Last Togo Post!

As we sit here in the Peace Corps office here in Lome with only a couple of hours before we head off to the airport for home, we thought we'd post one last blog to share our final thoughts on our service, leaving, and life in general. BUT.....

Then we decided that we'd rather tell you all about it in person instead. So, enjoy a couple of last pictures of us in Togo. What we have here are Joe and our groupement president (the grand charlatan who made our cat's voodoo collar) doing the local dance (yup, Joe dances); the waterfalls in Badou that Joe visited with our clustermate, Sierra; a goodbye fete with some guys we worked with in a nearby village (we gave them a couple bottles of liquor, and they gave us the lovely outfits you see here); our last goodbye to our dog, Awooyo (who will be inherited by the volunteer who's replacing us); and us with Sierra at our last goodbye lunch that took place in Lome just a few hours ago.

The next time you see us will be back home! Looking forward to seeing you all soon!

Two Last Pictures for Today

Here, for a comparative study, is a picture of our entire stage right before leaving for Togo during our training in Philadelphia. Don't we look clean and slightly clueless? The other is the ones who remained at our Close of Service conference we had at the beginning of May. Do we look the same to you?

Water Tower Pics Part 2

Here are pictures from on top of the tower. Here are Joe and Matt, me and Sierra, and then me, Joe, and Matt together.

Water Tower Adventure Part 1

Here are the first three pictures of our climbing excursion. First is our view of Joe and company from the ground; second, Joe's view of us from above; and third, a view of Tabligbo.

Two Months To Go, And Counting!

So, we’re down to our last two months here in Togo! First, a report on final projects…

Our health clinic has been running since about mid-February now. Our first baby was delivered in March (it was a girl!)and another was delivered just a couple of weeks ago. Last month, we accepted applications and chose four recent high school graduates from the surrounding villages to do apprenticeships to learn how to be health agents by working at the clinic for two years. Also, we recently ordered and restocked a huge shipment of medicine from Lomé to replenish what we’ve used since we’ve opened, so the clinic is getting steady clients and is making enough money to cover costs so far. It’s been gratifying to see the villagers coming in to receive services they didn’t have access to before, but it’s been even better to watch the COGES (management committee) take their job seriously and work responsibly with the staff there to manage the project without me. I can only hope they’ll continue to do so after we leave. Thanks to everyone who helped get this project up and running!

The chicken farm project is also complete. The buildings are finished, and windows, doors, and the roof are all installed. Work on the farm has begun, and the owner of the farm is in the process of legalizing a groupement (like a cooperative) to help him with running the farm and everyday tasks. Joe has also been working with him on advertising and business networking so he can sell his chickens and turkeys to large grocery chains in the capital. He’s planning to start taking orders soon for Thanksgiving turkeys and is expecting good sales this year. Thanks to everyone who helped bring this project to fruition also!

For small projects, liquid soap is apparently the cool new thing to make and sell around Tabligbo and the small neighboring villages, so we’ve been teaching large groups and even individual families how to make it and bring in a little profit. At the end of April, I even visited another health volunteer in a small village on the other side of Togo to share our valuable soap-making knowledge with the population there. (I also got to try ginger-infused sodabi [Togolese moonshine] for the first time there, but that’s another story!)

Finally, we’ve started working with our friend Daniel (the above-mentioned poultry farmer) on a conservation and reforestation project. In collaboration with Daniel and his farm, we’ve purchased one hectare (2.5 acres) of land that has been soil depleted due to over-farming and land mismanagement about 5km outside of Tabligbo with the intention of restoring and reforesting the land with teak and baobab trees. The land currently has some trees already, such as palm, mangoes, and acacia trees. We’re also partnering with several local artisans and have begun constructing a web site for the project as well. There is an artisan expo scheduled in the capital at the end of June, and Joe and Daniel will be heading down there to pitch the preliminary project and see what people think of our idea there. More information will be available on this project soon, so stay tuned!

On to non-work-related things…

For the Togolese version of Labor Day, we recently attended a big party which was attended by all of the local unions in Tabligbo: tailors, mechanics, hairdressers, you name it. Included here are a couple of pictures from that fête: one of Joe doing the chicken dance with our neighbor, Lydia, and one of me with our neighbor, her daughters, and a fellow volunteer, Sierra, in our lovely matching pagne (fabric). I would have posted a picture of me chicken dancing, too, but that one (thankfully!) came out blurry.

