6/22/08
Gizmo is sleeping on my neck and shoulders as if he were a fuzzy extension of my shirt. Unfortunately, it is a little hot for a fur collar. Oh well, I oblige him because I don’t want him to stop being the sweetest, most people-friendly cat in the world.
I stayed in Notse yesterday to send Jorge my emails. The internet in Notse isn’t usually connected on the weekends, but I must have looked particularly desperate because the manager agreed to connect for 1,000 cFA the hour – more than three times the normal price. But I was feeling a desperate need to be in contact with Jorge after almost two weeks of disconnectedness. His mom called me earlier in the afternoon and told me that he had passed all of his exams (I am so happy and proud!) and I wanted to congratulate him myself. The university in Uruguay can be extremely challenging at times and it is a huge and praiseworthy accomplishment to have passed all the exams. He now has an intermediate degree of international analyst as he finishes his thesis and eventually receives his complete diploma in International Studies. I am so excited and relieved and I am sure he is also breathing easier and sleeping better. I’m so proud! Anyway, so I was dying to congratulate him myself and ended up calling him for six minutes after my expensive hour of internet. Unfortunately, his neighbor got savvy and password protected his wifi so Jorge no longer has internet at home. It was lovely to hear his voice.
For the rest of the night I entertained myself with episodes of “the L word,” the rather shocking and very explicitly sexual lesbian sister of Sex in the City. I went to bed when my computer battery ran out due to a power cut.
Today I left Notse around 7:00 and biked to Agbatitoe where I stopped to speak with the Director and the student I chose to attend the boys’ camp. He is leaving for camp tomorrow and I wanted to solidify departure times and travel arrangements. I will go to Agbatit tomorrow to make sure he catches the bus heading north to Pagala. My student, Selom, seems a little nervous; I hope he has fun and finds it to be a constructive learning experience.
The rest of the day I spent doing laundry. Lots and lots of laundry. I went to say “hey” to the infirmier. Apparently Lili left for the weekend and next month she is taking a whole month of vacation. They have changed the dispensaire around a bit so that both Lili and the infirmier have their own office. The infirmier said that he is working to get his room in a strip of rooms across the road ready, but that it isn’t good that the dispensaire doesn’t have a separate lodging for the medical personnel. He expressed discomfort at living amongst the villagers and fear that they would try to poison him. Yikes. Not fear that they will grigri him but that they will literally put poison in his food. Apparently people here are jealous of his ethnic group, the Adja, because they have a reputation for being more successful and consequently wealthier. Hm.
I also went to visit Mana and bring her cloth I bought yesterday to make into curtains for my windows and door. IT will just be nice to have the option of shutting people (mostly children) out without suffocating myself.
I studied a bit of Ewe, greeted everyone and not I am writing and that was my day. Tomorrow I will hoe my garden and maybe try to make beds, go to Agbatit and hopefully learn from Mana how to make pâte rouge – red pâte.
By the way, several of my Moringa trees are taller than I am with stalks almost
I made myself a fabulous fruit salad with mango, pineapple and banana, but unfortunately, I have a sore in my mouth that impedes complete and utter enjoyment.
6/23/08 and 6/24/08
I spent the better part of the day (and night) at a fetish ceremony yesterday, so I am going to breeze through my comparatively boring morning and move on to more exciting things. Early yesterday morning, I went out back and hoed my garden. Actually, it was more like manual rotatilling because I wasn’t only looking to nix the weeds, but to turn over and aerate the soil and remove rocks and trash. Needless to say, I made very slow progress. At 10:00 I showered and biked to Agbatote to see my student off to Camp Unite. We waited on the side of the route nationale for an hour shrouded in awkward silence but fortunately shaded from the noonday sun by a vacant market stand.
When I got home I ate lunch and then tried to compile a comprehensive “attendance” list for all the Moringa community work days. I would like to reward the people who participated with Moringa seeds, maybe two for each day they came. IT was as I ventured out in search of Tsevi to look over my list that I first suspected something was a brewing. Pardon the pun, but it was. A group of people were gathered at the home of the “president of young people” (even though he himself isn’t young 50s or 60s, he is also Tseviato’s dad). It could have been an informal gathering, but Tseviato’s father was getting drums out and tightening their skins by pounding the sides of the head with a rock. I sat and played with Tseviato’s older sisters’ baby who peed on me, twice. I spoke with Tsevi and then went home again.
