After making and eating pancakes with Ashley and her friend Sawyer, I left Notse around 7:30. I had wanted to try internet again, but the man wasn't there and I couldn't wait for an undetermined amount of time.
I had not yet sent his Christmas solicitation letters. He said he might be able to take me to Atakpame on Tuesday – that would be really nice if it works out – it would at least save me some time and money.
I biked back to Avassikpe, stopped to greet Lili who is looking a little more chipper and seems to be in better health and then went home and showered just in time for Jerome's arrival.
As a side note, I am really pleased with my shelves and the way in which my house is beginning to be organized as I would like it.
My Ewe lesson was good – we talked about chickens laying eggs and other animals giving birth, and how to talk about the different sounds animals make. It was relatively short, sweet and to the point. The most useful thing I learned was how to say I will have children in five or seven years.
I made us egg sandwiches for lunch and then went to pay the carpenter the other 2,000 cFA I owed him (he seems a little friendlier now) and to say hello to Lili again. I went to look at my morning trees and was really saddened by the fact that those will certainly get eaten by the goats and sheep now that the live fence has been destroyed. I almost started to cry. I went home and lay in my hammock reading about Ewe history and culture. Then I went over to help DaJulie push grains off dried corn cobs and listen to the women (DaJulie, her sister who was visiting from Chalimpota – Victor, the President of COGES' wife, and her sister in law) chatter off and on I tried to understand what they were saying.
When we finished pushing corn off the cob, I helped pound fufu (earning myself a little container full of fufu and sauce, and then I played UNO with the little, little children causing myself a bit of frustration (you have to constantly guide them through the game and fend off the cards getting thrown on the pile out of turn). I eventually called it quits and lay back in my hammock to study the Ewe grammar book I borrowed from Heather.
When he got back from the field, Efo came to show me that he had inadvertently broken the handle on my wind-up flashlight. He sent his nephews all over creation (actually just Avassikpe) – two different nephews, two different times, in search of super glue, but they didn't find any in the village boutiques. I brought out the fufu so we could eat it together because I didn't really feel like eating a whole ball of fufu myself. The other day Efo told me that here they don't ask a guest if he/she wants to eat or drink something, they just place it in front of them. He explained that if you ask, the person might say no even though he/she really wants some. So I just brought it out, thereby obliging him to eat whether he wanted to or not. Unfortunately, I had let it sit (an apparently you're definitely not supposed to let it sit covered) and it lost its doughy texture and turned more pasty. Bummer. After eating, DaJulie came and I had her lay down in the hammock to test it out. While she dozed, Efo and I had an interesting conversation about how a man might choose a wife here and what makes a good wife. Efo said that the pastor called him to his house yesterday to ask him if he had a particular girl in mind. Efo said no. He said that the pastor told him to observe the girl for a long time before asking her to marry him. Apparently. Many young girls won't go out with a young man unless he has asked her to marry him or has expressed the intention of marrying her. It is sort of paradoxical because you are prevented from getting to know a person until you are already engaged to be married. He says young people n Togo marry for love today, but I guess, if you're lucky, the love comes after the marriage because how can you love someone you don't really know? Ideally, I guess, you would have grown up alongside the person or have some chance to interact with them extensively and get to know them on a non-romantic basis before choosing them as your wife. I didn't ask yet, but I am guessing men choose women and women just wait to be chosen. In the course of the conversation, Efo revealed that he doesn't really believe in the equality of men and women – he believes that women should submit themselves to men and that God wants it to be that way. He also believes that it is a woman's duty to prepare food for her husband, that women are tied to food preparation as they are to child birthing and rearing. I think this shows that even though his generation might intellectually and superficially accept the equality of women, they haven't internalized it and they don't know how and perhaps don't even want to put it into practice. He said that because he is a man, it is good for him that women are subordinate to men. He said that he will do all he can to help his wife with her duties and lighten her load, but ultimately, they are still her duties and responsibilities. I told him that I object to the idea that women have fixed, pre-determined duties that the man can expect and even demand that she perform. If anything, a married couple has responsibilities towards each other so that the household runs smoothly, but whoever's better disposed in whatever moment to do a certain task should do it. It shouldn't be that the woman always does the cooking, cleaning, sweeping, laundry, childcare, dishes etc. Anyway, it was all very interesting, but it makes me sad that even the younger generations don't really believe that women are or even should be equal.
1/5/08
In the morning, as I was greeting the women in front, DaJulie asked me if I would go to the field with them and help transport some corn back to village. Of course, I said yes, so after writing letters for a bit, we went. Their field is kind of far away, but it is a nice walk. When we got there the corn was spread out on a plastic tarp where they had beaten it the day before to get the dried kernels off the cob. We picked the cobs out and tried to winnow out all the undesirable stuff. I tried, DaJulie actually did it. Firs, you put some corn in a basin and with an up and down tossing action you flip the corn over on itself so that some of the debris blows away. Once you've gotten rid of most of the debris, you take the basin, hold it over your head, and pour it into another basin or basket. Again, if you're standing in the correct position, the wind will remove the undesirable stuff. We did that with all the corn that was left (luckily it wasn't too too much) and then we transported it back to village in basins on our heads. Hey gave me the perfect amount to transport back – enough to feel useful, but not so much that I was in pain and agony and on the point of tears by the time we arrived.
Afterwards, I finished writing and filled my indoor water containers with water from my cistern. The cistern is almost empty and I am a little anxious about it. Apparently, it is quite labor intensive to pump water out of the village well – a job that requires more than one person and so I am not sure how I will fare. I know it will work out, because if I can't do it myself, I am sure people will help me, but I don't want to burden other people.
I showered and went to visit Lili, but she was MIA, and so I came back and read about Ewe grammar as I rocked in my hammock. Then the children arrived to pester me to play UNO and so I consented – but, lately, it is the little children, the ones who don't really know how to play, who are constantly bugging me to bring out the cards. Playing with them isn't as fun as with older children because you have to monitor every step. "blue? Or four? No? Take a card. Not your turn."
We played for a little while before I lay down in my hammock to continue with my studies. Efo came by and we tried in vain to fix the flashlight and charge his cell phone, his baby. We super-glued the handle back on, but it kept coming off when we would impatiently try to charge the phone. Efo is going to take the flashlight to someone in Notse to see if they can fix it. I probably wouldn't bother, but he likes the idea of having a means of charging his cell phone in village, so if he wants to pay for it . . .
In the late afternoon, I made banana bread with my very rotted bananas and then I went to sit by the side of the road with Efo and a lot of small children to wait for a car to pass. He had a whole pile of stuff and so couldn't take a moto – the car had passed by once (luckily it was Saturday and market day in Notse) and we were waiting for it to pass by a second time heading towards Notse, but it never did. We sat there until dark and talked about the nutrition of small children, why, perhaps, the babies have distended stomachs (too many carps, too little protein or worms). He said that the older women will say that infants have distended stomachs because their mother didn't wait two years to have sex after giving birth. We also talked about birth spacing and exclusive breast feeding for the first six moths. HE said that it is common here for mothers to give newborn babies water to drink. When his sister came to visit from Chalimpota with a four month old baby, she had not given him anything but breast milk, but Efo's mother insisted that the baby was crying because he was thirsty and that he should be given water. The taxi never came and so we went back to our respective houses and after cutting up some pineapple to share, I went to sit with Efo, DaJulie, their mother and the children. We chatted until DaJulie and her mom got up and started dancing to a song on the radio. Efo bribed the children, who were already snoozing on a tarp on the ground by the wood-fueled cookstove, into dancing with pieces of the banana bread I had given him earlier that afternoon. At this point the dance party really began. Tseviato is an amazing dancer – I can't even describe the way she moves her body – it is something you have to see, and even little Parfait (about a year old) was dancing up a storm. He was so cute trying to mimick his older siblings on his still unstable legs. Absolutely adorable.
After the children settled down, Efo and I picked up the same argument as the night before – the equality or not of men and women. HE said that the fact that women cry betrays their inferiority, their inherent weakness. HE said that men are physically stronger and therefore superior. I asked if a man who is stronger than he is therefore superior to him and, because I cannot transport as heavy a load as the women here, am I therefore inferior to them? He didn't really answer. Then he said that it is the woman who leaves her home to incorporate herself into her husband's household and therefore it is logical that the man should be the head of the household. A woman can't be the boss where she is a stranger. I said, but what if he and his future wife set up a home in Notse or Lome or some other city wher neither of them have family, what then justifies that he should be the chief in residence? He just went around in a circle to the fact that a man would never go and live with the woman's family, but that the woman leaves her home to integrate herself into the man's family, territory, dominion (patrilineal society at its best). I tried to convince him that that is just a socio-cultural characteristic, and not anything that betrays an inherent inferiority or superiority of either sex. He is not yet convinced, but I am determined that by the end of my tow years here, he will be the one trying to convince his peers of the equality of women.
1/6/08
I didn't sleep well at all last night. A mouse (at least that is what I think it was) was gnawing at and then playing around in my guarde manger (food cabinet) and making an awful lot of noise.
After making tapioca pudding for breakfast and bringing some over to DaJulie in thanks for the fufu she brought me yesterday (I think I forgot to mention the fufu and that it was rank. It tasted like she had made the sauce with a rotting piece of meat – no offense to her cooking or anything – it is probably a much prized delicacy here – but I wasn't a fan), I decided to accompany Efo and his cousin (a thirteen or fourteen year old boy) to Agbatitoe so that I could help them transport their things (including two bags of corn kernels, a bag of charcoal, a chair and clothes and stuff. Four of us went – two travelers and two to bring the bikes back to village – Atavi (another 13 or 14 year old) was the fourth person. As we walked along, we chatted about random things like how to get rid of the mouse in my house (Efo wanted to com kill it this morning, but I refused. I'd rather remove it alive, but Efo says it will just come back) and why Togolese women don't wear pants (apparently, in the Bible it says women shouldn't wear mens clothing and men shouldn't wear women's clothing and so the church forbids women to wear pants). I said that today they make pants for women and pants for men and so a woman can wear women's pants without being guilty of wearing men's clothing. Right? Efo said he didn't know how to respond to that. If I had thought of it, I would have voiced a common complaint of female PCVs in Togo – that Togolese young men buy up all the women's jeans from the Dead Yovo clothing piles at the market, leaving slim pickings for the women (girl volunteers included). I wonder what he would have said about that. He probably would have offered up some cop-out like "those men aren't Christian so they don't count."
I dropped off the stuff in Agbatitoe and then raced the two (12, 13, 14 ? year old) boys who were with me (Koffi – another of Efo's nephews met us as we were leaving Agbatit) back to village. I won, but if we had traded bikes, I am sure I would have lost so I didn't gloat too much.
I was going to go to church, but I would have had to make a late entrance and I don't like that. Besides, all the students are gone so they probably wouldn't be able to find someone to translate for me and I would be bored. I know. Excuses. Excuses. I stopped to see Lili at the dispensaire and learned that the microplanning meeting has been rescheduled for tomorrow and that my presence is expected. Fun, fun. (To backtrack – I am reminded by the drumming I hear in the not too distant distance that Efo said I missed a voudou ceremony Thursday evening and that the people who perform those ceremonies probably wouldn't mind if I went and took pictures, but that he can't go because the church forbids the encouragement of or participation in traditional religion). And for a side-note, a little girl – Sherita (Efo's niece) – just commented on my fat belly in Ewe – sometimes I would prefer not to understand =0).