This past weekend, we convinced the head guy at the local water company to allow us to climb inside the Tabligbo water tower to sit on top and take some aerial photos of Tabligbo. So, Joe, me, Sierra, and our friend Matt were joined by some water company staff, our friend Daniel, and our neighbor Dominique, as we ascended about 150 feet (maybe five stories?) up the interior metal ladder to a final platform and central ladder that led to the hole in the top of the tower. After a brief intermission to deal with some bees that had built honeycombs all around the door to the top (they were dispersed with some bug spray that seemed to have a mostly soporific effect, which was sufficient to get us past them without getting stung), we were able to climb out the trapdoor and sit, for all intensive purposes, on top of Tabligbo. Included in the next couple of posts are some pictures from our exciting ascension of the water tower, probably the highest point for miles around in our mostly flat region.

In mid-June, Joe will finally be heading off to visit the waterfalls on the western side of Togo, and has promised to come back with some good pictures. The rainy season is just about upon us, so we’re waiting for the nearby river to reach a sufficient level to allow us to go fishing and see where those alleged bird-catching spiders live as well. Hopefully, we’ll have some pictures to prove their existence!

And so, final thoughts for today…

We recently had what is called our Close of Service Conference here in Peace Corps, where we learned things like how to talk to our friends and family and potential employers about our Peace Corps service without causing yawns and glazed looks. We also got some surprisingly helpful information about how to translate Peace Corps work into statements that make sense on résumés and about how to readjust to life in the States. It was good to see our entire stage together again, too, as we haven’t all been in the same place since we swore in as Peace Corps volunteers way back in August of 2008. Of the original 31 people in our group, there are 21 remaining who will COS over the next couple of months (the other ten left early or were sent home for medical or administrative reasons). Of the volunteers we’ve met during our service here, we’ve made a surprising number of really good friends we hope to keep in touch with after we all return to the land of bacon and mint chocolate chip ice cream. I wasn’t really prepared to make AMERICAN friends when we got selected for service in West Africa, and it’s been interesting to meet a variety of people who are doing the same thing we’re doing for a myriad of different reasons and share this experience with them.

As we finish up our last couple of months here in Togo, we’re really starting to look forward to our return back home. Family, friends, and food are obviously foremost on our list of things we miss, but the other day, I realized we’re soon going to be experiencing some things we’ve kind of forgotten about. A funny story to illustrate: I had to call our credit card company the other day, and worried that my small task was going to take a lot of time and effort to accomplish (because I’ve become what we call here habitué to things taking much longer than anyone predicts them to take), I stocked up on phone credit for the call. I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly and efficiently the representative handled my request, and I hung up the phone smiling. You know what was so great about that call? Customer service! Yup, the fact that someone helped me without trying to get something from me (like money, my phone number, a visa to America, or my hand in marriage) was quite refreshing. So thanks, Bank of America guy, for giving me yet another reason (not that I really need more than the promise of being clean and eating steak to get me excited about America!) to look forward to coming home. Just a couple of months left now!

Two More Obama Village Pics

What a lovely place!

Reflections on Obama Village

There is an Obama Craze in West Africa, and it has been going strong for two years now. As an American living in West Africa I was subjected to the Obama craze well before there was an Obama Presidency. During presidential campaigning, I was politely but firmly told by more than a dozen Togolese that I HAD to vote for Obama. During the inaugural address, which I was privileged to watch on a Dutch NGO television run on a generator in one small village, I was greeted with many handshakes and treated as a small hero for voting for our first African American president. But in recent months the infatuation with the president has morphed from idolization into industry in West Africa. There are Obama T-shirts, bumper stickers, and baseball hats coming out of Nigeria and yards and yards of cloth with the president’s likeness emblazoned on them being sold in Ghana. There are buildings with the president’s face painted on the side; local businesses are named after him (Obama Café in one village, and my favorite Obama Hairstylist in another); and one of the most popular baby names in the area where I live is Obama. There is even a village in Togo which is pushed back in the bush, four miles from the nearest road, which has changed its name from Agbassou-Kopé (translated from the Ewé language, it means “male goat village”) to Obama Village and erected a life-size statue of the American President, complete with big ears and great shoes.

But despite all the idolization and the influence the American President has had on African pop culture, the people I have spoken to have little or no knowledge of Obama’s personal or professional life or his administration’s stances on many issues. When I talked with a group of people sitting in a bar in the Togolese capital city of Lomé about what the Obama administration was doing in America, no one could give me an answer. And when I pressed them to answer questions concerning the administration’s policies toward things like health care, terrorism, torture, and unemployment all I received for a response was silence. But when asked about Obama’s African policy, the answer I received was a chorus of: “Obama is African and he is going to help Africa.” In fact, little is known about the popular American President beyond the fact that his father was Kenyan. Most people don’t even know that Obama’s party affiliation is with the Democrats or who Joe Biden is. Over the past year Obama has become a brand name in Africa, and sadly enough, the icon has become more important than the essence. It has become a way to sell products and services, make money and, in the case of Obama Village, attract the attention of NGOs, which are handing out grant money to organizers of development projects in Africa. What Africans are lacking in knowledge of Obama’s history, they are making up in their knowledge of marketing strategies and American-style capitalism: Obama sells - and Africa knows it.

