2/19/08 through 3/3/08

2-19-08 and 2-20-08
So yesterday after typing up my emails and waiting around the Bureau for my gas tank to be ready it never materialized. Ashley, the angel that she is, agreed to stay in Lome with me for another night. That was really sweet and self-sacrificing of her because Lome is a black hole for money and if you're there too long, it can get rather boring and frustrating.
I sat around, read a funny book called "So you want to be Canadian" or something to that effect, did miscellaneous things on internet like friend all the people I went to school with in Bolivia on Facebook and other essentially useless things just to pass the time. Whenever I get to Lome and have fast and free internet, I always forget all th things I wanted to look up – I need to keep a running internet list.
For dinner we went back to the Festival des Glaces – the really yummy restaurant we had gone to the night before and I had pizza (for only the second time since I've been in Togo). This time I had coffee ice cream with tiny chocolate chips in it for desert. Heavenly.
After chatting with Jorge until late into the night, Ashley and I went to find a room at Mamy's (the same hotel/rumored brothel that we had stayed in the previous two nights). The bed I slept in was much less comfortable, though , and around four in the morning the electricity and therefore the fans shut off and we baked. I didn't sleep very well.
Today was stressful. It is so hard to get straight information here because everyone just tells you what you want to hear. I didn't know whether there would really be gas today or whether they were just saying that there would be gas. I also felt a little guilty making Ashley stay with me and felt that I was wasting not only my time but hers as well (luckily, the internet was now working). I wandered around aimlessly bugging everyone I could find about my gas tank, but even so it didn't' come until 10:30 and I had to cancel my PE class. Luckily I got a hold of the Director of the CEG in Agbatitoe so that the students would be informed. Canceling my class turned out to be a wise decision because we didn't get to Notse until 3:00 and I didn't get home until around 5:00.
Transportation here is something that just has to be experienced first hand – you can't possibly get the full effect of the chaotic, yelling, pushing, shoving, aggressiveness that is taxi drivers and their "peeps" until you experience it for yourself. It is exhausting, literally exhausting. Not to mention the hours of waiting before the car/van is full and then the drive itself which is inevitably painful (if you're lucky, not to the point of tears, but painful nonetheless) and frightening. Today the tire of a huge tractor-trailer blew out if front of us making a terrible explosive noise. Luckily it was able to pull off to the side – I guess that is one of the benefits of having so many tires – even if you lose one you can still remain semi-stable.
We arrived in Notse exhausted (traveling with extra baggage also raises the aggravation index because the taxi drivers will try to squeeze every cent they can out of you and our moto restriction makes it difficult for us to transport heavy things like a full gas tank in Notse where all the taxis are intercity and not intracity taxis. We got extremely lucky and one of Ashley's taxi driver friends happened to be passing through the gare (station) at the exact same moment we arrived. We had tried to negotiate with the driver of the van beforehand, but you never know if they will honor their word and so we eagerly accepted her friend's offer to take us closer to the house for free. I paid him 500cFA anyway in thanks because he saved me a huge amount of aggravation – I had a lot of stuff with my gas tank and all the things Unicef gave me and could never have carried them all to Ashley's house.
Once in Notse, I rushed around getting pineapples, bananas, oranges, eggs, onions and other staples and then took a car to Agbatitoe and two motos (for all my stuff) to Avassikpe. I had smushed some of my bananas and am making two batches of banana bread (the downside? My house is going to be really hot). Tomorrow I have a meeting with the CVD and I want to prepare a calendar so we can plan our moringa work schedule, but I'm really tired . . . the meeting is at 6:00, though, so I won't have time in the morning . . .
2/21/08
This morning I met with the CVD. We talked about the roles and responsibilities of the members and established twice monthly meetings on Thursday at 7:00. We instated fines for members who arrive late or fail to come at all (unless they have notified the secretary in advance). We also spoke of a village trash clean-up effort and trash pits and fines for those who throw garbage outside of the designated pits. Finally, we spoke about moringa, but not much was concluded except that we will have a village wide meeting on Monday to decide the dates we will clear the field and do the other work for the moringa project, how the work will be organized and the penalty for not participating. At this village wide (which inevitably means elders and other male members of the community) we should also discuss the village clean-up and get that ball rolling as well.
I brought two of the banana breads that I baked to the meeting and it was a great hit – everyone loved it and they all want to learn how to make it.
My day today was busy, but not particularly exciting an so I am going to run through it quickly. After the meeting with the CVD, I brought all the "goods" from Unicef to the dispensaire. Lili was happy, but not as ecstatically overjoyed by the scale as I had hoped. Then I went to speak with the director of the school. He thanked me for the banana doughnuts I had made him on Saturay and told me that the students would bring the wood they had collected for my fence posts to the house at noon.
