January 31, 2010
Dear Friends and Family:
Thank you for your incredible generosity and open heartedness in your support of Justine’s operation. I am attaching the blog post from early December that I posted as a thank you to all of you.
Justine finally had her surgery on December 21, 2009. She left village on Saturday the 19th [...]
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Update on Justine’s surgery
Went to hospital in Afagnan, Simon and I and Vialley (who we asked to come stay at the hospital with Justine since Simon and I are not free to do so) waited for SIX HOURS , then Justine got handed a piece of paper and was told that she needed to go [...]
Justine’s surgery is (tentatively) scheduled for the 15th, in Afagnanyan which is 2 hours on a moto, several hours by taxi , away. She will probably be there 5 -7 days before coming home.
Simon and Justine’s Thanks (seconded by me)
I cannot write too much about the day I told Justine about the money. Even thinking about this day reminds me too much of the emotion in her eyes and this is a delicate memory on which I cannot dwell too much. The following lines must suffice:
“Justine! We found [...]
My COS date is December 29 , 2009 !!
Thank you to everyone who has sent packages , letters, etc. While I would never tell you NOT to send anything, keep my COS date in mind . The things that I will continue to need are batteries and eating stuff, but everything else [...]
Meet Zidane and Meninha, my two Mistakes as I’ve christened them.
Zidane is the black male and Meninha is the beige female.
Zidane was an impulse buy for which I blame Justine entirely ; she saw me playing with him and said “ I had no idea you liked puppies this much, just go ahead and buy [...]
Photos (and lots of them!) of this trip can be found at the normal link!
[Note: Because I have already spent two days in Grand Popo and Ouidah, I do not talk very much about them here. This is not to say that we did not have a great time relaxing on the beach!]
The last [...]
I’m uploading the photos from Camp Espoir 2009 right now ! Check them out at the normal link under “July ‘09 -mainly Camp Espoir”
Communication Problems
So a lot of you have probably figured out that communicating with me has been difficult lately. This is because 1) the wireless internet in the PC lounge has not been working ; 2) the electricity has been getting cut all day in Vogan so when I go there I can’t use the internet; [...]
Small Blessings
Don’t forget new photos are up
“Empowering Young Women to Initiate Change” was a training I found online at the YWCA that I did over the course of 4 days in June at the collège with all the girls in 4eme (9th grade?). There were 42 girls, although we lost about half of those [...]
New albums are posted:
1) Becka’s Going Away Party
2) My 25th Birthday Party
3) Training: Empowering Young Women to Initiate Change (a 4 day seminar I did at the middle school in June)
So as I mentioned, photos from Benin are up at the usual site or you can click here .
Benin was great. I would love to go back there and explore more (particularly the park in the north where you can go on safari and see animals!)
Crossing the border was a little [...]
There are photos from Benin at the normal site now posted
Blog Post
Photos: May 2009
A new photo album has been added, called “May 2009” . It is mainly of the First of May Fete (Workers’ Holiday), but also has pictures of kids playing American football and baseball at the collège ….
World Map Project
The World Map mural is DONE. You can see photos at the [...]
PHOTOS : 3 new albums are up!
–World Map Project
–Easter 2009
–Daily Life 2009
Next Friday is 1st May so it is a holiday so I will not be in Vogan, so a new blog post won’t happen till AFTER that.
World Map
The next time I’m in Lome I hope to post photos of the World Map Mural project at the collège. The map is halfway done, despite the kids’ having first badly measured the grid (meaning we had to erase the entire thing), and then not paying attention to where they were drawing (hence [...]
Blog post
The rains are back, little by little, and the whole village has been waiting them with bated breath (reminds me of the opening scene in the film Lagaan) so that they can plant corn… We had one big rain last week , and, as I type this in Vogan before going to the internet [...]
New photos are up, at the regular link; the album is called “February 2009″ and has pictures of Fika and the festival at the lake…
The goat has been sick for a while – monts and months, with bony hips that stick out showing the hollowness of his sides, and a tumor-like growth as big as his head that hangs from the underside of his belly.
« You know, » Kokoutsé said to Bogavi in Ewe, then translating for my [...]
Requiem
And then lying in the darkness, surrounded by the mosquito net through
which was seeping the African night, the open window letting in the
loudness fo the quiet hour, I remembered what I had forgotten – how in
the utter stillness you can feel the cold reality of your solitude
penetrating to your bones. That this is the [...]
A Christmas Story: Part I
“Justine,” I announced a week before Christmas, “I have a great idea!”
Justine put down her sewing and looked at me expectantly, albeit with an obviously wary suspension of judgment. She’d heard me say these words before, always pronounced with a dramatic flourish of arms and a deeply felt conviction in [...]
In America!!! Blog posts (including Christmas) coming soon…. I’m on vacation for a month!
Christmas photos are uploaded!! It is the album titled “Christmas in Village 2008″.
And another album is up! It’s titled Swear In 08 (the new gee / nrm stage)
Another photo album has been posted : It is the one that starts with “Taking Akou to the beach”… It has Togoville pilgrimage and the training in Vogan, too, among others…
My Work in Elementary Schools: Dokitaviwo
Sophia ordered for me the book “Child to Child Resource Book” (Activity Sheets) and, along with ‘Helping Health Workers Learn”, it’s become my Bible. I use its ideas twice a week in two different primary schools. The first school (Apegnigbe) only has about 150 students so I tend to work [...]
So Antonia asked for a christmas list so here it is… as always I’m not posting to say you “should” send me this stuff, it’s just she asked me to put some ideas on my blog. It’s very hard to think of things I want because it’s hard to even think what my options are [...]
So really quickly I came into Lome for the elections and we all ended up going over to our Country Director’s house who was amazing and let us watch CNN alll night long (9pm to 5am, Togo time! We were so tired!) and it was awesoommme!!!!!!!!!!!
There is a storm coming. There’s no point in me trying to go to bed now since it will just wake me up, as it did last night. The rains are back — la petite saison des pluies – and in some ways they seem to be more frequent than during la grande saison. Last [...]
A new photo album is up (it’s called Swear-In 08, Justine’s Birthday, and fields…) ! Check it out at the normal link.
Off to Agou to help plan stage for GEE and NRM ‘08 - I’m a PCV trainer!
Click on image or go here to see more photos
Betrayals
I used to be in love with the lake. But it all ended this week, leaving me hurt, confused, and angry, like any ending to a relationship.
Seva-Tonu is the fifth quartier of Sevagan (‘tonu’ is Ewe for lake), but now the sand where I stood [...]
Another photo album is up: Camp Espoir (for children affected by or infected by HIV/AIDS), and a small collection of photos of apprentices and girls soccer team.
Also, thank you everyone for your birthday packages, I really loved everything
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