate on an Ewe less derived from the Bible. Jerome seems at a lack for good lesson ideas lately. Perhaps I should make a list of ideas.
He helped me make pâte again except this time I did most of it. Thank goodness I had prepared the sauce yesterday! I think it turned out well – not too lumpy and not too rubbery.
After he left, I meant to go to the barrage to get water for my trees, but I got side-tracked by a conversation with Lili. Apparently the "authocthones" – original inhabitants of the village – are gravely displeased that Bebe, a "foreigner," accompanied me to the formation in Pagala. Please! It makes me so angry! We picked a person that is involved in the activities of the dispensaire and who has proved herself willing to work and give of her time and energy. One of the main whiners, the president of COGES, Victor, is the kind of person that drives up on his moto on vaccination day, struts around in his "vaccination vest" as if he were a central component for the smooth-functioning of the work at hand and then disappears to "animer" the marché (drink Tchouk – fermented sorghum beer). I hope Lili can come to this next formation in Pagala because I will refuse to take one of those types. Roundly refuse. I would like to take Bebe again if Lili can't make it or no one at all. It makes me so angry – all this petty authocthone/foreigner crap.
I didn't get a chance to water my dirt before my PE class. Today the class was on gender roles (a continuation of the topic of debate last class) and what facilitates good communication. The kids just got done with a week of exams and I am tired, a little stressed and less well-prepared than usual I guess and the class was a little subdued. Even I was bored. The kids didn't seem in the mood to think or participate too much. I asked them what changes they would like to see in the gender roles in Togo and they couldn't come up with any ideas at all. I'm not sure if they didn't understand or if they were just being lazy and so I gave them a homework assignment. I wonder if they are going to be bored by the capacity building sessions now that we have finished with HIV/AIDS. I finished class half an hour early and biked to Avovocope, a village between Agbatitoe and Avassikpe, and stopped to pick up the cle (a barrier made of palm fronts) that I had ordered. I thought I would be albe to tie it on my bike (I don't know why I thought that – it wasn't dry yet and so heavy I could barely lift it, not to mention big, bigger than a door which is what it is – a door for my garden. Apparently when it dires, it gets lighter, but right now it is green and very heavy). And so I had to mess around with getting a moto driver to bring it to Avassikpe for me. I paid as much for transport as I did for the thing itself. Stupid, but I wanted my door. I need my door to keep children and animals out. Children because they like to test my patience and walk on my bags and stick their fingers in them. Animals for the obvious reasons . . .
And so, life goes on. I made two trips to the barraged and watered half my dirt and then brought pâte and sauce to Tseviato's mom 'cause she gave me some charcoal today (I wanted to buy some; she didn't have enough to sell, but she insisted on giving me what little she had). I also gave some pâte to DaJulie and her sister to taste and a pineapple to DaMarie who sent bananas over yesterday. And then I showered.
Yesterday I learned that Koffi (15 or 16) and Xola (12) and Gerard (10) and Isabel (1) are all DaMarie's children. She only looks a couple of years older than me. I even thought Isabel might be her first child – silly me.
Lately I have also been hearing a lot about Nigeria. All the children are talking about going to Nigeria and coming back with a moto and it has me really upset. Aparently the moto that brought me to Agbatitoe when my gas ran out was obtained by the kid who looked too young to drive it in Nigeria. That, and other "success stories' lure children into thinking that Nigeria is the promised land. Yeah right. I spoke with the director of the school and we agreed that I will come talk with the students about it.
3/8/08
I was thinking about trying to write while lying in my hammock, but on second thoughts, that might not be all that productive. I am exhausted. I know, I know, I whine that I am exhausted at the end of every day, but seriously, I am talking 6am to 6pm hard labor without a break. I got up, made breakfast – I finally figured out how my host mom in Agou Nyogbo used to make a cream of wheat like breakfast cereal – corn flour. I discovered it by chance because as you make pâte you first boil a big pot of water and then, in a small bowl of cold water you mix corn flour with hour hand so as to break up all the lumps. When your big pot of water is boiling, you pour the cold corn flour liquid in and stir vigorously. You then cover it and let it come to a boil for a second time. When boiling, you remove a bowl full of the now thickened mixture and set it aside. Yesterday, we removed too much and so, after adding corn flour and evening it out with some of the liquid we had set aside, we still had a bowl full. Jerome said I could put sugar in it and eat it as a bouillie (liquidy cereal) and so later in the day I did and realized it was the same thing my host mom used to make and that I have been wondering for ages how to replicate.