Around 3:00 I decided to go to Midojicope to see Mana and ask if we could postpone our pâte rouge cooking lesson until the next day (I already had more food at the house than I could eat). On my way I again passed Tseviato’s dad’s house and the gathering had grown: mostly children circled around a few men with as of yet silent drums, but also men who obviously had returned from the fields early for the event (including DaMarie’s husband, Effoh’s older brother, Kodjovi, the president of the CVD and several others. I asked a woman what was going on and she responded that they are going to play the drums. For the children? I asked. Yes. I asked a man what was going on and he said a fetish ceremony and pointed to a clay mound with sticks jutting out of it on all sides. I knew it was part of the traditional religion (fetish is what they call it and less frequently voudou), but I had never seen exactly what it was used for. I decided that this was an opportunity I could not miss – it was broad daylight and the people in attendance were almost all people I know and am pretty sure like me. I decided to take my bike back home and bring a bench out to watch. As I walked away, I heard the men commenting on my decision to return and watch with what I interpreted as approuval. I put my bench down off to the side, between Kodjovi (Effoh’s older brother) and DaMarie’s husband. I asked them what the ceremony was for and Kodjovi explained that one of their fetishers (people who have certain powers and go into trance during fetish ceremonies) had disappeared that morning. NO one knew where he was and this was an impromptu ceremony to try to use spiritual powers to locate his whereabouts. I was amazed by how such a well-attended event could have been organized on such short notice. It was obvious that people deemed the ceremony important enough to cut the workday short, but it wasn’t a somber affair.
Shortly after I sat down, shots of sodabe were poured and libations made to the ancestors. Then the men started drumming (one with his hands and one with two sticks) and the women singing, clapping and dancing. We moved from our spot on the periphery to the inner circle and I clapped along with the music waiting expectantly for what might come next.
For what seemed like a long time, nothing happened. The drumming and singing was punctuated by the metallic ding of the gongonneur’s bells (like two toned cow bells that are hit wit heither a metallic or wooden object) and an airy whistle. Men and women took turns singing the lead and even children were encouraged to participate in the dancing. Of course I would have loved to understand the words to the song, but I couldn’t even make out one word.
During the singing and dancing, a man poured a milky white liquid on the clay mound and then a yellow liquid and an orange liquid. He also spewed sodabe through his lips onto the mound and crushed some sort o leaf on top. Grass skirts were laid out at the base of the mound and the bright yellow powder sprinkled over them and on the ground in the middle of the circle formed by singing, dancing and clapping men, women and children. On the far side of the clay mound was a small mud brick one-room building with a door facing towards us and no windows. I must have passed it one hundred times in my meanderings around village, but I never stopped to wonder what it was. Its ceiling is lower that that on a house and not peaked, but rather slanted slightly to one side. It looks like a shed and I guess that is what it is, but not a tool shed, rather a fetisher’s shed. It seemed to be the base of operations, but, to go inside, both men and women had to take their shirts off.
After what seemed like an extended period of singing and dancing, one of the drummers somersaulted off the bench and out from behind the drum and proceeded to somersault erratically in every direction and make a whooping sound somewhat like a man’s imitation of a dog’s bark. The crowd scattered as he somersaulted towards them and DaMarie’s husband put out his arm to shield me much like my Mom does when braking suddenly while driving, only this time I was thankful for the arm – no seatbelt to protect me from the possessed fetisher. Eventually he came to a halt and froze on all fours to the right of the fetishers’ shed. Another man went over to him and took off his shirt and pants (he had shorts on underneath) and proceeded to dress him in grass skirts. He then went into the fetishers shed and came back out with yellow and orange paste smeared all over his face, chest and a Mohawk like stripe down the middle of his head. He went around the circle holding the pointer finger of his right hand out to everyone to shake and then, after being giving branches of a particular plant to hold, started whooping and dancing in the middle of the circle, swishing the grass skirt back and forth, digging his feet into the ground so that the sand flew everywhere, dropping down flat on his stomach and jumping high into the air, legs together and pointed forward. Everyone else continued singing, dancing and clapping, but leaving him the center stage.
He danced and then ran off. After a long while of non-stop singing and dancing (I was just clapping along), another man somersaulted out of control and into a “trance.” He actually plowed down a little girl in his somersaulting frenzy. When he came to a rolling stop, the same thing happened: he was undressed and dressed in a grass skirt and then painted himself with yellow and orange paste. Rather than his pointer finger, he offered his whole hand for people to shake. It was as if the person who normally occupies his body was gone and a new being was using his body as a host. This recent arrival needed, then, to greet the important people present.
Each of the men had a knife – the first with a curved blade and a bell in the handle, and the second like a dagger. At one point, the first man to go into a trance grabbed a dog by the neck and held it over the clay mound, with his curved knife in hand ready to sacrifice the poor animal who was so scared it lost control of its bladder. I guess someone pleaded on the dog’s behalf and it was released. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dog run away so fast.
