Venturing up to northern Togo

I spent a couple days in Western Kara with my lovely friend Danielle after a planning session for the woman’s conference. On the journey, I noticed how different the northern part of the country looks from the south. Kara region seems downright fancy and developed compared to parts of the south. The roads were blissfully smooth and—amazingly–there were actual street signs! I saw signs for taxi stands, warnings for a big hill, children crossing, and traffic lights. Our taxi zoomed along for 70 km in no time at all, a distance that takes 2 and a half hours on the Adeta-Atakpame road.

I think the government spends more money on Northern Togo because it is the birthplace of the president. His own region has a reputation of better government services than the south, where a different ethnic group lives. There is the lovely Hotel Kara with the perfect pool, of course, and a restaurant that serves American food like pizza and cheeseburgers. The president has his own private airport in the region! There is tons of wagash in northern Togo. Wagash is a locally made cheese that is fried or boiled (to pasteurize it). It’s very yummy, whether served in sauces or eaten by the cube. The city of Kara also has giant billboards for iPhones and 3G Internet, a traffic circle, and many “yovo” stores with imported food. There are Pringles for sale, chocolate…

Danielle’s village is very nice. It’s tiny—half the size of my village—but everyone was very excited to meet me and welcome me to Kara. They asked me if I would learn their local language, Bassar. Instead of churches, there are mosques on every corner and the call to prayer occurs five times a day. Many women wear colorful and glittery headscarves, and the men wear religious caps.  And there’s much less variety of fruit and vegetables—no avocados, bell peppers, or okra here! Danielle does live next to a bread-maker; a woman has a clay oven to cook fresh bread every morning. The bread is delicious and served still warm.

I followed her on her work errands too—we visited the health clinic and the middle-school/high-school. She held her weekly girl’s club and gave a fun lesson on saying no to drugs and alcohol. It’s too bad there isn’t a high school in N’digbe since it would be fun to work with older girls.

Street food and other random things

Eight months into Peace Corps service, I’m feeling good about where I’m at. Parts of life that seemed bizarre or even aggravating a few months ago now seem relatively normal. I rode in a jam-packed car—seven people in a five seat car, several chickens in baskets tied to the roof, and huge sacks of rice bulging out of the trunk—to the workstation without any trouble at all. It’s been very hot the last couple weeks, probably over a hundred degrees, but at this point I can’t imagine being in cold weather or snow.

 

Now that it’s dry season, people in village seem to have a bit more free time. People will wait until the rainy season comes to plant their crops, so once the soil is prepared, they are free to work on other income generating activities. Many women are making “gari”–cooked and ground manioc and has a very distinct crunchy texture. They sell it in huge bags in the market since the Togolese add it to many different foods—especially beans! Other families are out selling Payne or household goods in the market, or collecting firewood on the mountainside, or whatever else they can think of to make money. Unfortunately I haven’t seen anyone making the neem lotion that I demonstrated to the Femmes Lumieres in October. Apparently it isn’t easy to find the neem tree in the village.

 

I’ve been enjoying my days in village even more than usual, since I recently spent time away for PDM and for Christmas vacation. Everyone seems to have a project or idea to discuss with me or a new food to share. I’ve been eating my lunchtime special, beans and gari, every afternoon at the same lady’s stand by the side of the road. She serves cooked beans with a little oil, topped with crunchy gari. I can’t remember the last time that I cooked an elaborate meal in my own kitchen! In the afternoons, I sit outside and drink bouille—warm oatmeal-ish concoction made from flour, sugar and water—with a handful of fried dough.

 

Drinking bouille in the late afternoons is the perfect replacement for tea-time, and it’s a great social activity too. Old men in the village always gather to play “pickets”–a peg game for two people—on the benches by the bouille tables. Other people just sit and gossip or pick numbers for the village lottery; I find it frustrating that people buy tickets for 25 or 50 cents yet complain they don’t have enough money saved for important purchases like school fees or seeds.

 

The other evening, a guy sitting next to me asked me a few funny questions about life in the U.S. “Do women sell things from baskets on their heads in the U.S.?” he asked me. In Togo, there’s always women (or children) walking by with a basket full of veggies, fruits, Tupperware, fish, or something in a woven basket on their head. But I had to think back if I’ve ever seen a woman selling things on her head on the U.S… nope, I guess I haven’t.

 

Ok, I’ll write more later! If you’re reading this and have some free time, feel free to send a letter/post card/note my way! Merci bien.

Slideshow from January

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Just got back from technical training on family planning and behavior change in Pagala. We brought our Togolese counterparts and spent the week with volunteers from my stage.

Ernest and I are excited about our “plan d’action:” working on building latrines, family planning counseling, working with middle school girls, and training health agents.

 

It’s January already!?

I’m definitely getting back into my groove in N’digbe after an amazing Christmas and New Years. There have been plenty of project opportunities both with partners in village, and with other Peace Corps volunteers.

 

I had the opportunity to attend another volunteer’s “girl camp”–a weekend full of confidence-building activities, health talks and self-empowerment for middle-school girls. I had such a great time—it reminded me of being a Girl Scout counselor at Camp Mountaindale! We sang songs, played ice breakers, painted each other’s nails, and listened to a panel discussion on the life stories of successful Togolese women. I left Sunday afternoon excited and motivated for similar upcoming activities, like the Woman’s Wellness and Empowerment Conference.

Without camps and conferences like these, Togolese women never have the opportunity to share ideas and feelings exclusively with other women. Girls can say whatever they want without having to worry about men interrupting them, correcting them, or sexually harassing them. At the girl’s weekend, they listened to sessions about motivating their community, child trafficking, sexual harassment, HIV/AIDS, abstinence, and confidence.

