5/2/08 through 5/13/08

5/2/08, 5/3/08 and 5/4/08

It is mango season and I’m in heaven. I bought grafted mangoes in Notse and I have more ungrafted mangoes (given to me as gifts) than I can eat. Mangoes (and their remnants – pits and peels) are everywhere. I wonder if eating so many mangoes causes your sweat to be sweeter and therefore attract more mosquitoes. It would be an interesting study, a correlation between mangoes and malaria other than they both begin with “ma”?

Yesterday I was angry. All day. For no apparent reason. I think I was anxious about coming back to village after so much time (2 weeks) away.

Friday, after arriving at the Bureau around 11:30, I did a couple of errands and had a chance to chat with Jorge for a bit before the electricity cut. Usually the generators kick in, but for some reason they didn’t and when I left Lome around 4:00, the electricity was still off. In the meantime, I went to the market and bought brown sugar, curry powder, ketchup and kraft macaroni and cheese and a cake mix (those last two were impulse buys because they were on sale – they expire next month, but expiration dates (unless on condoms) do nothing to phase a Peace Corps volunteer).

Rather than going to the gar (official taxi station) I got a car on the side of the road and was in Notse before dark and in record time. Ashley and I spent the evening chatting about anything and everything.

Saturday morning, after a lazy start (I slept in until 7:30!), I showered and biked to buy pineapples, mangoes and pick up the mail (nothing exciting). Then Ashley and I walked to the market and I bought other supplies for the week. On the way back to Ashley’s house, I stopped to see if my bag was ready yet (it wasn’t) and I think that is where my anger started (partially at myself, I think, for having been somewhat rude to the dude who told me the my bag still wasn’t ready – it wasn’t his fault at all, he was just an intermediary). Then the soja (fried tofu) lady had no piment and when I went to pick up my cassette recorder, some big fat guy, who looked me up and down as I walked in, waved it around in front of my face before finally handing it to me. That fueled my anger. Luckily Ashley knew exactly how to make me forget: macaroni and cheese and a movie. We watched Matchstick Men with Nicolas Cage; it was pretty good.

Earlier in the day I had called Effoh and arranged for him to take me to the taxi for Avassikpe. It is a little bit of a tricky business because it only comes once and not at a scheduled time. I had never taken the Saturday market car to Avassikpe before and didn’t know when, where, with whom. Effoh came by at around 4:30 and we walked to the market. We sat waiting for the car for over an hour and when it finally arrived arranged with the driver to pick me and all my stuff (2 boxes of rocks + a bag of fruit +2 bags) up on the edge of the route nationale nearer to Ashley’s house. Effoh and Ashley helped me transport. By the time I got in the unusually full car, it was already dark. The car overheated twice on the way to Avassikpe. I was afraid that I’d have to call Ashley out to rescue me, but we eventually made it.

Oh, I forgot my biggest news! I happened upon Lili in the market and she said that the State is sending us a nurse. That is fantastic news for Avassikpe. I just hope that he is competent and not on a power/ego trip.

My trees are still alive, but looking a bit peaked. I think they are starting to get pot-bound and so my plan is to plan on Thursday and, if need be, transport water to the field to irrigate them.

This morning, Sunday, after weeding my garden (how waist-high weeds can sprout from nothing in two weeks is beyond me) and showering, I went to church. On the way, a woman I stopped to greet congratulated me on how fat I’ve gotten. Granted, I think I did gain weight from all the good food I ate while my parents were here, but really, these powers of observation for weight gain/loss are remarkable. Needless to say, I didn’t appreciate the comment.

Church wasn’t out of the ordinary and in the afternoon I did laundry, ate boiled ignams (that DaMarie brought me) with ketchup and scrambled eggs, started planning my garden, made five trips to the barrage and watered my trees.

I am so excited by all my seeds. I have green beans, cabbage, spinach, green and yellow squash, peas, broccoli, tomatoes, beets, green peppers, lettuce, carrots, watermelon, cantaloupe, cucumber, eggplant, okra, ademan (those last two from Togo), and basil, marigolds, and sunflowers. I unpacked all the things my parents brought me so quickly and there was so much that I didn’t have time to get excited about each and every thing. This way, though, the excitement is going to last forever as I gradually rediscover all the gifts. Today I got particularly excited by the black pepper, seeds and beef jerky. Tomorrow I am going to use the dry erase sheets to map out my garden and I am stoked for that.