The two fetishers took turns dancing. The second fetisher’s dance was more low to the ground – hopping from one foot to the other all while crouching down.
After dancing a while, they ran away, out of sight towards the village boundaries.
By this point, it was nearing dark and although energy was not lacking, there were mutterings of going home to prepare pâte.
At dusk, everyone went home to make dinner. I went home briefly, cam back and just waited, but nothing was happening. Some elders from Midojicope (I think) arrived, spewed sodabe on the clay mound, took their shirts off and went into the fetishers’ shed. One introduced himself to me as the president (of the fetishers perhaps?). He seemed pleased by my presence and said that Emmanuelle had once attended one of their ceremonies. He reiterated that this particular ceremony was because one of the fetishers was “lost.” I was invited to attend part of the ceremony that would take place “on the road,” but when the men headed out, the invitation was not reiterated and so I stayed put. I went home for a bit (I was already sleepy) and when I heard drumming forced myself to venture out again.
They had set up a generator wit ha string of lights. People trickled back and the drumming, dancing and singing started again. I felt very welcome. A chair appeared out of nowhere for me and I was even given the bells to play as things got started. The children got a kick out of trying to show me how to play.
It was pretty much a repeat of the afternoon performance. Occasionally the possessed fetishers would dance, but otherwise it was just the accompaniment and sometimes nothing at all. Everyone just waited around for something to happen. The two possessed fetishers were eventually joined by the 13? 14? Year old boy who somersaulted past my paillote once in a trance. He also has the thick scars on his arms and chest that seem to mark a fetisher, but his “trance” was a little less convincing this time . (I am not sure how much of it is acting and how much a real trance-like state. I have no doubt that they can work themselves into a trance with the singing, dancing, drumming and sodabe – by the way, the sodabe kept flowing the whole afternoon and into the night, - but I find it hard to believe that a possession or trance state would persist through so much down time. Then again, I have no idea what they were doing when they ran off).
The possessed fetishers started whistling a lot after dark – I guess that is why whistling is associated with calling the spirits and is prohibited after dark under normal circumstances.
A chicken and goat were paraded around presumably awaiting a sacrificial end that I am not sure ever came. After much down time, sleepy and shivering from the cold, I gave up. IT was 1:30 and almost everyone else had already left except the chief and elders. I learned today that the lost fetisher re-appeared around 1:40. Bummer. I just missed it.
Surprisingly, today Tseviato’s Dad, who normally doesn’t pay too much attention to me, came specifically to thank me (for my presence?). My proprietor’s wife and the chief also thanked me. Everyone seems pleased by my presence which is a relief and encourages me to attend future ceremonies.
The way Patrovi explained it to me this morning, the lost fetisher had sleep walked out of village in the early morning, but I don’t know how all of this was interpreted or if he received some sort of message from the spirits or what.
It was very interesting, but I was most excited by being included and welcomed, even made to feel like an honored guest. Unfortunately, there was a lot of down time and I was exhausted, but now maybe I won’t be afraid to venture out when I hear the drumming.
Today after on four hours of sleep I got up and went to continue rotatilling my garden wit ha hoe. I worked until 10:30 – luckily the day was cool and cloudy, then Mana came to show me how to make pâte rouge. First you roast the corn flour and then you cook piment, tomato paste, onions, garlic and little fish in oil. After a whle you add water and proceed as if you were making regular p^ate and the result is twenty times as good. Mana and I ate together and then I went back out to my garden to continue working. It is hard on the back and after another 2 hours I was more than ready to use the rain as an excuse to call it quits. It is lovely and cool and I think I will go to be early, as soon as it is dark.
By the way, Mana says Gizmo is a girl. That just wouldn’t be right. He is such a boy. I hope he is a boy
6/25/08
Jerome arrived early for our Ewe lesson today and I was in the midst of digging up my garden. Our Ewe, lesson was good, however, and afterwards Jerome explained the difference between fetishers and sorcerers. According to Jerome, the Ewe don’t have sorcerers - that is something that belongs to the northern ethnicities. Sorcerers can actually leave their bodies, take the form of animals and “fly” places. He said that some Kabiye sorcerers used their powers to “fly” in spirit for to Germany to watch a soccer game a couple of years ago. Fetish, which is the practice of the Ewe, embodies objects with certain powers and spirits and practitioners make sacrifices to the objects and request that the spirits do favors for them.
