Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Six Months in Togo so Far

There are two recent incidents that came to mind when I sat down to write this blog entry. So, here they are, two things that made me shake my head and wonder why things go the way they go here in Togo. First, I think there was a rooster caught inside the (empty) house next door a couple of weeks ago. He started crowing at 3am, and since I couldn’t sleep with the crow echoing off the walls and bouncing around, I started counting the seconds between the crows. Where else in the world does a rooster need to crow every 6-12 seconds for at least an hour straight? He started tapering off eventually, but was back the next morning with the same routine. After a few days, there was an unexpected silence – I can only assume that he somehow got out of the house or that someone came in and ate him. The vengeful part of me hopes for the latter…


The second incident occurred this past week at the marché. We’ve been buying the wheels of Vache Qui Rit cheese (which is actually more like cheese-flavored butter) since we got here, and the price has been consistent each time. Last week, the price went up 100 CFA (which is, granted, only about $.20 at the current exchange rate), but irritated by this, I asked why the increase. The marché lady proceeded to show me the expiration date on the cheese, which is no longer August 2008, the date on all the cheese I’ve been buying without problems since we arrived at the end of August (with only a few bad pieces here and there). So, it wasn’t that I was paying more for fresher cheese, but that I was paying more for non-expired cheese. I wonder will the price go down when this new batch of cheese reaches the expiration date?


Joe has been working with three different people on three different elevage (farm animal breeding) projects. One is a group with a chicken farm, another is a guy who’s starting a rabbit and guinea pig elevage (yes, guinea pigs – apparently, they’re quite good for eating, although we haven’t tried it yet), and a third guy who’s starting a chicken and turkey elevage. He facilitated a loan at the local microfinance for the first group, who lost all their chickens to the avian flu recently. Also he’s been helping the second guy build bunny cages for the last couple of weeks, and is becoming quite proficient in the art of using the machete, an implement we originally bought to cut up whole chickens, but which has become quite the multi-purpose tool around the house. You might be surprised to learn that the machete is handy as a shovel, a weed whacker, a kitchen utensil, a saw for bamboo cages, and an axe. In addition to perfecting his couper-ing skills, Joe has also been working with the association that makes the tote bags on improving their accounting books and records and has been investigating exporting authorities and methods for them, along with potential buyers for their products.


As for me, I attended my first training for peer educators (mostly as an observer, although I did help a little with the condom demonstration), and have had exactly one meeting so far with my own group of peer educators at the apprentice school. It’s a group of five boys and five girls, all training to be tailors and seamstresses and hosted by the association that makes the tote bags. We’ve decided to meet twice a month, and our second meeting falls on December 1, World AIDS Day, so I’ve asked the association president to see if he can get permission for them all to go with us to a fellow volunteer’s village nearby that day, where Joe and I will be helping with a sensibilisation on HIV/AIDS. Hopefully, it will give them a better picture of what I hope they’ll be able to do themselves after all of our classes are finished. I’m also continuing to work on the catalog for the association, and will be sure to send some home for you all to see when it’s ready – it’s pretty close! And finally, I’ve been talking to the same chicken elevage guy that Joe is working with, and he wants to build a dispensaire (like a pharmacy with an on-duty nurse) out in his cartier, which is a neighborhood of Tabligbo that’s a little dans le brousse and not accessible by car. His is the center of eight small cartiers, and they all have at least a 2km walk or moto ride to the hospital. So, we’re setting up some meetings to talk it over with their neighborhood chief and the hygiene director at the hospital. More soon on this one.


We’re both still working with the local CVD (village development committee) and attending those meetings to see what the village is talking about. They still want to go ahead with the latrine project, and we’re slowly researching the possibilities for that. During one recent meeting, they were talking about gathering up the stories and memories of the older residents of Tabligbo and trying to consolidate it into a comprehensive history of the city. It sounds like it would be an interesting process, and last week, we visited the chief’s older brother, who gave us the history of the village as he heard it from his father. It seems the name of Tabligbo came from a story about a guy getting his head cut off at the marché and the people watching it roll away: the word for head (something like “tabli”), and the word for roll (something like “gbo”) got combined with a German accent, and apparently, Tabligbo was the result. How about that for a story to name your city after?


I managed to post the puppy pictures, and I have some more, but I'll have to try later or tomorrow to get them up. Sorry for the delay!

Puppy Post



Here are pictures of our dog's puppies that she had our first month at post. Thankfully, they've all been farmed out to their new homes now!