7/29/08 through 7/31/08
Ashley and I biked out of Notse at 6 :00. The ride wasn’t terrible. I felt a little low on energy, but the hills were only rolling and in most places it wasn’t too sandy. We had been told that we would have to ford a stream that had overflowed its banks, but luckily for us, the water had receded enough for us to pass; it was level with the road, but not covering it. We could see however, the damage done by the water. On the route national between
We had four stops to make during the ride at four CEGs. We didn’t find any of the school Directors, but we managed to get their contact numbers anyway. We took a little detour to hit a CEG 3 km off the road – it was a rough 3 km, but it is important to sensibilize populations off the beaten track as well. I almost got into an argument with an elder because as we biked towards the village he yelled at me to stop. So many people yell at us to stop and then ask us for money or to give them a “cadeau” that I just pedaled on. A few cycles later and we stopped to ask someone for information about the Director of the CEG. The elder (not that old, or wise, or probably respected of an elder) came running after and started yelling, “See? See? You should have stopped! I am an elder! You should have stopped!” I told him that perhaps if he had asked “Est-ce que je peux vous aider?” (can I help you?) rather than ordering us to stop, than we would have stopped to ask him about the Director of the CEG. The other three stops were less of a hassle.
We ate beans and rice at a village called Kati, about 10 kilometers before Tig’s village and then pushed on, arriving at Tig’s village around noon. We had biked around 60 kilometers. Tig wasn’t in village, so we rested and ate more beans and rice on her porch and then we locked our bikes together and to a post and walked the 3K to the hard road. If we had had our helmets we could have taken motos because the new moto policy allows for motos on all low traffic routes where it is difficult to find a car, but we didn’t and so we walked. At Notse-Mono, where the Notse-Kpalime road connects with the Lome-Kpalime road, we got a taxi to the Prefet. The Prefet was welcoming and accommodating and didn’t even make me apologize too much for having picked the wrong letter out of my folder (it was the letter for the prefecture Wawa and this was the
There were a lot of people at the house (including Nadia and Tristan) that I haven’t seen for a while and it was really nice to reconnect. It is a sad time in our Peace Corps service though. As we near our one year mark, many of the volunteers who arrived in my stage and vowed to stick it out at least a year are throwing their hats in. Their reasons vary from family problems back home, to not feeling productive, to wanting to get on with their lives, to hating Togo, but we lost a volunteer a couple of weeks ago and I know of six more who are definitely or most likely leaving. That discounts all the volunteers from the stage after us who have left for various reasons and the fact that all the second year volunteers who stuck out the two years are COS-ing. It feels like a mass exodus of volunteers from
We chatted, made dinner, and played a game called Apples to Apples before going to bed.
On Wednesday, after a lazy morning, we walked into town, bought ingredients for lunch and then took a taxi to Notse-Mono. We tried to get a car to take us all the way to Tig’s village, but they wanted too much money. Tig had her helmet, so she moto-ed and Ashley and I walked. Unfortunately, it was noon and I was hot, hungry and sweaty and the walk felt never-ending.
It was so great to be with Tig again. She just got back from a month-long vacation visiting family in
Aside for a visit from a young Togolese rapper from Lome (dressed in baggy jeans, a baggy shirt, big white shoes, gold chain, bracelet and ring, with corn spirals (as opposed to corn rows) in his hair – he stuck out like an alien from another planet), we just chatted until bedtime. The rapper wants Tig to help him get a CD out and wanted, like everyone else, to know how we could help him get to the United States. Unfortunately, a torrential downpour extended his visit longer than necessary; we were trapped on Tig’s porch.
On Thursday, after a more than twelve hours of rain, Ashley and I biked out of Agou Avedje towards Notse. The road was terrible. It was coated with a layer of slippery mud that sprayed up as we pedaled making artful designs on the backs of our shirts and was gutted by the combination of rain mud, and the spinning wheels of tractor trailers stuck in the mud. Normally, tractor trailers never go down the Notse-Mono road. On a normal day, you would be lucky to see a car, but because of the bridge that collapsed between Notse and Lome, the Notse-Mono road has turned into a principal thorough way for cargo destined for Lome. The mud, traffic, and people along the route made the ride somewhat unpleasant. All along the route, people were trying to fix the roads by filling pot-holes and muddy tracks with brush and logs, anything to allow for a bit of traction. They tried to extort money out of us, the whities, for their efforts when the people who should be tipping them are the drivers of the huge cargo trucks that are tearing up the road. We refused to pay mostly because the men asking for payment were belligerent (one even grabbed Ashley’s butt – I don’t know why she always gets her butt grabbed, Togolese men must like it). We saw two tractor trailers stuck in the mud and two that had toppled over, not to mention the long traffic jams of tractor trailers lined up behind the ones that were stuck and consequently blocking the route.