After making my corn bouillie (cream of corn cereal) I had no time to eat it because Tseviato was at my door asking if I was planning to go to the barrage. I was and so we went together. It was my first time going to the barrage in the early morning when everyone goes to get water. Tomorrow I plan to take my video camera and film it because it looks really neat (a long line of people with containers of all materials shapes and sizes filled with water on their heads) and will be useful in my moringa video if it ever gets made.
Tseviato and I went to the barrage three times in three hours. I could have done it a little faster alone because I felt badly riding my bike and leaving Tseviato in the dust and so I wheeled it. In between each trip, we watered the dirt. The children are no longer allowed unsupervised in my garden because yesterday I found a bag of dirt that had been purposely dumped out sever feet away and today I saw that someone tore the duct tape off the defective bags I had tried to patch. I tried to tell them that if they are going to do destructive things like that, they won't be allowed in the garden and I also refused to give them the ball all morning as punishment and had Tseviato explain each and every time someone asked me for the ball exactly why I was refusing. There is probably only one culprit, but this way everyone is forewarned not to mess around in my garden. I don't want to banish the kids, but I can't have them damaging the trees and later my vegetables.
I finished watering the dirt and brought my pictures over to show DaJulie's sister (Sofie's mom). I interrupted their morning meal, but that was fine because I was hungry and ate some pâte. Afterwards, Tseviato and I planted the moringa seeds that I had left soaking since yesterday afternoon. Not as easy as you might think/hope planning a thousand seeds – it too us until noon in the fierce sunlight, but luckily we had just enough seeds. I wonder what our germination rate will be. Ideally you would plan three seed in each back to be on the safe side, but I didn't have enough seeds.
I made Tseviato some popcorn th thnk her and then went to see Lili (mia) and Tsevi. He came to help me with my door and fill the space between the wall and my fencing. For lunch I made couscous and lentils with leftover fish sauce and after eating I did a bit of laundry and went to see Lili again and then I tried to deepen my compost pit, but the dirt is really dry and hard. At four I made three more trips to the barrage – it went faster because I was unaccompanied and therefore didn't feel guilty about biking there and back. I did dishes, showered and am writing. And I just got off the phone with Jorge – we spoke for 45 minutes! What a treat!
3/9/08
My meeting with the CVD was first thing in the morning and as I waited for them to assemble under my paillote, I packed and made corn bouillie for breakfast. The meeting was short, sweet and to the point – I informed them that I am leaving for two weeks and that they will have to water the trees and finish preparing the field for planting. They accepted the news easily for which I was grateful and relieved. I showed them how I water the plants – they brought over a metal colander to see if that would work faster and better, but we decided that it was too much water and would flood the trees. The soil was still quite damp from the night before and so we ended up only using one bidon and I was freed from having to go to the barrage for a second bidon.
I spoke with Bebe and a young man from Midijicope about the problems between the two halves of the village – it is so difficult to figure out what really happened because each side has their "story" of how it all went down well rehearsed, like a dialogue that over time has become truth and replaced any real memories they have of the conflict. When I talk with people from Midijicope, invariably they say they contributed money and Avassikpe bouffed (stole) it. When I ask someone from Avassikpe, invariably Midijicope refused to contribute money. Now the pump is broken and apparently people from Midijicope are being charged for taking water from the barrage. I feel like I have been plopped into the role of conflict solver– I guess trying to work through this problem with be a good learning experience for me.