I came home and got busy on the unpleasant task of debugging my food supplies. So much for stockpiling food – all my beans are bug infested and essentially ruined. The nasty little buggers drill a hole in the beans and eat the inside out, leaving only the shell. I used a sieve to get some of the bugs out (there were hundreds), but others were buried inside the beans like a crab in its shell. The chickens feasted on all the bugs and Khosoivi told me that I could take my spoiled beans to the Moulin and then make beignets with the bean flour. Tsevi told me that if I lay the beans out in the sun, the bugs would come out and so I lay them out on a mat in my shower. Frustrating. I am very very frustrated by food conservation here and I am sick and tired of the bugs and the mice. The mice here know no boundaries. They have started gnawing on my chocolate and eve nibbled at my margarine. At Ashley's I guess they were super hungry (her guarde-manger actually keeps mice out, unlike mine) and they gnawed a hole into one of our pineapples.
After removing hundreds of bugs from my beans, I ate bugs and beans for lunch. I tried to get them all out, but I am sure I missed a couple. Fortunately, I ate beans, bugs and gari so that I could pretend that the crunching was gari and not bugs =0).
I prepared my Peer Educator class (Lili told me that one of my students came to Avassikpe looking for me – I guess the Director did not inform everyone; that makes me feel both angry and guilty, as though I let them down. =0( No good. Tomorrow I will apologize and bring them candy =0).
I walked around afterwards talking with different people – village women, Lili, the EPP Director (again), Tsevi about my fencing, etc. I got another bongo today; moving right along. I need two more to complete my fence. I hope it gets done because that will be a big five-moth long headache out of the way.
In the evening I went to see Ignace about my 1,000 cFA that some dude in Midijicope owes me (money I forwarded for bongo's he never made). Apparently they will bring the money tomorrow.
I showered and now I am writing. The Assemblea de Dieu's convention is starting tonight, but I am really tired. I can hear that they are just getting going, but I am afraid that I will get stuck there for hours if I go. That is one of the downsides to being so conspicuous.
BTW, harmattan came back in full force today and it was extremely dusty.
2/22/08
Today was busy but not particularly exciting. In the morning I prepared koliko (ignam fries) for lunch for Jerome and I and then after debating whether or not to go to church (I didn't go last night), I decided to stick around and do my laundry. Jerome arrived so after I finished around 10-10:30 and we had an uneventful Ewe lesson. As I was heating up our lunch, the IDH dude came by. I thought he would eat with us, but he went to his meeting. The guy is too friendly (today he brought me a 2008 Calendar – one of those cardboard calendars where the whole year is crammed onto one page and he offered to come on a weekend and help me put my fence up). People who are too too "helpful" make me suspicious. Jerome and I ate, went to see Ignace, and then, after Jerome left, I got ready to go to class.
My PE class today went well except the Director was present and I think he impedes the free and easy participation of the students who are made nervous by his barking voice correcting their French when their ideas are of much greater consequence. Right as I was starting class, my APCD and the Country Director pulled up in their shiny white, Peace Corps stamped land-rover. They were on their way back to Lome from Dapaong; they needed to get back to Lome for a meeting and so couldn't stay for my class – I wasn't really bummed. My APCD gave me cookies that I shared with the eight students that were there on time. Seven more eventually arrived. It was our last class specifically on HIV/AIDS and we talked about stigmatization, discrimination and behavior change. We did group work for the second half so less work for me =0).
After the class, I stopped to see the priest – he wanted to know if I could make him a CD with a photo-movie with captions and everything. I told him that when my power cord arrives in April, I can put photos on a CD for him, but that actually making a movie is too labor intensive. He gets on my nerves.
Now (I think this is the shortest blog post I have ever written) I am trying to maintain my motivation to go to church. They have been there (with some breaks to eat and sleep I guess) since last night. I am tired, but I really think I should go and show my support especially considering the fact that the pastor is my newfound and much appreciated ally.
2/23/08
Bugs in my beans, larvae in my pancakes, mice in my corn . . . how do you like that for a protein rich diet? What? What's that you say? Something crunchy in your pancakes? Must be dried larvae body parts. No worries, they're harmless, I think. What? You don't like the idea of eating bugs you say? I can't understand why not. Good source of much needed protein in this otherwise carbohydrate laden diet.
How do you make milled beans and bugs taste good? Add a lot of piment and cumin and fry her up – tastes like falafel. I wonder if I will ever embrace the bugs, enough so that I don't even bother to try picking them out. Right now I can eat bean flour that I know has hundreds of bugs, and even mold, in it, but I can't see the bugs. This morning I spent over an hour picking little larvae out of my flour because I wanted to make pancakes. I never made the pancakes and I know I didn't get all the larvae and larvae parts (seems some of them shed some sort of shell) out and the best part is that I bet the banana cakes I made the other day were packed full of extra bits of protein in the form of squiggly little bug larvae because I made them in the dark and didn't realize that my flour was larvae infested. Yummy.