Even so, we made good time and were in Notse by around 10:00. We ate, showered (but not before taking pictures of our mud covered bodies – I even had mud in my hair!) and sat down to finalize our AIDS Ride route, and participants list. It is a bit of a pain to organize a huge event like this. I much prefer to participate than to organize, but someone has to organize . . . So . . .
We did as much as we could and then called it quits and went out for an early dinner with Heather (the other volunteer in Notse) to a fufu bar. In the evening I continued studying to become a certified lesbian (meaning I watched more episodes of the L word). I finished the third season, my junior year, so after one more year (season) I will get my certificate. Yay! The third season was a downer, though, very depressing; I hope the fourth season is a little happier. I need happy not depressing.
Today, Friday, I am biking back to village for an Ewe lesson and a soccer match. I just decided to go to a workshop with traditional healers Monday through Friday of next week in Pagala and so I have to try to find a community health worker and/or a traditional healer to accompany me. One that speaks French – that is the clincher – and I only have two or three days. We will see. If I have to go alone I have to go alone. The reason it is sloppy and last minute like this is that my APCD didn’t want to ask me to go because I have gotten to go to every other special workshop and he doesn’t want other volunteers to complain, but when he invited some of my peers to this workshop, all but Tig said they were unavailable, so I’m going. I hope it is interesting. At least a little.
8/1/08 and 8/2/08
Biking home from Notse yesterday I stopped briefly to see the Director of the CEG in Agbatit. First think upon arriving in village I tracked down Tsevi and asked him about traditional healers that speak French. I am attending a workshop in Pagala next week and ought to bring two homologues: a traditional healer and a community health agent. Tsevi said he knew of one and would speak with him. I then went home. Gizmo wasn’t in the house. I couldn’t help but imagine the worst: he died and they had removed his body. I tried not to panic and went to look for Effoh who had Gizmo in his house with him. I sat for a little bit, but had to go prepare lunch for Jerome. Gizmo was mad at me and it made me really sad. Evidently he was well-cared for in my absence because he ignored my arrival and presence, reusing to stay in my arms and be cuddled. I can’t help but wonder how much it must hurt when your child rejects you if it hurts when your kitten rejects you. Everyone wants to feel needed and loved.
Jerome arrived before I was able to finish preparing rice and beans for lunch. We had our lesson and then he helped me with lunch by crushing the onions, garlic, piment and little fish on the stone in my garden. I was thankful for the help because I hate how my hands burn after crushing piment. Jerome suggested soaking the piment for an hour beforehand and adding rock salt when crushing to expedite the task and rubbing palm oil on my hands afterwards to ease the burning.
While I was preparing lunch, the catechist from Komlacope arrived with a father and daughter to see Jerome. The young girl (12? 13?) apparently had an infected cut on her leg. The father tried to “dig” out the infection (?!?!), whatever that means, and it only got worse. He took her to a traditional healer who said the wound would heal by itself and advised against taking the girl to the hospital. The infection spread and her leg fell off right below the knee without her ever being treated by a trained professional. Now she hops around on one foot doing her best to get by, but she is severely handicapped. Jerome works with some Catholic nuns who help handicapped children find treatment, but they usually require some sort of family contribution be it 20,000 cFA, a goat or a sack of corn – whatever the family has to offer. Unfortunately, her father stubbornly insisted that he has absolutely nothing. Everyone has something. Palm fronds, a chicken, something.
The children were supposed to have a soccer match, but the team from Avovocope never showed. I think they don’t want to conform to a height regulation. That is unfortunate because if the two teams don’t play against each other, I don’t know how they will paly. They had practice anyway. I watched for a bit, played with the younger children and then went home to shower.
In the evening I had perhaps the longest (an hour!) purely Ewe conversation I have ever had. I was sitting with DaJulie and her mom and even Tseviato wasn’t around to translate, so I was on my own. We talked about Mama’s lack of condiments to make pâte sauce and about her accompanying me to the States when I leave and how long I have left in Togo and how men chez moi help with the household and how chores whereas men here don’t and how female praying mantis eat the male after he has fertilized her eggs. Effoh arrived just in time to help me out with the last topic which is good because I wasn’t successfully getting my point across.
I don’t know what Effoh and I were talking about when one of his married friends walked by and commented that he was going to visit a girl launching me into a lively argument about faithfulness, polygamy, religion and sex. The young man argued that men in the Bible had multiple wives, why shouldn’t he? That he needs more than one woman to satisfy his desires, that there are more women than men in Avassikpe and Togo in general (I need some statistics) and that it is practically his duty to take a second wife so that women won’t be left husbandless. He also said sex with his wife who has had a baby isn’t as gratifying as sex with a younger, childless girl who has tighter breasts, stomach and vagina. Great. I fought the urge to plug my ears. HE couldn’t seem to recognize how disgusting and hypocritical his behavior is: to reject his wife because she bore him a child? I didn’t roundly win the argument even though I held my own and was frustrated by having failed to make him understand that everything he can do with a random woman he can do with his wife if only he would take the time to cultivate the sexual side of their relationship.