Once the CVD members had dispersed, I started chipping away at my compost hole. I went back into the house to get something and surprised a mouse in my front room. It looked as though it had eaten of the poisoned apple (or poisoned fish and pâte) because it was no longer racing out of sight at lightning speed. Stupidly, I scared it from where I could see it to under my guarde-manger and then, even worse, into the bedroom. And then a second mouse ran over my foot and into my bedroom. I called in the ranks (Tseviato and Richard wielding sticks) and stepped outside while they tried to find and kill the mice and not get too distracted by the fact that they were in my bedroom, virgin territory for village children and a treasure trove for the eyes. They killed and removed one mouse and about half an hour later, as I was packing for my trip, the second one jumped out of my clothes basket, into my lap and under my bed. I chased him back into the front room, shut the door to the bedroom and called the children back in. Picture this: several children ages six through twelve wielding sticks and a coupcoup trying to wack a mouse running helter-skelter all over my relatively small and cluttered room; Danielle sitting perched on a chair back, afraid to come in direct contact with the mouse for yet a third time and children peeking in the windows and around the door to watch the circus. They caught and removed another mouse (still alive) from under my two-burner gas stove, but we lost the third mouse. I don't know where it escaped to; I was sure it was hiding under my guarde-manger, but Tsevi, attracted by the commotion, joined the hunt and moved my entire guarde-manger to prove to me that the mouse wasn't there. I was convinced it was squished as we moved it because, and this is really really gross so you might want to skip to the next line, when I was poking around under there with a stick, I swept out a mouse foot. No, not a lucky rabbit foot (although, if you ask me, that is just as disgusting) but a mouse foot. And so Tsevi, a wonderful man who wanted to humor me, then tilted up the guarde-manger to make sure the mouse wasn't smushed up underneath. I still wasn't convinced and only time and the stench or lack there of emanating from my house when I return will put my mind at ease.
After the mouse hunt, I decided to try to sweep out my entire house and leave it in some sort of order and cleanliness – that took a while considering I hadn't swept out my bedroom for months. Can that be true? With harmattan it is so easy to adopt the "why bother" attitude because everything is dirty again five minutes after you clean it anyway.
I finished cleaning and packing and showering around 12:30 which ended the debate in my mind over whether to take a moto or ride my bike. It was simply too hot to ride my bike, but in normal, not-rushed circumstances, riding my bike is a 100 times more pleasant. You have to wait for the moto and then, when I got one it was a small one so my backpack couldn't be tied to the back and so I wore it – big mistake. I'm never doing that again – fifteen hellish minutes in which I felt as though I was holding myself in a crunch position for a super duper abdominal workout without respite for the entire trip with the alternative being falling off the back of the moto. Sometimes I am stubbornly and stupidly proud. I don't know why I didn't just ask him to stop and put my bag between his legs. I honestly thought I as going to fall off and it took the cooperation of every muscle in my body to keep me on that moto for the excruciating 6 kilometers to Agbatitoe (my body is sore today, Monday, from the effort).
When I got to Notse and to Heather's house, I was pleasantly welcomed by four people from my stage (other than Ashley and Heather whom I expected to be there) and a feast that they had prepared. I arrived just in time to reap the benefits of everyone else's efforts and ate a fabulous lunch of spicy ginger grilled pintade and vegetables, rice and tortillas. It was amazing and so much better for not having cost me any effort.
At 4:00 I caught a taxi to Tsevie and found myself squished in the front seat with two other women, a toddler and the driver. I arrived in Tsevie around 5:30 and decided to test out the internet café while waiting for Maggie and Stephanie to arrive (two health volunteers from the Maritime region – Steph is in my stage and Maggie in the one before us). Amazingly, the internet worked and I was able to chat with Jorge and finish up my hour just as Maggine and Steph rolled into town. The first hotel we stopped at was, alarmingly, full, but we were directed to a hotel where, after discute-ing (arguing the price down) we got a room with air-conditioning, hot water and television! We didn't mean to pamper ourselves so much, but it was his only open room and it was getting too late to be wandering around looking for lodging. And so I had my first warm water shower since I've been in Togo.