During my time in Africa, the Obama craze has been a double-edged machete. On the one hand, President Obama has managed to rehabilitate the American image in Africa. He has done this partly with his moderate style of governing and his willingness to create a dialogue between himself and other countries, but mostly by having family ties to Kenya and by being black. Whether good or bad, this has made being an American in West Africa great. Here I’m a hero just because I’m an American. Besides having the random family scream “OBAMA!!,” at me I have received more cadeaux of chicken eggs, papayas, and what passes for moonshine from poor Africans than I and my wife can consume, thus making us bigger heroes when we re-gift the local hooch and fruit to our neighbors.

Remember, the machete does cut both ways. Because President Obama has African ties, many Africans believe he will “help” Africa. This I’ve come to realize is just a polite way to say that Africans expect Obama to send over boat loads of USD to the African continent and that obviously I must have been sent to Africa to be the distributor of this money. The people I have met in West Africa have become emboldened by the belief that Obama is sending “help,” for me this translates into daily requests for money and a constant badgering for “gifts.” Imagine a world where you are Britney Spears and the rest of the world is paparazzi watching your every move: that’s what it’s like being an American in West Africa.

Two more Pictures for Today

Here's a picture of on of the neighborhoods which now has access to the health clinic. This was during our 19-neighborhood walk.

The other picture is of a soap making demonstration I did with a women's group. Liquid soap is pretty cool!

Winding Down...

It’s been an interesting couple of months. In January, I made several trips to Lomé with the nurse who’s running our health clinic to a pharmacy where we bought all the medicine and equipment we needed. After getting everything set up and organized, we finally opened the clinic in February. We had an opening ceremony and spent an entire Sunday driving around the 19 quartiers (neighborhoods) that will benefit from the clinic to inform people of the opening and to answer their questions about what we’ll be doing at the clinic. On that first day, the chief of the village made it a point to be one of the first clients to set a good example for the other villagers, and told everyone he was coming back to get a shot from the white girl to make him strong. The groupement president I worked on this project with has assured me that my presence there as a white person will make people even more likely to come. I was skeptical of this claim after hearing about the experience of a fellow health volunteer in a tiny village on the other side of the country who had the exact opposite experience: women in her village were afraid that she put curses, evil white people voodoo, and various other hexes and diseases in the birth control shots and implants that they were advertising at her health clinic. The president assured me that since “we live in a city, we know better and don’t believe that stuff – people will come if you’re here.” Of course, a couple of days later, we did a voodoo ceremony of our own to ask the gods to bless our clinic. So, I guess what I take away from that is that regular gris gris is okay, but we draw the line at believing in white people gris gris. That would just be too ridiculous! Oh, Togo, how we do love you.

We were also planning an official inauguration, but all of the important personages around the village (like the prefet and the mayor) asked us to wait till after the presidential election when they would have more time. So, we should be doing that in the next week or so. I’ve posted a picture here of two of the village chiefs consulting with the nurse in his new office. This past week, the nurse and his wife, who is a birthing attendant, selected four kids in their early twenties from the surrounding villages who recently finished high school to come and work as trainees and learn how to work at the health clinic for the next three years. It looks like things are well underway and under control out there, so I think we can finally call this project finished!

Joe has been working with another of our counterparts to build the new chicken farm that we raised the money for with our second Peace Corps Partnership Proposal for the last two months. The mason has built the foundations for the chicken cages and the other buildings, made hundreds of bricks, put up the walls, and he is now working on installing the beams, roofing, and windows. That counterpart has also gotten the official paperwork signed to start his own groupement to help run the farm and is working with them to write another proposal to a local NGO to pay for their first purchase of baby chickens for the farm. The other picture posted here is a picture of the outer walls of the farm, partially finished in this shot. The construction for this project has been moving along pretty quickly (unlike that damn health clinic!), so it should be done within the next month or so.

So, those are our two big projects. We recently got word from Peace Corps that Joe will definitely be replaced by a new business volunteer here in Tabligbo and that my health volunteer replacement will definitely be going to the nearby village of Ahepé (12km from us) where I’ve been working with a new counterpart to set up some work for the new volunteer. There’s a women’s groupement there who has asked me to work with them on some income generating activities, and so far, we’ve had meetings to talk about a community garden project and how to make and sell liquid soap. The garden idea is currently under discussion, and I went out and did a demonstration on how to make liquid soap there just last week. It went pretty well, and the women seem interested in hearing more ideas about income generating activities, so Joe may have to brush up on the soy milk making that he perfected last summer!