People here could use some serious sex counseling/education. They lack basic knowledge on foreplay and men and women’s centers of pleasure, how to please the respective sexes, varying sexual positions, everything really. Sex here is pretty much limited to missionary position, man on top doing his thing, women lying there like a lifeless receptacle for the man’s pleasure. When I suggested trying sex with the woman on top, the young man actually voiced the fear that his penis would break off (jokingly I think/hope) and then said that the woman would refuse. Women here are shackled by the idea that during sex it is the man who works (sex is referred to as “travail,” work). No wonder they are bored with their sex lives. They don’t know what they are missing by stifling the sexual expression of women. I tried to explain that if they show themselves willing to try new things and eager to please their wives, that, once they have gained trust and confidence, their wives will open themselves up to experimenting and initiating. One of the big complaints they voiced was that women here never initiate and never respond to men’s sexual advances with caresses of their own. Maybe because society tells them that their sexual desires don’t count, that women are just there to satisfy the sexual drives of men. Therefore, of course they wouldn’t feel “brazen” enough to initiate a sexual encounter or suggest that things be done differently in the bedroom. Gender inequality permeates the whole society, but men don’t realize what they are missing by extending that inequality to the bedroom. I feel like the whole country could use some serious “marriage” counseling. Maybe the best approach to the new HIV/AIDS prevention strategy of limiting long-term concurrent sexual partnerships is to teach men and women how to enjoy each other sexually so they don’t feel a constant desire to go in search of something younger, better, more exciting. I foresee a book: A Sex Doctor for Togo. Is that presumptuous of me? It isn’t a society that shies away from sex, but from what I have heard, sex here isn’t very exciting or imaginative. They need some guidance in thinking outside the box. Restructuring family housing setups would help as well. Currently, the woman has a house where she sleeps with her children and the man a separate house where he sleeps. That doesn’t facilitate spontaneous sexual relations. I wonder how you could counsel a whole country, generation, society on sexual relations without being perceived as corrupting society and youth.
Today, Saturday, was a relatively uneventful day during which I did a ---- ton of laundry, tried to track down a tradition healer that speaks French (an elusive combination), studied Ewe, slept in my hammock and read my book on women and Islam.
I eventually found someone who speaks French who says he knows a little about traditional medicine (he is actually the brother of a traditional healer, but not really a healer himself). Whatever, it will help me get to know and work with more people in the community. He is from Midojicope, so that is also good . . . it widens my base.
8/3/08
Today, attending church was like reading the gossip column in your local newspaper. I learned that so and so is courting women even though he is married, that one of the diacres (leaders in the church) took a second wife and then shortly afterwards died in a car crash (deserved punishment?); his second wife took all his money and went back to her family in the north. I learned that a young girl, betrothed to someone in the village, had gone away for school and returned pregnant and that the choir was being punished for having gone to the marriage in Kpegbadja “behind the pastor’s back.” I don’t know how it could have been behind his back considering the fact that it was his wife who informed me of the marriage and invited me. The whole sermon centered on people’s sins and how it is not a joy but a duty for the pastor to punish them, to inform them of their wrong-doing so they can repent and be saved.
After church I went home to finish cooking my beans for lunch and make banana bread. The young man I chose to attend a couples’ formation in Atakpame with his wife came to see me. He said that their difficulty is that their daughter, who is almost two, still breastfeeds especially at night. I explained that children can’t go to the formation and tried to find a solution. After speaking with him, with his wife (separately) and then accompanying her to their house to speak with his mother (who will take care of the baby in their absence), we decided that I will buy a baby bottle and powdered milk and they will try to give her the bottle instead of the breast for a week before attending the conference to see if she will accept the substitution. I hope this doesn’t wean the baby off the breast entirely. Babies here need the nutritional boost of the mother’s milk as long as possible. I also can’t help but be afraid that the mother will stop producing milk after two weeks of not breast feeding. The purpose of this formation is to improve husband-wife relations and make couples better parents, not wean a child prematurely off breast milk.
After speaking with the couple and their mother, I went to track down my brother of a traditional healer. I spoke with his brother and would have preferred that he accompany me (he is both a traditional healer and a fetisher), but he said he wasn’t available to go to Pagala this week. The traditional healer/fetisher speaks French as well; I don’t know why people didn’t take me directly to him. Oh well . . .
After arranging to meet the brother, who is a primary school teacher, in Agbatitoe at 10:00, I decided to bike to Notse that afternoon so as to have time to find powdered milk and a baby bottle. The powdered milk will be easy, but the baby bottle is a different matter.
It took me a while to get everything in my house ready for a week-long absence and by the time I was ready, it was raining. I rain-proofed Gizmo’s carrier and biked out anyway. Luckily it wasn’t raining hard and stopped before I got to Agbatit. Nevertheless, I ended up biking the last kilometer or so in the dark. Not fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment