I’ve been back in Togo for about a week now and I’ll admit coming back from America wasn’t the easiest thing. When I arrived in my village and entered my house with fresh, American eyes, I couldn’t really believe that this is where I’d lived for over a year. The floor was covered in dust, cobwebs were everywhere, and the space seemed somehow smaller. Waking up the following morning to the myriad of noises that begin each day at about 5am in my Togolese village (roosters crowing, guinea fowl on my tin roof, sweeping, babies crying, loud Anofo greetings, pots clanging, and more), I definitely thought to myself: not this again. However, I got myself out of bed, made some breakfast, greeted my host family, and biked to Mango to pick up food and supplies at the market. Once I was out biking, I started to feel better. It was nice to be getting exercise after days of travel, the women I buy from at the market all greeted me warmly and enthusiastically, and by the time I was heading back to Magna, things started to feel normal again. That day, I had given money to one of my host moms to buy food at the market for my favorite Togolese meal (beans and gari) and so at night, lit up by a full moon, I sat around with my host family eating with my hands from a communal bowl and had that reassuring feeling that everything was going to be alright.

Overall, my trip home was filled with that same feeling of reassurance. After being away for 15 months, America seemed like a far-away dreamland that I wasn’t really a part of anymore. Landing in JFK made my stomach flip and I had to hold back tears while getting my passport stamped. While waiting for my connecting flight to Boston, I stood in front of the menu of one of the Delta terminal’s 3 Starbucks for about 15 minutes before deciding on a pumpkin latte just because it sounded Christmasy, American, and too fancy for Togo. Arriving back to my home in Brookline was like living out one of the many dreams I had of coming home and my first hot shower was glorious. Seeing friends and family over the next 3 weeks was so great and the best part was how normal it was to see everyone, like I had only been gone a month, not 15. Overall, it was way easier than I had expected to just jump back into my American life. It was reassuring that after so long I could come home and be so at ease. After a few days, Togo seemed so far away and I could understand why returned volunteers always say that after being home a short time their Peace Corps service starts to feel like the dream. Just like living in Togo gave me a new perspective on life in America, being at home gave me a new perspective on my Peace Corps service. In Peace Corps, the only other Americans you really interact with are other Peace Corps Volunteers. This causes us to lose site of the uniqueness of what we’re doing and instead we just compare ourselves to each other and feel frustrated that we aren’t integrating enough into our communities or working hard enough to pursue projects. After talking to my friends about their lives and various reasons for dissatisfaction with their jobs and having to explain my own life and work, I appreciated more being a Peace Corps Volunteer and having the freedom and autonomy to pursue whatever I’m interested in. Although I’ve had many failures, frustrations, and days of inaction, I have been involved in projects that I’ve learned a lot from and am proud of (primarily my work with the Pathways scholarship program and on the girl’s empowerment camp in Mango- I also finally got funding for my village well project, which, when completed, will be a big accomplishment). So, while leaving home was sad, I was able to come back to Togo reassured that my life in America is still there for me and that I do have projects and people I care about enough here in Togo to give me a good reason to come back for these last 10 months.

So, here I am, back in Togo. Once again, I’m sweaty, dirty, and wearing an outfit made from fabric of clashing colors and patterns that would make me look like a clown in America. Jeeves, thankfully, did well during my absence and we have been playing, cuddling, and going on runs and walks since I got back. Apparently, he went on a bit of a hunger strike the first days I was gone because my host family wasn’t putting milk powder in his food like I do, but he got over being spoiled and now is back to gulfing down plain pate (the Togolese corn-based staple) like a normal village dog. My host family was excited for their gifts. I distributed earrings, candy, calendars, and printed pictures I’d taken of the family. The calendars were the biggest hit, they had scenic pictures from America and around the world that my host dad had me explain to him in detail, and they have already been mounted on the mud walls of the various compound huts. I also brought back some French-English dictionaries for students I work with. About 2 months ago, I was helping a student with his English homework and when he was struggling with words, I told him he should look them up in a dictionary. However, the second I said it, I realized that, of course, he probably didn’t have a dictionary since Togolese schools don’t give out books and most students can’t afford them. This was, in fact, the case. I can’t imagine trying to learn another language without having a means to look up words and translations, so I brought back some French-English dictionaries and the students were thrilled.

Otherwise, things are basically the same here. Almost all the crops have been harvested; it seems like only cotton remains to be picked. Harmattan is still here, so, although it’s still hot during the day, I’m able to sleep well at night with temperatures in the 60s. Hot season will be here in about a month and a half, which I’m dreading, but for now, I’m trying to enjoy being somewhat comfortable during the day. In the next few months, we’ll be constructing a new well in the village and I will also be participating in a women’s empowerment conference for the region where I, along with several other volunteers, will organize trainings for women from various villages on nutrition, money-management, income generating activities, sexual health, and a variety of other topics that promote healthy lifestyles. This project actually still needs funding, so if you’re interested, you can donate through this link: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=693-389. This weekend my good friend Molly, who is a PCV in Morocco, is visiting me, so that’s another thing I’m looking forward to! Other than that, I’m just getting back into the slow pace of life here after my busy trip home. It was nice seeing so many of you in the States and I hope that winter actually brings snow to you soon (at least for those of you who want it)!

Up here in Savannes, harmattan is starting. Where last month the ground was covered in tall, green grass or miles of crops, there is now brown, dusty ground and black earth where the burning of fields has begun. Everyone in my village is busy harvesting crops and with everyone gone from the compound during the day, I can enjoy some quiet afternoons. Whereas a month ago, it took all day for clothes to dry, it now takes an hour. The last rain fell over a month ago and the ground won’t feel another drop of moisture until next April or May. It’s finally a bit cooler at night and it’s possible to sleep curled up under a sheet as opposed to being forced to lie splayed out naked in a starfish position in the hopes of getting any sleep at all like during the rest of the year. The bugs are also all dying off; I keep finding dried up spider carcasses around my house. This is very nice, because it means I can sit actually sit outside without being swarmed by flies. Harmattan also marks a full year that I’ve lived at post. Last week, I was down in Lome for the swearing-in of new volunteers and to say goodbye to those COSing (Close of Service aka successfully completing service and going home). The week brought lots of flashbacks to my own swear-in last year and, although it’s exciting to have new volunteers and officially be a second year PCV, it was sad to say goodbye to so many good friends who were headed back to America.

old, current, and new Savanners at swear-in

Luckily, my own pending trip home has made it easier to watch good friends make their way back to the States. In about 3 weeks, I’ll be landing back in the U.S. for vacation. It’ll have been 15 months since I’ve set foot on American soil and I’ve never been more excited to be going home. As Peace Corps volunteers, we all obviously had a strong desire to leave the U.S. behind and most of us were very critical of the States, leading us to seek satisfaction abroad. However, after actually living abroad as a volunteer, most of us come to have a deep, deep appreciation of America and home. I fall into this category. Of course, I’m excited for all the obvious things: good, easily accessible food, constant electricity, running water, hot showers, nice, paved roads, etc. However, I’m most excited to just be where I’m from, where I fit in, where I understand what is being said around me, and where I’m near so many of the people who are most important to me.

In Peace Corps, we constantly talk about “integration.” It’s a buzzword that we are supposed to be constantly striving for. Volunteers do manage to live more like local people, eat more local food, speak more local language, and have more local friends compared to other expats. However, being white and American, it’s pretty impossible to ever truly fit in and be completely “integrated.” After living at my site for a year, there are individuals who treat me more normally, who I feel comfortable around, and who I can have good conversations with. I’m always referring back to my host dad, because he really has made my experience and has dulled feelings of being uncomfortable and out of place. He explains things that are happening in village when I don’t understand and he actually gets why I don’t like being called “batule.” Every local language anywhere I’ve been in Africa has a word for “white person.” In Niger, it was anasara, in Botswana it was makoa, in the south of Togo, it’s yovo, and by me it’s batule. Having any of these words yelled at you wherever you go drives even the most patient volunteer a little crazy. When I take the time to explain to people that I don’t like being called batule, the first reaction is usually, “but that’s what you are.” I then usually say, but it’s not my name, it makes me seem like I don’t belong and like I’m not an individual, and wouldn’t it bother you if you came to America and every place you went people pointed and yelled “black person, black person.” After this, some adults just laugh at me but others do start to understand. Kids are a lost cause, they just look back with a sheepish smile and confused look and sometimes whisper batule again. My host dad is one of the rare types who I never even had to explain this to, he just got it. Whenever he hears someone call me batule, he gets mad, and yells at them saying, “don’t call her batule; her name is Samira.” Of course, most people are not my host dad and he isn’t there to stick up for me wherever I go. In larger towns, like Mango, there is no hope of getting people to stop. Whether biking, walking, or riding on the back of a moto, I will inevitably hear the batule chant, which, when I hear it, causes the same physical reaction in me as when you hear nails on a chalkboard. However, what’s most disheartening is hearing it in my village where everyone does know my name and where I’ve lived for the past year. Of course, it is just the children who still chant in Magna, but I’ve told these kids a million times in Anofo, “Buferen ma batule, Buferen Samira” (my name is not batule, my name is Samira). Still, almost every time I leave my house, walking on some narrow path in my village through rows of corn, I hear from the bushes, from the compound in the distance, or from a nearby tree, “Batule! Batule!” Even if it’s not batule, it’s something repeated loudly (Samira! Samira! or Bonjour! Bonjour!) until I’m no longer in view and considering how many children there are, I’m always in view of a child. This constant attention and reinforcement of the fact that you don’t fit in gets exhausting and is probably what is hardest for me living here and what makes me most excited to have a little break and vacation to where I won’t be such an object of attention.