I also recently made the acquaintance of another women’s groupement in another nearby village attached to Tabligbo (a little en brousse, like the village where we put the health clinic). This group has 177 members (!!) and I did another soap making demonstration with them a couple of weeks ago, which they were really excited about. They’re working with their local village development committee to save up money to start a health clinic out in their village. At the end of the soap-making demonstration, the women were already selling some water bottles filled with soap to some curious onlookers, and were confident that they would be able to sell lots of it and save up money to put toward the health clinic project. I talked with their CVD members about the materials and equipment necessary for starting a clinic and gave them copies of all of our receipts from the other health clinic project, which should help them decide what they need. They seem like a really motivated group of women, and I hope I can help them get started on their project before we leave.

What else has been going on lately? Our neighbor’s baby, my little buddy Emmanuel, was really sick recently with fever, dehydration, and diarrhea, so I took the opportunity to teach the family and some high school kids that were hanging around for lunch how to make oral rehydration solution (volunteers swear by it!) to keep him hydrated and get him through the diarrhea. It’s sad how many kids die of that easily preventable and treatable problem because they don’t understand the concept of dehydration. Thankfully, Emmanuel got better and is back to his usual cheerful self, tearing around our compound and shrieking happily at the dog. Such a good dog to be so tolerant of kids! More than I can say for me and Joe, who have taken to waving sticks and yelling in English at the kids behind us when they throw stuff over our compound wall at the dog.

The presidential election was pushed back from February 28 to March 4 (does anyone else think it’s a little too much of a coincidence that the election was changed to March FOUR, when the president’s name is FAURE? Maybe I’m just weird). Anyway, a few weeks before the election, campaigners went nuts driving around villages in their “VOTEZ FAURE” shirts with huge speakers and music blaring and people yelling with megaphones turned up so loud that you had no idea what they were actually saying. We volunteers went on “lock down” status in our villages for a couple of weeks (restricted to village for safety), but things have been calm as ever here in Tabligbo. Joe and I walked past a voting station near our house on election day and were pleasantly surprised at the orderliness and organization of the voting process. The day after the election, the president declared unofficial victory with over 60 percent of the vote and then declared official victory a few days later. The opposition party claimed shady vote counting procedures and there were some initial protests in Lomé where opposition supporters were dispersed pretty quickly by the army with teargas. No one around our village seems to think the protests or the fact that the opposition party has contested the results will amount to anything, so it looks like President Faure Gnassingbe will stay President Faure Gnassingbe.

So, we’re winding down our service here in Togo. It’s hard to believe that we arrived here almost 22 months ago and we only have four or five months left! I suppose we’ll have to come up with a “things we’ve learned” or “how we feel about our service” kind of blog before we leave, but I think I’ll leave that till next time. In the meantime, we’ve come up with a little list of things in Togo that we’re looking forward to exchanging for things in America.

THINGS WE’RE LOOKING FORWARD TO EXCHANGING:
Lizards for squirrels
Hippie Chacos and bare feet for real shoes and socks
Mango trees for apple trees
Tampicos from the Fanmilk guy for banana cream pie shakers from the Twist and Shout
Celebrity status for anonymity
Vache Qui Rit for real cheese, any kind of cheese
Awooyo (the beer, not the dog) for Guinness
Laissez-Passers for Driver’s Licenses
A straw mat on the concrete roof to stay cool at night for a nice soft bed and air conditioning
CFAs for American dollars

Over the next few months, we’ll be finishing up the new chicken farm, monitoring the training of the health clinic trainees, working with the two women’s groups on ideas for other income generating activities, and trying to set up some potential projects for our replacements who will be arriving in Togo in early June. Before we go, we’d also like to see a few things around Togo, an initiative I started last month with a short stay at a hotel in Aneho, the former capital of Togo (when it was a German colony) down on the coast. We’d like to see the waterfalls over in Badou, for example, and the reputed bird-eating spiders near Zafi, that allegedly spin webs so massive that they catch birds in them. Worth a look, no? For those who know me best, I’m sure you’re impressed with what Togo has done to my fear of spiders. I can just hear my brother thinking: “Bree kills spiders? And she wants to go see a spider that’s big enough to eat a bird? What the hell happened to her over in Africa?”

We’ll be heading down to Lomé for our COS (close of service) conference at the beginning of May and should get to decide our COS date then, likely late July or early August. So, look for another blog in May – I promise to try to make that one a little more thoughtful and a little less just a list of what we’ve been doing (which I find boring, but hopefully you all don’t!). For the next couple of months we’ll be enjoying (yeah, right) the rest of our last hot season and planning what we’re going to do when we get home. Till next time!