After our Ewe lesson, I got ready to go to Notse. Gizmo and I biked in, stopping at Effoh’s house on our way to drop of hot peppers his mom sent and some leftover beans from lunch. We chatted for a while about my hopeful water-filter project and Giz’s sex (?! No one knows for sure if he is a boy or a girl! We need Tig!) and then continued to Ashley’s house.
In the evening we had a meeting with Laurent, Ashley’s homologue to explain the Moringa advertising campaign that we would like to wage and why ADAC, Laurent’s organization, needs to take a back seat role. The organization, ADAC, is primarily associated with people living with HIV/AIDS and unfortunately, because of strong stigmatization against HIV infected people, if Moringa becomes associated solely with HIV, we will have difficulty expanding the market and production. I thought he took it pretty well, but Ashley, who knows him much better, thought he was annoyed. Oh well.
6/26/08 and 6/27/08
Ashley and I went down to Lome early Thursday morning and met with our Country Director and APCD to talk about our ideas for a Moringa marketing awareness-raising campaign. Then we vegged out on the internet.
The other reason (besides good food and we ate a lot of good food: rotisserie chicken, ice cream, hamburgers, chicken burgers, French fries) that we were in Lome was an AIDS Ride meeting. We have our work cut out for us in the month of July. Before July 31st we have to have our routes for AIDS Ride charted, biked, we have to have talked to the local and regional authorities, find homologues and participants etc. It is going to be a lot of work.
I also took advantage of my time in Lome to go to the MedUnit and get my ringworm reappraised. It isn’t getting better and actually had turned into open, infected oozing fly-attracting sores. I got more of the same medicine and an oral medicine as well (I am breezing past this because it was almost two weeks ago and I already wrote about it. Unfortunately, it is saved in my now useless and inaccessible computer).
6/28/08 and 6/29/08
We left Lome yesterday around 7:30 in a car full of Peace Corps volunteers so it was a more enjoyable ride than most; we laughed all the way to Notse.
I got to Notse around 9:30 – the rest of the volunteers including Ashley continued on to Atakpame. I went to Ashley’s house. Gizmo was still alive and seemed fine albeit a little hoarse from meowing so much and very in need of some love. I did my errands (wheeling my bike around the market on market day isn’t my favorite thing to do, but I needed to stock up on supplies. I bought little dried fish, onions, garlic, flour, pineapples, mangos, eggs and some beans, rice, wagash and sauce for lunch. I then typed up the emails I had been too distracted to type while in Lome and finished around 3:00. I closed up Ashley’s house and tried to remove all traces of the cat, loaded up and started home around 4:00. I stopped briefly at the house of the Director of the CEG in Agbatito to arrange a meeting time and place with my girl student who is going to camp on Monday. Unfortunately, as we rode through Agbatitoe, Giz and I got caught in the rain. Talk about a water torture. Not for me (well, his meowing was torture for me), but for the cat. I ripped the rain cover off one of my saddle bags and tried to shield him a bit, but he still screamed bloody murder.
Luckily, I soon biked out from under the rain cloud and neither he nor I got soaked. I arrived in Avassikpe around 5:30, stopped to greet Lili and the infirmier and went home to unpack. I was going to greet DaJulie when I saw that Effoh was in village. I made the women – DaJulie, Khosoivi and another woman laugh when I tried to explain in my baby Ewe how Gizmo got mad when it rained and when I praised Khosoivi’s husband Victor for doing his own laundry.
I greeted all the women and then sat down to chat with Effoh. He grilled me a young ear of corn and then I went to shower because I was damp and chilly from the rain. I figured that I might just as well get it over with. On chilly nights people here heat water to bathe; just an observation
After showering I returned to sit around DaJulie’s wood cookstove. Da Julie’s mom taught me how to say “I am shucking corn” in Ewe. Among the other things that stand out in the conversation that followed: Effoh told me that the white, yellow and orange pastes that the fetishers smear all over themselves during the ceremonies are simply corn flour mixed with different amounts of palm oil or none at all (white). I also lectured Effoh’s father on why smoking is bad for your health.
Today I made myself mango crepes for breakfast. They were just ok - my flour is a little old. Effoh came to say good morning and we talked about water filters and the seeds I have for my garden. He has never heard of some of the vegetables (squash, peas, green peppers) and others he has heard of but never tasted (beets, green beans). It will be fun to share my vegetables with people in my village (if they grow!) because it will be something new for them - the only vegetables they eat on a regular basis are green leafy veggies like ademan and gboma and okra, onions and tomatoes.
Effoh left and DaJulie came to visit. I also showed her the seeds. Then I went to church. The service today was more energized than usual of late - I only realized as I was walking home after the first part of the service (around 12:30) that they are fasting and praying today. No wonder we prayed so much! I prefer to pray in silence and privacy. With everyone praying at the top of their lungs I can hardly think, let alone pray.