 

I loved the presentations by Togolese women, such as one by Tanti, an organizer for Peace Corps camps and a past participant herself. There was also a university student named Marie. I am so impressed that she’s made it all the way to university—quite a challenge in Togo! And she’s a great speaker, full of ambition to become an English teacher, and to help younger girls accomplish similarly awesome things.

 

Now I am helping a woman from my village with her application for the Woman’s Wellness and Empowerment Conference—the CVD President. As CVD president she has successfully raised money in the village for electricity lines, started a new annual festival « La Fete de Retrouvailles ,» created a woman’s agriculture group, and sustained the energy of the CARE group « Femmes Lumieres. » In addition to these activities, she constantly pursues opportunities to improve her family’s economic situation through AGR’s such as peanut brittle, raising guinea pigs, and cooking bean beignets.

 

She is an amazing lady and I am so glad she’s interested in attending. I think she will be a great participant, because she is full of ideas, not afraid to share her mind. She has told me that ending underage pregnancies is one her top priorities, but she is not sure what else she can do other than share methods of family planning. Hopefully both of us can go in March, her as a participant, and me, to help with health presentations.

 

Otherwise, there have lots of smaller activities going on in N’digbe. It is a great balance between short-term small projects like health talks and baby weighing and home visits, and planning for long-term projects like the Woman’s Conference. We had 70 women come to baby weighing this month. I talked about enriched bouille (porridge) for underweight babies, and a Red Cross volunteer (a Togolese woman from my village) gave a more in-depth talk about malaria prevention.

 

Now it’s time for a reunion/meeting in Pagala, where we’ll be learning about health topics along with our Togolese homologues. I’m bringing Ernest. Of course he’s really excited, and I’m equally excited for him to meet lots of my volunteer friends!

 

P.S. Thanks to cousin Michelle for her package! It was full of thoughtful goodies like stationary, recipes, a new journal, a scarf, and other cool stuff. For anyone thinking about sending a package, just want to let you know that I have everything I could possibly need. But if you still would like to help out, please consider making a donation to the Woman’s Conference so the project can take place as planned!  https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=693-389

Christmas abroad, New Years in Togo

It’s the beginning of a new year, and my eighth month in Togo. I’ve been up to a lot these past months—graduating college, moving to Togo, two-month training, and five months at post as a health volunteer. I really appreciated the chance to see my friends and family over the holidays. I saw my parents for Christmas, and we spent a week enjoying each others company, eating yummy food, and playing lots of Settlers of Catan (and other games). There was so much to talk about, like all the things about Togo that I don’t have time or space to write about on my blog!

When I left Togo, I half expected to feel culture shock upon entering the developed world. The airport alone is full of modern, “fancy” stuff like flushing toilets, real drip coffee, ice cream, unlimited food, escalators, and other modern conveniences. Since I had three hours before my parents arrived, I had some Ha-gen-Daaz ice cream right off the plane!

I didn’t feel culture shock, as in oh now how do I use a flushing toilet again!?, but it is hard to believe that two places like Spain and Togo can exist on the same planet. The whole time I was in Spain, I felt that I had somehow imagined or dreamt the past few months in Togo. And when I returned to Togo, it seemed like I had dreamt my vacation with my parents.

It was very nice to eat nice food, go shopping, stroll down the pretty streets of southern Spain, and stay in a real hotel room. After being in Togo, I feel like I appreciate all of these things that I might have otherwise taken for granted. Nothing in Spain seemed overly inefficient since I had already tested the limits of my patience in a Togolese bush taxi. My parents’ suitcases didn’t make their flight, but I was surprised the baggage eventually turned up unopened and damage-free.

My mom drove a rental car for our day trips along the Mediterranean coast, which felt like heaven after being squeezed in a nearly broken down 11-seat van. We visited caves, attempted to go geo-cacheing, and visited tiny, picture-perfect Andalucian “villages” (more like luxurious towns now that I think about it!). I was the navigator, for the most part successfully, so I go to sit shotgun.

Spending Christmas with my parents was fun, but leaving them was not so fun. We flew to CDG in Paris together, then I tried to go with them to the gate but I had a boarding pass for a different area. We said goodbye very hurriedly, and for the first time I didn’t want to go back to Togo.

I have always understood the hardships of living in Togo, but I never explicitly wanted to leave. Life here is an adventure, and I’m having fun the whole way. But leaving beautiful, “civilized” Spain for 20 months in Togo was not as easy as I initially assumed it would be. I got on my plane for Lome (after eating some macaroons and coffee in the Paris airport), waited at the gate with groups of excited “voluntourists” and Togolese returning home, and flew back to Togo. When I got off the plane, there was so much humidity that it fogged up my glasses.

By the next morning, I had already started readjusting to life in Togo: the weather, the crowded streets of Lome, the annoying kids (and adults) shouting yovo, yovo, and the lack of variety in food. But I was also with friends—Peace Corps friends, my host family in Gbatope—and I had a great New Years with both groups of people. (Side note: finally saw the new and last Harry Potter movie, yay!) I shared some chocolate with my host family, which they loved:

My work partners are anxious and ready to start working on new projects—working in the schools, with the women’s groups, baby weighing in other villages, and a regional women’s conference to empower and build confidence for Togolese women. Going back to my village will also require readjusting, but I think I am more than up for the challenge!

This year, I will try to write more about what day to day life is like in Togo, since many people tell me they still can’t imagine living in Africa I’ll also take more pictures of things I’ve grown to take for granted, like water in plastic bags, yummy street food, and the ubiquitous tiny stores called boutiques.

I am so thankful for everyone’s support—letters, phone calls, and packages—you have no idea how much they mean to me! I keep an envelope with all of the letters, notes, and postcards that I have received. If you want a letter from me (trust me, I have lots of time for lengthy letter writing), then just send me your address!