Today was a bad food day. I wanted pancakes – flour was larvae infested – spent an hour (an hour!!) picking larvae out of one cup (one cup!!) of flour – never made pancakes – didn't really eat breakfast. Spent another hour picking some of the bugs out of the beans – made fried bean patties called gawu – I thought they wer yucky and gave them all away. I planned to eat leftover koliko for lunch – it smelled rancid and I had to throw it away. That is the abbreviated version.
In a bit more detail, small children helped me pick the worst beans from among the bad beans ('cause they were all bad). The worst beans are the ones that have bugs embedded inside. The Tseviato and I went to the mill (me, for the first time) and the guy milled my beans for free but he was obnoxious and annoying later. For some reason, he really wanted his younger sister (apparently both a coiffure and a couteriere (hairdresser and seamstress)) to become my new best friend. They came around twice during the day and the girl walked right into my house. I don't like that and don't particularly need friends like that. Tseviato showed me how they make bean beignets – gawu – just bean flour, water and salt. We made them outside on my charcoal stove. After a lot of fanning, I got the charcoal to light on fire all by myself. I'm very proud. The oil only caught on fire twice. The second time was a little scary because the frying pan tipped and was dripping oil onto the charcoal. We made a lot of gawu and I brought a big pot full over to Adjo's little sister so she could bring it to the Pastor's wife. I thought I'd take advantage of my spoiled beans to feed the visitors from other villages that are staying here for the convention. The rest I gave to the children and the women who helped me – Tseviato and Xola and DaJulie and another woman. I really only asked for Tseviato's help, but . . . it was a bit of a long, tiring process.
After the lunch disappointment – my food was rancid – I revisited the beignets and made ones that actually tasted good – the moldy buggy flavor was masked by spices. DaJulie scoffed at my idea of putting spices in the bean beignets, but I did and I brought her some. She later said they were good, but she could have just been humoring me.
I cleaned up, showered, gave bean beignets to my three favorite women in front and yelled at the children for trying to kill little birds; they can't seem to grasp why I would get so upset by their murderous activity.
When the church got going again (I knew because I can hear it from my house) I went to join. They had a choir competition (I was falling asleep) and then a soccer match which at least kept me awake. They played married men against unmarried men; I think it ended in a tie, but I lost track.
I came home and ate some boiled ignam that Tseviato's older sister (Parfait's mom) gave me in thanks for the bean beignets.
I am writing outside now, accompanied by children who want to know what direction America is in and how long it would take to walk there. Four days?
2/24/08 and 2/25/08
I've reached a new low. What, you ask yourself, could be lower than eating bugs? Re-using used toilet paper. Yup. That's the problem with having an outdoor latrine, diarrhea (probably caused by all the bugs I have ingested in the past two days) and forgetting to bring a new toilet paper roll out after finishing the last one. Gross, I know.
Yesterday I gave myself a break from writing because I was tired. Turns out I'm even more tired to day, but I can't be lazy two days in a row.
I went to church yesterday morning, but it wasn't particularly interesting. There were a lot of people from all the villages around, but I couldn't understand (or hear) the sermon. I think they said it in French, but like I said, I couldn't hear. I was there from 10 until 12 – they continued until 1:30 so I was glad I didn't stick around. I also met with two ASCs (community health agents) to make a baby-weighing schedule for each of their respective villages. I need to eet with at least three more. I think really getting busy on baby-weighing will be a good summertime activity – then I can train the ASCs and other helpers to do it themselves. Right now I have some difficulty with overlap with my PE classes and also with the communal work days we are trying to organize in Avassikpe.
From Azakpe's ASC I learned that their dispensaire is now open and they have an infirmier (nurse), so that is great.
In the afternoon I worked on my new vaccination day numbers – this time on cardboard and "plastified" with tape. It took me all afternoon and in the evening I rested.
It is really hot at night now and gross how much I sweat while sleeping or trying to sleep. I wake up and the first thing I want to do is take a shower because I feel like I've just gotten back from the gym – if only I could burn as many calories while sleeping as I would at the gym.
This morning we were supposed to have a village-wide meeting to schedule work days for our two projects: moringa and the village clean-up. As usual, only a few men showed, but plans were made to hoe the field on Thursday and create a moringa committee on the same day. Holes were designated for trash dumps throughout the village and it was decided that we will pick one day a month in which everyone needs to participate in a gradual village clean-up. Unfortunately, I didn't understand all or even half (or a quarter) of what was said because it was all in Ewe and Tsevi only gave me brief and infrequent synopses.
After the meeting, I started to fill the seedling bags with dirt. At first, I was on my own and it was slow going (it was only 9 am and most of the children were at school). Juju, a very precocious three year old, was my first helper and, as I hoped, as soon as the younger classes were let out of school, I had more helpers than I could handle. I filled perhaps twenty bags by myself; by 2:00, the children had filled four-hundred bags. They thought it was fun and I was extremely grateful for their help. I am thinking of scheduling the next bag-filling day on Saturday (when the children are out of school) so as to get an earlier start – the sun was awfully hot today, but I didn't want to stop and let such willing help go to waste. I think I will make banana bread to thank my Saturday helpers. I was supposed to go to Atakpame this weekend, but I have decided to go to Notse tomorrow to charge my video camera batteries and buy groceries, and I think I will skip Atak and go directly to Notse on Sunday – Ashley's B-day. We will see.