The pastor gave the congregation a half an hour brek to go drink water; I took a break for the rest of the day (week even) and went home and made fried ride for lunch. No fasting for me (although maybe I should because later in the day the infirmier told me I am getting fatter; I don't think that is true, but, nonetheless, I didn't appreciate the remark).
After making and eating lunch, I hung my curtains to have the option of more privacy if I so desire and then I went to visit Lili and the infirmier. Afterwards I worked in my garden until the sun began to set. Now I am batehd with a tummy full of mango and pineapple. Bed time.
6/30/08
I decided to try being a Togolese child today and experience what it is like to collect water during a torrential downpour. Koffi and Tseviato came to my door asking to scoop water out of my overflowing cistern into their buckets and it just looked like too much fun, so I went out to help. And it was fun. A little chilly and I couldn't help envisioning myself getting electrocuted by the lightning, but very amusing nonetheless. Both my cisterns were overflowing and filling with water faster than I could bail them out. Eventually, we ran out of storage containers and had to give up.
That was teh second interesting thing about my day that made it out of the ordinary. The first was that on my way back from Agbatit where I had sat unshaded from the noonday sun (yes, I was wearing sunscreen) for two hours waiting for my student's ride to camp to arrive, I happened upon a ceremony hosted by DaMarie's family.
As I biked into the village two things caught my attention and prevented me from going directly home to satiate my hunger and thirst: the desperate screaming of a woman at the dispensaire and blood in the middle of the road. The two were not, in fact, related and I realized that as soon as I saw the dead chicken and goat that were being prepared after having been sacrificed during the ceremony. The woman who was screaming had just lost her baby, whether as a miscarriage or during childbirthe I am not sure. When I went to ask the infirmier about it he was busy with patients (I later learned that it was a two year old baby that died of anemia, probably after having malaria).
When I saw that the ceremony was primarily DaMarie's family, I felt less shy about sticking around. Just this morning I went out of my way to make a huge pot of pâte rouge for them - I had thought that DaMarie wanted me to teach her ow to make it, but she just wanted me to make it for her (whether because she doesn't know how or because she didn't have all the ingredients I am not sure). Anyway, she invited me to sit down and so I did. In front of me, over a wood fire, some adolescent boyse were preparing a chicken. To my right on the edge of the road, young men were torching the stiff body of a goat and scraping the hair off. To my left, DaMarie's husband and an older man, who I have never seen before (somewhat light skinned with thin scars from ritual cutting criss-crossing his arms and chest) were sitting. The older man had obviously drank his fair share (and more) of sodabe and was behaving quite strangely. The children just laughted at him when he started licking a black leather purse, almost as if it were a woman he was sloppily making out with and swinging his hips to the music on the radio. I thought it strange that a radio would be present at such a cermony, but it was. In between the two men was a small warty calabash filled with sodabe and perched on some sort of stand, black figurines (wood? clay?) embedded with cowery shells, a curved knfe with a bell in the handle, and bowls covered in blood. Next to them were mounds of dirt with clay bowls embedded in them (
The rain chased me away from the ceremony (not sure how it ended, but it did end). Afterwards I studied Ewe. I took advantage of a break in the clouds to go check on my trees. They are alive, but not thriving. Whereas the trees in my garden are taller than I am, the ones in the field are overgrown with weeds and the majority not yet waist high. But it is no longer my problem. If they don't organize themselves to hoe and the trees' growth is stunted, so be it.
Other than that, this morining I worked in my garden, continuing the neverending task of removing weeds, rocks and garbage and to loosen and turn over the soil.
7/1/08
Perfectionism in its extreme form can be quite a debilitating disease. I think I suffer from it. This morning I swept my garden. Literally. The rain last night washed away the sand aroudn all the pebbles and fragments of charcoal, leaving them balanced on pedestals of sand. I couldn't resist, they were too exposed, too blatant to ignore. It took me about three hourse to sweep it all up. As I did, I thought that perhaps I was doing myself mor of a dis-service than anything else, ir i the process I was removing the topsoil. But I had already rotatilled that part and so the topsoil is now about two feet under. Good or bad, I don't know, I've never really gardened. One thing I do know, though, is that my veggies wouldn't have grown well with all the garbage buried back there, so that IS a necessary task.