3/10/08
Not knowing what time our formation started or where the hospital was, we decided to play it safe and leave the hotel at 6:30 in search of breakfast. Stephanie ate beans (I stocked up on beans for lunch) and Maggie and I had egg sandwhiches. We then walked for forty minutes and asked for directions three times before arriving at the hospital. We didn't get lost; the hospital just happens to be on completely the opposite side of town from our hotel. The hospital in Tsevie is actually impressively nice. I thought the Notse hospital was nice, but this one has a park with trees and cement benches lining a long driveway that ends in a roundabout in front of the main entrance and is adorned with a modern artish statue of a woman and her child. Inside there is actually a receptionist, plenty of seating, and even lounge-like nooks with reading material. The staff is dressed in crisply pressed white and blue uniforms and the hospital even smells clean. The bathrooms are stocked with toilet paper and soap to boot. We are duly impressed. The receptionist directed us up the stairs to the second floor – when we arrived at the conference room, a man informed us that our formation was elsewhere and that he would conduct us to our destination. He escorted us to a building at the back of the hospital grounds (which are huge and leave much room for expansion), past beautifully landscaped areas full of trees and greenery, past a resource center and some mango trees that insisted on pelting us with their unripe baby mangos. The room for our formation was being cleaned out; we were disappointed because the first conference room was air conditioned and equipped for a powerpoint presentation; this conference room looked like it was being swept out after a year of disuse. We waited around chatting for an hour while they readied the room and then followed all the other people inside. We sat down and realized quickly that we were in the wrong formation – this was a formation for community health agents on the Buruli Ulcer (also a serious problem, but not where we were supposed to be). And so, someone conducted us back to that air-conditioned conference room we had first stumbled upon. Luckily, it hadn't started yet, but we got stuck with terrible seats for the duration of the formation (because people here are too anal to accept the changing of seats; this morning, Tuesday, we were considering changing spots and pretending to be oblivious to all the confusion, discomfort and disorder our disruption of the status quo had caused – people probably wouldn't tell us to move, but they would certainly be upset by the change).
The woman who gave me the scales wasn't present, but we were given a pen, a pencil, an eraser, a notebook, and a big book outlining UNICEF's program for treating child malnutrition in Togo. We also learned that we are getting paid a per diem of 18,000 cFA a day (around $35.00) and so I calculate that I can walk away with about 90,000 or $170 – pretty good for a weeks work as a volunteer. Now I understand why people love formations hosted by big international organizations.
The formation is on an interesting topic (child malnutrition), but the pace at which the information is disseminated is extremely slow. Essentially UNICEF is teaching health workers how to implement its program/plan to rehabilitate severely malnourished children. The problem? It brings in enriched milk and some peanut butter paste to boost the child's weight and intake of important nutrients, but it doesn't teach parents how to better feed their children with the resources they have at their disposal or how to generate local resources; it keeps everyone dependent on UNICEF handouts and makes it likely that the same child will relapse into a state of malnutrition once they are no longer receiving the free nutrient-packed handouts. Big international organization sweeps in and saves hundreds of children from starvation; pictures of emaciated babies turned plump, happy, smiling. But what happens afterwards? What are the benefits for the children who follow? What behavior change or capacity building actually takes place? None. At least not that I am hearing. Totally missing is how families can improve child nutrition without UNICEF's high-handed intervention. I fully realize that they are focusing on sever cases in which the children are likely to die unless someone swoops in and saves the day, but without a parallel behavior change, information sharing and capacity building effort, it is a band-aid on a gunshot wound. They could easily make mothers attend workshops while their babies are being nutritionally rehabilitated, but I am not hearing much mention of that, only shiny silver packets of astronaut food (just kidding – powdered milk and peanut butter – but it reminds me of astronaut food) with spacy names like F75, F100 and Plumpy Nut.