Having the chance to travel home during my service just serves as another reminder of how fortunate I am and how many opportunities I have compared to the people I live with in Magna. Most of the women in my village have never been beyond the Mango market, which is just 3 km away. My host Dad is probably one of the most well-traveled people in my village. He has been to Lome a couple times, crossed into Ghana (25km away), and travelled all the way to Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. Recently, some of the students I work with informed me, when I was speaking optimistically about how they would go on to university, that no student from Magna since the primary school was built 30 years ago has ever passed the BAC and gone to university. A few fortunate students were sent to larger towns with extended family and they may have been able to reach the university level, but no one living in Magna from primary school through high school has ever gone to one of Togo’s two universities. This is due to a variety of factors: farm work, long distances from school, lack of electricity, lack of resources, uneducated parents, etc, but I was still surprised that no one had made it. I’m hoping one of the students I work with, Alexis, will break this trend, but so far, kids born in Magna tend to stay in Magna. In general, our mobility as volunteers is one of the biggest things that differentiates our lifestyle from the Togolese around us. By American standards, our “living allowance” (about $300 a month) is nothing, but in Togo, where the per capita GDP is $900, it goes a long way and means that we are able to make that bimonthly trip to our regional capital or travel down to Lome once every couple months. Each of these trips would be a big event for any individual in my host family, whose yearly crop sales total about $600, a fact my host dad recently shared with me when discussing his prospects for this year’s harvest. So, if travelling an hour and a half to Dapaong is viewed as a large production, you can imagine how people react to the fact that I’m going to America. Many volunteers going home for vacation get bombarded with requests for cell phones, computers, etc, but, once again, my host dad has shown how great he is. He has not asked for anything and has just seemed genuinely excited that I get to see my family. As the patriarch of his extended family, he is constantly hosting relatives who have left Magna and he understands the importance of me seeing mine. Of course, I will bring back lots of goodies for my host family, but it’s nice not to be pressured or asked. Anyways, point being, I am so appreciative that I have the ability to travel and not be stuck in one place for my life.

So, to wrap things up, in case you couldn’t tell, I can’t wait to be home. Since it’s just for vacation, I get to absorb and enjoy all the things I’ve missed and come to appreciate without having to adjust to the more pressure filled, fast paced life that comes with living in America and that I imagine will be the hardest thing to adjust to when I go home for good. I’m excited for creature comforts, but mostly to be back in a place where I blend in and am not a constant subject of attention. Hopefully the break will rejuvenate me, recharge my batteries, and leave me ready to come back and finish up my service.

Just to give you a sense of what it takes to get from a small village in northern Togo to a bustling city in the States, here are the stages of my trip from Magna to Boston:

Dec 11th:

10 minute moto ride from Magna to Mango

10 hour bus ride, on a pothole filled, body jarring road, to Lome

Dec 12th:

10 minute taxi ride to the Ghanaian border

3 hour bus ride on a less pothole filled road to Accra

15 minute taxi ride to the airport

11 hour flight from Accra to NYC

Dec 13th:

2 hour flight from NYC to Boston!!

It will be a long trip, but it’s also pretty amazing that it will only take about 48 hours to go through such an incredible change in climate, culture, development level, language, etc. So, that’s all for now. I hope to see many of you next month when I’m home!!

It’s now early October; the leaves should be changing at home and here in Togo rainy season is winding down and soon it will be time for harmattan once again. This also marks the half way point in my service. A year ago, it seemed like I had an infinite amount of time ahead of me in the Peace Corps, but recently time has started to really pick up and in about a year from now, I’ll be heading back to the U.S. to actually live, not just visit. The past year has been full of extreme ups and downs. I’d be lying if I said it was easy or that I transitioned smoothly to feeling at home here. I’ve been frustrated, homesick, impatient, and often times disappointed in myself. I could write a blog all about the negative things: various sicknesses, gross latrines, pests I’ve had to kill, uncomfortable heat, squished bush taxi rides, feeling out of place, harassment from men, and more. However, despite the negatives, Peace Corps has also come with lots of high points. It’s been a challenge, but that’s why I came in the first place, and, after a little over a year, I can genuinely say I’m happy I came and that being a Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo is really a pretty cool job. So, in the spirit of positivity, I’m going to list some of the high points from the first half of my service here in Togo.

1. Girls’s Empowerment Projects: Although I’m not officially a “Girl’s Education and Empowerment” volunteer, I’ve become involved in projects within the GEE sector. I already wrote a whole blog about Camp Etoiles du Nord, the life skills and career development camp we held for middle school girls in Mango, but it really was one of the best things I did this past year. The same month as camp, I also organized a conference for the scholars of the Pathways program, which provides scholarships to female students in Togo. The conference was very similar to camp, with the main difference being that each scholar brought a mentor with her. The mentors attended sessions to help them plan out how they would effectively help their scholar and ensure that she continued to do well in school. Like at the camp in Mango, we also had model women come to speak at the conference and again I really enjoyed spending time with motivated professional Togolese women. If you want to see pictures from the conference and get more information about Pathways (and maybe donate!!), you can look at their website: www.pathwaystogo.org

2. Working with returned camp participants: During the summer, Peace Corps volunteers hold multiple national camps and volunteers are asked to send youth from their villages to the camps. I sent a couple students to a life skills camp and they came back incredibly excited and motivated to do trainings in Magna on what they learned. The students are Mossi, whose 18, and Alexis, whose 15, and I’ve really enjoyed working with them since they returned from Camp UNITE. They’re on board with many Peace Corps ideas (gender equity, the importance of education, etc) and I’m able to have good conversations with them about the problems facing Magna. They’ve conducted a few trainings already and they have been helping the girls from my village (Lafimatou and Alimatou), who went to Camp Etoiles du Nord and who are slightly younger and more shy, to participate in trainings and gain confidence with public speaking.

3. My host family: I continue to love my host family. My host dad is always ready to chat whenever I’m bored and although I have difficulty communicating with his two wives, who don’t speak French, I still feel comfortable around them and we can laugh at things together. For example, although slightly horrified, I laughed alongside my host moms when a couple weeks ago my host brother was chasing my 2 year old host sister around the compound with a machete and pretending he was going to cut off her thumb if she didn’t stop sucking it. This might be considered child abuse at home, but here it was just playful fun that left the whole family, minus the little girl (Zakia) who was a bit traumatized, laughing hysterically.

4. Jeeves: Jeeves, my wonderful dog, continues to be a highlight. When I’m in Magna, he follows me everywhere. We go on walks and runs together and everyone in my village now knows him by name. Having a dog to keep you company is really great here and takes the sting out of many lonely moments. My host family also likes him, as much as Togolese people can like a dog, and when I’m not around, Jeeves follows my host dad around instead.

5. Peace Corps friends: In Togo, there are about 100 volunteers, and, as you might imagine, many of us become really close. I have some really, really great friends here in Togo and that helps to make everything better. We’re all going through this crazy experience together and with friends it’s easier to see the comedic value of even the most frustrating situations.

6. Visitors: I’ve had two visitors since arriving in Togo. Nick came in February and just two days ago my Dad left after a two week visit. Having visitors, although a bit stressful, is great. To start, at least with my Dad’s recent visit, I got to eat out at some of Togo’s fine dining, stay in a nicer quality of hotel (aka with hot water and air conditioning), and rent out cars for travel so as to avoid waiting around and being squished with 8 people in a 5-seat car. It’s also great for people from home to see my life here and meet the people. My host family was ecstatic when both Nick and my Dad came. Dad brought Boston-themed hats and shirts for my host family so now everyone is walking around representing either BU, the Bruins, the Red Sox, or the Celtics. It’s interesting also to see Togo through fresh eyes. When you live here, you get used to things, and stop noticing a lot of what is strange, different, and even difficult compared to life in the U.S. It’s good to be reminded of what is interesting, but also hard to be reminded of what about life really is difficult here, because it can make you homesick.

7. The Accra Half-marathon: Anyone who knows me from back home knows that I was never really a runner. Therefore, I was just as surprised as many of my friends when I decided to train for the half-marathon in Accra, Ghana. However, as a Peace Corps volunteer, I definitely had enough free time to train and I wanted a personal goal to aim for since work goals can be so hard to accomplish here. Therefore, last April, I decided to go for it and train. 2 weeks ago, after months of training on dirt roads, early in the morning to beat the heat, and with several breaks due to sickness or travel, myself and 19 other volunteers and friends of volunteers ran either the full or half marathon. It was definitely a West African marathon: hot, disorganized, and ridiculous. It started late, many water stations ran out of water, there were no bathrooms at the starting line or along the course, the streets weren’t closed so we were literally running through traffic, and we also had to run through several active markets, bustling with people. However, I managed to run the whole thing and at the finish line Dad was waiting for me. Despite some really painful moments, it was a great experience and I definitely want to try running a nice, organized, American half-marathon during a cool part of the year.

8. Freedom: As a Peace Corps volunteer, you have a lot of freedom to design your own schedule. With the exception of a few trainings scattered throughout your service, there is no structure set for you. Coming from America, where strict schedules, planned out days, and structure reigns, this can be very disconcerting at first. However, once you get used to it, it can be really nice. Each day is up to me. I decide what work to do and when to do it. If I want to read a good book all day on a Wednesday, I can. If I want to take a nap from 3-4pm on a Thursday, that’s fine. If I’m feeling antsy and want to go for a bike ride at 9am on a Monday, I can do that too. With all the freedom, it’s easy to feel misguided and uprooted, but once you start to get involved in projects, you set your own guidance and you begin to feel less aimless and more appreciative of the freedom.

So, there it is, a summary of some of the high points of my first year. I did work on other projects and do other enjoyable things, but those listed are what stand out the most right now. I know the second half of my service is going to go by at a much faster rate than the first and I already have an idea of the projects that I’ll be doing in the coming year. For example, I’ll be continuing work with Pathways, we will run Camp Etoiles du Nord next year, and I’m currently waiting for the funds to come in for a well project that was approved and that will take place next year. Of course, what I’m most excited for right now is my 3 week trip home in December. I’m so happy that I’ll be able to spend Christmas at home, experience some snow and cold weather, enjoy the amenities and comforts of America, and, most of all, see many of the people I love back in the States.