I stopped working at noon and ate leftover pâte rouge wit ha fried egg. I studied Ewe for a bit and then went to the dispensaire and chatted with Lli's sister until Mana joined us. I listend to them chat and then I went home to continue hoeing my garden which I did until dark. Some children eventually joined me and helped me pick out rocks. When Patrovi arrived, he started re-hoeing the part I had already hoed, which was great - the looser the soil the better, but I was a little discouraged to see that he was still pulling out all sorts of garbage and rocks =0(. This is an unterminable job and is making me rethink my site selection. It would be worth it if I were going to live here for ten years, but . . .
7/2/08
Never rely solely on the rain for your shower. Rain stops. Unexpectedly. Luckily, today I was prepared and it was a deliciousl cleansing because the rain was chillingly cool, but my bucket of water had been sitting in the sun the entire day and was surprisingly warm. The contrast was like moving betwen the pool and the hot tub (ok, a tiny bit of an exaggeration, but you have to appreciate what you've got). It was particularly soothing after six hours of digging (
The best part of my day was a brief phoncall from Jorge. IT is always so special to have a chance to hear his voice. I don't know what I will do with myself when I have him here 24/7! I'm going to be on cloud 9!
7/3/08
Sometimes I wish I had the option of ordering takout. Today Jerome was scheduled to come for an Ewe lesson and I'm out of piment. And there is none for sale in teh boutiques. I know I could ask my neighbors for some, but they would refuse paymetn and I'd feel badly. I can't make anything without piment, though. I ended up making curried red lentils and rice and it was fine.
My Ewe lesson was good - Jerome is such a natural story-teller. He recounted a story about how he cunningly forced a wife-beater to mend his ways. He witnessed the sever beating of one of the wives and knowing that he could not confront the man in such an agitated state, explained how he had circumvented the husband and encouraged the wives to take the abuse to the faimily court. The man was heavily fined by both of his wives' families and approached Jerome for financial help. Jerome took advantage of the man's position to lecture him on the consequences of wife-beating. All this was not only retold, but re-enacted in my little house turned theater.
I also learned that these big bugs that I have been digging up in my garden are eaten by children - cook in the fire, pop the wings and head off, pull out the intestines and its ready to go! Yummy proten snack! (Right).
We also talked about how sorcerers and fetishers can send lightning bolts to kill people.
Except for the time I spent with Jerome, I spent the whole day hoeing my garden. I am excited because tomorrow I will begin making the beds and my garden will really start taking shape. Yay! I hope it succeeds and transforms into a beautiful lush garden.
I just learned from the infirmier that the baby of the woman who was screaming as I biked into village on Monday died of anemia. He was 2 years old. They waited too long to bring him to the dispensaire. Today another baby died of anemia, a one year old. I think this is the time of year for babies to die because it is the low resource period - perhaps food is somewhat scarce and money even scarcer and the mosquitoes are out and about. So an already undernourished child is ravished by malaria, if that doesn't kill him, anemia very well might. Malaria and anemia are intricately related and the two are partners in crime (Ashley later explained that malaria attacks the red blood cells, the cells that carry oxygen to the brain, and can cause anemia. I feel like a better nourished child would be better poised to combat malaria). I don't know why there aren't campaigns to sensibilize against anemia. I think we need to start one.
Ashley has malaria. She got tested at the hospital in Notse. She has to go to Lome tomorrow and is afraid they will ad-sep her. I don't see how they could she's been taking her drugs. The people who have been ad-septed for getting malaria have flagrantly neglected to take their antimalarial medecine whatever it may be. I guess I shouldn't judge because I have never suffered any of the side effects of the mefloquine (and they can be quite terrible - nightmares, panic attacks, anxiety, depression), but to stop taking your drugs altogether is stubid and I know Ashley takes her drugs.
7/4/08
I wonder if it is that sharp shooting pain in my back that makes it hard to bend over means that I am developing muscles or that I have hurt something. It hurts to movie, ti hurts to sit; as soon as I finish writing I am going to go to bed. The reason I am whining is that I worked nine hours in my garden making beds. Big bedds. I don't know why I mad the beds so mountainous. I will probably rake them down. I wish I had a rake. At first i was using my little ho and then Effoh's older brother, Kodjovi, came and doubled my two hours of work in under twenty minutes with a big hoe called a taba. He leant the hoe to me and although it is much heavier, the work went a lot faster.
I had children (Patrovi, Tseviato) helping me off and on and we did all four big beds I have mapped out. I had thought I'd get two done at most. There is a lot of polishing to do and I still have to make round mounds for watermellon and canteloup and inevitably I will find more than enough to keep me busy all day tomorrow, but the worst of the work is more or less done. Unfortunately, I am in pain sitting here and so I am going to be brief.