Anyway, I'm learning a lot about child malnutrition and about the defects of huge international organizations. The UNICEF centers aren't in my region (because we have a child malnutrition rate lower than 10% apparently – UNICEF focuses their efforts in Savannes, Kara and Maritime which have acute malnutrition rates of 32%, 22.6% and 12.99% respectively). I really think they should be spending their money on developing local and sustainable resources – are they going to fund these centers and programs forever? (no, only for a year I later found out) They are only fomenting dependency.
Like I said, I am learning interesting information, but the pace is painfully slow. We get snacks, though, sodas and food . . . we are in session from 8 in the morning until 1 and again from 2:30 until 5:30. We have to eat lunch in and around the hospital because our hotel is way too far away.
Yesterday, after the formation ended for the day, I went to the internet and was able to chat with Jorge again – I am being spoiled! And then I met up with the girls at the hotel – we have been severely demoted – we were under the impression that our new room (our posh room was reserved for Monday night and the rest of the week) would be the same as the first except with fans instead of airconditioning. In fact, it is in a completely separate building a block away and just a bare room with two twin beds pushed together. Not only does it not have a nice bathroom with hot water, but it doesn't have a bathroom at all! The bathroom is communal and across the courtyard and the toilet doesn't have a toilet seat. Had we not spent the first night in absolute luxury, we probably wouldn't even have blinked – the conditions really aren't bad, it is the comparison that makes them completely unacceptable. And so I went to the manager and complained and convinced him to drop a thousand francs from the nightly price. I honestly don't mind the cold shower and I prefer the fan to the air conditioning, but I would like to have easy and exclusive access to the bathroom.
3/11/08
The morning session today was painful. Excruciatingly boring. The first part was tolerable because we were looking at pictures and talking about how to recognize a severely malnourished child, but the second part consisted of several hours of reading out loud from the book and discussing. In the afternoon we were supposed to practice the diagnostic techniques that we learned (measuring the circumference of the middle upper arm, the weigh to height ration, the appetite, etc.) and it would have been interesting except the groups were too large and the children weren't at all malnourished, so it was a little bit of a mute point – just going through the motions. We didn't actually participate (the three volunteers) because we aren't really medically trained and the kids are scared of us to bood. Now we are going over the "field" experience in our groups and writing up a report which we will present tomorrow. Unfortunately, it is only day 2 of this seminar. I don't know why everything, every learning situation here has to be so long, drawn-out and painful.
3/12/08
Have I ever mentioned the clapping? Here they have all these claps (with different names and rhythms that they call bancs) that they use to make sure everyone is paying attention, to thank someone for their contribution, to energize everyone, etc. It is interesting to see adults joyfully clapping in unison.
I forgot to mention yesterday how ridiculous some of the protocol crap is here. For example, each morning participants are assigned to summarize the events of the previous day. They recap everything as if they were a secretary taking the minutes of a meeting, complete with "at 11:27 we . . ." And then the other participants correct the summary (the grammar or vocabulary, for example, or make stupid, inconsequential comments or corrections just to say something). Then, (yes, I know I am griping, but I am going to continue anyway) we all took turns reading out loud and the woman net to me seems to have difficulty seeing or reading and the others in the room impatiently corrected her pronunciation and pausation - very obnoxious and condescending. And they are always correcting people's grammar – there is such an emphasis on form here and a lack of attention to the content. It is really frustrating and tiring.
Our formateur for the day was a very energetic, wiry man with a curly mustache and a big toothy smile. He was a huge fan of the clapping I was just telling you about and had us repeating the same banc over and over again all day. Triple: xxx xxx x! The sessions were somewhat interesting because it was a lot of information about complications that can arise while treating cases of sever malnutrition like dehydration, intestinal problems, heart failure, hypothermia, hypoglycemia, anemia and convulsions. It was a lot of information, but at least it was useful information and not a waste of time.
In the evening we were liberated half an hour early and I went to chat with Jorge at the internet café. Everything was going fine until it got dark and these flying termites came out. I was sitting right under the light, unfortunately, and the bugs were flying and crawling all over me – in my hair, down my shirt, up my skirt – it was driving me crazy – disgusting, torturous – I couldn't hardly concentrate on our conversation and ended up having to leave because I couldn't stand the bugs any longer.