At two I called it quits on the bag filling because I was exhausted. I went in and made fried rice for lunch. Some children stuck around wanting some sort of recompense for their work. I don't want them to help me just because they think I will give them something, so today I refused. Hopefully Saturday I can surprise them with banana bread . . .
I then poked holes in my vaccination day numbers so I can tie a string to them so the women can hang them around their necks and hopefully they will get less abused (ripped, bent, dirty) that way and make it easier to spot the next in line.
I showered, went to the dispensaire and learned that many children in Midijicope – the other half of the village have shistosomiasis – little worms that get into your body when you walk into a contaminated water source. The water gets contaminated when an infected person pees into the water and the eggs of the worm are released into the water. Left untreated, it can do sever damage to the kidneys and the liver, but according to Lili the suggested treatments are very expensive. Hm. I have to look into this. Perhaps Bebe and I can go around interviewing infected families to try to identify the contaminated water source. All the more reason to get busy on a latrine project.
I went to buy palm oil this evening and was pleasantly surprised and touched by the woman's refusal to sell oil (once I understood the reasoning behind it, of course). There are different qualities of palm oil, but, of course, I have no idea how to judge and the woman, knowing this, refused to sell me the pal oil because it isn't good quality. She could have just sold it to me knowing that I wouldn't know any better. . .
I worked on some prep for my PE class and now I am writing. I am exhausted. Too much sun and too much time spent bent over filling and arranging seedling bags.
2/26/08
One of the girls in my stage is always saying "I'm sweating like a whore in church." I don't particularly like the expression, but I can't help but feel that it is appropriate right now. I just showered about one hour ago and I am sitting still writing and I am disgustingly sweaty. The weather has been odd lately – after those two days of severe harmattan-like weather (dusty, dry) it turned humid again. At night I try to visualize cool places and pretend I'm there just so I can fall asleep.
Today, for the first time, I biked to Notse and back on the same day. It is nice to know that I can easily bike in to Notse, spend some time with Ashley and get a "break," do some shopping, internet IF it were working (big if) and then bike back to village before dark. That way I don't need to close up my house or be away for long. The only thinkg that really makes it necessary for me to spend the night in Notse are my emails because it takes me on average 5-8 hourse to type them up.
I was really glad to see Ashley and talk to her about the past week. Other than that, I did some shopping (I bought fish for the first time – both little and big! And all the ingredients for making pâte and sauce – okra, palm oil, ademan (green leafy vegetable) – I am hoping to have Jerome teach me how to make pâte and sauce tomorrow and I'm excited about it. I want to learn how to prepare the fish as well – it could be a good addition to my diet . . . We hung out at Heather's a bit and made macaroni and cheese with some velveta Ashley had received in a package – heaven =0). You know, before coming here I might have been a bit of a cheese snob – velveta? Good only for nacho-salsa dip. Now even cheez whiz would probably taste good to me.
I spent an hour or so chatting with Effoh and Hevihevi at Hevihevi's house – I gave Effoh the 500 francs that his mom sent with me and I checked twice to see if internet was working but the connection was completely out. Ashley says it hasn't been working at all lately =0(. That was my day. I biked back to Avassikpe, showered and mice and bug-proofed my newly acquired food.
I am worried that the dirt we filled 400 seedling bags with might not be good. Essentially, the area that we took the dirt from is a trash heap (can I just comment on the fact that only my hand is moving and I am literally dripping with sweat?). I made the kids pull out the plastic bags and such, but . . . Tomorrow I will ask Tsevi again and ask Jerome to take a look at it as well. I am also afraid that it might be too sandy. Luckily moringa isn't too too picky, but I would like the trees to get a good, healthy head start.
As I was walking my bike through Agbatitoe, I met four women from the village – four women I interact with on a daily basis including DaJulie. They were headed to Notse and won't be back until Saturday (!). I suppose I should be glad that they are getting a much deserved mini-vacation, but I am selfishly disappointed that they won't be around. Hopefully I will be busy enough not to notice their absence too too much.
2/27/08
I don't know why I 'm so busy all the time and I don't know ho other volunteers have so much free time . . . this morning I got up, did laundry and was heading over to the dispensaire to talk to Lili when Jerome arrived. He taught me how to make a pâte sauce with okra, ademan (green leafy veggie), palm oil, salt, chicken stock, potasse, onions, little fish, big fish – it was a really good sauce. He also taught me how to make pâte – now the real test will be if I can reproduce the mal next week? We prepared the meal and then let it cool while we had class. Class was a moral diatribe about how you should accept your destiny and do what you can with the wealth (material and personal talents) that God gave you. Not particularly interesting.