Let me just comment that while I work people trail in and out of my garden to watch. I can't imagine what they must be thinking. I bet I look pretty awkward tield an instrument that is like an extension of their hands, but completely foreign to me. But even if they are laughing inside, I know I get points for working hard and not being laxy. When people see me caked with dirt from head to toe, they exclaim "Miato!" and shake their heads smiling slighting. Miato is sort of the equivalent of "Would you look at that!?"
The only other relavant part of my day is that, in honor of the 4th of July, I ate only American food. Ok, I was really just being lazy, I mean, how often do I eat these things at home? - fruit loops, kraft macaroni and cheese (expired, but still good), beef jerkey, and peanutbutter and chocolate chips on a spoon! Yummy.
Ok. Bedtime. I am going to collapse. I wonder what the rain is doing to my garden. I am gong to be afraid to look tomorrow morning.
7/5/08
I realize that as i have gotten older, I haven't learned how to better deal with things not turning out as I'd like them to, rather I have become better at making sure things turn out as I'd like. Unfortunately, in Togo, I am out of my element and so this moring, as I patted down the sides of my mountainous beds and Tsevi informed me that it won't do any good, that the rain will wash them half away, I felt the old urge to throw a temper tantrum. But I settled for pouting instead.
I worked in the garden again today, finishing the beds around the fence for beans and cucumbers, making round beds for watermelons and canteloup and making two extra beds just because I had the space. I also made drainage holes. When I wasn't working in my garden I was preparing lunch - DaMarie gave me an ignam the other day to make the dish she taught me how to make a few weeks ago. I think it turned out alright except that I put so much piment in it that it was almost inedible (for me). I also baked a white cake. I had promised Ashley (and myself) that I would make us a 4th of July cake, but then she had to go and get malaria and go to Lome instead. So I made us a belated 4th of July cake. Three layers, with vanilla buttercream icing and little red candy stars as decoration. I impressed even myself.
In the evening, Tsevi invited the infirmier and me to eat manioc fufu. He himself pounded the fufu (his wife gave birth to a baby about a month ago and he said that in her state she can't pound the fufu so it is his duty to help her). I told him that the fufu tasted better because he had pounded it and he laughed. Women here get no respite before they give birth, but for a couple months after giving birth (depending on the family situation, I think) they are exempt from going to the fields.
After showering and icing my cake, I painted my toenails. I'm not much for painting my toenails in the States, but here it is almost as necessary as brushing your teeth. I wouldn't be able to stand looking at my feet if I could see all the dirt that is inevitably under there. Did I ever mention that women here can't pain the nails on their right hand because they eat with that hand. Curious. When Tseviato and Xola painted their nails at my house, I asked them if they weren't going to paint their right hand, or if they wanted me to do it, thinking, perhaps, that it was a problem of dexterity. They looked at me as if I had two heads and said that if they painted the nails of their right hands they wouldn't be able to eat.
7/6/08
I left village around 7:00 this morning and biked to Notse. It took me longer than usual because I was tired, sore, stiff and lacking in energy. Gizmo exteriorized my pain and cried the entire way. Usually he quiets down once we hit the paved road and even snoozes a bit, but not today. Also, I was worried about the cake I had in a cardboard box on the back of my bike. Sure enough, when I got to Effoh's house and peeked inside, it was cracked down the middle and smashed up against two walls of the carton. I took advantage of the wreckage to serve some to Effoh and eat some myself in lieu of a more nutritious breakfast. I spent a couple of hours at Effoh's house as I waited for Ashley to get back from Lome. He starts his exam tomorrow, his BAC. It is the culmination of all his years of study and will earn him a high school diploma. He has been studying hard for it since October and sleeplessly since January. He already failed it once and his family won't have the money to put him through another year of school if he fails it again, so it is very serious. We chatted as he packed up all his notebooks to take to a room he is renting with a friend closer to the testing site. I tried to distract him from his nervousness. Sometimes I think the build-up for an exam like that is more torturous than the exam itself. I really hope he passes.
Before I left for Ashley's, I meant to ask him if he needed money, but it slipped my mind. I later texted him about it. He said he could use 3,000 cFA (about $7) and I was happy to lend it to him because I know he will pay me back and I don't want anything stupid to prevent him from passing the exam.
For the rest of the day Ashley and I vegged. Me mostly. I felt in need of a vacation, bodily and metally, and watched about six episodes of the second season of the L-word. Ashley and I joke that we are taking classes and that after watching all five season of the L-word I will be a certified lesbian. Right now I am at the 200 level, about a sophomore in my studies. I think a show like the L-word is interesting because young lesbians across the United States, who perhaps don't have access to lesbian role models or a lesbian community watch the show and emulate the behavior of the characters on the show. And so, a show that maybe reflects (how accurately is, of course, debatable) the reality of a community of lesbians in Los Angelos, now creates reality as young people identify with and model themselves after these fictional characters. There is even an entire jargon that most would never be exposed to if not for the show. So fiction infused with elements of reality creates reality. It also provides me insights (however real or fictional) into a lifestyle that I might never otherwise have so fully exposed before me. Interesting.