5/5/08 and 5/6/08

They aren’t kidding when they advise you to drink lots of water. Holy moly, I don’t think I’ve ever been so sick. I was sure my grandmother had left me with a not-so-welcome parting gift. I ruled out malaria only because I haven’t missed any doses of mefloquine.

Yesterday morning I transplanted some trees (where there were two in one place) and then I made four trips to the barrage. After that (it seems so long ago, I can hardly remember), I made fufu for lunch – lots of sweating and hard work. I didn’t feel very hungry once I finished even though I had been craving fufu for the past couple of days, but I ate anyway because fufu doesn’t keep. I then pounded piment and garlic together to make a pesticide for my moringa seedlings – some rotten caterpillar is eating all the leaves and I boiled neem leaves with village-made soap, also for the pesticide. Afterwards, I sat down to plan out my garden on my new dry-erase sheets. I wanted to check how many moringa trees I had planted around my garden and so I went out back – I couldn’t even finish counting, though, because all of a sudden I felt woozy, as if I were going to faint. I had had a throbbing headache since mid-morning, but I was ignoring it, chalking it up to the sun and all the pounding I had done, but it reached the point that I could no longer ignore it. I went inside, took an extra strength motrin and lay down. My whole body hurt – I thought it was regular muscle soreness from working in my garden and all the trips to the barrage, but it wasn’t only my muscles that ached. My skin and bones hurt as well. About an hour after lying down, I started to get chills. I decided to take my temperature and scared myself with a fever of 102. Somewhere in all of this, my diarrhea started. Eventually the chills and headache eased and my fever lessoned. Mid-afternoon, I was able to get up, plan my garden a little and shower. By evening, though, my headache was returning and I popped another motrin and lay down.

Around 7:00, some children called to me to come see. I groaned no, but then thought better of it and I am glad I did because they handed me a kitten. I took it and closed the door. I had no idea who it belonged to or even if it was for sale, but I managed to feed it some fish and milk. It distracted me from my discomfort for a while. It is white with caramel colored patches on its ears, a caramel spot on its back, a caramel striped tail and blue eyes. He? she? is cute and curious and friendly and playful. I was immediately attached and would have been more excited had I not been so ill.

The kitten took my mind off my bad state for a little while. I shut up the house and lay down again around 7:30. The night was very long. I don’t know how many times I peed/had liquid diarrhea. I was freezing cold, shivering, covered in a fleece blanket and simultaneously burning up. At one point I took my temperature and it was 102.5. An hour later, it was 103.5. I took another motrin and knew my fever had broken when I kicked off my fleece covering. Still, I was up all night with diarrhea; the kitten provided comic relief, entertainment and comfort as I tried to fall back asleep after each explosive burst into the bucket sitting on my floor. He had fallen asleep on my chair, but eventually found his way to the band and even found the opening in the mosquito net.

Towards morning I decided to do a MIF kit (poo samples to test for amoebas). I was sure I had amoebas and was admonishing myself for being cocky. Yes, I told myself, you have built up a resistance, but you aren’t immune. At daybreak, I brought the MIF kit to Lili to bring to Notse so that Ashley could EMS it to Lome. I barely made it back to my latrine without dribbling diarrhea down my leg.

I finished preparing my pesticide and then went with Tsevi to speak with the owner of the kitten. Apparently he had already been sold. I was disappointed. There was another kitten, a black and white one, but like I said, I was already attached, especially after the night we had hared. The man said that he must have escaped the person who bought him and the children, upon finding her, offered her to me. The owner of the mother cat told me to keep the kitten and that, when the person who lost it comes by, he will give them the other one. I was happy with that arrangement and ready to pay the 505 cFA for the “precious little morsel” as Ashley would say. Apparently kittens are always sold for x amount + 5cFA – a tradition that has something to do with how wise and special cats are. I don’t know where I am going to find 5cFA.

Happy, I went home with my kitten. He? She? (nobody seems to be able to tell for sure) is nameless. I am waiting for Ashley to help me pick a good name. Ashley is good at names. I then patched the screen in my door so the kitten can’t excape me like he did his previous owner and I made a littler box.

Mid-morning, I was feeling a little better when my PCMO returned my call. She was of the opinion that I was just dehydrated. Just. Remind me never to get dehydrated again. She told me to rest and drink lots of fluids, so I did.