As I was saying, I have to go to Notse tomorrow for this meeting – it is actually a three day long meeting and the COGES is expected to be in attendance as well. I will go tomorrow, but I think I will also leave Notse tomorrow evening and go to Atakpame. I am in desperate need of money. I have all of 3,000 cFA ($6.00) and I already borrowed 20,000 cFA from Ashley. Perhaps I will go back to Notse Tuesday evening and attend the meeting Wednesday morning before continuing to Agbatitoe for my first ever Peer Educator Training session at 3:00 in the afternoon. I spent the day preparing for it, but I am nervous about it. I feel like the real work is rolling in with the New Year. Soon, if everything falls into place, I will be doing Peer Educator classes at the middle school, health classes/drawing at the elementary school in Avassikpe, Child Trafficking meetings with the high school students in Notse and causeries (informational talks) with pregnant women at the dispensaire. I might soon be a busy volunteer who actually works and doesn't just play at the game of cultural integration (although that, as many a volunteer will tell you, is work too.
Instead of going to church, I planned my first class – or at least started to plan it. It is a work in progress and I will be bringing all my materials with me when I leave tomorrow so that I can continue planning.
I took a break around noon to make lunch, play cards with the children (a real test of my patience) eat lunch, talk to Jorge's mom on the phone, sweep out my house – then I did a little more preparation, gave the kids the soccer ball to get them out of my hair (just kidding, they weren't really bothering me, but they were probably bothering DaJulie who was trying to rest in my hammock. I showered and read a bit more and now I am writing. I am really really sleepy-tired and soon I will go to bed.
1/7/08 – 1/9/08
I am tired but content because my first class of my peer educator formation went well and I am eating one of the best pineapples I have ever tasted (and after being here for four months, just outside of the pineapple capital of Togo, I have tasted a lot of pineapples) – this one is the perfect combination of sweet and tangy. But more about all that when I get to it. Right now I have to backtrack three days to Monday. TO make excuses for myself, when I know I am going to get to a computer the next day (or I think I am anyway), I get laxy about writing the days events out by hand when I could just type them up directly the next day and save myself a lot of time and energy. The onley problem is that my computer's power cord is shot and it wasn't working and by the time I had finished toying around with it for an hour I was too tired to write about my day by hand. So my Monday excuse is laziness and expectations of computer access in the near future. My Tuesday excuse is computer malfunction and today is Wednesday.
So, back to Monday . . . it started out badly. I didn't sleep well because of the mice that have invaded my house (not just in the roof now, but in my house même) and yes, I did mean to say mice – they have multiplied. As of Sunday night there were at least two of them in the house – one in the bedroom and one in the kitchen. I certainly hope they don't keep doubling each night – by the time I get home on Wednesday night there will be sixteen of them! Agghhhh! By disturbing my sleep (how can I sleep with the scurrying of mice when I know they are in the same room, in my clothes, in my food?), they have signed their own death warrant. Every time the mice would make noise, I would sit up and shine my flashlight around. Mice are sneaky little buggers that disappear the moment you turn off the light and then unabashedly start disturbing your sleep again as soon as you lay back down. I can't take any more sleepless nights (too bad I gave my earplugs away to one of my formateurs during stage). I would have been inclined to just try to trap them and let them go, but because of the annoyance they are causing me, I want them dead.
So, after a largely sleepless night, I got up early to prepare myself to be in Notse by 8:00. I desperately had to go to the bathroom. It was still dark, but I had my headlamp with me (for all the good it did . . . ). I tried to lift up the latrine seat cover and it wouldn't open all the way. I just thought that its hinges were stuck or something and so I tried to jiggle and shove it open and then I saw the flickering tail of the lizard I was squishing each time I tried to force open the lid. Now, I hade senselessly killing anima.s Some of my friends in high school can attest to the fact that I cried after they through a book at and killed a mouse in my AP English class and my mom, I am sure, remembers how I refused to go to the circus (I madder her turn around and take me home) after she inadvertently ran over a turtle on the highway – so needles to say, I wasn't happy about having just squished a lizard to its tail-twitching death with my toilet seat cover. To make matters worse, it was stuck there and I really, really had to poo. I held it hoping that by some miraculous intervention, the lizard would remove himself from that spot where he was preventing my toilet seat cover from rising and, consequently, my bowels from finding respite. I went back inside my house and when I returned, he was still there and his tail was no longer twitching. I tried to remove him with a stick. I was inclined to just leave him there or wait for it to be light and ask a child to remove his lifeless body for me, but let me restate the fact that I really, really had to poo. I ended up using the handle of a fork to flick him onto the floor and was able to make use of my latrine, but I still felt badly about the whole thing.
I prepared myself and my house for my trip to Notse – gave some fruits to Tseviato's mom and pedaled out of village. I arrived in Notse at five minutes after eight, but wouldn't you know, the meeting didn't actually start until 10:00. Go figure. Luckily, I had come prepared and I had some reading material – the French version of my Life skills manual and so I continued reading it in preparation for my Peer Educator formation. I would like to have an idea of where I am going with the formation before I begin. I think I will largely follow the Life Skills manual because it has a lot of good ideas for activities, but I will try to incorporate a wider range of topics.