3/13/08
Today has also been a torturous day of reading out loud from the book and confusing people who are supposed to implement UNICEF's program with mixed protocol messages (miscommunications between UNICEF and the World Food Program who is also funding the project).
Breakfast this morning was interesting. We went to an egg sandwich stand – a little shack where a man makes egg sandwiches. There was an Imam there and then the pastor arrived and afterwards other men. The Imam was really getting on my nerves; he chose Maggie as his wife and asked the other men which one they wanted as if we were cattle lined up for sale. I got annoyed and said, "excuse me, but we are not available to be chose by you. We don't choose to be chosen, you can't just divvy us up as if we were your loot." The problem with people like that is that they don't listen to your words and everything you say that they don't like turns you into a racist. Here men's favorite explanation/reasoning for why we don't want to marry them or have sex with them is that we are racist. Not because we just aren't interested and they are rude, obnoxious, and sexist, but because we are racist.
Someone must have figured out somewhere along the way that nothing will provoke some sort of reaction from a young American woman like calling her racist for ignoring your overtures and so they constantly play that card. Racism has nothing to do with it; culture is a much greater issue here. If the men here knew how to treat women, they would have a much better chance with American women (not me, but American women in general). They are never going to be seriously considered as a romantic interest by an American woman if they continue to treat women as objects to be claimed and partitioned and owned; they annihilate their own chances the first time they open their mouths. And the main perpetrator this morning is an Imam. Fantastic.
We got our money today – 108,000 cFA – yay! That is a lot of money – I am thinking of using 60,000 of it to apply for a multiple entry visa to Ghana. Dad said we could go to Ghana in the extra days he will be here after mom and Mimi leave and I am excited about it because all the other PCVs talk about Ghana as if it were the Promised Land.
We wanted to go out for a nice dinner to celebrate surviving four days of Togo Learning Torture (TLT, makes me think of a BLT – I'm hungry), but everywhere we went only had couscous, spaghetti and fish and fries; not a very celebratory menu. We ended up back at the hotel with street salads in black plastic bags and sending a moto to get us French fries that we ate with the ketchup that Maggie had bought in Lome.
3/14/08
The session was again torturous today, but luckily it was the last day and the thought of a quickly approaching liberation helped us make it through. To boot, the session didn't concern us at all because it was all about the paperwork and documentation so that UNICEF can easily calculate how many children's lives they save. We took the post-test (did I mention that we took a pretest the first day? I only got one question right because I had no idea what PB, P/T, F100, F75, Phase 1, Transition, Phase 2, CRENI, CRENAS, CRENAM, ATPE, or Plumpy Nut meant – all parts of UNICEF's program. Now I at least know the jargon, although I am not sure how much good it will do me) and left the torture chamber around 10:45. A Peace Corps Vehicle full of other volunteers picked us up around 11:30, dropped me in Notse, and continued to Pagala.
When I arrived at Ashley's house, one of the women who works at the internet café informed me that they were having a cultural celebration at the Soke private school (right in front of Ashley's house and the affiliate of the internet café) with singing and dancing and skits. I went over around 1:00 when it was supposed to start, went to the internet café when the electricity came back on, Jorge wasn't on gmail and so I went back to the school (still nothing interesting going on except a lot of really nicely dressed school-kids), went back to the internet café, left when the power cut out, went back to the school (still nothing, now à cause de the powercut), went to Ashley's house, showered, changed, went back to the school (still nothing – they tried to find a generator, but the generator wasn't working either), saw Effoh and chatted with him for a while, went to buy water and sit and chat with Hevihevi and wait for something to HAPPEN which it never did. The electricity only came back around 7:00 and I went to the internet café and had a chance to chat with Jorge for an hour.
3/15/08
Today I got up early and biked out to the really fancy hotel at the other side of town. It might arguably be the nicest hotel in Togo. It is called Hotel Berceau and it isn't even that expensive (it has rooms for roughly $28, $32, $50, and $70). I reserved a room for my parents' and grandmother's visit and was really impressed by how nice the hotel is (and it has a pool that would be fantastic for swimming laps! – nonguests can swim there for 1000 cFa ($2.00) hm . . . ). I then biked to the market, but it was too early to get all the ingredients for my planned lunch of lemon, garlic, herb fish and rice and so I may have to bike back, change my plans, or go hungry.
I also picked up my computer cord which I brought yesterday to be fixed and it is working so that should hold me over until my parents bring my new powercord and I brought my Tevas to someone who fixes shoes because, and I think I forgot to mention it before, they broke the first day of the formation. Now I am typing up emails and hoping that internet will open. I went around 10:00 and it was all closed up. Maybe I will be lucky in the afternoon. The problem is that it is Saturday and they need at least three clients to connect to the internet.
In the afternoon I had no luck with internet and so I typed responses to the letters that a third grade class from my school district in Pennsylvania wrote to me. Their questions include: "what is the weather like?" "what food do you eat?" "are you the only Peace Corps person there?" "are the kids nice?" "do the kids go to school?" "do the kids do the same things we do?" "do you live in a log cabin?" "what do you do?" "what animals are there?" I enjoyed answering their questions.
I received a visit from Yaovi – I passed him on the road this morning as I was biking out to the hotel and so he knew I was in town. I also picked up my Tevas and received a phone call from Jorge's mother. The layover in Notse provided me with some downtime between the two formations I am attending this week, although I heard that I missed some fun times at AllVol (All Volunteer Conference) which was taking place in Pagala as I was taking my respite.
3/15/08
It wasn't a particularly remarkable day. It took a while to find a car heading this far north from Notse, but once I was in the right car, it was a pretty straight shot to a town on the route national called Langabou and I got lucky and hopped in a Peace Corps vehicle just as it was leaving for Pagala.
Upon arrival I met my friends, all the girls from my stage were already here because they had been here for AllVol. We ate lunch and then watched a strange movie called "Into the Wild" about a young man who goes off into the wilderness to escape modern materialism and ends up dying of starvation – not exactly a pick-me-up movie. It is based on a true story to boot.
Television. Food. More television.
Lili didn't arrive until around 10:00. Apparently her taxi had a flat tire en rout – she must be exhausted. I hope to find this formation somewhat interesting and useful and not to torturous. I'll let you know tomorrow.
3/17/08, 3/18/08, and 3/19/08
What can I say about three days of in-service training at Pagala? The food was good. The sessions, were long, tedious and boring, although I did learn a few things about methods of birth control and family planning that I will impart to my peer educators and I bought around 3,000 moringa seeds. It is nice to be with the girls and have a chance to get to know some of the GEE (Girls Education and Empowerment) volunteers who arrived in this last stage and are here having PDM at the same time we have IST.
I have been a little anxious for multiple reasons that have been impeding my concentration at this very worthy (sensing a little bit of sarcasm?) formation, but one of them is the fact that my APCD informed me that I am one of four CHAP volunteers that he has chosen to attend a FARN formation in Benin. Nothing wrong with that you say? Well, normally, no, there wouldn't be (unless you take into account that I have had a bit of an overdose of formations lately). Actually, it seems like a pretty good opportunity because the FARN method is for treating malnutrition at the local level and provides a good alternative (a more sustainable, capacity building alternative than UNICEF's swoop in and save the day approach). So what's the problem? It overlaps with the last two days of Dad's stay in Togo. We are supposed to leave mid-day on the 28th of April and the formation starts on the 29th. If Dad weren't blacklisted from entering Benin, we could switch our Ghana plans to Benin plans, but . . . and you know me, I like to have my cake and eat it too. Maybe I arrive late, but I am a little afraid that if I suggest that to my APCD he will just choose someone else for the formation who can go for the whole thing (considering that he is only taking four volunteers). And then again, maybe it isn't such a big deal and I should tell him to choose someone else. One of the sources of my current angst.