7/7/08
I am bummed. Really really bummed. I was typing up emails when my computer screen went cloudy in places. For a second I thought it was a trick my eyes were playing on me because it immediately went back to normal. Then the screen faded out into blotchy clouds for another second and returned to normal. It faded in and out several times until it went completely grayscale and cloudy. =0( I dared to hope that if I turned it off and turned it back on, everything would go back to normal. No such luck. Maybe if I turned it off and left it off for a while, gave it a break. Nope. What about all night? Nope.
Ashley has two computers, so it isn’t the end of the world – she is of course nice enough to allow me to use her computer freely as I am doing right now, but everything is on my computer and now I have to retype my emails from last week (I dug through Ashley’s trash to find them). The only redeeming factor is that, if it is just a problem with the screen, the information should all still be there and in tact. Ashley seems to think that if I could hook it up to another monitor or projector that we could pull all the information off and onto an external hard-drive. I am still super bummed and there is nothing that I can do about it.
This morning Ashley and I went to Heather’s house (she isn’t there) to do laundry. Well, Ashley did laundry while we discussed AIDS Ride and Moringa and I took notes. We are planning AIDS Ride and starting next Monday, July 14, we are going to bike from Notse to Tohoun to Tado to Kpekpleme. Kpekpleme is a town near the border of Benin where we would like to start AIDS Ride 2008 for the Plateaux Region. And we are going to bike all the way to the other side of the country ending in Badou. Luckily, Togo isn’t that wide, but it will still be between 250 and
We came home and made macaroni and cheese for lunch and then my computer died. I started typing again on Ashley’s computer. Around 3:00 we left the house to go to the local radio station. We talked to the director about doing mini radio shows to sensibilize the population on the nutritional benefits of Moringa. He received us better than I could have ever hoped. Two weeks ago they ran an interview with a Moringa “expert” in Lome on the broad-based characteristics of the plant and so he is already on-board and didn’t need to be convinced. He seemed really excited that we were interested in doing the show and ready to help us in any way possible. The idea is to do many four to five minutes radio skits that highlight one aspect of Moringa and the radio will run one of the microprograms as they call them two or three times a day. (I just lost my steam and enthusiasm; Ashley and I got into a small disagreement I think because she is stressed and can’t really think too much about our Moringa awareness raising campaign because she has too many things going on this month already. And I am gung-ho and ready to go (I have fewer responsibilities this month). I think I just need to do what I can myself in my free time this month while she is at camps for children living with HIV/AIDS and then we can pick it up again next month).
Another idea, which he was also very supportive of, is to use local musicians and lyricists to make up a song in local language about Moringa that can be played on the radio and hopefully be catchy enough that it makes its way into the minds and mouths of children and adults in the region. He seemed pleased by the idea and ready and willing to find us musicians and composers to work with. He then gave us a tour of the studio where they have a sound-proof room and recording equipment. We left the radio station in high spirits, not having expected to be received so enthusiastically.
We then went to the hospital and met with various people to talk about doing Moringa information sessions with the women who come on vaccination day and with the midwives and nurses who come in from all the clinics in the prefecture once a month. The higher-ups want concrete information first, which I think is reasonable, and so we have to find some reliable Moringa information in French and compile a sort of packet for them and then do a mini-formation with them. But again, all of that will have to wait at least until next month because this month is full of Camp Espoir (for Ashley) and AIDS Ride (for the both of us).
When we finally got back to the house I felt deflated for some reason. I think I was just tired; worn out from the week of working in my garden and feeling a little overwhelmed. I also think I overworked my hands and wrists in my garden because it hurts to ride my bike, it hurts to try to squeeze the brakes, it hurts to make a fist, it even hurts to hold a pencil. I spent the rest of the night watching the L word and stayed up way too late.
7/8/08
Today I am feeling unmotivated and uninspired. I am in a little bit of a funk, sad because of my computer, frustrated because of my lost emails, and absorbing some of Ashley’s stress I think. I have to retype the emails I typed last Saturday (because they are lost in the fog of my computer) and I am dreading the task. Not because it is so difficult, but just because I stubbornly resist the idea of retyping and reliving something I already lived once, wrote out and typed up. Suck it up. I know. Then I will go to internet, run errands and go home in the rain holds off.
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