New Year’s Report Part 4: Miscellaneous

First, thanks to everyone who sent us boxes to help us celebrate the holidays! We really appreciate the things (read: food!) from home. Awooyo and Elliott von Tusky were very happy with their treats as well, so thanks again!

Second, we finally figured out where Mr. Tusky goes when he jumps over our compound wall every night. Turns out that there’s a little brown and white female cat that lives kind of around the corner from us, and lots of people in the neighborhood have seen the two of them running around together at night. So, he’s got a little girlfriend, who we’ve dubbed Cinnamon, who also, according to her owner, happens to be pregnant. Maybe we should get a gris gris collar made for her and all her babies, too? Seems to be working pretty good so far!

Presidential elections are coming up here in Togo on February 28, and a lot of people are getting things ready around village by setting up voting places. As our cluster’s “contact volunteer,” (volunteer who serves as the organizer and meeting place in the event of some kind of crisis), Joe will be heading off to a Peace Corps conference at the beginning of February to hear more about the election and what kind of local response the administration is expecting. I imagine it will get more interesting as things get closer, so we’ll try to post an update before the big day arrives.

Here are a couple of last pictures, one of Tusky peeking over our back wall in search of his girlfriend, and the other of Awooyo, chilling in her favorite spot under my chair.

Happy 2010 to everyone! Oh, and 2010, is it? We come home this year!!!

New Year’s Report Part 3: Work!

Well, to turn to the serious side of things, we currently have three big projects going. Number one, the health clinic project that I started writing the proposal for this past March. After three rewrites of the budget, giving an extension to the groupement to raise their local contribution money, reducing the amount of the local contribution, kicking out a management committee treasurer who didn’t have time to help with the project then appointing a new one, and a fight with the groupement president about honesty, money, and beds (a long story, but suffice to say that the beds will be real mattresses, not old rice sacks stuffed with straw), I finally made the trip to Lomé to meet up with the infermier to order medical equipment, medicine, and a examination/birthing table on December 23. I was pretty impressed with the infermier and his confidence choosing and ordering what he deemed would be necessary for the clinic, so hopefully that’s a sign of good things to come with him. We’re ordering a few more types of medicine and a few other small things, but I think that immediately after the New Year, we’ll be able to open for business. I can’t believe that it’s taken almost a year to get this project done, but we’re finally almost there.

Number two, is the new Peace Corps partnership that Joe is doing to expand a chicken farm and provide training for local farmers who want to learn how to do poultry breeding. As we wait for the last few hundred dollars to accumulate for the project on the Peace Corps web site, Joe has been working with the owner of the farm on marketing and selling his turkeys commercially. He got a few orders for turkeys for Thanksgiving and Christmas from Peace Corps and American Embassy employees in Lomé, but the most exciting thing that’s happened recently is that the he’s had meetings with a couple of large grocery store chains in Lomé for really big turkey orders. For that, he has to get a tax ID number and become a “real” business instead of just a local farm, so he’s looking into that process. He also just had a talk with his first potential paid employee who wants to come work on the expanded farm once the project is fully funded. Ultimately, things are looking promising there, too.

The last big project is the community garden, which we’ve had a lot of problems with the in the last few months. First, the owner of the land we’re renting for the garden apparently neglected to tell his brothers who are partial owners that he was renting the land to us. Hence, he was apparently just pocketing that rent money and not dividing it between all the brothers. Second, the people who are renting the adjacent land and were using the garden part rent-free before we got there, are angry that we “took” the land from them (although they were perfectly happy to buy our lettuce when our neighbor was selling it). Needless to say, this has been frustrating, but the real kicker is that our neighbor’s nephew who was doing most of the weeding and watering went back to school and took his labor with him. Hence, a lot of vegetables died recently. Our neighbor is convinced that the previous users of the land cast some bad gris gris (aka voodoo) on the garden, despite our efforts to convince him that simple watering would have prevented the problem. Either way, our contract for the land is up at the end of the year, and with all the problems we’ve been having, the best thing seems to be to pick up and move the garden to a more hospitable location. The neighbor recently bought some land of his own, and he’s expressed interest in starting a new garden over there, so we’ll see how that goes.

So, that’s all for big things. For little things, Joe recently did a small training project with a farmer on how to grow better corn, which turned out pretty well. On World AIDS Day in December, I went to another volunteer’s village to help her organize a race and some health-themed games for her middle school students. The day was kind of taken over by the local NGO, but it was well done and it was good to see how many right answers the kids gave to the questions about AIDS. Also, I’ve started working with a traditional healer to investigate the possibility of putting the next health volunteer (my replacement) in his village rather than in Tabligbo (Peace Corps would still send a business volunteer to replace Joe here). So far, we’ve had meetings with the chief, village development committee, and a local NGO to talk about their needs; we also found a potential house for the new volunteer. We sent the request off to the Director of the health program, who says they’ll likely make a decision in January or February. Since they haven’t had a volunteer in that village for many years, it’s been kind of fun talking to them over there and having some excitement about the possibility of a local Peace Corps volunteer. While people are always excited to see a yovo, it’s another thing to be excited about working with a yovo, which we’ve had a little difficulty with here.