Last night one of the women in my compound gave birth. The woman, Miamuna, is married to one of the many brothers of my host father. He is an electrician and they live together in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. When I first arrived in my village, Miamuna was here visiting. She was there for my first month before heading back to Burkina Faso. I really liked having her around because she speaks French and was very patient with my many questions. I was sad to see her go last December, but was excited when I arrived back to my village, after a trip down to Lome, in June and she was sitting there in my compound. When she stood up, I noticed she was pregnant, which explained why she was back to visit so soon. Since she has no extended family in Ouagadougou, there was no one to help her out throughout her pregnancy and after the birth, so she came back to Magna to be surrounded by women in her husband’s family who could support her.

Throughout the past few months, I’ve been asking Miamuna if she’s been going to the hospital for checkups and I verified multiple times that she planned to have the baby at the Mango hospital. The Mango hospital is only about 3km away from Magna and it takes about 5-10 minutes to get there on a moto. I’ve written about the hospital in previous blogs, so you know it’s definitely not a nice hospital and not somewhere I would want to have any medical treatment done, but still, it is a hospital with trained doctors and nurses, medical equipment, medicine, electricity, running water, and some level of sanitation- all of which are not available in my village. I had heard that many women in Magna still don’t go to Mango to give birth, even though it’s so close, so I kept posing questions to Miamuna to make sure she was planning to go to the hospital when the time came. Since I’ve read the statistics on maternal mortality in the developing world, I was understandably concerned about how Miamuna was approaching her pregnancy and childbirth. However, I was assured that the plan was to go to the hospital, which made me feel more at ease.

The past few day, it’s been pretty clear that Miamuna’s water could break at any moment. Therefore, last night, when I was woken up by the sound of my host dad’s moto at about 11pm, I assumed that he was taking Miamuna to the hospital to have the baby and I fell back asleep. At 1am, my host dad woke me up again, but this time he was calling my name at my door. When I responded, he said to come outside to see Miamuna and the baby. I was surprised that she had already come back from the hospital with the baby and when I expressed this, he explained that no, she was actually having the baby at that moment. He pointed to the room of his second wife and told me to go inside, because men aren’t allowed to. I was confused and said, “she’s having the baby HERE, why isn’t she at the hospital?”. He responded, telling me not worry because “a women is here to help who has her card.” What he meant was a local women who had received some sort of midwife training (and therefore had some card to prove it) was inside helping out. When I heard the moto a couple hours earlier, it was to go pick up the midwife from a nearby compound, not to bring Miamuna to the hospital. Anyways, I entered the room, which was dimly lit by a flashlight hanging from the wall. Inside were a few kids, my two host moms, my host grandma, the village midwife, and Miamuna. I recognized the village midwife as one of the old ladies that sometimes stops by my compound. Previously, I had asked around and heard there was a village woman trained to help with childbirth, but I had no idea it was this woman. Miamuna was lying naked on her back on the cement floor with no sheet, blanket, or pillow. The midwife had her hands inside her, so I couldn’t tell for a second if the baby was already born, but then I looked in the corner of the room that possessed a bundle of pagne (the fabric women wrap themselves in) and saw there was a little baby boy inside. I was motioned to sit next to the baby and grandma on the floor. The midwife was currently easing out the placenta, which was then put in a pot on the floor. There was blood all over the floor and once the placenta was removed, the midwife, with the help of my host moms, began to wipe it up with more pagne. After this was over, I was glad to see the midwife mixed a little bleach with water and used it to wipe down the floor some more. She then tied a pagne around Miamuna to absorb further blood and then used a razor to cut off some of the umbilical cord still attached to the baby. After this was over, Miamuna was made to sit up and eat a little food before she was led to her room and allowed to sleep along with her baby. The midwife packed up her things (consisting of a plastic container with gauze, tape, bleach, gloves, and a razor) and hopped on my host dad’s moto for a ride home. Then, everyone else went back to bed and it was all over.

Luckily, there were no problems with Miamuna’s labor and both she and the baby came out of it alive and healthy. However, I’m still baffled that they didn’t want to drive the 10 minutes on my host dad’s moto to get to the Mango hospital like they had planned. Although the village midwife did a good job, if even a small thing had gone wrong, I don’t know how much the midwife would have been able to do, especially compared to a hospital staffed with more highly trained doctors and nurses. At the same time, while I personally don’t understand it, it’s also true that back in America, where we have some of the best medical care in the world, some couples decide to forego the modern hospital and have a home birth. However, the difference is that in the States, a home birth is usually a carefully planned out decision based on research about different childbirth philosophies whereas in Miamuna’s case it was a last second “practical” decision made because it was nighttime and having her just give birth at home seemed easier.

I’m really glad everything went smoothly and I’m also really glad my host dad woke me up to be able to see some of the process. It was interesting for me to observe, especially considering it was probably similar to the way the majority of the world’s births occur. Additionally, being present also made me feel closer to the women in my host family and it was nice to know that they feel I’m enough a part of the family that I should be in the room when a child is born.

This past week, the Mango girls’ camp that I had been planning since March, with other volunteers in my prefecture, took place. The camp was held for 30 female students entering into 3eme, the U.S. equivalent of freshmen year of high school, who were the top female students in their classes. The girls ranged from 14-19 years old. It’s common to have girls still in middle school who are 17 or 18 years old since failing and retaking classes occurs so often. We took girls from the Oti prefecture that encompasses the lower section of the Savannes region and has one of the lowest rates of girls’ education in the country. The girls came from 20 villages, ranging from Mango itself to villages 2 hours away. The goal of the camp was to empower the girls and motivate them to stay in school by opening their eyes to opportunities beyond their villages.

As you can imagine, planning and running a summer camp in Togo is a lot different from running a camp in the U.S. To contact the girls and provide them with information, we had to travel to their different villages by bike, moto, and bush taxi to see them in person and make sure they understood all the camp details. This took a lot of time and I think we were all wishing we could just email out an invite and wait for an emailed confirmation in return. In preparing camp documents, printing, and photocopying, we had to travel to Dapaong and to buy things like folders, nametags, and pens in bulk we went on a 10 hour trip to Lome. What would take a quick trip to Kinkos and a few “purchase” clicks on a school supply website in the U.S. took many days and lots of uncomfortable road trips in Togo.

Another time-consuming issue came about while we were preparing the camp location. We used a room at the local CEG (like a middle school) for the camp sessions and while preparing the site, we came across the almost always unpleasant issue of latrines. Since we wanted to practice the health behavior that we always preach and have all campers use a latrine instead of the great outdoors, we had to make sure that there were latrines available for use. I was given the fun duty of figuring out this latrine situation. Upon arrival, the CEG director informed me that the latrines had been locked for the summer with fancy bars across the doors and that a parent group had the key. Apparently, the school had to upgrade to having metal bars across the doors because the normal locks had been broken multiple times by local people who wanted access to the latrines. Since there are only 6 latrines for a school with about 1000 students, they don’t want random people using the latrine all summer because they will fill up faster. Anyways, after we obtained the keys, there was the issue of used toilet paper. The CEG director was away the last week of school, so he hadn’t been able to oversee the usual end of the year latrine clean-up by the students. In Togo, since schools can’t afford to pay for things like janitors, it’s the students who are made to do all the cleaning. Because no cleaning had occurred, the latrines were filled with used toilet paper. No students were around, so I paid someone to come clean out the latrines while the director and I oversaw the burning of the used paper. Throughout the ordeal, I was laughing to myself imagining a school director in the States being asked to oversee this type of issue.

A couple weeks before camp, we came across two more road bumps. The first was when we came to the realization that we had planned the camp during Ramadan. This meant that about 1/3 of our campers were fasting during camp. We had to provide meals at different times and rearrange the timing of some activities around prayer. Additionally, many girls were nodding off and unable to focus during sessions. However, I can’t really blame them, as I’m sure I would have trouble focusing if I were not eating or drinking water from dawn to dusk. A second road bump came when we found out one of the girls we had chosen for camp had a 3 month old baby. Since she had managed to be one of the best female students in her grade throughout her pregnancy and right after she gave birth, we didn’t want to discourage her by telling her she couldn’t come to camp because of her baby. The girl proposed a solution by saying she’d just bring along a 9 year-old in the family to take care of her baby while she was in sessions. While a 9 year-old might seem a little young to be caring for an infant, in Togo, as soon as a girl is big enough to carry a baby on her back without falling over, she’s old enough to take care of a younger child.

Despite lots of expected, yet unforeseen, setbacks, camp went really, really well. Many of the girls had never been to Mango before, so it was their first time being in a larger town. We had a whole variety of sessions from self-confidence to setting objectives to reproductive health and we did all the usual camp things like singing songs and dancing. We brought some American camp traditions like the campfire and marshmellow roasting. When we brought out the marshmellows, one girl was very concerned and she kept saying, “are you SURE it’s not cheese?” Three activities that really interested the girls were a computer session, a site visit to the local hospital, and a visit to the local radio station. During the computer session, many girls saw and touched a computer for the first time. They were so excited to learn, but it was a slow process to teach them how to do something simple like open word, write their name, and save the document. Back home computer use has become such an expected skill, which you assume everyone possesses, that I had forgotten how unnatural using a mouse and typing on a keyboard really is in the beginning. At the site visit to the local hospital, the girls got a tour of the facility and met nurses and doctors. By chance, an operation was happening when we arrived at the operating room. There was a small boy on the table about to be cut open, but that didn’t stop the tour, the surgeon opened the door and let all the girls look inside, which I’m sure does not meet the necessary standards of sanitation for surgery! Needless to say, I was glad to know I would never be operated on at that hospital. For the visit to the radio station, each girl got to talk for a second on the radio and give her name and say a little about herself. The room was air-conditioned and it was funny to see the reactions of the girls who probably had never felt air-conditioning before.

