5/21/08 through 5/31/08

5/21/08 – 5/23/08

I am reluctant to write because my funk persists in hanging over my head and I don’t have that many positive things to say, so I will just hit the particularly high and low points so that everyone knows that I am still alive. I have decided that my mood is not due exclusively to my monthly cycle (although its beginning stages may have been aggravated by that, but rather to the fact that I am in between projects, restless and ready to begin new endeavors, but held back by the prolonged completion of old projects, particularly my moringa seedlings and my peer educator course. I am anxious to be finished with both and to be freed to move on to different activities like baby weighing in surrounding villages to identify malnourished children and work to improve their health.

The good news is that I am pretty sure my funk will go away once my moringa trees are in the ground and my P.E. certificates in the hands of my students. In the mean time, my mood is bungy jumping off cliffs every few minutes.

The last to days have been rough. I had a hard time getting out of Lome on Wednesday. After picking up my passport at the Ghanain Embassy, complete with a two year multiple entry visa that cost me $150.00, I tried to avoid the gare (taxi station where vans take hours to fill up) and waited for a car on the side of the road. Strangely, though, when the van was full, instead of heading straight north, up the route nationale to Notse, the chauffeur drove us to the gare where we all had to get out and buy official tickets and wait for the authorized car to fill. I climbed into the van when it looked like it was ready to leave and ended up suffocating in the far back corner for over half an hour. I had to experiment with calming breathing tactics in order not to scream or frantically make everyone move so as to escape my prison of metal and firmly packed, seating, stinking bodies. None of this improved my mood and I as also stressed about not getting to my PE course on time.

I ended up having to take a car to my course from Notse after a brief stop and shower at Ashley’s. It has also been uncustomarily hot and humid which added to my discomfort and annoyance.

My PE class was disappointing as well. When I arrived at 3:00, the class was empty. Eventually students trickled in, but all my troisieme (the highest grade level in my course) were in a class next door. I had been hoping to finish my PE course and my trees before going to Ghana to meet up with my Dad, but it isn’t to be. Due to exams and things, my students won’t be able to finish their final projects until the week after I return. Whatever. Every cloud, or almost every cloud, has a silver lining if you look hard enough. So now I will have more time to get my certificates signed by my APCD and the final projects hopefully won’t be rushed and mediocre. Unfortunately, I can’t help but wonder what, if anything, my students have gleaned from the course because they can’t seem to reproduce anything but memorized fragments of what I have tried to teach them.

After class, the Director got me a ride back to Notse with the local Director of the Ministry of Fish and Agriculture who told me where I could buy fertilizer for my garden. I spent the night at Ashleys and then did some errands – I went and bought fertilizer and foodstuffs. The fertilizer delayed me a while because I had to wait for the man in charge to return and advise me on how much fertilizer I would need and how to use it.

I also picked up the kitten carrier I had made. It had been grating on my nerves as well because it wasn’t exactly what I thought I wanted, but now that I have it mounted on my bike I realize that the metal-worker did a very good job. Not only is it functional, but also pretty and I have modified my mental vision to accommodate its non-conformity. Flexible of me, eh?

In the afternoon, after disposing of two batches of baby mice birthed in Ashley’s bedroom (I just put them in a field where they will probably die because they are not yet self-sufficient), and eating fried rice for lunch, we went to Heather’s to chat. Gizmo and Heather’s huger German Shepherd – Zemijan – began a rather rocky friendship. Zemi was very well behaved, friendly and not at all threatening, but Gizmo turned into a spitting cobra with a mohawk and bottle-brush tail. He kind of looked like he was being electrocuted because of the way his hair was standing on end.

I biked back to village with Gizmo in his new chariot. He didn’t love it, but he didn’t hate it. It was a little difficult because I have to adjust my balance to accommodate the unusual weight on the front of my bike, but we did alright. Halfway to Agbatitoe, a car with two screaming yovos, Heather and Ashley, pulled over in front of me. After asking “what are you psychos doing?” I realized that Ashley had my purse, including my keys and wallet, in her hand. Ashley really saved my butt, I don’t know what I would have done when I pulled up to my house as it was getting dark and realized that I didn’t have my keys.

