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…

A Petite Update

This past week, Joey and I hit our one-year anniversary at our post (12 months in Tabligbo, 15 and a half months in Togo!). That means, for those of you who keep asking, that if we come home sometime between June and August of next summer, we only have somewhere between nine and eleven months left here in Togo. Our COS (close of service) conference will be held in May, I think, and PC will assign COS dates to all the volunteers in our group then. We’ll be sure to let you know what our date will be when it gets assigned.

So, in our less than a year left, we’re going to keep working on two projects that have become our pet projects in the last few months: the community garden and the health clinic. We have some other secondary projects still going (like the latrine project and clean-up projects with the CVD, working with peer educators, and working with the chicken and turkey farm), but these two projects have become our focus, at least for now.

The community garden project is going pretty well, so here are some pictures of that. One is of Joey and two of our neighbors planting carrots, and the other is of Joey and our neighbor making their first harvest and sale of lettuce to a local marché lady. Other vegetables that are currently growing are zucchini and a local green leafy thing called gboma. We also have a few scraggly beets and a few peppers. We should probably get another harvest in before the next dry season, and the neighbors are talking about the possibility of using some of the money from selling to build a well next to the garden to make watering easier.

The health clinic is still under construction, although we’re almost ready to paint. The walls, windows, and doors are up, and the masons have installed a concrete ramp leading up to the door (for those who can’t manage stairs, they tell me). Last week, we had a meeting with a couple of the quartier chiefs and representatives from all the quartiers that will benefit from the clinic. About 25 people attended the meeting, and they voted in an 11-member group of people to serve as a committee to manage and oversee the income and purchases of the clinic. The group who donated the building and is organizing the project has met with the nurse and birthing attendant (a husband and wife team) who will be coming to run the clinic, and we’re all now waiting for our project web site to earn the rest of the money we need to order the furniture, equipment, and supplies. We’ve already raised more than half of the money we need, so things are looking pretty good. Thank you so much for your donations and for helping to fund our project! Once the clinic starts to look like a clinic, I’ll be sure to post some pictures.

I’m going to post some other pictures after I post this update, so scroll up!