When the meeting finally started, they gave the order of presentation of the 2007 budget and Avassikpe was fourteenth in line out of some nineteen groups or so. The DPS (Prefectural Director of Health) and the Medical Assistant to the DPS opened the meeting with short welcome speeches. They said that each presentation was to last a maximum of fifteen minutes with ten minutes for comments and questions – the first presentation lasted over two hours. From each dispensaire in the prefecture, a staff member (nurse, midwife) and a member of the COGES (village health committee) were to be present. The staff member presented the yearly budget reading off lines and lines of items, numbers, percentages and I don't know what else. The most remarkable thing was the percentage of the population (1%, 3%) that actually takes advantage of the dispensaire's services. That is problematic, but instead of taking note of the problem areas and discussing how to address the problem, the medical assistant to the DPS reamed the people out demanding "what's the problem? Do you not receive the people well? Are people not satisfied with the job you do?" etc. But the problem is a general one. People rarely go to the dispensaire unless they are seriously ill, have already tried traditional medicine and been disappointed, or have a serious or worsening injury. For example, however, Richard – DaJulie's younger son – has an ever worsening cut (two in fact) on his lower leg/.ankle – it is seriously a crater in his leg and if it isn't worse ever time I see him, it certainly isn't getting better. They try to clean it out, but their water is probably causing the infection and yet they don't dish out the 100 francs it would cost to go to the dispensair, get it really cleaned out and bandaged. And yet they spend money on some sort of pill (a pill you are evidently intended to be swallowed – it is in a capsule), but which they, for some reason, thought they should break open and spread directly on the wound. I wonder where they got the medicine and advice.
Another problem is that women come for one prenatal consultation and then never come back and dispensaire staff don't actively seek out the missing patients. That, too, is a problem, but I don't see a reason for the public humiliation of the staff member when it is a general problem. The authorities at the meeting criticized the staff and COGES members up and down, but they didn't do much in the way of giving constructive advice as to how to correct or improve on the points found lacking.
I probably should have paid more attention to the criticisms part and perhaps even tried to deduce the importance of all the numbers in the budget report, but I didn't; I continued reading my Life Skills manual.
I am not feeling 100% today (Thursday) – I don't know why. I think I am just tired and a little worn down. I think I have lost my stamina for work since leaving Middlbury. Notice how I just wrote about half a day last night and then I was too tired to continue and I went to bed. At this rat, I will never catch up. Harmattan isn't really agreeing with me either – there is dust everywhere – it is inescapable and makes it a little hard to breathe. And on top of the normal dustiness, they burn the fields and sweep every morning adding to the floating matter in the air. Harmattan dries out your skin, your lips, your nose – it is really like a dry winter day except not as cold and dusty. It is cool though. In the evenings you can feel the cold air move in and if I didn't have the fleece sleeping bag Dad left me at night, I would be really cold and unhappy. With the sleeping bag, sleeping is lovely – the fleece is so soft and it is like sleeping in a hug. If it weren't for the mice . . . Mice are another thing I don't like about harmattan. Apparently, mice are more of a nuisance during harmattan because we are burning their homes and it is harder to find food. So, as payback, they move in with me. Another thing I noticed about harmattan is that, instead of a watermark on all the trees after a flood, there is a burn mark on all the trees where they have burned the brush and the trees survived.
Anyway, enough about harmattan – back to Monday's meeting. Around 1:00 they fed us little sandwiches and drinks. I was impressed that they fed us at all, but then I thought that, if they had skipped the sodas they could really have fed everybody. They probably spend three times what they spent on food, on drinks. Then, there was an hour long break – it wasn't really planned, everyone just sort of left and wandered back in when they were ready. It would be better if they stuck to a schedule.
I stuck around listening to more of the same, or rather, not really listening, but reading my Life Skills manual and just making a show of presence. Every once in a while I paid attention to something that seemed interesting – I can't really remember now what those interesting things were =0).
I left around 4:00, dropped my bike off at Ashley's house (she wasn't there) and took a cab up to Atakpame. It was a fine, uneventful ride and the driver didn't even try to cheat me on the price. I dropped my stuff off at the maison and went directly to internet where I was able to chat with Jorge for several hours.
I got up early Tuesday morning and went to the bank and then to the market. Everything is more expensive now during Harmattan. I should remember that next year and stock up on the non-perishable things. Even eggs are more expensive, but I can't really stock up on those. As I was shopping, I realized that I had left my memory stick at the internet café. I hurried back and luckily it was still there – it would have been really upsetting, not to mention stupid, to lose my memory stick like that.
I went back to the maison, showered and took a taxi back to Notse. Another uneventful ride, not that I am complaining. When I got to Notse, I dropped my stuff of at Ashley's house and went to join Ashley, her friend Sawyer, Heather and her father (who just arrived for a month long visit) at Hotel Dunya. Heather had gone home for Christmas and her Dad cambe back with her. After chatting with them for a while, I forced myself to go to the meeting. Apparently they had stopped with the 2007 budget presentations and were now working on the 2008 budget proposal. Complicated stuff that mostly doesn't concern me – it isn't really my job to deal with the budget and not really a task I want to take on even though they could probably use some help. What does interest me, though, are the goals and objectives for 2008. I copied them down so that I can decide where to direct my efforts. Unfortunately, Lili wants me to find money to install a well and pump at the dispensaire, build housing for dispensaire staff, do maintenance and repair work on the dispensaire and I don't know what else. I agree that all those things are necessary and good, but I don't know where or how I am going to find funding . . . Anyway, I can also try to increase the dispensaries impact, sensibilize people on why it is important to take advantage of the dispensaire's services etc. We also need a baby-weighing scale to start baby-weighing in the surrounding villages and I need to try to find some way to motivate the COGES and the community at large to participate actively in the running of the dispensaire. Those are only a few things. We could also use new beds at the dispensaire and screens on the windows to keep mosquitoes out.
The afternoon was even less interesting than the day before – a lot of sitting around and eventually a group presented their 2008 projected budget so that the other groups could critique it and learn from the critiques of the important people and not make the same mistakes on their own budget proposals.