We ate lunch – it was really yummy – funny how your taste buds change and adapt. When I first arrived, I didn't want any of the okra sauce or fish and now I eat it up and even crave it.
After Jerome left I only had half an hour to finish the preparation for my PE class – I was a little worried about the class, but it went well. We got a bit of a late start because we were distracted by a white couple sitting under one of the mango trees. We went to speak with them – they are from Spain and are driving around Africa for a year! They have a big white van that they have converted into a camper-like vehicle and they left Spain in January, drove through Morocco, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and now Togo. When I am retired, I would love to do the same thing. How brave and adventurous! I got their blog site – it is in Spanish – and if I have a chance to log on, I will. They took a picture of me with my PE class – maybe they will post it on their blog. You can log on as well – just google search: xxx. My PE class went really well. I was a little worried that I had given them a too difficult an assignment – preparing a debate on the statement: women should have the same rights as men. As they were preparing in tow different groups, I was afraid that the topic might be too theoretical and that I should have made it more tangible; for example: women and men should share housework, but they brought it around to a more tangible debate on their own. The debate really got fired up – the group assigned to argue that women shouldn't have the same rights as men had a bit easier of a task because they could draw on local examples and tradition. They argued that women should not have the same rights as men because a woman could never marry (in their cultural context) more than one man and a man pays a bride price for a woman and the woman goes to live in the man's house and therefore he is boss. This was the basis of their argument and the other group didn't jump on the easiest refutation which is that all those things are culturally engendered and could be changed and are different in other societies. I think they have not been exposed enough to other realities, other possibilities, to really grasp the fact that even in Togo things don't have to remain exactly the way they are now. I motivated them to work seriously on the debate by telling them that the team with the best arguments would get chewing gum, but I gave them all chewing gum because I was pleased with their active participation.
Jorge called twice during the debate, but the connection wasn't clear. Unfortunately he has been trying to call me for several days and hasn't been able to get through.
I think I am getting a cold . . .
This evening, I brought some pâte and sauce to the three women in front and then showered and now I am writing surrounded by children who are distracting me from the task at hand.
2/28/08
Today was overall a good day, but I am feeling unreasonably and disproportionately sad. The only two downers in the day were that I couldn't fix my bike (the gears aren't working and I tried to fix it – tried meaning I looked at it and spun the wheel pretending to know what I was doing. I have no clue – it is too complicated and I don't want to make it worse. I guess I just have to be patient and wait for Ashley to help me fix it, but for some reason I was really upset that I couldn't fix it myself. Right now. As always I want everything done right away. The second thing that made me unreasonably and disproportionately sad was that I made a little three year old girl cry in fear when I was just trying to play with her. For some reason I wanted to cry after having unintentionally made her cry. I'm chalking it all up to a hormonal imbalance caused by that time of the month, so if I seem sad today, you can chalk it up to that as well.
This morning I woke up early, really early (4:30) and couldn't get back to sleep – it was hot and the mice were very active – Jerome saw my mice yesterday and said they are big. Great.
Tsevi gongonned last night to inform everyone that we would go hoe the field for the moringa today and I fully expected no one to show, but some forty-five people (mostly men) came. We got an impressive amount of work done considering that after about half an hour they wanted to leave to go hunting. Speaking of hunting, the children informed me last night that they eat agouti poop and that it is very good. I think maybe they mean that they eat agouti intestines? They explained that they take the poop from inside the agouti and don't go wandering around a field looking for agouti poop. The field needs a lot of work before it will be clear – it seems like it has been a while since it was formed because there are a lot of trees growing on it that need to be coupcouped and so it is a two step (at least) process of hoeing and chopping, but that is fine, I guess, because it means that it might not be entirely stripped of nutrients. At first I was trying to chop down some small trees as the men raced off in a dust storm of hoeing – each one to their row – but then one of the men told me to leave the trees and make piles with the brush they hoed up and trees they cut down. I'm not sure if it was because I looked like I was struggling or because I wasn't doing a good job, but the change of task was fine with me. At first it was all men, but then some women (the ladies who live in front) arrived and started helping me make brush piles. I wonder if they came for me or because they understand that this is a project for them, for the village, that it belongs to the village. Mostly, the people who came were the people I interact with most frequently. People were getting restless to leave already around 8:30 (we hadn't arrived until 7:00) and so we stopped the work to have a meeting. At the "village wide" meeting on Monday, one of the elders suggested that we create a moringa committee that would be responsible for all the decisions involving the moringa project. So, we tried to form a committee. Strangely, the same elder (maybe his old age is affecting his memory?) then questioned why we were creating a committee this early on in the project when there isn't much to manage except the work days. I am in total agreement – I think we should wait until next dry season to form a committee. I was just agreeing toe the formation of a committee this early on because I thought everyone agreed that it was needed now and I was trying not to be a control freak and to go with the flow. It all got a little confusing – we were going to vote on six committee members, but we didn't have enough volunteers step forward. Part of the problem was that I asked for at least one person who speaks French well (a little hard to find when I have already eliminated the members of the CVD from the running – part of the point of making a moringa committee is dispersing the work load). Another problem was that 37 people came from Avassikpe whereas only 7 came from Midijicope and yet I insisted that it should be 2-2-2 (Chalimpota-Avassikpe-Midijicope). Tsevi wanted to substitute a person from Avassikpe for one of the Midijicope reps, but I refused. Hopefully I can get more people from Midijicope involved with the help of the pastor and by making more of an effort myself to make sure they are informed of the next work day. Anyway, nothing was really concluded except that we have 6 volunteers. They wanted a man I don't like at all to be president, but that was contested because he is from Avassikpe and so is the president of the CVD; the people from Midijicope didn't like that both presidents be from Avassikpe. Hopefully we can get more people involved and have more volunteers so that we can actually vote. People eventually got a little tired and fed-up with the whole thing and left. I hope they won't be discouraged from participating the next time. I hope next Thursday our numbers will go up and not down.