Like last year about this time, things have been a little slower than usual with the holidays, so I think that’s all to report about work for now. In the absence of interesting work pictures this time around, here are a couple of Joey and me enjoying the things our wonderful friends and family sent us for Christmas. Thank you!

New Year’s Report Part 2.3: Fêtes Continued!

Here are a couple more pictures from our Christmas fête. Even in Africa, kids can’t resist the temptation to play in a cardboard box! You might recognize the animals in the second picture; despite popular belief, these are likely the only tiger and elephant in Togo. ;-)

New Year’s Report Part 2.2: Fêtes Continued!

As Christmas approached for 2009, the bar across the street from us celebrated by pointing a speaker out into the street (I think they pointed it right at our house on purpose) and blaring music from about 6:00am till about midnight for several days in a row. That’s really not at all an unusual way to celebrate, so we were kind of expecting that. What we weren’t expecting was the soundtrack: a standard repertoire of the usual African music, but as background to the music….every few minutes….to celebrate the Christmas season….you could distinctly make out the sound of….a howling wolfman. Wolfman is always a good way to ring in the holidays, don’t you think?

On Christmas morning this year, we celebrated with our neighbors across the street. A lot of volunteers were getting together to celebrate Christmas with a yovo party, but as we did that last year, and are kind of yovo partied out besides, we decided to fête village-style this year. And we’re glad we did! My Christmas present to Lydia and her two daughters was to have matching complets made for all of us, with fabric that Lydia chose herself. Her husband, Dominique, reciprocated with matching complets for himself, Joe, and the two boys. So, here were all are in our fancy Christmas attire! I’m only sorry (wait, who am I kidding?) that you all didn’t get to see us doing the famous dance locale, otherwise known as the infamous CHICKEN DANCE. And yes, you really do look like a chicken when you do it, in case you were wondering…

New Year’s Report Part 2: Fêtes!

After our Catholic church experience, we went to celebrate baby Natalie’s baptism with Amelie and her family. We ate fufu with peanut sauce and fish, Togo pancakes (made of beans and soy) with oil and peppers, popcorn, and red wine: quite the mélange for the stomach, although I think our stomachs are biens habitués after all this time! Here are two pictures from that fête, one of Joe trying his hand pounding fufu and the other of our little friend Stella enjoying a glass of watered-down red wine. It’s a novelty for the yovo to try pounding fufu, but the experts took it away from him after less than a minute, of course. Stella had a fancy new tresse hairdo (what back in the States would be called a weave) to make her look way older than her three years, hence, I suppose, the celebratory glass of wine to make her feel even more a part of the adult crowd.

New Year's Report Part 1: Church!

So, we recently had our second experience at the churches of two families in our village. The first was at the Baptist church attended by our neighbors across the street, which we attended at their request; it seems an important preacher, who had studied in America, was “guest preaching” that day. The place was full, there was a special segment for the kids to get up and sing, and we got a taste of fire and brimstone Togo-style. I think you could kind of tell the guy learned his technique in the States – his animation (excitement? fervor?) really reminded me of those guys you see on TV who really have the “spirit,” and it was kind of fun to see something that was reminiscent of that - in French. The downside, of course, was that the service was three and a half hours long! Yikes. Here’s a picture I took of the congregation that day; see if you can find Joe amid the sea of faces!

The second church experience took us back to our friend Amelie’s Catholic church for her baby’s baptism. About 30 women had their babies baptized that day, and they went up to receive multiple blessings (a candle once, holy water another time, and something else after that we couldn’t see) in a nice orderly line (I guess church is the one place where line order matters, ‘cause it certainly doesn’t matter at places like the bank!). The priest at that church is an old Italian guy, who has clearly been in Togo an unfathomable amount of time, as his Ewé is damn near perfect, so perfect, in fact, that when we approached him after the service to take a picture with our newly baptized friend Natalie, he said to us inquiringly: “Yovo?” I had to ask: “Did we just get yovo-ed by a yovo?” I guess he really has been in Togo too long. I think the most disconcerting and ironic part of the experience was that two Americans met an Italian. In Africa. And they spoke French to each other. Yup. Internationality is interesting, isn’t it? Anyway, nice priest, nice service (only two and a half hours this time), and a little calmer than the fire and brimstone we got with the Baptists.

