Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Happy Halloween

Tabligbo is starting to feel like home now for lots of reasons. First, we recognize people we’ve been working with around town and a lot of people recognize us (and our names!). Second, we’ve figured out where the good deals are on vegetables, street food, and how to navigate the marché on marché day. Third, we’ve added some things around the house that make it seem more like ours: curtains, furniture cushions (with fabric from Schalom, the association Joe is working with), and a garden. We never got around to that at home, but here it seems like the thing to do, so Joe is trying his hand at tomatoes, lettuce, onions, squash, and beans. We’ve also planted 11 pineapple plants out in front of our compound in the little strip of dirt we have. Fourth, we’re getting used to the water and electricity going out at random times, and while it’s sometimes a pain, we’ve mastered the charcoal stove, so no worries! And finally, we’ve found two good (if, albeit, expensive) tchouk stands that have pretty good tchouk (a type of home-brewed beer that is definitely an acquired taste); the stands are a good place to talk to people and learn (and relearn) a few words of Ewé (see items 4 and 7 below!).

We’ve also started to learn what’s around Tabligbo and which direction various things are. We’ve visited a few of the surrounding villages, one to visit another volunteer in our area, and another to investigate a Catholic mission that makes pagne, fabric like Schalom, and to visit a guy who does elevage (breeding) for chickens. In that village, we experienced the epitome of Togolese hospitality – we wandered into the Catholic mission and were immediately given a tour of pretty much the entire village and the two outfits we wanted to visit by the Togolese priest who had no problem dropping what he was doing for the afternoon and showing two white people around town!

Our latrine project with the 18 primary schools is still in the works and we’re negotiating with the village development committee, the local school inspector, and the school directors, to get that project under way. It’s hard to get everyone together for meetings, but we’re still in the very early phases of the project. We still have to decide what kind of latrines to build and where they should be built at the schools, who the masons will be and where the materials will come from, and who’s going to teach the students about the use of the latrines once they’re all built. So, it might take some time before we have an update on this one, but stay tuned.

Joe and I are now both working with Schalom a little. My new pet project is to help them create a catalog of all the things they can make with their fabric (besides the obvious things like the tote bags and clothes). I’ve begun working with them on one catalog in French and one in English, and they seem pretty excited to have something to send to businesses overseas. So, watch for a catalog soon!

In addition to the group that does chicken breeding here in Tabligbo, Joe has also started working with another elevage that has rabbits and guinea pigs. Both groups want to improve their business practices and capabilities, so Joe is trying his hand at the farm animal industry. Do guinea pigs count as farm animals? Anyway, Joe says it was pretty funny to see big fat bunnies and guinea pigs here in Togo – not the kind of animals we were expecting! And speaking of animals, Joe’s mom asked us for pictures of the local wildlife, but I'm again having problems with posting pictures from our cyber cafe, so they'll have to wait to be posted until we get back to Lome.

We’ve been to visit the local high school, and it turns out they already have a group of peer educators who are just getting started. School started late this year, so things are taking a little longer to get going, but the principal said we could meet with the peer educators once they get their meetings going. I also talked with the director of the local radio station and he was agreeable to allowing health talks with a few of the peer educators on the air a couple of hours a month. So, that might be a future project, if we can get someone to translate our talks into the local language.

My first sensibilisation (health talk) has been scheduled and cancelled three times so far. I was also planning to meet with some of Schalom's peer educators yesterday, to get them prepared to lead talks of their own, but it rained and no one showed up. Rain tends to put a stop to any plans people make here, so hopefully, I'll have a better update about this project soon. Patience....

Also, here are some fun random observations after five months in Togo:

1. Vendeuses (ladies that sell food in boxes or baskets on their heads) sell all kinds of things, but their “advertising calls” as they wander around the streets all sound like the same thing.
2. You can fit way more people (and animals) in the back seat of a bush taxi than you would think.
3. Discussing the price with a bush taxi driver can be a very long exercise in patience.
4. The name “Joe” actually means the equivalent of “go away” in Ewé.
5. A 5:00 meeting can start anywhere from 5:00 to 5:59, and be considered on time.
6. It’s best to avoid eye contact with local naked fous.
7. You know you’re starting to become a little Togolese when you find 100 CFA (about $.20) an appalling price for a calabash of tchouk (about a pint of beer).
8. Your compound isn’t really clean until you’ve swept the dirt for at least an hour, twice a day.
9. Togolese babies can sleep through anything, in what must be the best sleeping place anyone has ever found, ever – tied to their mothers’ backs with pagne.
10. No matter how many times you tell a marché mama that you don’t need a black sachet for your purchase, she will inevitably give you one anyway.