While at Heather’s, Ashley and I fashioned a harness and leash for Gizmo out of strips of pagne and so, after settling back into my house and showering, Gizmo and I went to lie in the hammock. It was very refreshing.

Today, Friday, I don’t have much to do. I am pretty much just hanging out until the afternoon when I have a peer educator course. I think I will study Ewe for a bit, make lunch, go to the market and just bum around.

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I went to the market in Agbatitoe and found a fish pagne to use to make a protective padding for Gizmo’s carrier. I like it. I also bought a heavy duty mosquito net for drying fruits and vegetables. My parents brought me a tent-like structure with shelves in it, but it is pretty airtight and so I am going to ask Mana to copy it with this mosquito netting. Keeping bugs out while allowing air circulation is what is most important I think. We will see.

I also paid a long overdue visit to the dispensaire in Agbatitoe to ask permission for my PE students to give a talk on diarrhea. I felt a bit sheepish because I really should have gone and introduced myself months ago.

My PE class was just ok. Even with the detailed lesson plans that I made for each of the groups, their presentations were mediocre and I made each group except one do it two, three times.

5/24/08

Today Ashley came to Avassikpe on her own for the fist time and distracted me from what might have otherwise been a depressing day. It is my mom’s birthday and one of my good friends from high school’s wedding. Ashley was specifically coming to Avassikpe to pick up cookies that I made for Tig as a birthday present. Her birthday is May 27th and the girls are all going to Ghana to celebrate. I decided not to go because with Dad’s visit a week later it would be too much vacation and too much Ghana. And so I sent cookies in my stead. Craisin, almond, oatmeal cookies and chocolate chip. The cookies might even be more appreciated than my presence =0). I started baking at 6:00 this morning and finished around 2:00. In between I neatened my house. Ashley arrived around 11:00 and we chatted, finished baking and then made spaghetti and garlic bread and had a delicious lunch.

I tried to convince her to spend the night, but she is going to Lome tomorrow and had some things to do at home first. She left around 4:30.

Around noon I called my mom to wish her a happy birthday. In the evening, after Ashley left, I received a call from Jorge’s mother which was very nice. She is delighted by the prospect of Jorge and I visiting her in Italy.

For some reason I feel as though this week is going to be a long one. Perhaps because I don’t have much to do. Maybe I ill make the “beds for my garden. If only the seedlings weren’t in the way . . .”

5/25/08 and 5/26/08

This is decidedly my longest lasting funk since coming to Togo – right about at the year mark. I guess I was long overdue for a funk that lasts more than a day or two, everyone else has had them.

My motivation to write is just about non-existant but I will make an effort.

Saturday night we had a violent rainstorm around 2:00 in the morning. The wind was blowing so hard that the rain was coming in through the cracks in between the window and the frame and dripping through the roof. The leaks weren’t too too bad, but the next day I saw the real damage – the wind had blown one side of my garden fence down. Luckily, the thick brambles around my garden prevented the sheep and goats from feasting and the cistern caught the fence before it totally flattened my little trees. As is, they were just bent, not broken. Tsevi helped me prop the fence back up until later in the day when he and Effoh restaked it.

Effoh arrived unexpectedly in village Sunday morning. When I asked why he came and how long he was planning to stay, his response was vague and elusive. He finally told me that he hadn’t been able to pay the last of his school installments and he wouldn’t be able to go back until his brother could come up with the last 10,000 cFA (approx $25). The problem is that now is the moment that everyone’s finances are particularly tight because they are using the last of their food reserves to plant next season’s crop. I didn’t need to think twice. He only has a month left and it would be stupid to miss critical class time that will help him prepare for the exam he will take in July that will determine whether or not he receives a high school diploma. I told him that I would lend him the 10,000 francs. $25 is relatively insignificant to me and to them it is an impossible sum. It made me stop and think about how well off I am, on a PCV salary of $4 a day in comparison. I have no idea what the yearly income is for people in my village, but I would be curious to find out.

I went to church – it was unremarkable except that the Pastor asked me to say a prayer. I did it in English so that no one would understand. He also invited me to participate in the women’s day festivities next Sunday by buying the matching outfit (pink skirt, white top) and singing a song. Me? Sing? Right. I considered the whole business for about two seconds because I was touched that they thought to include me, but I have decided to use my trip to Ghana as an excuse to get out of the whole affair. I don’t particularly want to waste money on an outfit I will never wear again and I definitely don’t ant to sing in public even if it were in English and a song they have never heard before.

After church, Effoh and Tsevi fixed my fence and then I fed them rice and beans with burnt sauce. Yes, unfortunately, I burned the sauce, but they didn’t complain. Tsevi tried some of Gizmo’s dried cat food and then, at Effoh’s suggestion that it probably had lizard meat in it, went outside to spit it out. I doubt it, but it was still pretty funny to see Tsevi’s whole demeanor change visibly as he considered the possibility and then got progressively more disgusted by the thought.

In the afternoon I did laundry and chatted with the infirmier who is bored by the lack of work. I try to encourage him by telling him that even if he only sees two patients a day, they are to people ho more desperately need his services than the ten or fifteen people he might see in a larger town because they might not have the funds to go any further than Avassikpe in search of medical care. I also tell him that perhaps after high-planting season passes and more people become aware of his presence, more people will come for consultations. It would be terrible for him to get so discouraged that he actively wants to leave. Avassikpe has waited so long for a nurse.

We talked about how stigmatized couples who can’t have children are here and about what we could do in terms of educative/preventative campaigns and a bunch of other things like immigration to the U.S. and the visa lottery that I don’t have the energy to detail.

He left as it got dark and Effoh came back from the field. He told me that his older brother had danced with joy at the news that I would lend them the 10,000 francs. I asked them to be discreet about it because it is not a gesture I am willing to repeat with anyone and everyone. His brother also came to thank me. Being thanked so profusely embarrasses me a little, but again signals the different relative values of the sum to me and to Effoh and his family. No wonder people think I am filthy rich. It is all relative.

In the evening, I chatted with Effoh a bit and then we helped Tseviato with her math homework. Mostly Effoh helped and I looked at the stars.

Today I didn’t do much. At least, I don’t feel very productive. I went to visit Mana and then she came back to the house to see the tent I want her to replicate and take the Niger pagne Dad brought me. I wanted a bubu like the one she had made for me with material Lili bought me for my birthday, but tomorrow I will have to take it back to her and ask her to reduce its size. Feeling fat and lazy is part of my current funk and I didn’t particularly need her to make me a dress the size of a tent to exacerbate it. Maybe she confused the two projects I want her to do. What annoys me is that she uses way more material than necessary.

The resteof the day I studied Ewe, played with Gizmo, read a book called “Out of Poverty” that Dad brought me and sweated. I really wish the stupid trees were out of the stupid garden so I could make my beds and at least feel a tiny bit active and productive. Grr. I would move them, but I am not sure it is worth the aggravation if we are planting on Thursday. Seriously, I’m going to get rid of whatever is left if they don’t plant all the trees on Thursday. (Yeah, you are . . . )

And that is it. That was my day. If it weren’t for Gizmo . . .

5/27/08

Today is Jorge and my 6 year anniversary. 6 years! I just calculated and we have been physically in the same place for only 25 of those 72 months. Just over a third. Crazy. I can’t help but hope that this will be the last (it is already the longest) separation.

The highlight of my day was, of course, a thirty minute phone call from my Love. That is always a special and treasured treat.

Other than that, my day has been unremarkable (I am noticing as I retype this that “unremarkable” describes most everything about my week. Ok, that is not true – Jorge’s phone call and Ashley’s visit were out of the ordinary). I spent the bulk of the day lying in my hammock finishing “Out of Poverty” and starting “Ripples from the Zambezi.” Both are books about small enterprise development. My problem in deciding what path to take for the rest of my life, what grad school course to embark on is that everything excites me. Moringa excites me, public health excites me, even small enterprise development excites me when the right people write about it. I just want to do something that really helps other people because I feel that that is the only way I will feel fulfilled in life. I am not adamant about how or where, I just really want to spend my time and effort working to make a positive difference in the lives of others. That has remained a constant in my mind since about the age of twelve when I reneged on veterinary medicine after concluding that I’d rather help people than animals. Now I just (JUST?!?!?) have to decide how I can best use my particular talents (yet to be defined) and interests (too many to be defined) to accomplish that task. Any enlightened suggestions?

5/28/08 and 5/29/08

Yesterday I didn’t do anything. Really. Ok, well to give myself some credit, I studied Ewe for a while. Other than that, I slept (yes, during daylight) and lay in my hammock reading Newsweek.

Today is Thursday. I don’t know why I ever wake up in a good, optimistic mood on a Thursday because invariably it is all down hill from the moment I open my eyes. Thursday is the day I try to coerce and/or cajole people into planting the moringa seedlings. I was really hoping we would finish planting today. I don’t know why I hoped that, even two-hundred trees appears to be too much to ask. Only a couple of people came out to help. Ok, to be fair, a couple times 3 = 6 people. I was oscillating between anger and tears the whole morning, but a quote from the book I am reading kept reverberating in my ears: “don’t ever initiate anything and don’t ever motivate anybody” (Ripples from the Zambezi, p.42). The more I think about it, the more I think he’s got the right idea. The author, Ernesto Sirolli, calls his approach to development Enterprise Facilitation and people come to him with a business idea or problem and he helps them realize it. That is exactly what all the small enterprise development volunteers should be doing and I should probably be staying out of that arena entirely because I have been asking to get my butt whupped from the very beginning by tackling things I know nothing about. I am trying to appreciate the whole business as a learning experience. Very important lessons: 1 – Community projects are very challenging (not to say impossible. Even if some people are enthusiastic at the beginning, the lack of participation by the rest of the community will discourage them); 2 – I think Sirolli has got it right – don’t initiate; don’t motivate, just facilitate. Two strikes on that level. It is going to take me a while (and probably more frustration and failure) to really internalize that, but I think it is wise. Still, where exactly are the boundaries? Can you suggest? Inform? I will have to keep considering his approach, but, even so, what I am doing right now is half cheerleader, half disappointed mother and certainly not what Sirolli has in mind.

After planting a few trees I made beans and rice for lunch and welcomed Jerome and Nicolas into my home shortly after. My Ewe lesson was good as usual, not spectacular. After eating we talked about my plans for a vegetable garden, Nicolas’ gardens, and birthing babies. Jerome’s wife had a baby girl about two weeks ago and he said his wife went to the field and carried home a load of firewood right before (by right I mean, like an hour) giving birth all by herself. Only after the baby was out did she call for another woman to help tend to it. Yikes. When I think about it, it is so different from our coddling of pregnant women (don’t get any ideas Love, I want to be coddled!). Here I see extremely pregnant women lifting water and wood onto their heads and going about their daily tasks as if they didn’t have a bowling ball, watermelon, whatever you like, in their belly. Jerome says keeping active makes the pregnancy easier and some women just pop the baby out on their way home from the field. Nicolas shared a sad story, though. He said that his wife lost her second baby because she was delivering alone and the baby hit its head on the ground when it came out.