In between resting, I cleaned up my house a bit, prepared my Peer Educator course for tomorrow and made a sauce for Jerome for tomorrow’s Ewe class.

My kitten is really sweet, but he is a baby. He cries when I leave him inside alone and when I don’t pay him enough attention. HE is cute though. I am smitten.

I didn’t eat anything all day except for some popcorn. In the evening, I was feeling pretty good and made myself some pasta with olive oil, basil, garlic, onion and parmesan cheese. It was really good, but as my stomach starts rumbling I am starting to wonder if that was a good idea. We will see. Hopefully tonight will not be a repeat of last night. I shouldn’t be dehydrated, though, I’ve drank my weight in pink lemonade.

5/7/08

Have you ever felt pure joy at the realization that you just farted? Meaning that your bowels are now enough under your control that, at the least relaxation, liquid diarrhea doesn’t come spewing out? That is how I felt today before going to my Peer Educator course.

I am feeling better today. I was able to sleep almost straight through the night – I only had diarrhea twice. Only. Much better compared to the twenty plus times the night before.

This morning I took it easy – cleaned up a bit, did a tiny bit of laundry and waited for Jerome to arrive. He came late morning, around 11:00. ‘Til then I puttered around. I didn’t end up using my pesticide on the trees. Tsevi, after seeing how eaten the seedlings are, decided that it would be best to use the pesticide for cotton (turns out it is a little too strong and is making the leaves shrivel). Anyway, I dumped my pesticide in ant holes. Maybe it will kill them . . . who knows.

I might get my second cistern built on Friday. That would be great. Tomorrow I need to get sand for it though . . . lots and lots of sand.

My Ewe lesson was fine – nothing great. Jerome was really excited about the dry-erase board and markers. My PE class was also unremarkable, although I am thankful that I made it through without pooping my pants. I think we are all (my students and I) have had enough. Luckily, I only have one more class to teach and then the final projects and presentation of certificates. I have enjoyed the experience, but I must admit, I am ready to be done with the classes and move on to new and different things.

Tomorrow we are going to try to plant the trees – we will see how it goes . . .

5/8/08

Today would have been just an ok day except that it rained really hard for about half an hour therby watering the trees we planted this morning. Otherwise, I might have tried to water them and that would have been very hard.

As is, I worked pretty hard today. By 5:30 I was already transporting trees out to the field. People showed up to work, but not nearly enough people. We worked transporting, digging and planting until around 9:30 and planted 300 and some trees. That isn’t terrible (and I should be thankful because I know Ashley is having a hard time getting her 500 seedlings planted because she only has one or two other people to help her and her field is further away and more inaccessible), but I still wasn’t happy.

After planting seedlings, I started to collect sand for my cistern that is supposed to be built tomorrow. I collected 5 buckets full (using my bike and child labor – hey, they wanted to help) by 11:30 and then called it quits because the sun was just too hot.

On one of my first return trips from collecting sand, DaMarie brought me pâte and sauce and on my second to last trip, a nice woman who has a store and sells me oil and other things (including the kitten) called Patrovi (one of my little helpers) over. She reportedly asked him if I had eaten anything. He told her no, which was more or less true, and so she filled a bowl with rice and sauce and sent it over. I devoured it as soon as I got in the house. I had started some beans in the morning, but they would take a while and I was hungry.

I ate, called my APCD and learned that only one CHAP volunteer (Ashley) is on budget for the moringa conference in Burkina Faso in June. I almost cried with disappointment. Not that Ashley shouldn’t go, she should, but I wanted to go too. There is still a small chance that I can go if I pay my own way. I wonder how much that will cost . . . I still want to go and will pay for it if it isn’t outrageously expensive. I don’t know who is hosting it, so I don’t know if there is an entrance fee. If it is exclusively Peace Corps . . . there shouldn’t be an entrance fee, but I will still have to pay for meals, lodging, and a visa to Burkina Faso. Hmm. I’m so disappointed. I thought for sure I’d get to go if 3 CHAP volunteers were in the budget. If it is only one, I’m glad it is Ashley, but I am still disappointed. Even with a relatively slight chance of being able to go to Burkina, I bailed on Camp Unite because the dates conflict. I decided that I would be more bummed to pull if my APCD said I could go and I was committed to doing camp (too committed to pull out), than if I gave up camp and don’t go to Burkina. That would just mean more time in village, which doesn’t bother me as I have lots of things on my agenda. So. We will see.
After that whole business, I baked banana bread with some rotting bananas so as to have something to give back to the two women who gave me food today and the woman who gave me the bananas. Again, my flour is bug and larvae infested. The fine sieve my mom brought me worked for the bigger ones. Once again I resigned myself to banana bread +larvae, convincing myself that all the bread I eat in Togo is probably made with larvae-infested flour. You can’t escape it. Give in. Embrace the larvae. I’m already salivating over my planned breakfast of larvae infested pancakes with real maple syrup. Yum, yum.