I left, bored and tired, around 6:00 – using as an excuse the fact that I had run out of drinking water. I was also hungry and so I went back to Ashley's house to make myself a spaghetti and hot dog in cream sauce dish. I had brought my frozen hot dogs from Atakpame, so that was a treat. After eating, I went to the internet, but apparently their internet card had just ran out. I guess they buy internet time like one might buy cell phone minutes and, unluckily for me, they ran out. On the way back to the house, I stopped to say hi to Hevihevi and stayed chatting with her for about half an hour. She said that she saw a movie in which some boys were trafficked to Nigeria and then killed for Voudou and sacrificial purposes and that she would like to incorporate that trajectory into our next child trafficking skit. She also studies by lamplight even though she has electricity because she is saving up the 1,000 or so francs it costs to buy a light ($2.00). It is a tough life. Studying by kerosene lamplight is not fun.
Once back at Ashley's, I tried to start typing up emails, but my power cord wasn't working and as much as I fiddled with it, the charge didn't arrive to the computer. I would have used Ashley's computer, but it is password protected and I didn't want to bother her a second time (I bothered her a first time to ask if I could use her computer). I also wanted to prepare my Peer Educator class on the computer to be sure of the French, but obviously that was a no-go as well. Frustrated and tired, I went to bed, only to be plagued by mice in Ashley's house as well. Mice give me the heeby-jeebies.
I got up early and worked on my lesson plan for the first of my Peer Educator classes. I was really nervous about it. Unlike the rest of the presentations I have made here in Togo, I will be stuck working with these kids for five months whether it goes well or not.
I wrote out exactly what I was going to say and on slips of paper, I wrote out hypothetical situations in which their intervention as Peer Educators would be useful and appropriate (I gleaned the situations from my Life Skills manual). I also took my computer cord to an electronics place (kitty-corner to Ashley's house) and they temporarily fixed my cord for free. I say temporarily because all they did was cut away the protective casing and wrap it with what I hope is electrical tape, but uncannily resembles masking tape. I was fully expecting them to try to overcharge me some exorbitant fee and was debating what would be a reasonable price in my head when they said that it was free – I was sort of speechless and very surprised. So surprised that I can't help but question their motive in performing the service for me for free. Granted, it was a pretty small job that didn't require much of their time or supplies, but a service rendered non-the-less. Curious, but I wasn't going to argue.
I went to the hospital to attend the meeting more as a show of solidarity rather than because I have something to offer in terms of the budgeting. I was hoping to copy the rough draft of my lesson plan out again, but one of the important people – one of the consultants to the national COGES project – asked me to translate his Resume into English. When people ask you to do something like that, it is hard to refuse, but I would always prefer that they attempt it first and then bring it to me to correct and improve. Anyway, I'd rather he owe me a favor than me owe him a favor and he might be a useful contact. He has written documents on how to do a Peer Educator formation – I asked him to send the documents to the Peace Corps Resource Center in Lome (where he is based) so that all volunteers might benefit. He said he would, we will see.
He has a rather interesting career trajectory working with Alternative Medicine and Nature Therapy. I asked if he was translating his CV to apply for a job outside of Togo, but luckily it is to convince an organization in Dubai to collaborate with him on work here in Togo. I say luckily because it is good that he stay in Togo where he can really help advance the situation of his country. The translation took all morning until about 11:30. At one point, Koffi, the secretary of the COGES, brought me my backpack. He said my cell phone had been ringing nonstop – I looked at it – nine missed phone calls, but the call registry said no number so I wasn't sure who was calling. I should have known that it was Jorge – no one else would call me so insistently, but one time I answered "Hola Amor" and it was his mother, so I am a little more tentative when answering the phone now. He eventually called again and I was able to speak with him for a minute only – our calls are always super short, it is just too expensive – but it was still a special and unexpected treat to hear his voice.
After a few minutes at the meeting, I left (all in all, my presence at the three day meeting was not all that productive except for the opportunity to witness how they conduct meetings here). I went to Ashley's house, made myself an egg sandwich for lunch, cleaned up after myself, packed my bike and closed up te house. I made one last attempt to use internet – but it wasn't working (it seems like it is never working, but I don't want to complain too much because it is just too convenient to have an internet place a block from Ashley's house. And so I left Notse around 1:30 to make sure I would be at the CEG (Middle School) in Agbatitoe in time to start my 3:00 class and my teaching debut.
On the way, I passed Yawovi carrying a bucket of water on his head. I stopped to say hi and learned that they buy drinking water at his house, but they have to walk all the way down to the stream to get bath water. I am not sure exactly how far his house is from the stream, but based on where he was when our paths crossed, it must be at least a twenty minute walk. Water that comes out of taps?!?! In the house?!?! We are so incredibly spoiled and we don't even know it. Everyone in the States who has a water source within a twenty minute walk from their house should try not using tap water for a day and going to the stream, river or lake to transport water back to their house for all their water needs. Just for one day. No wonder we can "progress" . . . imagine how much time and energy you would use just trying to satisfy your needs for water. Now try making a living and feeding your family.
Anyway, I didn't linger because I didn't want to be late. I arrived at the school in Agbatitoe around 2:30 and some of my students arrived simultaneously. I was impressed by and grateful for their punctuality. Fourteen of the eighteen students arrived before 3:00, two arrived late and two didn't come at all, but if you consider the difficulty I have getting anyone to arrive anywhere even remotely on time, that is a pretty good turn-out. As we waited for it to be 3:00, I had them put their names, age, village, gender, and grade-level on big piece of paper. The idea was to make a map and have the students put themselves on it. I put myself in Avassikpe, but apparently, the instructions weren't clear or they don't know how to put their villages on a map with respect to Agbatitoe. They ended up all over the place, but I will fix the map later if I can figure out where the villages I'm not familiar with are located.