I rather appreciated this second, more peaceful version of worship, but Joe says he couldn’t sit still and much preferred the vibrancy and liveliness of the Baptist preacher. Two unique experiences, either way! Also, here’s a picture of us with Amelie and her family with the Italian priest after the service.

A Little Bit of Everything

So life continues here in Togo, although the countdown to COS (close of service) has begun for our group that arrived in June 2008. The group that came in right before us is COS-ing over the next month, which will make us, as we say here, the plus âgé, and therefore the next to leave. With only about eight or nine months to go, we’ve started thinking about what we’d like to do with the remainder of our service.

First on the list is to finish up current projects, including the health clinic, which was fully funded last month. Although we received the Peace Corps contribution about a month ago, the groupement has had some financial trouble lately, and while the reasons for that are sketchy and convoluted at best, the president has assured me that the furniture is currently being made. To ensure that they provide the total amount for their local contribution, I’ve decided to wait until the furniture is installed before I start ordering the other supplies. I’m still hopeful that all the equipment and materials will be in place by the end of the year.

Secondly, the community garden. The leader of that project, our neighbor across the street, is keeping good records and has an order from a local marché mama for nine beds of lettuce for the Christmas season. We’ve asked him to start thinking about more long term goals for the garden, such as continuing to rent the land and the possibility of installing a well on the property.

Of our two sort of ongoing projects with the CVD, the first, the project to build latrines at six of the primary schools in Tabligbo, has reached an impasse because the technician who is writing up the project plan has asked to be paid for his work and the CVD has asked him to make the work on the plan part of the community contribution. With no solution to this problem in sight, we’ve considered trying to mediate a resolution, but are reluctant to take sides in the matter. The second project involves the supervision of the ordering and installation of new equipment at the local hospital, a project which was funded by a local NGO. As an advisor on the management committee for that project, I (and the other members of the committee) have been waiting for the NGO to send the check, which we’ve been assured is on the way. The hospital recently got a new head doctor, who the entire committee had a meeting with a couple of weeks ago to talk about our roles for the project. The new doctor has insisted that the alleged corruption of the previous administration is finished and that he’s excited to work with the committee and ensure transparency on all financial matters. Everybody seems to like him, so this could be the thing to hospital needs to turn itself around.

For the main projects, that’s pretty much all right now. Over the next few months, we have two other new projects that we’d like to get going. The first is to start a cultural exchange club at the high school, which would ideally involve me hooking up with the French teacher at our old high school and seeing if she has any students who would be interested in corresponding in French with some African high schoolers who want to learn about American culture. Currently, this project is just an idea, but I had a couple of high school kids visit last week, and their excitement at reading some old Time magazines that I showed them made me think the idea could be fun. Next time they come over, I’ll pitch it to them and see what they think, and in the meantime shoot an email off to the French teacher (could it be the same French teacher that was there when we graduated 13 years ago??) at old RHS to see what she thinks.

The other project is one Joe just started to expand the chicken and turkey farm that he’s been working with over the last several months. We thought we’d try one last funded project, and as the family that runs the farm has been doing really well with keeping up on their accounting lately, Joe thought he’d like to give a boost to their operation. The project will ultimately build bigger cages for the chickens, expand the walls of the farm, and build a well on the property (the family currently has to walk to a neighborhood pump to get their water). Also, the farm will be opening its doors to other local éleveurs who want to learn about the practice of chicken and turkey breeding, and will ultimately provide training and advice for how to start their own small élevage project. He just got a Peace Corps Partnership approved and posted on the Peace Corps web site, so if you’d like to help out with a small contribution, you can visit the www.peacecorps.gov, click “donate,” and do a search on Togo for volunteer projects.

Our last PCPP was funded so quickly by donors who were former Peace Corps volunteers (thank you all so much for your help! We hope you got the letter and pictures we sent you) that our family and friends didn’t really get a chance to contribute or even know about the request for contributions for the health clinic project before it was taken down off the Peace Corps web site, so hopefully you can all help out with this other project.

So, that’s enough about work! In recent non-work news, our cherished cat , Elliott von Tusky, lost his fancy gris gris collar a week or so ago, and came back the next morning after going out for the first time without it looking like he got into a fight either with a dog or a really pissed off chicken. He’s healing up fine now, and our friend made him a new collar, so he’s once again bien protégé against all forms of mishap, we hope. The coincidence makes you think that maybe gris gris works over here, you know?

In other non-work related news, we’re looking forward to celebrating Christmas in village this year. Last year’s volunteer party up north was fun, but we’ve decided to hang out in village this year and fête with our neighbors. After being served that plate of goat face last July (I seriously maintain that my plate was smiling at me), I’m a little leery about buying a goat to roast for the party, so maybe we’ll just stick with some chickens from our friend’s farm.