When I got home, I decided to make cookies with my larvae flour for the children who help me fill bags on Satruday. I was planning on going to Atakpame this weekend, but I am staying in village until Sunday for the sole purpose of taking advantage of child labor. Is that bad? And is it even more unethical that I plan to thank them with cookies made from larvae infested flour? If it makes it any better, I picked out as many bugs and larvae as I could find and sifted the flour several times. I also ate two of the cookies myself so it isn't as though I am feeding them something I wouldn't eat, but rather something I don't want to eat a lot of. =0) Like I said, you've got to learn to embrace the bugs. Anyway, I made spice cookies and they would be really good if it weren't for the knowledge that they have bugs in them.
I could only bake four at a time so it took a really long time and in between I tied strings to my baby-weighing numbers. I also did the dishes and tried to eat day old pâte. Apparently day old pâte is fine and the sauce can be good for days if reheated morning and night, but I think I only like pâte on day one. I threw it away. The beauty of having a compost in a closed area (I don't have one yet, but I will) is that not everyone and their brother will see what I waste – it will take a tiny bit of the pressure off me to eat food that isn't enough quantity/quality wise to give away.
As I was finishing my baking, Tsevi came and dug up three tree stumps in my garden. If there is one person here that always comes through for me it is Tsevi. I hadn't said anything to him about it recently, he thought of it and came over to uproot them for me. Tomorrow I will bring him a pineapple in thanks. After finishing, I decided to fix my gutter system considering I was already dirty. I fixed it successfully and earned a lot of surprised stares from passers-by as I climbed on a bench atop a chair to secure my gutters to the roof and correct the drip (or waterfall) over my door.
It did rain a tiny bit, but not enough to make a difference. Tomorrow I will try to wash out the gutters so that all that dirt doesn't go into my cistern with the first heavy rain.
I showered and went to see the pastor because he said his members would help me fence my garden and Tsevi told me that the last bongo is finished, but the pastor wasn't there. I will go again early tomorrow morning in hopes that they will fence it before I go to Notse on Sunday so that I can plant the seeds when I get back . . .
It was on the way back from the pastor's that I made the child cry . . .
There is some serious marital strive taking place across the way . . . Tseviato translated bits and pieces of it for me. Something about a cow and not getting a fair share. Apparently the same people fight every night. I think the man is Yolke and Marie's husband, but I don't think the woman's voice belongs to either of them . . .
2/29/08 and 3/1/08
Yesterday was a long day – we did vaccinations at the dispensaire and received over 250 women – a record attendance and would you know it, it was an off day for the guy from the hospital in Notse, the sam guy that did the vaccination campaign with us; he brought already opened vials of one vaccine and not enough of another. Unfortunately, we didn't even realize this at the same time so we sent Victor, the President of the COGES to Notse to get unopened vials, but didn't' catch him in time to get more of the vaccine we were short on. The guy from Notse (Tchanguy) went to Agbatitoe to see if they had extra and he got some there, but we ran out anyway and ended up having to turn women away. That really stinks because they came from far away and wait for a long time, all for nothing. Paradoxically, we are trying to increase our coverage – raise the number of women who come when pregnant and bring their babies after delivery – and yet we don't do a good job of serving the women who do come or encouraging them to return.
Luckily, we had a lot of helpers, but it was still crazy and unorganized. IF we could just start when the women start arriving, but, no, we have to wait until there are some fifty women and then decide to get the ball rolling. I am not sure if it is a power game – "I'm important, I can make you wait" or what, but next time I will try to insist that we start as soon as Tchanguy gets there with the vaccines. That reminds me, though, it was partially my fault because I got a late start setting up my "tent" and getting the benches and also my numbers got all tangled and Lili and Tchanguy were helping me untangle them so they aren't completely to blame – next tiem I will try to be more on top of things. I was trying to do too many things at once and I got delayed by a conversation wit hteh pastor. I went over there to tell him that all my fence mats were completed and that if he could get a group of men to put them in place for me I would really appreciate it. As always with the pastor, I got drawn into a conversation – I think he talks with so many people that he forgets who he said what to and ends up repeating himself. I spoke with him about the Shisto problem in Midijicope and won myself a chance to speak to his congregation about it. Maybe I can throw something about moringa in there while I am at it . . .
The other thing we talked about was the dire need for a latrine project. Seriously, people poop anywhere and everywhere and the fact that he is gung-ho about it and willing to head the project (talk to the mason, organize people to dig the holes, encourage people to cotiser (contribute money), make sure people who don't use the latrines are fined) makes me more willing to participate because all the responsibility won't be on my shoulders. He has plans to construct a latrine with ten stalls (five for women and five for men) in Avassikpe and an identical one in Midijicope and estimates that the project will cost about $600 (300,000 francs). I am thinking of asking my church at home – even, perhaps, all the churches in the area – if they would be willing to match the villagers contributions for a latrine project – sort of like rich people sometimes do for National Public Radio fundraisers to encourage people to contribute: for every dollar that people here contribute, the church members could contribute a dollar. The cap would be around $300 (half the cost of the latrine project) so that isn't an exorbitant, unreasonable sum. We will see. It would be a good way to encourage people to contribute speedily.
Anyway, back to the vaccinations. The number system worked ok, but I am still having difficulties finding the best special arrangement. We put the registration/paper work table at the door and made the women stay outside until their number was called so that all the women inside had completed paperwork and were ready for the vaccinations, but the problem is still that there isn't enough shade or seating outside so they weren't too happy about the arrangement. It made it a little less chaotic, though. I was filling out the registry – a boring, but necessary job . . . we worked non-stop until 3:30 and would have continued except we ran out of vaccines. I was starving and tired and ran home to cook a quick macaroni meal with the wagash I bought and boiled the day before. I showered while the food cooled and then had to rush out because I had scheduled a screening for my PE class at 6:00 in Agbatit. I called the Director to confirm, but, of course, when I got there the generator used to power the Director's television (Agbatit strangely enough, doesn't have electricity – it is on the Route National and there seem toe be power lines . . . !?) wasn't working. The Director is a strange bloke (for some reason bloke seems like a particularly appropriate word for him) who is nice enough and harmless enough, but for some reason he felt the need to explain to me ten times (as we waited for the mechanic to arrive) that the problem is surely that there isn't any gas in the carburetor because he let it run completely out the other day even though the mechanic told him that that would cause it to malfunction. I think he felt sheepish for making me wait and being so unorganized – it was a mess, though, and to make matters worse, the students hadn't understood that class was being replaced by the movie at 6:00 and so they had been waiting around since 3:00. I felt badly about that miscommunication. After much fiddling with the generator and with the television, dvd player and sound system (nothing was cooperating), we finally watched the forty minute film that recapped everything we had learned about HIV/AIDS. The students were sitting on benches under a tree outside the Director's house watching the film on a generator-powered color TV; it was an "I'm in Togo" moment. Afterwards I reminded them that Ashley's organization is hosting a free HIV testing day on Monday, March 3, in case they are interested. I advised them to go early, though, because there are only 100 tests available. Ashley almost had a heart attack when she found out; she had been bugging her deadbeat homologue to check before they invited over 4,000 people to the free testing, but, of course, he kept assuring her that it wasn't a problem. Right. We will see how it goes.
The Director himself accompanied me back to Avassikpe on a moto – they followed me the whole way home and it was a good thing because even though I had my headlamp (and even though I changed the batteries and it actually lights up more that five inches in front of my nose), I still needed he light of the moto to really see the road.
Today, Saturday, I made myself pancakes and then got ready to fill some seedling bags. I got an unexpected visit from the President of the CVD who ate one of my pancakes and then from a guy who sells herbal medicines, remedies and nutritional supplements that he himself prepares. After one of our "village" meetings on moringa, he had asked me for some information and so today I gave him some of the French documents I had printed out. Sometime I would like to sit down and chat with him, but today I needed to exploit child labor. It worked. With chewing gum and the promise of the soccer ball as encouragement, we had all the bags (1,000 total; 600 today) filled by 11:30 (we started the work around 7:30). It was a little difficult to keep their interest for those four hours and children came and went. The chewing gum helped a bit as did the video camera in attracting helpers.
When the work was done (or so I thought) I gave them each two cookies (I probably should have had them wash their hands first . . . ) and pumped up a second soccer ball Dad brought me and gave it to the children to play with. I prepared my beans for lunch and then made chocolate chip cookies for Ashley for her birthday (tomorrow, March 2). They took me all afternoon to bake (4 at a time) and in between I did laundry, burned garbage, washed dishes, swept the bathroom, studied with some school girls, visited with the women in front (DaJulie is back from Notse and her sister, Sofie's mom, is here to stay a week or so with her newborn). I also tried to even out the dirt in the seedling bags. Some were too full and others not full enough.
The pastor had said that he and a group of his members would come at 4:00 to place my fence, but they didn't arrive until around 5:00. For awhile I was worried that they wouldn't come, but the weather was strange (really strong gusts of wind and consecutive, seemingly impending thunderstorms that blew over), so maybe that delayed them.
The important thing, though, is that they cam and almost finished placing my fence. Unfortunately, some silly person lit a fire right next to where we were working (literally two feet away – I was worried my fencing would catch fire and five months of effort would burn to nothing) and the smoke made it impossible to continue working. My house also filled with smoke. Fantastic. I gave the men some cookies in thanks. Normally I wouldn't have shared chocolate chip cookies (such a rare treat) with them, but I couldn't think of any other show of thanks (buying them soft drinks would have gotten too expensive . . . and the church members aren't supposed to drink alcohol . . . )
I showered and now I am writing and I'm pooped. I am going to go lie in my hammock. My new tactic is to stay outside in my hammock until I'm so sleepy that I don't notice so much how hot it is inside and I fall right asleep.


3/2/08 and 3/3/08
I had the most horrible night last night. I was feeling nauseous and like I might throw up to begin with and then the mice at Ashley's house, which are even more "sin verguenza" than my mice, ran over me, yes, that's right, on top of me as I lay on the couch – not once, not twice, but thrice. You try sleeping on a couch that is too short, knowing that a mouse may run over you at any minute, sweating yourself into a sauna, and to boot being bitten by some sort of bed bug that apparently lives in her couch cushions. Not conducive to achieving REM quality sleep to say the least. This morning I am still feeling nauseous – I don't think it is because of something I ate – I haven't eaten anything strange except perhaps for the cookie dough that I ate while making Ashley's birthday present which, by the way, taste just as yummy as any chocolate chip cookies I have ever made, but that was two days ago so if it were that it should have hit me yesterday morning.
Yesterday I got up and packed, washed dishes, washed my super dirty work clothes, showered and then went to church. A guy volunteered to translate for me, but I only understood fifty percent or so of what was going on because I couldn't hear his translations over the bellowing of the pastor and the guy doing the Kabiye translation. Other than the usual singing and praying, the service was a little strange because the pastor didn't really give a sermon in the sense of reading a passage from the Bible and expanding on it. Rather he spent two hours talking about the members of the church who have sinned and need to be "disciplined." My understanding of what he said was a bit spotty – something about a woman who went to the market and instead of buying the staple food supplies for the week she spent the money her husband gave her on perfume and then she put something in the perfume and tried to poison her husband with it and then she lied to the pastor and said the perfume was lost. Great strangeness. It is as though church canalizes all the village gossip – Avassikpe's version of trashy magazines. I think the pastor asked the woman who allegedly tried to poison her husband to repent and suggest a suitable punishment for herself, but instead she silently, with tears rolling down her cheeks, walked out of the church. Then another woman was called up to the front of the church and it was recounted that she "cursed" another woman by saying "may you never have children" and she was asked to go home and think about whether her actions were befitting of a Christian or not. All very strange. I never did get a chance to say something about Schistosomiasis because the pastor went on and on about the sinners, but at the end they said something about it in the announcements to the effect of – when the gongonneur announces that someone is coming to the dispensaire to talk about the sickness, they should all go to hear about it. I didn't know that I was bringing someone to the dispensaire to talk about it . . .
After church I ate some beans for lunch, tried to untangle my numbers from the vaccination day, neatened and swept out my house and put my rain chute back up because it had fallen down (the piece of corrugated metal that channels the rainwater from my gutters into my cistern.
I thought the men were going to come back at two to finish my fencing, but they didn't come and so, around three, I left the remaining string to tie the straw fencing to the posts with Tsevi and got ready to bike to Notse. Just as I was about to leave, a storm blew through with extremely strong and dusty gusts of wind and some sparse but driving raindrops. I sat out the storm inside my dark cave of a house (I had already closed all the shutters) and when it let up a bit it was remarkably cooler and allowed for a pleasant ride to Notse.
Yesterday was Ashley's 25th birthday, but she had already partied hard in Atakpame the day before and so she was in the mood for some quiet celebrating. We ate Kraft macaroni and cheese and chocolate chip cookies and watched "Stepmom." I had seen the movie before, but it was still really good and I was in the mood for a good movie – it made me forget my cramping nauseous stomach for a while.
Today I have been nauseous all day and have pretty much been alternating between lying on the couch trying to overcome my nausea and making myself more nauseous by sitting in front of Ashley's computer trying to type up my emails from the last week and a half. I have absolutely no energy and feel quite weak, probably because all I have eaten today is a small piece of bread and even water increases my nauseousness. I am going to go see if internet is working . . .