The carpenter was supposed to come yesterday morning to install my gutter out back but he never showed so this afternoon, after Jerome and Nicolas left, I did it myself. It was hard – especially cutting the corrugated metal sheet into four pieces. Luckily, I had my wolverine gloves that my parents brought me that protected my hands from being completely shredded. I then rolled the metal strips to flatten them, shaped them into gutters and found a way to mount them all by my lonesome. It took me four hours, but I did it and saved myself 500cFA ($1.25). Yay me. And I get to feel productive to boot which is worth even more than the 500 cFA. =0)

Tomorrow I will pour water on the roof and see if it actually works. I am a little worried that I haven’t sloped it enough.

5/30/08

Today I did random tasks until 10:30 when I went to Agbatitoe. One of my PE groups was scheduled to do their presentation for the women gathered at the dispensaire in Agbatit for the weekly vaccinations. We had to wait over an hour for ten or so women to accumulate, but I was pleased with the way my students really rose to the occasion.

Afterwards I wandered around the market, found none of the things I was looking for, and then went to the school to read and wait for my students to arrive. Luckily, they had all made an effort to learn their respective parts of the presentations and we were finished by 4:00.

I spent the rest of the day getting ready for my VAY-K (vacation): Notse, Lome, Accra, here I come!

5/31/08

I got a late start this morning a cause de la pluie (the rain), and didn’t arrive in Notse until around 9:30. I also underestimated the challenge that is biking through mud. It is much more difficult than biking through sand because it sucks you in and then doesn’t give way as easily. Gizmo, true to his nickname “biggest crybaby in the whole wide world” (BCB3W for short), meow-ed the whole way. I mean, I get it, he is bouncing around in a cage and probably scared, but I wouldn’t mind trading him places. He can sweat while I alternate between dozing and enjoying the scenery. And sweat I did. It was exceptionally humid (it had rained all night) and for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to wear a long-sleeved shirt AND I had to pump up a flat tire right as I was leaving village.

But we made it. Shortly after arriving and getting Gizmo settled, I went to find Effoh. We had agreed that he would take me to see the wife of my proprietor who is sick and has been staying in Notse for the past couple of weeks. I first thought I should probably visit her when I encountered a group of five women from my village walking back from Agbatit one day as I biked out towards Notse. When I asked why they had gone to Notse, they said to visit the “mama.” If they went all the way to Notse to visit her, the least I could do is pay the same respects on one of my frequent trips to the “grande ville.” Effoh waited as I showered and then I bought some hearty staples like eggs, canned evaporated milk, sardines and avocados (we were trying to come up with nutritious foods that would put some meat back on to the emaciated woman’s bones). We walked to the house which was out near Effoh’s house. We stayed for about an hour an a half. The visit and gifts were very much appreciated, but the visit was painful at times. Later I talked with Effoh about the cards people will always play for amusment’s sake. The first: “I want to marry you;” the second: “give me money;” the third: “take me to the United States.” According to Effoh, the first is used on Togolese women as well; the last two are reserved for yovos. Apparently, Togolese women will just agree with a lighthearted “yo-oo” to the marriage request thereby ending the conversation. He says that when I engage the speaker by refusing, it creates the opportunity to push the merriment a little further. Maybe I will try accepting the next marriage proposal and see if that works for me.

When we finally escaped I was a little weary of the fun and games and it was high-noon. I waited out the hottest part of the day chatting with Effoh in the shade of his house and then returned to Notse-center to order the padding for Gizmo’s car. I tell people that it is his car and that I am his driver (chauffeur) and they get a big kick out of that.

This evening we were going to go see one of the students in my children’s rights group who has been gravely ill, but we got rained out (by the way, while chatting with Effoh this afternoon I learned that DaJulie has an eleven or twelve year old daughter who is working in Lome. I was shocked. Here he is the president of a group advocating children’s rights and his niece is currently working in Lome as a trafficked child. Fantastic.). Effoh came by on his way home from the market amid scattered thundershowers and we chatted until the next break in the clouds.