The director eventually found us – apparently there was a bit of confusion surrounding the location of the class. We decided to stay put for the first class, but use the intended classroom starting with the next class. We were under a paillote, the classroom that the director prefer we use is an actual concrete school building. First I introduced myself and the class and then we started to talk about what a Peer Educator is, what qualities a Peer Educator should have, etc. After finishing with those two topics, I was a little worried because I had only used half an hour, but I have to remember for the future that group work takes a lot of time. By the way, for the first hour (until a football game started) I had about thirty or more spectators above and beyond the fifteen students who were there for my class. I tried to just ignore them and luckily they weren't too noisy. We split into groups and I gave them each a scenario. They had a bit of trouble understanding my writing, some of the vocabulary and the context itself, but I circulated from group to group and helped move their discussions along. The questions I put on the board for them to answer didn't fit perfectly with each scenario and so I will have to be more careful about that next time because it caused some confusion. Perhaps I can create specific questions for each scenario as opposed to general questions. After about an hour, each group presented their scenario and discussions for the others. They were really nervous about getting up in front of the class – shaking and sweating – I felt badly for them, but know they will get more and more comfortable with it as we do more and more group work and presentations. At the end of class, I asked them to write why they want to be Peer Educators and what topics they would like to cover over the course of the formation. I also told them that, at the beginning of the next class, I will ask them if they were in a situation in which they had to make a healthy decision befitting a peer educator or if they were able to support someone else who had made a healthy decision. All in all, I was very pleased with how the class went. The students seem respectful, interested and motivated, if a bit shy. I hope to enjoy working with them.
On the way home, I stopped by the priest's house to greet Mana and speak with the priest about his Christmas letter. He said he hadn't been able to send it with the pictures. I should have asked him if he spent hours trying like I did. I didn't stay long and made it home just as it was getting dark. I showered, cut up a pineapple and tried to catch up on my writing. I didn't last long before I was too tired to continue and I went to bed with my headphones on so I would hear the mice.
1/10/07
This morning I made up a poison for the mice with the little pills I bought and some corn four that a neighbor lady gave me. I set one under the guard manger and one under the shelves in the bedroom. Hopefully the mice will eat it and die in a visible space so that I can remove their bodies before my nose leads me to their hidden carcasses. Gross.
Then I made koliko (ignam fries) and a sardine tomato sauce for lunch for Jerome (my Ewe Prof) and I. He didn't arrive until around noon, but I didn't mind because I spent the morning catching up on my writing.
My Ewe lesson today was good – I learned many things – not just Ewe either. I learned how they roast peanuts. I couldn't figure out how they get the salt to stick to the peanuts and how they get them to have a nice rosy roasted color as opposed to the brown-burned, roasted color that I get. Apparently they boil the peanuts in salt water first for a couple minutes only and then they spread them out to dry. Then, in a special ceramic cooking bowl they cook sand until it is hot. Then they add the peanuts and roast them and then sift out the salt. Interesting. I am surprised the peanuts don't taste sandy afterwards.
I also learned that women leave the village at 2 or 3 in the morning to start their search for water and that sometimes it takes them several hours to get one basin full of water because either they have to walk really far or they have to sit and wait while the water seeps out of the ground! They literally sit and wait, scooping up bowls of water as soon as there is enough to scoop. I also learned that there is some dude who professes to be able to find water. He walks around a village until he gets chills – sometimes he rolls up his pants because he feels like he is walking in water – and when the calabash in his hand starts trembling violently and falls to the ground, that is the spot where a well should be drilled because you are sure to hit water. A question for Dad or anyone else who has an answer: is there no instrument, with all the technology we have at our fingertips, that can identify precisely where there is water? So that people don't drill in vain?
Anyway, it goes back to what I said this morning – in the dry season, people's lives here revolve around the search for water.
In the afternoon – from 3:00 until dark, I did laundry – lots of laundry. Apparently, people stop doing laundry and bathing frequently during dry season because water is so scarce – bathing and laundry become luxuries. Crazy.
Oh, I forgot to mention that I spoke with the director of the primary school this morning and he wanted me on Wednesdays as well, but obviously I am already busy Wednesday afternoon with peer educator formations in Agbatitoe, so . . . we decided I would go every other Friday to teach health/drawing classes. It would be better if they gave me real class time so that I am not usurping the students free time . . .
1/11/08
I'm sitting in the dispensaire waiting for instructions from Lili, but she is busy assisting a birth that seems difficult, but what do I know? All births would probably sound difficult to me because they all sound painful.
I have spent a good part of the day at the dispensaire copying rough drafts of the budget onto clean copies, but I don't feel very accomplished because the proposed budget for 2008 is largely incomplete and I can't copy what isn't there. I also don't know how to fill in the blanks.
Today I have been thinking a lot about how incredibly useful computers are. It would be so much easier to do the budget on an excel spreadsheet. Even if I couldn't figure out how to make the computer do the math, at least it would be easy to correct mistakes.
For my lesson planning as well, I could really use my computer – otherwise I will have to keep writing it out again and again as I correct my mistakes, change my plan, move things around, add things, etc. And so I don't really feel like working on it until I am in Notse where I can use my computer, but I know I will be distracted in Notse by Ashley and the other PCVs (not because they are purposefully distracting me, but because I'd rather hang-out than do work). I think Ashley will have a full house this weekend – not really conducive to working.
I ate leftover koliko with spaghetti, tomato sardine sauce and fried eggs for lunch. The combination doesn't sound good, I know, but it is.
