Peace Corps Journals

27 days ago

This Tuesday, Togo celebrated their annual labor day, a derivative of the French holiday "Première May," also known as "May day." It was a spectacular event talked up by everyone all over town (the ladies at the post, the fruit vendors, the man who owns the boutique by my house, and even the annoying moto taxi drivers), and everyone asked me almost the same question "Tu vas fêter bien?" (Translation: Are you going to party well?) The day started off with what I can only describe as the one of the few well organized large scale event I've ever seen in Togo (even though it started 2 hours late…); a parade through the town center all the way to the outskirts of the city to the Mayor's office. My trusty companion/side-kick/site-mate Rebekah and I made our way out early to our usual hang out spot, a café right by the main road that runs through town to await the much-anticipated parade. After a while of waiting, we started to doubt what everyone was telling us and scoffed at the idea of an actual organized parade. But then, in the distance I heard the unmistakable noise of brass instruments, being badly played I might add, and then saw the first group of Togoelse to walk by. We jumped up, threw a wad of cash at the waitress to cover the cost of our morning breakfast, and ran out to the main road to get a good view. In retrospect, we didn't really need to hurry, the parade was inching along at a glacial pace and we were the only real spectators. As is customary for our lives here in Togo, we were much more the focus of the parades' participants attention than they were for us. People were shouting and waving at us standing on the side of the road and taking pictures of us with their camera phones. I quickly coined the term "reverse parade" as it was most obviously an inverse of what an actual parade is. In many ways, I feel that everyday is a reverse parade, but that's a different qualm I have with living here – and not one I really care to discuss at length. Even still, it was quite an event as probably over a thousand people walked past carrying the banners of their respective organizations/companies. My favorite "float" was the water company who what cleverly created a closed loop water pump in the bed of the truck and had someone standing continuously pumping water into a cistern – it was pretty neat, I gotta say. Afterwards, we went back to my house, made some banana bread, and hung out. All in all, a pretty good "fête." Things are going splendidly here in Togo and I must say that the past 3 months have been the most productive in terms of my work and integration. I attribute this to many things, but mainly a higher level of comfort I now have communicating in French. I've also been pushing a lot to get projects going and thanks to the relationships I've forged with my Togolese counterparts, I have had much success collaborating with some very capable people. In fact, I credit most of my success these past three months to them. My first large project was the Men's Health and Wellness trainings that I organized throughout my city. The project was based on a philosophy called "Men as Partners" which focuses on educating men to see the inequalities between the genders and to empower them to make positive decisions to advance their well being and that of their communities. The program follows an "ecological model" which is really just a fancy way of saying that the activities encourages the participants to draw their own conclusions on different issues presented to them as problems in their society. Within the realm of gender equality/equity, sexual health/reproduction, violence, communication, and drug use, the 40 men that received the training were encouraged to re-examine the status quo and determine for themselves if their position in society as men could do anything to address the issues. In conjunction with the Red Cross, my two counterparts and I trained eight Red Cross volunteers in how to facilitate the MAP (Men as partners) sessions and over the course of two weeks we held four separate trainings, each within the communities lasting for 4 days each. I would say that I felt the project was most successful in that the participants seemed motivated to share the information with their communities, and to inform other men of their responsibilities in the Togolese patriarchal society to promote change. Participants at every training thanked me at the end for giving them a new way of looking at their lives and I was surprised by how strongly some men felt about the topics we discussed. One man at the end of the last training came up to me and told me that after the training, he felt that gender inequity in terms of access to education was the biggest obstacle to Togo's development. He said that because he loves his country he would send each of his 3 daughters to school and ensure that all of them finished high school. I was very taken aback by this statement mostly due to the fact that this same participant who indirectly supported the statement on the first day that "men are smarter than women." It was a fantastic first project and it gave me a lot of experience with working with HCNs (host country nationals), managing a budget (it was a USAID funded project), and working on developing capacities at the community level. Over the next three months, the men in each group (four total) will carry out activities within their community and in September I will be doing follow-up interviews to assess their progress and whether or not the MAP philosophy made any difference in their lives. In all honesty, I'm not sure if I'll see the tangible results of this project during my service, but when considering the steps of behavior change, and getting people to implement things they learn, I feel that almost all 40 men made remarkable strides. Other fun work activities that I've been doing include working with 12 Togolese NGO representatives teaching them basic Microsoft Word during an 3 day NGO conference organized by fellow volunteers; sharing enriched porridge practices with the participants at a well-being fair organized by a fellow volunteer; continuing my work with a youth club and mothers club at an NGO that supports people living with/affected by HIV; and starting a moringa garden at the Red Cross office in my town. (Moringa is a tree known as the "miracle tree" all over Africa for having amazing properties such as a high protein/vitamin content in the leaves in addition to nearly 8 other uses. A big part of the Peace Corps does in Africa is teaching people how to grow and use this awesome plant.) Approaching the year mark in my service (I know, when did that happen?!) has been good for many reasons, but mainly because I feel that I have developed some solid relationships with Togoelse and Americans alike, pushed myself a little to do things I'm not 100% comfortable with, and because I've learned how to "live" here and make myself happy. The other day I made an amazing chicken pot pie and brownies using all local ingredients, and it was DELICIOUS. I am always missing my friends and family back home and sometimes I get down on myself for not communicating as much with them as I probably should, but I'm trying. I know these blogs don't come as regularly as they should, and I'm working on it. I also wanted to give a quick shout-out to any incoming PCVs who may or may not be reading this blog since it's linked to the Peace Corps blog website (personally I couldn't get enough of volunteers' blogs before I came to country. I'm still awkwardly dropping facts that I read on peoples' blogs to them…it's a bit of awkward at times, ha ha!) This experience is an absolute roller coaster, so just be prepared for it to be awesome and ridiculously ridiculous (e.g. reverse parade, green oranges, etc.) all at the same time. Please don't worry about what to pack, just bring what will make you happy. With everything else, you can manage here. My prized possessions from home: non-stick saucepan and hair products. Eat a turkey sandwich for me before you come, please! Love, Ryan