Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Joe and I spent Christmas “up north” this year visiting one of our PCV friends and having a little PCV Christmas party, the only version of a white Christmas we can get here in Togo (I know, what a lame joke, right?!). We managed to make it feel like Christmas despite our lack of snow, however. We played Christmas music, made Christmas decorations, and even made homemade egg nog (thanks to M – that was good stuff, man!). The usual Christmas fare was traded in for beef kabobs, chicken, rice, and hummus made from black-eyed beans, all of which turned out really well. Celebrated my dreaded birthday up there, too, and managed not to let it get me down too much. I guess I’m officially on par with the rest of my friends back home now, but feel pretty old sometimes here in Togo with all my 23-year-old PCV friends…
North of Kara, the big city up there, Togo is like a completely different country, at least now, during Harmattan. It’s mountainous, insanely dry (the air dries up your whole head, there’s zero humidity, and everything is brown), and it’s almost like fall weather in Michigan in the mornings and evenings – refreshingly cool. Wore my hair down for the first time in months up there! The dust is pretty crazy, though; there’s a haze over the sky and in the air, which made me think either someone was burning stuff or that my glasses were really dirty when we first got there. Quite a change from the flat, green, comparatively swampy-feeling air we have down in the Maritime region. Come February and March, though, the heat up there is supposed to be much worse than where we live in the south, so we’ll see who really has the best overall post weather-wise when we have to deal with the “real” hot season. Yikes.
Yesterday, on our way home from up north, our bus blew a tire, which also somehow affected the air suspension (brakes) and the battery, so we had to hang out on the side of the road for a couple of hours while they changed the tire, backed the brakes off, and recharged the battery. Might have taken a lot longer, but Joe came to the rescue and helped the bus mechanic with the brakes. Being a mechanic for 15 years paid off yesterday, as we were on our way a lot sooner than we might have been! Here are a couple of photos of Joe saving the day, too!
Things have been kind of slow for the past few weeks in regards to work; everything seems to be shutting down for the holidays: our village development committee meetings, school for the peer educators, etc. I’m supposed to pick up my work with them again January 12, so it looks like they get a little Christmas break from school, same as we do. The catalog for Schalom is almost finished and should be able to be printed very soon. I’ll be sure to send a couple copies home for those who are interested in their products. There are lots of versions of the tote bags now, along with some clothes and household items that I got them to add in (placemats, table cloths, things like that), so hopefully the variety of things will help with their plans for exporting outside of Togo. Joe is still building bunny cages and is now helping a new elevage enterprise with their chickens and turkeys. We’re also moving forward a little with the latrine project; we had the meeting with the school inspector that we’ve been trying to have for months, so that was a step in the right direction. Also, we’ve done a little more on the case de santé (health clinic) project and are writing up the proposal to get that funded through a mechanism called Peace Corps Partnership, where we ask friends and family to donate to our village projects via the Peace Corps web site. This is a pretty small project, compared to many, and we think it’s a good one to start with as far as being the first thing we’re trying to get funding for. The association that has initiated the project has found an infermier (nurse) to come from Lomé and live for two years in Tabligbo to run the clinic and train a woman in the village to become a sage femme (a little lower than a nurse, but higher than a birthing attendant in the health hierarchy here in Togo). The plan is for her to take over the clinic after the two years is up, with help from the association for financial and bookkeeping activities. We’ll keep you updated as this project moves along.
We hope everyone back home had a good Christmas and that you have a great start to 2009. More from Togo soon!