Other than that, I went to the football field for an hour with the little kids and this morning I read over my peer educators' reasons for wanting to be peer educators (a little vague) and what they want to learn about. Some of their answers made me smile: procreation, love, satisfaction, how to have sexual intercourse (I think the student meant how to have safe sex) and then the expected responses like HIV/AIDS, STIs, unwanted pregnancies, alcohol, drugs, etc. I think the students aren't really sure yet what a peer educator is, but hopefully they will understand more and more as the course progresses.
Fridays are a particularly busy day for Lili at the dispensaire because all the people who come to Avassikpe for the market take advantage of the trip to come to the dispensaire.
I spent the afternoon sitting in the dispensaire reading the NRM (Natural Resource Management) and SED (Small Enterprise Development) volunteers' publication – some interesting stuff about moringa, making pomades (lotions which would be particularly important at this time of year because people's skin dries out and cracks. I wonder if my skin isn't so badly affected (even though I haven't started using lotion yet) because I have more fat – just a guess, not even an educated one . . . ), making oil from moringa seeds and using the by-product to filter water, using Neem seeds to make a pesticide, how to make a vegetable garden (that will come in handy later on), etc.
I never figured out what happened to the woman in labor – when I asked Lili if the baby had been born she gave a strange smile and said "desolee" ("I'm sorry"), but she stopped attending constantly to the woman and the woman's groaning and whimpering in pain stopped. I can't help but feel that the baby was stillborn. I hope the woman is ok . . .
1/12/08
Today I was out of village by 6:45 and in Notse by 8:30 with a stop-over in Agbatitoe to visit Mana. Ashley and Becka (another CHAP volunteer from my stage who is posted in Vogan) arrived from Lome just after I rolled in and we made pancakes for breakfast. Afterwards, I started typing emails. Jake (a GEE – Girls Education and Empowerment – volunteer from the most recent stage) arrived – he is taking a dog Becka inherited from a COSing volunteer off her hands – and midmorning Ashley and I biked to the post office and to the pineapple stand and I was surprised by all the packages I received. Of course I ripped them open as soon as I arrived at Ashley's house. I received a box full of chocolate from my parents and Christmas candy-corn! Reindeer corn – a novel invention. It is a fabulous coincidence because just yesterday I finished the candy-corn Dad brought me and just this morning I ate the last two pieces of chocolate – a mini twix and a mini snickers – from the chocolate he brought me. And now I have more! Yippee, yippee, yay! (So much for starting to eat more healthily and not snacking on candy and chocolate!) I am also particularly excited about the chocolate orange my parents sent me because chocolate oranges are very associated with Christmas in my mind and I was thinking about it the other day and wanting one after having a few pieces of a chocolate orange Ashley's friends brought her. They read my mind! The second huge package was from a Sunday school class at home who was sending care-packages to the service men and women from our area who are currently abroad and decided to send me some Christmas cheer as well. All the items were donated from the Wyalusing and Spring Hill United Methodist churches and include things like: hair brushes, tooth brushes, tooth paste, body lotion (lots and lots of it – very important for harmattan), chapstick, band-aids, candy, cookies, books, dvds, sunflower seeds, gum, baby-wipes, sunglasses, sunscreen – all very important, useful and much-appreciated things. I am including the letter I wrote in thanks:
Dear Skyler, Dominic, Mitchell, Vicki and Stef:
I am touched by the thoughtfulness and compassion of your care package. When you are far away from home, it makes things easier to know that people are thinking of you, praying for you and wishing you the best. Your care package has arrived at a particularly opportune time and is much appreciated. Christmas is the season during which I miss my family most because Christmas, in my head and heart, is intimately related to being with my family. If I am not with my family, it almost doesn't seem like Christmas. I spent Christmas in my village, a small village of about two thousand people in the Togolese countryside, with my new friends, but it wasn't the same as being at home. Your care package serves as a reminder that people at home are supporting me and encouraging me in my efforts to increase awareness of widespread health problems like malaria, HIV/AIDS and malnutrition.
Please relay my thanks and appreciation to the members of the Wyalusing and Spring Hill Methodist Churches who donated the items included in the package. I am particularly thankful for the lotions and chapstick. Right now, it is Harmattan – Togo's equivalent of winter. It isn't cold (except at night), but it is extremely, extremely dry and skin and lips crack just like during winter at home and dust blows everywhere. I am also thankful for the sunscreen and sunglasses; if you look on a map of the world, you will see that Togo is quite close to the equator, the sun even looks bigger here, and so products for protection from the sun are particularly necessary. Just the other day I was thinking that I need a new toothbrush and that I won't be able to find a good one here so thank you! thank you! thank you! The books and DVDs are also much appreciated by all the Peace Corps Volunteers in Togo and you can be sure that they will be passed around from volunteer to volunteer – we are so hungry for new reading material. As you can imagine, in a tiny village with no electricity, there is not much to do for entertainment except read books and when we go to the bigger cities, watching Dvds is a special treat. And of course the food – food from home is one of the things that volunteers miss most. The most common meal here is called pâte – a firm porridge-like starch made from corn flour that is eaten with a fish sauce. While it isn't bad, it isn't mom's cooking either and we miss all the familiar tastes from home.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your gesture of encouragement and support. You should really feel proud of your efforts to brighten the lives of people far from home and it means a lot to me to know that you are thinking of me and praying for me. If you have any particular questions about my experience in Togo, I would be more than happy to answer them via email.
My sincere and heartfelt thanks,
Danielle
PCV Togo
To boot, I received a Secret Santa package from Nadia and Tristan (the married PCVs that live in Kpalime) – three little baskets and some candy – an EMS with medkit supplies that I requested and more peer educator formation documents that I also requested – a very bright spot in my day considering the other disappointments that most importantly include not being able to contact Jorge.
I spent the entire day typing up emails except for a small break at lunchtime during which I went and made a list with HeviHevi and Efo of all the ingredients we will need to make fufu tomorrow (it is a holiday, the 13 th of January, in celebration of the day Eyedema, the now deceased dictator took power) and then I went with HeviHevi to the market to buy the supplies. I was a little put-out because I couldn't help but feel that she was trying to take advantage of me and my offer to pay for the bulk of the ingredients. We agreed that each member of the club will pay 100 francs for the meal and that I will pay the rest (about a 1,000 francs). It isn't that it is that much, I just want it to be a gesture of good-will and thanks from me and not an occasion for a person I like to take advantage of me.
In the evening, I went back over to help make the sauce, tried internet for the umpteenth time and then continued typing emails while the other volunteers watched the fifth Harry Potter movie.
1/13/07
This morning we got off to a bit of a slow start, but it didn't matter because everything (even official events) begins late here. We walked over to the Middle School, which is only a block or two from Ashley's house, just in time to find a good vantage point from which to watch the festivities. It was a parade of sorts. Seating for important people was set up on concrete bleachers and there were other seats under a pavilion as well. We were standing behind the seats so as not to get trapped into staying for hours and hours. First, a high school choir sang and then a high school band played while a string of groups marched through the channel created by the spectators. It was funny because the military groups marched swinging there arms and legs out perpendicular to their bodies in much exaggerated movements which the other groups (women's groups, associations, political parties, businesses, students) imitated. The most awkward group was comprised of "majorettes" – girls of all ages who marched, sort of danced and clumsily twirled batons. I found it unfortunate that they would try to reproduce one of our traditions when they have so many traditions of their own that would have been more appropriate and would have made for a better presentation. Not that I want to limit them to "traditional" expressions, but I do want them to value their own culture, and it really just looked terribly awkward and out-of-place. There were also boy-scouts or military children in training that marched with fake wooden rifles and painted cardboard hats (hey, it's resourceful – you gotta use what you have). Then there were some dance groups and some more singing – it was all pretty palatable considering there were no long boring speeches (or, at least, we left before they started). We stayed for a little over an hour and then left because it was getting hot and the festivities were finishing anyway.
I then went over to Hevihevi's house to see what the plan was. The club members gradually gathered (I dragged Ashley, Becka and Jake along) and we boiled ignam chunks, finished the sauce and pounded some fufu. Before we started, I made a rule that everyone who wanted to eat had to help pound so that the girls wouldn't get stuck doing all the work while the boys sat inside doing nothing. Everyone readily accepted and even though I didn't get any money back (I am not sure if I am never going to get money back or just not today), I was happy that everyone pitched in and that we could enjoy a meal together. I want them to pay the 100 francs we agreed upon just so I don't feel that they are taking advantage of me – more as a matter of principal than necessity. If they pay me, then I will happily organize and foot the base bill for other festivities, but if they don't, I don't think I will be very inclined to organize another party/celebration. After eating, we looked at the photos I took during the skit and then we watched the movie Hitch with Will Smith. I debated for ages over which movie to show them because I didn't want to shock them with too much sex or violence or anything science fiction-y or fantasy-y because they might think it was real (knocking Harry Potter and Shrek off the list of potential films). It turns out that they wanted a war movie (or at least that was what they thought they wanted as I started the film and interestingly enough it was a girl who asked for a war movie) and they didn't really understand the movie even though it was dubbed over in French with French subtitles. I had to keep explaining the context and plot. Apparently, there are women here in Togo who perform match-making services somewhat similar to that of Will Smith's character. I also had to keep reminding them which character was which, confirming my suspicion that all white people (and even not so white people) look the same to them. I think they enjoyed the movie, though, which made me happy (it was a rare treat for them) and there weren't any explicit sex scenes which also left me relieved because I don't know how they would have reacted to those.
During the movie I received a surprise phone call from Jorge. I couldn't hear him well, but he could hear me and so I talked to him for a little while. It was really special because I have been feeling frustrated and saddened by the fact that he can send me text messages, call me occasionally, email me, but that, if the internet doesn't work, I have no way of contacting him at all. A phone call won't go through from my cell phone and neither will text messages. I am afraid to try calling him from a public phone booth because they can't give me the rate, they say that the computer will calculate what I owe only after I have made the call – before they have no way of knowing how much it would cost to call a cell phone in Latin America from Togo. I remember one of my friends inadvertently racking up a $50.00 phone booth bill during stage, and definitely don't want to repeat the mistake. And so I am wholly dependent on internet, but internet hasn't been cooperating lately. Anyway, even though I couldn't hear Jorge, it was lovely to be able to communicate to him that I am well and a little bit about the past and coming weeks.
After checking to see if internet was working yet (it wasn't, go figure – It hadn't been working at 3:00 when they opened and it still wasn't working around 5:00), I helped Hevihevi was the dishes. Yawovi wants to show me the way to his house, but it is a little far, he didn't have a bike and I didn't want to get caught biking back in the dark and so I told him that we could go another day. After washing up, I went home and washed myself and then ate a pineapple and worked on a syllabus of sorts for my Peer Educator Formation. I am trying to map out the five months of coursework so that I make sure I cover everything I need to cover. My kudos to full-time teachers – this is hard work and I have a book with lesson plans that I am following! I can't imagine making daily lesson plans for eight hours of classes as a first-year teacher (Karen, you get an A+ + + + in my book!). I wonder if anyone has ever calculated roughly how long it takes to prepare an hour long class – I am thinking at least five hours of preparation for one hour of teaching. That means forty hours of preparation for an eight hour work-day which translates to impossible; there simply aren't enough hours in the week to prepare. I am sure it must get easier with time and practice, but that first year or two must be hell; I feel stressed-out by the prospect of teaching 4 hours a week!
I worked on my syllabus until around 10:30 (way past my bedtime!) and went to sleep.
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