Sorry it’s been so long since we last wrote. We hope you’re all still keeping up with us and enjoying our little anecdotes. In deference to the gris gris that is currently protecting our cat, here’s a photo of the local fetish market on marché day. The other photo is the health clinic management committee that was elected along with a few members of the groupement outside the newly painted building. Have a Happy Thanksgiving, and we’ll write again soon!

Photos from the Beach Bar in Lome

Sadly, we've been informed that the beach bar that is frequented by volunteers is to be no more. The government has decided that the "beach shacks," as they're known, are no longer appropriate, economical, or an attractive addition to the waterfront, and that they will very shortly be demolished, forcing the bars to move back to regular buildings on the other side of the beach road.

So, for nostalgic purposes, here are some photos taken at the beach bar: one of me, one of Joe, one of our friend Matt, and one of a bunch of kids playing soccer on the beach. Bub-bye-lo, beach bar!

Another Month Rolls By...

So the funding for the health clinic is all set, and it barely took a month. Thanks to everybody who donated to our project! My contact in DC tells me that the money is on its way and that we should be able to pick it up at the bank within the next couple of weeks. The groupement has started painting the building already, and we've established an 11-person management committee (with representatives from all the villages that will benefit from the clinic) to work with the nurse and midwife and monitor the finances of the clinic. Once we get the money from Lome, we can start ordering supplies, many of which the nurse tells me will only take a few days to arrive. I'll be posting some pictures of the clinic once everything is installed.

Joe's community garden project has expanded with the creation of several new beds, and lettuce is selling like crazy. Our neighbor says the carrots should be ready in a week or two, so we'll try our hand at selling that, too. We've been discussing the possibility of digging a well on the garden property to make watering easier, but we're just in the talking stage for that so far.

What other news? We've gotten over (well, mostly) what volunteers call the "mid-service crisis," which hits between the year in Togo and the year in village marks (anywhere between June and August) and often involves intense periods of frustration, anger, depression, or all three. Our crises were exacerbated by several of our good friends from our stage ET-ing (early terminating), getting med-sepped (medically separated back to the States), or getting ad-sepped (administratively separated, for doing something against the ol' PC rules), which has been harder to deal with than I would have expected. I didn't really expect to make such good friends, I guess, and we've taken their departures as best we can.

On a brighter note, we're looking forward to the holiday season and are debating whether we should spend Christmas in village or on a petite vacation in Ghana with one of our good friends who's still here. Will post more updates soon, so in the meantime, enjoy a couple of random "Around Lome" pictures!

Last Two Pics for Today

Here’s a picture of our friend Amelie and her new baby the morning after she gave birth at the hospital here in Tabligbo. Tiny little Natalie showed up five days before my brother’s baby, Layla, was born back home. I showed a picture of Layla to Amelie, and she was pretty happy to hear that the two new babies have the same middle name: Marie. Natalie’s big sister, my little friend Stella, is happy to have a little sister to take care of, and Amelie is doing well.

The other picture needs some explanation! Obviously, it’s a shot of our cat, Elliott von Tusky, but take a close look at the fancy necklace he’s sporting. Joe and I paid our friend I’m working on the health clinic with who does gris gris (that’s voodoo) to, as we say here in Franglais, faire some gris gris to proteger our cat, who has recently taken to jumping over the compound wall after dark and sneaking around doing whatever cats do at night. In order to protect him against getting stolen and eaten during his nightly promenades, we asked our buddy to make a charm to let people around the neighborhood know that Mr. von Tusky is protected by gris gris. After a ceremony that involved sacrificing a rooster, sprinkling some sodabe around, exploding some magical powder, and asking the god in charge for help, our friend made us two charms to help protect our cat from potential thieves. The first, he buried in a corner of our compound with instructions to sprinkle the occasional shot of sodabe over the spot, and the second, he made into a necklace (complete with chicken bone adornment) for our cat to wear to warn anyone who’s thinking about snatching him that he’s protected by gris gris and that if they are foolish enough to try it, something bad will happen to them (i.e. they will die a slow and painful death). After seeing several goats and sheep around the village sporting similar neckwear and asking about it, we learned that this is a common practice people use to protect their animals that wander freely around the village from would-be thieves. So, we thought, if it works for others, why not us? Indeed, why not?

More Garden Pics

Here’s a picture of me with our neighbor across the street and all the neighborhood kids who help us water the community garden every evening (and by help, what I really mean is run around and mostly get in the way, but they like to see what we’re up to!). The other picture is of me and our neighbor across the street’s youngest kid, Emmanuel. He’s used to seeing Joe and I, unlike another baby that hangs out across the street who cries every time he sees me. White people are scary, you know!

A couple more pictures coming, so scroll up yet again…