I managed three more trips for sand before I got caught in the rain. I decided to shower as I was already soaking wet and then, even though I really should have made several trips to the barrage, I worked to complete the number system for the vaccination day tomorrow. I am getting to the point where I dread vaccination day – it is stressful and exhausting.

This evening I am feeling rather melancholy. I think I will lie in bed listening to the radio until I am tired enough to sleep.

5/9/08

This morning the bulk of my second cistern was built. It was interesting how they do it. First they dig out the ground and make the base and then they put plastic over the wet cement and use dirt to create a mold for the rest of the cistern. The children helped me bring seven more buckets of sand. Next Monday the men will return and remove the sand that served as a mold and finish the cistern wit ha layer of pure cement.

Other than that, my day was unremarkable. I did baby-weighing and I like that much better than the registry stuff because I get to hold babies. Only a few of them are old enough to be scared by my white skin.

We finished around 4:00. There weren’t as many women today as in the past two months because the rains have started and there is more fieldwork to be done. Soon after I got home, DaMarie called me over to show me how to make an ignam dish that she has given me in the past. It is pretty easy – boiled ignam, salt, piment and pounded fishies. Afterwards I went to the market, but I was too late to find anything but Tchouk. Like I said, not particularly exciting.

5/10/08 through 5/12/08

Thursday I wrote Effoh a text at his older brother, Kodjovi’s, request telling him that he had cut his foot and needed help planting corn. When he didn’t show Friday evening, I decided to offer to help plant the corn myself. After all, how hard can planting corn be? If you can’t walk, pretty difficult, but I can walk perfectly fine. Early Saturday morning I went over to Kodjovi’s wife’s house (Tseviato’s older sister) and asked Tseviato if they would be planting corn that day and, if so, could I help. They informed me that Effoh had arrived late the night before, but it didn’t make a difference, I still thought I could help. Effoh and Robert (the eldest of Kodjovi’s children – Robert (9-ish), Charles (5-ish), Parfait (1 ½)) went out to the field around 6:00 and Tseviato and I followed two hours later. When we got there, Robert had already lanted most of the rows that were ready for their kernels. Tseviato and I did two rows (there is a definite technique to it: a plant of the heel, swipe out, drop three kernels and swipe back) and then the planting was done. What now? Oh, just a whole huge field to hoe before corn can be planted there. The field had already been given a once-over by a tractor, but none-the-less, the dirt was pretty hard. Later, when Effoh told Kodjovi that we hoed the whole field, he at first didn’t believe it and then admitted that he had been dreading the job because the ground there is so hard. We hoed at four different intervals between 9:00 and 4:00, taking breaks under the paillote when we got too tired and the sun got too hot. During our second break, around noon, Tseviato and Robert went on a search for mangos and came back half an hour later with fifty or sixty small wild mangoes. We feasted. The work was pretty hard, but it was fun because Effoh made up games for the kids as we worked like, name these animals (he gave the French name) in Ewe, or name four domestic animals, or name as many animals as you can with four legs. Silly things like that, but it helped pass the time faster. Hoeing a rocky field was not what I bargained for, but it felt good to really help and not feel like people were just humoring me by allowing me to do a job they could do twenty times faster and better.

When I got home, I ate the mashed ignam dish DaMarie made me the day before with pieces of beef jerky and fried egg. I was starving because I hadn’t eaten anything but mangoes since my 6:00 breakfast of gari, peanuts and sugar. At ten in the morning, they ate pâte, but I wasn’t feeling it and so declined . . . a decision my tummy later regretted. I made mango crisp, did dishes, cleaned up my house a bit, watered the trees and then showered (I was filthy, filthy like you can’t even imagine). When you’re dirty, really really dirty, and every part of you is dirty, it gets to the point where you don’t even care anymore, you hardly even notice and then you happen in front of a mirror. . .

After showering I went over to sit and chat with Effoh, DaJulie and their mom. Kodjovi’s wife brought me pâte (in thanks I think for working in the field) and DaJulie and Effoh helped me polish it off. We chatted about random things until I got sleepy and went home to bed.

Sunday morning the men who had started my cistern on Friday came over unexpectedly to finish the job. I think they wanted their money =0). As I half-supervised that operation, I did laundry and then went over to the dispensaire. I arrived just as Lili and a young man were starting to chow down on a meal of rice and beans. Lili invited me to join, and so I did. She didn’t introduce the young man – I thought he might be her brother or some other younger relation. Shortly afterwards I learned that he is our new infirmier (nurse). He seems very nice and not at all condescending as I feared. Later in the day, a storm rolled in and trapped us under my paillote and so I got an opportunity to talk with him for a good hour about the problems of practicing medicine in a rural setting where people insist that they don’t have enough money to pay for treatment, where doctors treat patients like idiots, and where sorcery is blamed for any and every illness. I am really excited for Avassikpe. He seems young, engergetic, ready and willing to work, open-minded, respectful, not at all conceited or condescending, and really interested in helping and serving others. I’d hate to speak too soon, but I think Avassikpe has lucked out once again. The only thing is that he is from a large town and has never lived in a small village (without electricity!) before. He said that he doesn’t know what to do with himself after dark without electricity and that he just goes to bed but then can’t sleep through the night. Hopefully, the villagers will really welcome into village-life and make him feel at home.

The mid-day storm cooled things off considerably and so around two I packed up my things, closed up my house, put my kitten in a box and biked to Notse. It was a difficult ride because the kitten cried for the first half and then had me worried that he had somehow gotten out when he quieted down during the second half. I breathed a sigh of relief (and so did he I am sure) when we arrived at Ashley’s house.

After introducing the kitten to his second home, Ashley and I feasted on a dinner of macaroni and cheese and mango crisp for desert while watching the move Juno (a relatively recent movie about a high schooler who gets pregnant). I really enjoyed the movie and would recommend it – I thought the script was great.

Ashley leant me her phone to call my mom briefly and wish her a happy Mother’s Day. I got the answering machine at our house in Laceyville, but still, that is better than nothing. Also, another particularly exciting bit of news involving my parents is that my Dad has a conference in Ghana from June 1 through 7 and so, if I can get my visa, I think I will meet him there. Yay! Exciting! I will get to see him again sooner than any of us expected!

Today, Monday, I went to Ashley’s field to help her plant her Moringa seedlings. Boy does she have her work cut out for her. First of all, the path to her field is terrible – a real challenge to bike even without a basket full of trees perched precariously on a rickety metal bike rack. Secondly, she only has one other person that helps her regularly and, thirdly, her field has not been hoed or cultivated in a couple of years and so, in places, is very hard and also clay-y. It made me appreciate the efficient help of my villagers. We worked all morning, from 8:00 until noon and planted 90 trees. Granted, that isn’t, bad, but in Avassikpe we planted over three hundred in less than two hours (and I was complaining!?!?!?). I have decided to stay an extra day in Notse so that tomorrow I can help Ashley plant again. I have nothing particular to do in village and so might as well give her a hand.

On our way back to the house we stopped for some beans and rice. When I got back to the house I had a huge scare. My kitten had gotten out through part of the window that is unscreened. I almost cried. I thought for sure I had lost him, but Ashley asked the people in her compound and sure enough, he was with them sleeping in their part of the house. He is such a people-cat; he hates being left alone and so, when he got out of the house went right over to them. I was so thankful. I have gotten really attached to the little bugger (I think I am going to name him Gremlin) in just a short period of time. He is such a bundle of joy (most of the time anyway) because he is so playful and funny. He has this way of hopping sideways when you startle him that is absolutely hilarious.

This afternoon we went to visit Heather and tonight we are going to make pancakes – with real maple syrup! – and watch a movie and tomorrow we will see if we can manage a repeat performance and plant another hundred (or more) trees.

5/13/08

Today we planted double what we planted yesterday, but we had one extra person and Ashley and I went an hour and a half earlier than we did yesterday. We were still there until noon. It was hot hard work, but it is rewarding to see the little trees finally planted in the spot that will be their home. Again mangos were our little boost and afterwards we hit up the rice and beans lady for lunch.

Right now it is raining, which is perfect because the little trees were looking quite peaked after we planted them.