All the sessions and site visits were great, but what I enjoyed the most, and think were the most important, were the conversations with model women. We invited professional women who work in Mango, ranging from a police officer to teachers to a nurse to an engineer, to come share their experiences. We also had female university students, attending one of Togo’s 2 universities, who had grown up in the Oti prefecture serve as camp counselors. It’s easy for me to tell Togolese girls that they can have an independent career and a life beyond their village if they work hard and stay in school, but since I come from a privileged background filled with opportunity, I have no experience to back-up what I say. Many of the professional women we had talk came from poor families in villages and surmounted the same obstacles the girls currently face. Having the university girls was especially important, because they actually came from the same villages as many of our campers. Many of the women had common stories of having to balance the household demands of cooking and cleaning with school work, having to sell something small like bread or fruit to help pay for school, and almost all had been sexual harassed by a male teacher at some point along the way who wanted to exchange sex for better grades. Unfortunately, this last problem is a major issue in Togo and it’s all too common for girls to get pregnant from their teachers and to be generally pressured to sleep with their teachers. Some women had overcome the pressure to marry early like one university student who in middle school was about to be married off to an older man when she cut a deal with her dad that if she passed on to high school she could stay in school, but if she failed she would be married. Luckily, she passed and now is a university student studying German.

Overall, having all these educated and motivated Togolese women around all week was great for the campers, but it was also great for me. It was so nice to be able to hang out with the university students and talk to all the professional women. It can be really hard to be a female volunteer in a village, because women in villages tend to be uneducated and therefore don’t speak French. Although we try to learn local language, the depth of conversation is limited. Women also almost always have children and a ton of household work in addition to farm work, so they have less time than men to just hang out. Men tend to speak French more and have more free time, but friendships with men are difficult because attempts at friendship are often confused with expressing interest in a sexual relationship or marriage. Basically, it was a breath of fresh air for me to be spending time with Togolese women who spoke French, had a similar education level to me, and defied Togolese social norms of early marriage and child-rearing. All around the camp was a really positive experience and I’m glad I’ll be able to do it again next year. After being here 11 months, I finally feel like I’ve accomplished something positive and it feels good!

It’s been 10 months since I arrived in Togo and I’ve tried to be pretty good about keeping up a blog. It can be difficult to think of things to write about when life here now seems so mundane and normal to me, but I know that it’s just because I’ve gotten used to things and my daily stories might still be interesting to those of you living back in America. Anyways, in my blogs I think I’ve been fairly good at holding back on some of the grosser details of life in Togo, since I know that people don’t always want to read about bad bowel movements, open sewers, public defecation, rodents, unsanitary street food, bugs, and more. However, as you would expect from the lower levels of hygiene and sanitation that come from living in one of the world’s poorest countries (the Human Development Index ranks Togo as 30th from the bottom), life here can get, well, a little gross. Since this is part of my daily life, I thought it was time to share a gross story.

This past week, I had the pleasure of dealing with my dog falling victim to Tumbu flies. These are wonderful flies that lay their eggs in sand and soil. When the eggs hatch, the larvae search for an animal host and they burrow themselves under the animal’s skin. The larvae then grow and flourish and then after a week, pop out of the animal, become flies, and continue the cycle. I first noticed that my dog had bumps and I assumed they were just bug bites. However, my friend Maggie’s dog had had the Tumbu flies earlier in the year and I was nervous every time I saw a bump that it would be that, so I gave her a call to ask what I should look for. At home, you might call your friends to make a plan to meet up for dinner or to go out for the night, but in Peace Corps Togo, you call other volunteers with questions like “What did those Tumbu fly bumps look like?”, “What did you say worked best to kill all those flies in your latrine?”, “You had amoebas last month, right? What were your symptoms like?”, “When you got bit by that blister beetle, what did your skin look like?”, or “How did you get the bugs to leave your oatmeal?” So, the answer to my question about Tumbu flies, was that you can tell the bumps are caused by them when you see a small hole at the top of the bump; the larvae’s breathing hole. Sadly enough, when I looked closely at the bump, I could see those little breathing holes and my heart sank. I then went outside to ask my host dad about it, as I do when anything weird or gross happens that I don’t know how to deal with. He’s always there to lend a helping hand, whether it’s chasing a bat out of my house or using his machete to scrape a dead mouse of my floor that I found when I got back from vacation. Once again, Tchirifou came to the rescue. He immediately knew what Jeeves had, apparently it’s quite common in dogs here, and stepped up to pop out the first larvae. I held Jeeves while my host dad squeezed a larvae out of him. I was very mature and made squealing and gagging noises the entire time. Unfortunately, Jeeves had about 30 of these bumps and over the next 2 days, I became a real pro and was able to hold Jeeves under one arm and, in one swift motion, pop out a larvae with the other hand and then quickly squish it with my shoe. It finally seems that all the larvae are gone and dead and I can only hope that he won’t roll around in soil where Tumbu flies have lain their eggs and get them again. My even bigger fear, of course, is that I will end up with the larvae in me, since they apparently can lay their eggs in drying laundry. Now that I know these flies are in my village, I have one more thing to worry about getting, but it’s apparently rare for humans to get them, so that’s a slight consolation.

Anyways, so there is a nice gross story for you. It’s been 10 months and it was time to share one. Otherwise, things are going well. We’re busy planning for our girl’s camp and the rains keep on coming, bringing cooler weather and making life a lot more pleasant here overall.

It’s now school vacation here in Togo just like in the U.S. During the week my village is now filled with teenagers playing soccer and generally hanging out. However, summer vacation in Togo isn’t quite as carefree as in the States since here all the kids have to help their families prepare the fields and plant crops. Several girl students have come back for the summer after living in bigger towns during the school year. Some just live in Mango during the year so they don’t have to walk as far to school and others go to farther away regional capitals like Sokode or even Lome where there are more schooling options. Either way, it means there are more teenage girls who speak French hanging around, which means I have some new people to talk to. This week I made two of these new friends and despite being in middle school, they are 18 years old, so not that much younger than me. Girls, especially, often fail school years multiple times, especially exam years where every student in the country must take the same standardized exam, making it common for someone as old as 18 to still be in the equivalent of middle school. If people complain about the failures of standardized tests in the U.S.; you can only imagine how many problems they cause here in Togo. School vacation also means camp season when PCVs find themselves suddenly busy. Volunteers in Togo run a bunch of different summer camps, from a life skills camp to a camp for kids affected by HIV/AIDS to a camp for physically handicapped kids. Volunteers can nominate kids in their various villages for these camps and I was really excited because both of the students I nominated from my village, Alexis and Monique, were chosen to go to the life skills camp UNITE. It will be exciting for both of them, but especially for Alexis who, at 15, has never left the Savanes region of Togo. UNITE takes place in the Central region, so he’ll get to see half of the country on his way to camp. Hopefully, when they get back from camp, they’ll both be super motivated and ready to do some trainings on what they learned with other teenagers in Magna.

Like a lot of other volunteers, this summer I’m actually finding myself kind of busy. This isn’t busy by American standards, but after getting used to filling up many of my days with reading, cooking, and playing with my dog, it doesn’t take much to feel busier. To start, myself and two other Mango cluster volunteers, Megan and Ellen, are running a career development camp for girls from our prefecture in Mango. Megan has a blog about the camp to update her friends and family at home, which you can look at if you’re curious: campetoilestogo.wordpress.com. Then, I’m also involved with organizing a conference for the scholars of a girl’s scholarship program that’s funded by an American NGO and run in Togo by PCVs and an local NGO. The organization is Pathways Togo and you can read more about it on their website (pathwaystogo.org) and even donate if you’re feeling inspired. In Magna, I’m getting ready to plant Mahogany and Moringa trees from the tree nurseries I did earlier this year. Unfortunately, when I went on vacation the women’s groups didn’t repair the broken shade cover for the Moringa trees and most of them died when they were scorched by the sun (20 survived), but we can still plant the ones that made it. Lastly, I’ve been doing family planning trainings with women and men in my village. Since, after 6 months living in Magna, I found out from a third party that 2 women who I sometimes hang out with in my village are actually trained community health workers, I have been starting family planning trainings with them. First, we spoke with the men and chief to get them on board so the women would be less nervous. I was actually really surprised how enthusiastic the men were. My chief, who, mind you, has 14 children and 3 wives, went on a long speech at the end of the training about how it’s important to have a few kids so you can take good care of them. He may not have followed his own advice, but hopefully at least a few people will actually change their behavior. I’ve now also done one training with women and I will have two more in two different parts of the village. At the end of the most recent training, an 18 year old female student approached me and asked to talk to me in private. She had lots of questions and ended up saying she had a boyfriend and was going to start birth control. It felt really cool that she both listened and trusted me enough to come to me with personal questions. At the end, I gave her a bunch of documents about family planning methods that she can share with her friends. Anyways, with the camp, conference, and village activities, I actually feel busy. I still have plenty of time to read and play with Jeeves, but it feels good to feel like I have work to do as well.

As I’m settling into more work, I’m also learning new things about Magna. I had assumed all dry season that, like most small villages in Togo and West Africa in general, all the agricultural labor in Magna would be done by hand. The first surprise came when people started plowing their fields with cows. Then, the other day, I woke up to the sound of a big machine. I looked outside and there was a tractor out behind my house!! I asked my homologue about it and he said that people in Magna rent tractors for some of their farming. He said ten years ago an NGO trained people to use cows and convinced them that it made sense to pay the extra money to rent a tractor for some farm labor. Anyways, I was very surprised and apparently I’m living in one of the most agriculturally advanced villages in Togo. Obviously, there are still lots of issues impeding farming here, but still, I was really surprised to first see my village using animal traction and then using tractors!

Anyways, that’s all for now. Enjoy the nice weather at home and send me updates when you can; I love to hear what’s happening in everyone’s lives!!!

It’s finally rainy season here in northern Togo and it’s amazing! It hasn’t been raining every day, but when it does, the temperature drops, I can sleep well at night, I can walk around and bike in the middle of the day, and I can enjoy sitting inside my house without melting. You know those first warm days of spring at home when suddenly you can wear skirts and sit outside in the sun, well I get the same giddy, excited feeling here when I wake up to a drizzly, overcast day. It’s amazing how fast the landscape is changing. The once brown and black charred earth (literally because everyone burns their fields after harvest) is now sprouting fresh green grass and even flowers! I keep getting whiffs of the smell of fresh grass that reminds me of the beginnings of spring at home. People are beginning to plow their fields and the animals all seem to have more energy: Jeeves doesn’t pass out for the entire day, goats are running around playing, and the bulls in my village have been going a little crazy and getting into fights all over the place. For some reason, behind my back window seems to be a meeting place for angry and energetic bulls, so some afternoons I just watch small bull fights for entertainment from the safety of my couch. I also feel like I’m coming alive a bit. During hot season, my mind felt like mush and even the smallest tasks felt like a strain on my body. Now, I feel that I can think clearly again. With my renewed energy, I’ve also been adding new improvements to my house like curtains, pillows, mats, and new pieces of furniture. My house has come a long way and it finally feels more like a sanctuary that I actually enjoy spending time in! Basically, the rain is awesome and it’s a huge relief to know that after rainy season is the cooler harmattan season, which means I don’t have to deal with completely unbearable and relentless heat again until next February or March!

As far as works goes, things are moving along and I’m becoming a more patient, go with the flow, person. I’d say that I’ve achieved about a 2:1 ratio of failed meetings to realized meetings. For every 3 meetings I plan, usually 1 will actually happen and 2 will end up getting canceled on me or will have no or low attendance. Meetings fall through for a variety of reasons; none that are meant as a personal insult to me. Some examples include: it rained, the cotton buyers came to the village, I wasn’t at my house one afternoon so the group leader assumed I wouldn’t be around the next day for the meeting, a floor needed to be cemented, Bornefonden (an international NGO that works in the Mango area) was holding a meeting (Bornefonden has already built things like wells in Magna, so they might hold more selling power), the women had to collect wood, and so on. However, I’ve gotten a lot better at not getting upset when people don’t show and now I just go to their houses to find out why. The other day when people didn’t show up because they were cementing a floor, I showed up at the compound and ended up coming across a ceremony where animals were being sacrificed to ancestors to ask them for a good planting season and where I got to enjoy some tchakpa (millet beer) with a friend, so I think I salvaged the morning. Even though there have obviously been many setbacks, I’ve also managed to accomplish a few things in the past month. Examples include: a community mapping activity where we mapped out wells in my village and chose the site for the new well we will be building, a training on how to make neem lotion (a lotion that deters mosquitoes from biting), a meeting with community health agents to plan two upcoming family planning trainings in Magna, and continued preparation for our August career development camp in Mango. So, things move slow, but they are moving along and as people always say here, “Ca va aller.”

The last thing I’m excited for is the arrival of the new group of trainees next week! One of my friends from study abroad will actually be coming with the new group, which is pretty cool! I’ll be in Lome when the new groups gets here and I’m really excited to meet some new people. After more than 8 months of being here, I will finally no longer be the newbie and that definitely makes it feel like time is actually moving forward.

I hope all is well with everyone at home and that summer is off to a good start!

I got back from my vacation in Paris about three weeks ago. It was AMAZING!! Spending a week in beautiful weather, eating great food, and with my parents and cousin was like heaven. I won’t lie, it was a bit tough to come back to Togo, but then again what job and place would it not be hard to come back to after a week being taken care of by your parents in one of the world’s best cities.

After getting back to my post, I was able to share some of the gifts I bought with my host family. I bought little Eiffel tower trinkets for everyone, including keychains and earrings. They are the type of chintzy, cheap gifts that people at home would say thank you for and then never actually use, but in Togo, it’s a different story. My host dad immediately put his keys on his new Eiffel tower keychain and informed me that everyone was commenting on it and asking where he got it from. One of my host moms has been wearing her Eiffel tower earrings with plastic diamonds every day. It’s fun to see little reminders of Paris around my compound. The other thing I brought back from France is a short haircut. I followed in the footsteps of many other female volunteers and cut off almost all my hair. I didn’t go as far as some and shave my head, but it is pretty short now. Togolese people don’t love it, they ask why I got rid of the long hair that they are envious of, but I’m loving it. When it’s 100 degrees every day, you bathe from a bucket, and you don’t have a fan, short hair is definitely the way to go.

When I got back to Magna, there was also another surprise for me; my host dad informed me that my host sister was getting married! The wedding lasted from last Thursday through Sunday. The first day, the family paid for a generator and speakers so that music could be blasted in the family compound. The festivities took place in the larger compound of my host dad’s family. Since my host dad is not the oldest in the family, the wedding ceremonies weren’t held at his house, but at his parents’ and brothers’ compound. I went over and danced with the women in front of the speakers, which was a big hit. After the dancing, I got some Togolese spa treatment and was decorated in henna. Over the next couple days, there was a lot more food and dancing at both the brides’ and grooms’ compounds. Barila, my host sister, had to stay hidden in a room, only to be brought to her new husband on the first night, until the end of the wedding. On the last day, all of the gifts were brought to the women at the bride’s family compound and then were walked over to the groom’s compound where they were accepted and counted. Since I was told to come along, the women gave me an empty plastic box, kind of like large Tupperware, to carry since they said I was too weak to carry anything else. So, I walked along carrying this dinky box while everyone else carried mounds of gifts on their heads. When we were accepted at the grooms’ compound, and after the gifts were counted, Barila was finally brought out. There then began a round of prayers and advice from elders and I spaced out as I often do when everyone around me is speaking quickly in Anufo. Suddenly, everyone in the audience turned and stared at me, there must have been more than 100 people there, so a lot of faces were on me. I wasn’t sure what was going on and then one of the elders told me in French that they wanted to hear my advice for the young couple. I tried to think of something on the spot that would promote equal roles and a partnership, something that rarely is seen here, and I ended up saying that they must be patient with each other, talk to each other, and support and help each other even when there are problems. Everyone seemed satisfied, so I managed to get by without embarrassing myself. Overall, it was a much more eventful weekend than usual in Magna

Other than that, life is moving along. We’ve had a few rainstorms and they feel so nice! However, they also can be kind of scary. There was a really strong storm with lots of wind last week and I could see my tin roof shaking. Rain also sounds deafening on a tin roof, which just adds to the effect and helped to convince me when I was woken by the wind and rain that my roof was going to blow off! So far, that hasn’t happened and my host dad assures me my roof is on tight, but still, I don’t like big wind storms. Additionally, I have made the crazy decision to, along with other volunteers, run the Accra half-marathon in September. I’m starting to train and I think it will be a nice personal goal to set and hopefully accomplish, even if it might be incredibly painful. Wish me luck!!

Hot season is now in full force. It’s definitely not as hot as it was in Niamey, but it’s still really hot and this time I don’t have a ceiling fan to sleep under at night. Lots of volunteers choose to sleep outside during hot season, and that’s what Togolese people do, but I’m still holding out and sleeping inside. Although it would be cooler outside, I don’t want to. Because of the way my house is set up, if I sleep outside I would be sleeping right alongside my host family and I like my privacy. Also, my host family goes to bed after me and wakes up before me, so if I slept outside, it would mean many hours where people could stare at the white girl sleeping, and that just makes me uncomfortable. Also, sleeping outside means wearing clothes. Inside I can wear nothing, which helps fight the heat. Overall, a bucket with a washcloth to constantly put water on myself with and a battery powered fan, courtesy of my Uncle Geoff, have allowed me to keep sleeping inside.

Hot season leads to a different pace of life here. There is no work out in the fields, so people either hang out at home, fix-up their compounds (my host dad has added a new mud house to our compound), or work in the gardens. This means that people have had more free time to meet with me and I’ve been able to fit in morning meetings with different groups on things like Oral Rehydration Therapy, a well project, and more tree nurseries. However, I always try to finish before 10am, because that’s when the sun starts to get really strong. Because most activity is over by 10am, there is lots of napping in Magna during the middle of the day. It seems like almost every mango tree in my village has someone lying underneath it and resting. Around 2pm in my compound, I’m usually napping in my newly set-up hammock, Jeeves is passed out on my porch, and the rest of my family is sleeping on various mats around the compound. It’s nice to not feel lazy taking a nap, because everyone else is doing it too! Due to the heat, my running schedule has dwindled away to basically nothing, but I’ll get back at it when the rains come. However, I still need to bike into Mango, so I try to bike in early, but I still often end up biking back in the heat of the day. Recently, as I’ve been biking with sweat dripping down my face and the sun forcing me to squint even with sunglasses on, I’ve been muttering France continually under my breath to remind myself that in a few short weeks I will be basking in the glory of Paris!!! This has helped a lot.

To my surprise, despite the heat, these past few weeks have actually gone really well. I’m starting to find more people to work with and projects to start. The big ones I have and will be working on are a career development camp in Mango for female students (I’m doing this one with 2 other volunteers) and a well project in my village. Look out for future blogs where I will be asking for online donations to these two wonderful causes! I also just celebrated my 23rd birthday. I went to Dapaong and some friends came in. We baked cake, ate good food, and went to the new swimming pool at a hotel!! The pool is tiny and the water only comes up to your shoulders (so no jumping or cannonballs), but it’s still a large quantity of cool water to submerge yourself in, so it was awesome!! Of course, the knowledge that I will be escaping some of hot season in France has definitely helped to keep up my morale, but it still hasn’t been as bad as I expected.

Soon, I’ll be heading down south to catch my flight to Paris. In case you couldn’t already tell, I can’t wait!!! My mom will be there and so will my cousin Sean (whose studying abroad in France) and my family friends Mark and Aline. It’s going to be great. It’s funny because travelling to France from the States, France is the new, exotic, unfamiliar place, but after almost 7 months in Togo, going to France feels like going to somewhere that will be familiar and comfortable. I’m excited for so many things, including the following:

1. For a week, no one will stare at me or care who I am, where I’m going, or what I’m doing! I appreciate anonymity so much right now!

2. Food!!!! Good cheese, chocolate, French bread, crepes, and more wonderful things.

3. Drinks!! Wine that comes from a bottle and not a box, cappuccinos, and lots of cold beverages.

4. Drinking cold tap water!

5. Temperature controlled overhead showers in a temperature controlled room. Basically, things that are temperature controlled for maximum comfort and enjoyment.

6. Efficient public transportation and just efficiency in general

7. Spending time with people I love from home…I really miss everyone so much and getting to be with a few of the people I miss will be great! (this might be last on the list, but it actually is what I’m most excited about).

8. Many other things that I can’t think of at the moment…

So, I hope everyone at home is doing well. I love hearing from all of you and thanks for the cards and goodies that some of you sent for my birthday!!

I’ve just finished my first three months as a volunteer. This is a big milestone in Peace Corps, because the first 3 months are said to be the hardest period and they are also the period where you are restricted in your travel and are not allowed to take vacation days. Now, I have the full rights and privileges of a normal Peace Corps volunteer and supposedly things will start to go more smoothly from now on. Of course, there will still be many ups and downs and challenges, but I’ve completed the hard task of making a home for myself in a village far from home in a completely new culture.

I’ll give a quick recap of my first 3 months in village and how I filled the many hours of downtime. I almost fully furnished my house (I still need an armoir, another table, and some more wall decorations), I got an awesome puppy, I read ten books, I watched the whole first season of Glee and the first two seasons of Mad Men, I said the Anofo greetings hundreds of times, I biked A LOT and am proud to say that I now can somewhat successfully navigate sand and I have not fallen of yet despite my clumsiness, I ran more regularly than I have in awhile, I ate many meals with my host family, I walked through my village and now know my way around fairly well, and I daydreamed about memories I have with all you lovely people back home.

On the work front, I had many meetings with a farmer’s groupement and the Red Cross women’s groups in my village and I have been continuing with my English club. The English club has been running somewhat regularly and I’m starting to see that a group of kids actually do show up each time and do seem genuinely excited about the club. With the farmer’s groupement, we connected with a local NGO and had a gardening training and we are planning to do a reforestation training that will end with a Mahogany tree nursery and reforestation project. With the Red Cross women, I spent many meetings discussing the idea of Moringa (a tree with highly nutritious leaves; good for family health) gardens and planning for the next meeting where we would again discuss the Moringa gardens. Finally after a couple months of meetings, we set a date to actually start the Moringa tree nursery. On the planned date, I showed up on time to the gardens and proceeded to wait for a frustrating two hours while no one showed up. Eventually some women came, but my homologue (my primary work partner in my village) never made it, so we had to reschedule. A couple days later, a couple months after I had originally spoken to the women about planting Moringa, about thirty women showed up at the gardens along with my homologue and we prepared the tree nursery. It was one of the few days where everything seemed to fall into place and I felt like I was living an image on the Peace Corps website. I was sitting in the community gardens, filling bags with dirt and manure brought from the women’s compounds with the help of women, children, and men in my village. When it was all done, we had planted 70 seeds and the women had divided up the labor and made a schedule for who would water when. I then left for my in-service training, feeling happy and excited to see the progress of my Moringa trees when I returned. Of course, the Peace Corps feeling of success is often short lived, because when I returned I was informed that bugs were eating my trees, only 10 of the 70 were growing, and the manure I was so excited to have added to the tree’s soil got too hot in the sun and burnt half of the seeds. However, we planted more seeds and removed some of the manure and hopefully now more than ten trees will grow. I just have to remind myself that these little setbacks are part of life in the Peace Corps and that it’s often the process more than the results that count, because at least the womens’ groups are working together with male farmers in the gardens to try to figure out how to get these little trees to grow.

Anyways, that is a summary of some of the small projects and work I’ve been trying to start. I’m hoping in March to run some health workshops on things like Oral Rehydration Therapy, handwashing, and nutrition for the women’s groups. I’m also now part of one of Peace Corps Togo’s national committees (PCVs in Togo can join a range of different committees that work on national, Peace Corps wide projects). I’m now part of the Karren Waid Committee that provides scholarships to girl students in Togo and I’m going to be helping to plan and organize their national conference in August. I’m really excited for this and it will be nice to have something steady to work on throughout my service.

In addition to getting settled, trying to fill up free time, and trying to start work, my first three months at site have involved hosting my first visitor, Nick, who is still here with me!! Having Nick stay in my village with me has been really fun. Everyone has been SO excited to meet him and I’ve been able to have fun challenging gender roles by having him do things like sweep in front of my host family. When my host mom first saw him sweeping the porch, she stopped dead and just stared and him and then later informed in the entire family of the mind-blowing action of a man sweeping that had happened earlier that day. Then, my host family had their mind blown again when Nick got his own water for his bath. I also had fun telling my host dad that Nick was actually the one cooking each time, in the first couple days, when my host dad asked me if I was feeding Nick enough. Each time, he would just laugh heartily and shake his head. Playing with peoples’ ideas of gender roles here is always entertaining.

So, that’s it for now. The past 3 months were definitely full of lots of ups and downs and I probably felt ever possible emotion, many times all in the space of one day. However, I feel comfortable now in my village and I’m looking forward to continuing with my service. I hope everyone is doing well at home. Enjoy the beginnings of spring as I’m stuck in the full force of hot season!!!

As time goes on and life here begins to normalize, with the once unfamiliar becoming familiar, it becomes more difficult to approach writing blogs. This time, I figured I would just write a little more describing my host family. The Abdou family, whose compound I live in, is compromised of the Togolese individuals that I spend the most time with, rely on the most, and who will undoubtedly be some of the most important people during the rest of my service. Over the past couple months, I’ve been getting to know each member and have gotten a feel for the family dynamic. I’ve spent a lot of time just hanging out in my compound with whoever is around, which actually counts as “work” since it’s fulfilling the second goal of cultural exchange; Peace Corps is pretty cool that way. Anyways, I’ll just write a little bit about each person.

Tchirifou: He is my host dad. He is a farmer, like pretty much everyone in my village, and grows everything from cotton to corn to sorghum, along with working in the gardens during hot season. He also owns all the animals in my compound, so he’s not doing too bad for himself. He is one of two people in my compound who speaks French since he went to primary school, so I rely a lot on him to communicate. He’s been incredibly helpful since my arrival, even helping to organize the labor for my porch to get built, which was accomplished in two days, a feat that is pretty impressive here. He also motoed (we’ve created that verb to refer to riding on motorcycles) out to another volunteer’s house to get me a thermometer when mine broke while I was really sick. I know that I can always rely on him to help me out, which is really reassuring. He also loves to explain things to me and answer any of my questions, like when I asked why a dead bat carcass was being hung out in front of our house- apparently it is some sort of animist house protection tradition. He always starts his responses with “Nous les africains” (we, the Africans) or “Nous, les noirs” (we, the blacks) when he explains why something is done. However, I know that things are more nuanced than, for example, the explanation he gave that all Africans or all “blacks” hang dead bat carcasses up to protect the home, but chatting with him is always interesting.

Miamenutu: She is my host dad’s first wife. She doesn’t speak French, so our communication is based on the few French words she knows, the little Anofo I know, and hand gestures. However, one communication that we’ve gotten down pretty well is that when I bring back gari, oil, tomatoes, and beans from the market, she will make an awesome beans and gari meal for the family that I get to stuff my face with. I also am convinced that she has a secret soft spot for dogs, because she always seems to be watching out for Jeeves. She is the one who always makes sure he eats everyday and she’ll sneak him some higher quality stuff, like rice with sauce, that the others wouldn’t want to waste on a dog.

Salamatu: She is my host dad’s second wife. She is probably about 18 or 19 and she hasn’t had any kids yet, which is why the feticheur said she couldn’t eat poultry until she got pregnant. I really like Salam, and she always has a really big, warm smile, but again, she doesn’t speak French, so that limits our communication. Whenever she sees me, she yells really loud in a upbeat tone, “Madame Samira”, so I decided to give her an American name and I yell back, “Mrs. Sally”, which she thinks is really funny. We play the pointing game a lot where I point to something and say the word in English and she says it in Anofo and then we each repeat after each other, but I still really wish we could have a real conversation, because I feel like she has so much to say. She even told my host dad to translate to me that if she spoke French she would tell me everything, but that she had to work in the fields and couldn’t go to school, so I know the sentiment of wanting to be able to have a real conversation is shared.

Barila: She is my oldest host sister and is the same age as Salamatu. Barila did go to school until middle school, so she does speak French, which is really nice since she’s always around my host moms so she can always translate for them. Barila definitely has a rebellious side to her and she often gets yelled back for coming back after dark from the market. My host dad says she’s going to be married soon, but I hope she doesn’t get married during my service, because I really like having her around.

Hadidia: She is my little sister who is about five. Apparently next year she’s going to start going to school and my host dad is planning to send her to Lome to stay with family and go to the better schools there. There is already a sister I have never met who is in Lome doing the same thing, so I’m glad to see my host dad values his daughters’ getting an education. Hadidia is really shy and doesn’t talk to me much. When I talk to her she usually just smiles sheepishly and doesn’t say anything. Sometimes when her friends are over, they get more mischievous and brave and peak into my windows, which I really don’t like, so I scare them by going outside and yelling at them, which is totally acceptable for me to do here.

Zakia: She is my youngest sister and is about 2 years old. When I first arrived, she was terrified of me and tried to protect herself when I approached by hitting me with a spoon. Now, she isn’t scared of me anymore. However, she always manages to be incredibly dirty, with food, soot, and god knows what else all over her, so I only really play with her right after she gets her bath. Otherwise I make faces at her from a distance. She was really scared of Jeeves when I first brought him home, but now she’s warming up to him. I’m determined for her to love him since she’s young enough to not have the idea that dogs aren’t fun to play with ingrained her head. Already, she mimics me and comes up to pet him when I am, so I’ve been showing her how to pet him gently and softly. Of course Jeeves loves playing with her and licking her since she’s always covered in something yummy for him.

Amidu: He is not in the immediate family but is somehow related to my host dad. Amidu is about 15 and he takes care of all the compound animals, especially the cows. He doesn’t go to school, and therefore doesn’t speak French, and I think he was sent here by his family to be taken care in exchange for him working for my host dad. When I can’t find Jeeves, Amidu will go out looking for him for me and he always manages to find him and bring him back. However, he’s also the one who beat Jeeves when Jeeves tried to steal a baby chick. It was really painful for me, but I couldn’t get mad, because Jeeves was trying to eat their livelihood. I think he also learned his lesson, because he’s hasn’t tried to pick up any chicks since then.

Anyways, so that’s my host family. My family is actually pretty well of by village standards. At first glance, our compound looks like the stereotypically example of African "poverty" you would see on TV, with no electricity or running water, mud walls, open fires for cooking, naked children, and animals living right next to people, but upon closer look, I live with a fairly well-off village family. This is determined by the fact that they have lots of animals (which means more money and more nutritious food), including highly valued bulls, my host dad has a moto, they have a pit latrine, they have the money and family ties to send two daughters to Lome for school, and they had an unoccupied two room house in their compound that they could afford to let a foreigner stay in for two years.

Other than getting to know my host family better, things are moving along. Harmattan seems to be winding down, sadly, and the temperature is starting to heat up. In two weeks I’m travelling south to go to another week of training and also to pick up Nick who is visiting, so life is pretty good right now!! I hope all is going well at home in the cold winter!!!

I hope everyone had a good holiday season!! As you would expect, the holidays were a bit different for me this year, but they were still a lot of fun! For Christmas, I went to Dapaong and celebrated with other volunteers in my region. Everyone brought different items sent from home in care packages, so we definitely overindulged on sweets like skittles and oreos, just like you should at Christmas. Our program director lives in Dapaong and invited us over for Christmas lunch, which was really nice because we got to spend the day at his home and with his family.

Coming back to Mango from Dapaong, I had my worst bush taxi ride yet. To start, the bush taxi was even more overcrowded than usual. Usually, in a car with nine seats, drivers here will squish 14 or 15 people, but this driver managed to fit 17 or 18 of us in the car. It was ridiculous enough that even the Togolese passengers were upset. I should have known the ride was doomed when to start the car the apprentice had to get behind and push the taxi. Finally, we were on our way. I immediately began to feel sick and I assumed it was just dehydration and banked on the fact that I would be home in 1.5 hours like normal. However, the driver had somehow managed to not put enough gas in the car, so about an hour into the trip, we ran out of gas and were stranded on the side of the road. We had to wait for the driver to hitch a ride with another taxi to the closest gas station and bring back gas for the car. When we finally were on our way again, the taxi stopped in a town about 20 km away from Mango and let off a bunch of passengers. We were then informed that we would have to switch into a different taxi because the one we were in was going to go back to Dapaong. Of course, Megan, who I was riding with, and I tried to fight this, but it didn't work and we were forced to change taxis. Before leaving, the new taxi's door fell off, so we had to wait to fix that, and finally after 4 hours we rolled into Mango. By that time, I felt really sick and when I got home I realized I had done the whole annoying, hot, and cramped voyage with a fever.

The next couple days I spent sick in bed. The medical unit had me go get a malaria test, just in case, so I took a moto to a nearby clinic and got myself tested for malaria. As I was waiting for the results, the doctor asked me what I would want to do if the results were positive. As I looked around the small, dusty, and relatively barren clinic, I felt so relieved to know that if I did have malaria, Peace Corps would immediately bring me to the air-conditioned, clean medical unit in Lome and if needed would fly me back to the States where I could get some of the world's best medical care. It's in moments like those when you realize how far we, as volunteers, are from truly "living like locals", because although we may live in villages with Togolese people and without running water or electricity, inside our houses are water filters, medical kits, and phones that will allow us to be whisked away if anything ever actually does go wrong. Most Togolese people do not have that option. Anyways, luckily I did not have malaria and just went back to bed for another day until I felt fully better.

On New Years Eve, there was not much going on in Magna, so I found myself watching an episode of Mad Men and falling asleep at 9pm... that may sound depressing, but I was happy to go to bed. It's probably the first time since before kindergarden that I did not make it to midnight, but it's okay, there is always next year. The next day I celebrated with my host family. For my compound, celebrating New Years Day meant taking a day off from working in the fields and eating rice instead of pate. I also bought a guinea fowl to add to the mix. Normally, my host dad would have killed one of the chickens in our compound, but when I recently found out that his second wife, Salamatu, who is only about 20, was told by a feticheur that she can't eat chicken because she hasn't been able to bear a child yet, I decided to buy a guinea fowl for the family, because apparently that is okay for her to eat. Chicken, however, is off limits until she has a child. Anyways, on the first, I ate a big lunch with my host family and then went to Megan's in Mango for dinner. She made chili and corn bread and invited some of her Togolese friends over. She also managed to obtain a bottle of champagne, so atleast I had one glass on New Years!! I brought marshmellows and we shared the art of roasting marshmellows with Togolese friends. They were skeptical at first, but ended up loving it, because who doesn't love roasted marshmellows!!

So, that was my holiday season in Togo. The weather here has been really nice lately. Apparently, now it's the REAL harmattan, but before it was just the warm up. This means lots of wind, but also even cooler temperatures. I even have had to heat up water for warm bucket baths. I also have had entire days without excessive sweating, I've worn sweatshirts because I actually need to not just because it's cool enough to not overheat in them, and at about 3 am I wake up cold and get into my sleeping bag. It's great!! However, I'm enjoying it while it lasts because soon enough hot season will be here and having been through hot season in Niger, I know it will be miserable, expect this time I won't have a fan at night!! I hope all is well at home, write or call if you can, I really appreciate it!!!

I've just finished up my first month at post, so I thought it was time for a blog update!! My first month definitely had lots of ups and downs, but I feel like I'm finally getting settled here. My little house is starting to feel like my home thanks to more furniture, a finished porch, some wall decorations, and most importantly my new puppy, Jeeves. I've had Jeeves for a little over a week now and it's been so fun! It's great to have a little puppy to play with everyday. My host family jokingly calls him my baby since I give him the love and attention that would be normal in the U.S. but that is completely weird here. However, since it's obvious how much I love him, my host family has been doing a good job watching out for him for me.

In the past week, I've started eating dinners with my family. This has been nice for two reasons: 1. I hate cooking by flashlight 2. It gives me an opportunity to hang out with my host family and to get more comfortable with them. Since my host dad won't let me pay money for meals, I've been trying to contribute by buying food that they can use to cook the meals with. Most meals consist of pate with sauce. Pate is this corn staple that is basically just finely ground corn mixed with water and it's about the consistency of polenta. This is eaten with a sauce of usually peanuts or okra. The other day, I had been craving my favorite Togolese meal, beans and gari, which is just cooked beans mixed with oil, spices, and this stuff called gari that is crunchy manioc flour. I bought a bunch of beans and oil at the market and then my host family made awesome beans and gari and we all ate it together. I've been enjoying eating with them, so I think this will be a nice setup.

In regards to my official "work", I've had several meetings that I think will lead to projects and activities. I met with an english teacher at the local middle school who wants to start up an english club. I said I would help out and we're having our first official meeting tomorrow. Students here start to learn english at the CEG, the equivalent of middle school, and they have to pass an exam in english to move onto high school. However, most classes are really large, at the Mango CEG each class has about 100 students, and as anyone who has ever tried to learn a language can imagine, huge classrooms aren't that conducive to learning languages. The kids mainly learn by repetition and memorization, but they often don't really understand what they're saying. For example, when I was introducing myself to the different classes, each time they all stood up and said to me "Good morning sir, how are you?" They have a male teacher, so they'd memorized saying "sir" without realizing that "sir" is only meant for males. Anyways, the idea is that an english club will be an informal place where students can gain better english comprehension, so we'll see how it goes. I also had a meeting with a Red Cross women's group in Magna. I'm working with a Togolese Red Cross volunteer from Mango and we're hoping to start Moringa gardens with the women's groups. Moringa is a tree with highly nutritious leaves that women can cook with and that helps fight malnutrition. The women seemed excited about the idea, but it's really hard to organize people right now, because everyone is busy with harvest. However, in a month, harvest will be over and people will have a lot more time to meet and get engaged with potential projects like the Moringa gardens.

So, overall, things are going fairly well. I just wanted to leave you all with one funny image. Whenever I've traveled in Africa, I've always seen funny examples of people wearing clothing and items donated from the West. Some of my favorites were people wearing Santa hats in Niger and here it's common to see an old chief wearing one of those leopard or zebra print cowboy hats that you'd see strippers wearing in the movies. However, the other day, I saw my favorite example yet. I was biking in Mango and I saw a teenage boy biking along wearing a bear costume that was probably meant for a second grader. It had the ears, tail, and was WAY to small for the kid wearing it. Anyways, that was my favorite image of the week, so I thought I'd share. I hope everyone has a great Christmas and New Years!!!

The big activity this past weekend was the return of my host family's matriarch from Mecca. It amazes me that someone from my small village could travel all the way to Mecca, but apparently one of my many uncles is in the military and he financed the trip. The festivities began with acquiring matching pagne outfits. Here, for big festivities, like weddings, everyone in the family wears outfits out of matching pagne material. I was included in this and got my own dress made out of the material. All day Saturday the women in my compound, along with many neighbors, came by to help cook up the large quantities of rice that would be served once the grandmother arrived. Saturday afternoon, I was informed that I would be picking up the grandmother at the bus stop, so I put on my pagne dress and went into Mango on my host dad's moto. I couldn't help laughing to myself the whole time at how funny we must have looked and at what a strange site we would be in the States. We were both wearing outfits of the same brightly colored and patterned fabric, zooming through town, with me and my big helmet on the back. Once we got to the post office, where the bus would arrive, more and more relatives in that now familiar pagne arrived to wait anxiously. The bus was two hours late and it reminded me a bit of waiting for loved ones in an airport, with everyone chatting anxiously and growing more and more impatient with each passing minute. Then, the bus finally arrived and the grandmother descended in all white to a crowd of cheering relatives. She was whisked away back to Magna where everyone took turns greeting her. The next morning, I was brought to the room to greet her and I stayed as a malam lead the group in prayer. Then, I was informed that it was time for me to get my muslim name. I had been told a day prior that this would be happening, so I came forward as the malam announced that my new name would be Samira. After this, all the women came forward to cover my head with shawls and I was informed that I would now need to learn how to wash and pray with them. Apparently, it had been translated in Anofo that I was requesting a muslim name to become muslim. When I realized that the men and women around me were actually somewhat serious about this, I felt a bit panicked and tried to think of a culturally sensitive way to get out of adopting a muslim prayer routine. After all, there are limits to how far I will go for cultural integration. Since it was my host dad's idea to give me a muslim name, I asked him if I actually had to start praying each day. He laughed and said of course not, because I was baptized Christian and had been married in a church. Now, I had told said I celebrated Christmas and I did say I was married, to ward of future marriage proposals, and he just extrapolated that this meant I had been baptized and married in a church. So, I just went along with it and did what I do best in uncomfortable situations here, I nodded and smiled. Anyways, apparently now it's acceptable for me to have a muslim name without becoming muslim. The word has spread that Samira is my new name, so now half the kids in my village still yell Nafue when I bike by and the other half yell Samira, we'll see which one sticks.

So, that's what happened during my weekend. I hope everyone at home is enjoying winter and snow. I have to say I'm a bit jealous and am sad to be missing a white christmas this year, so enjoy it!!

I've just about finished up my first week at post as a volunteer. Overall, it's gone very well. After a terrible drive up that lasted 14 hours due to multiple breakdowns, I arrived at night and moved in by flashlight and moonlight. There had been a mouse in my food during post visit, but I had removed all the food in my house when I went back to training and when I arrived at my house last week there was a decaying mouse on my floor. While it was gross, I'm glad because I haven't had any mouse problems since. The landscape here looks a lot different now because everyone is busy harvesting their crops. People also burns their fields when they finish harvesting, so there are lots of black, charred fields. However, it's nice because I can see much farther now and it's easier to orient myself in my village. It's also harmattan season now, which is a season that occurs in Sahelian regions when strong winds come down from the Sahara, bringing lots of dust but also cooler temperatures. This means I've actually been cool enough to sleep under a sheet at night!! I'm enjoying harmattan while it lasts because in a few weeks hot season will begin and then sleeping will be difficult.

In my first week, I've made it my first priority to set up my house so that I can feel comfortable and at home. I've gotten some furniture made and have ordered more, so soon I'll have a couch, coffee table, and food cabinet. I already got my bed made, so I've been able to sleep on the double mattress I bought in Lome. In addition to going to Mango to get furniture ordered, made, and picked up, I've been spending a lot of time just hanging out with my compound host family. I feel really lucky for my host family here. To start, my compound is female dominated. I have my two host moms, my three sisters, and there is currently a cousin visiting from Burkina Faso. It's so nice to be able to just relax and hang out with them in the compound. I've tried to help go get water and I went to the fields to harvest corn, but of course I lack the strength and skill to actually be that useful. However, people in the village seem to get a real kick out of seeing me carrying a small bucket of water on my head from the well, so I'll keep trying. My host dad is also really nice and speaks pretty good french, so I can communicate almost everything with my host family through him. I've definitely been welcomed into the family and they invite me to share every meal with them. I've tried to offer food back and some food sent from home, jam, skittles, and beef jerkey, were big hits. I've even been officially recorded as a member of the Abudu family by the Togolese government. There is currently a census going on and census takers came to my compound when I wasn't home. Apparently they asked who lived in my house and my host dad said Nafue Abudu (my village name is Nafue, given to me because I was born on a Saturday- in Togo names are given based on what day of the week someone is born, so you can imagine there is a lot of repetition in names here) and so the census taker wrote down that Nafue Abudu lives in Magna and left an official notice on my door.

Anyways, I hope that everyone is doing well at home and I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!!!

A photo of myself with fellow Savanes volunteers at swear-in!!

We just got to Lome after finishing our 2 months of training. It’s crazy how different Lome seems now compared to when we first arrived. To start, it seems incredibly busy. There is so much going on and there are so many stores and little restaurants. Basically, there are so many options here! We arrived at the same hotel that we stayed in the first time we came to Lome and I remember thinking that it was kind of run down when we first arrived. This time, my reaction was completely different. It looks really clean, nice, and there are toilets, running water, fans, and electricity!! It’s crazy how different things look after only 2 months. I can’t even imagine how it will feel to go back to the U.S. after living in a village for two years! Anyways, tonight we’re having our swear-in ceremony. We will be at the ambassador’s house and will all give speeches in local language that will be broadcast on local television! It should be pretty cool and there will be good food there also, which is what I think all of us are most excited about!

Saturday we move to our posts. I’m really excited to be doing with training, but I’m also sad to be leaving the friends I made during training behind and I’m nervous to start my service. The first few months at post are supposed to be really hard and it’s pretty intimidating going into it. Our job for the first three months at post is to begin the process of integration that Peace Corps is always promoting. Basically, we’re supposed to just figure out what’s going on in our villages, make ourselves known, start making connections with people, learn local language, and start to think about what projects we want to work on in the future. It’s been emphasized to us by our program directors that work involves leaving our house, walking around, going to the market, and talking to our neighbors. The idea is that if we can successfully integrate into and understand our communities, then it will lay the foundation for future work and projects. When I hear about the busy office jobs of my friends at home, it’s funny to think about how different their “work “ is from my “work” here. I’m going to have to really try to move away from my American notions of work and productivity. Anyone who knows me knows that I like to be busy and plan a lot, so letting go and accepting that for now my job is to get to know people and settle into my new home will be hard, but I think it will be good for me. Also, it will take a lot of time just to set up my home and figure out how to live in Magna. I need to get furniture made (and figure out how to transport it- I may be moving couches and armoires via moto), get a porch made so I have a shaded area to sit outside in, figure out the market situation in order to get the different food I need, experiment with cooking for myself using what I can find here, learn more Anoufo, learn who’s who in my village, and I have some personal goals like starting to run again and maybe acquiring a cat or dog (although I’m a little nervous about this one because people eat dogs and cats in Togo and on more than one occasion a volunteer has returned from a trip to find out that their cat or dog was eaten!). Anyways, although I’m nervous to move to post, I’m also really eager to finally get started as a volunteer. It was over a year ago that I first submitted my application to become a volunteer and after over 14 months, I’ve finally becoming one!

I am sitting in the internet cafe in Mango, which is a 15 bike ride from my village, where there is a fairly decent connection for the moment. Tonight will be my last night in Magna before I head up to the regional capital Dapaong to meet up with the other trainees before heading back down south to Gbatope to finish up the last few weeks of training. Post visit has been overall very positive. I was the first to be dropped off from our group Saturday evening and it was a very surreal feeling to be driving up to the village that will be my home for the next 2 years. My village is scattered among corn, millet, and sorghum fields and it is incredibly beautiful right now. Apparently when I get back in November, the crops will be already harvested and I will be able to see long distances. Now, I cannot see far because the crops are so high. My home is a cute two room cement house with a tin roof in a family compound. I have no electricity or running water, but I do have my own latrine that has a toilet seat cemented to it! I also have my own private shower area that has no roof, so I can take showers at night under the stars!!! There are three other small houses in my compound that house my host father, his two wives, and three of their children (one teenage girl and two little girls). My host family also raises animals, so in my compound there are two bulls, goats, sheeps, doves, chickens, and one dog. My front door opens onto the compound, but my back windows look out on fields where there are no houses, so that is really nice. My host dad and older sister speak french, but both wives only speak Anofo, so I have a lot of motivation to keep studying and learning the local language. I have already had to repeat the basic greetings so many times that I am starting to learn them. Although I am going to be living in a small village, I am only a 15 minute bike ride on a flat dirt road to Mango where there is a market, post office, internet cafe, and another volunteer who has already been here a year and who has many contacts. I have already made the bike ride every day and the women in my compound walk into town everyday with food on their head to sell, so I can definitely make the bike ride easily. Bikes also seem to be the primary mode of transportation from my village, so it is not even weird for me to be biking. The only weird thing is that I am wearing a helmet. Also, my bike has gears, so I can fly by men who are definitely way more fit than me but have no gears on their bikes. I have already met the school teachers, the chief, local government officials, and different NGO workers and it seems like I will have many different options for projects and people to work with. Overall, I am really happy with my site and I am excited to come back at the end of November and start my service!!!

Tomorrow is the big day that we have been anxiously awaiting when we finally get to visit our posts and see what our new homes will be like!!! This week has been crazy with preparations. The Peace Corps rents vehicles to take us to post, so we can bring as much stuff with us as we would like. Since we will only be back in Gbatope for around 2 weeks before we head back to post and because next time we will be bringing furniture with us for our new homes, everyone is bringing a ton of stuff with them to leave at our posts. Yesterday afternoon was full of packing and we also got out motorcycle helmets, which we are required to wear on motos. Peace Corps Togo is one of the only countries where volunteers can ride motos because so many posts are only accesible by small dirt roads that you need to take a mototaxi to get to. Today we also met our counterparts who will travel up to post with us. Each volunteer gets assigned a counterpart who is from our community and who we will work with at post. They help us out, introduce us to people, and we collaborate with them on projects. My counterpart is Gaminou and he seems really nice. In addition to being a farmer, he works with the Red Cross and runs an HIV/AIDS club for students. I am excited to be able to work with him on both of those projects. Parts of the counterpart workshop were pretty amusing as trainers explained to our counterparts why we, the fragile Americans, cannot be fed certain foods, cannot be given normal water, should not be pressured to drink too much alcohol, but can bathe in untreated water. They were also informed not to laugh at us for constantly sipping out of our water bottles all day, because we need to for our health. A friend and I were joking that it is like we are these adult size babies who have to learn how to eat, drink, and bathe all over again.

Anyways, tomorrow will be a long day. We leave our homes at 545, then meet up and put the copious amounts of stuff plus all our bikes in/on the vehicles, and then I will be traveling with the others gonig to Savannes on a 10-12 hour drive. It will be exhausting but I am so excited to see more of the country!!! I will be at post for a week and then the volunteers in my region will have a party for us and then we have to take public transportation back for the first time on our own. However, the volunteers in Savannes will take care of us and help us out, so I am not too concerned.

On the home front, the card game go fish has become incredibly popular with my host family and I think my host dad is some sort of go fish genius. I beat him for the first time yesterday and it felt like quite the accomplishment. I hope that everything is going well back home. I love you and miss you all!!!

Emily

So, I wrote this blog post on my computer and put it on a USB port, but the computer I am using at the internet cafe is too old and there is no USB port, so my planned out, longer, and more descriptive blog cannot be posted. I also can not use the exclamation point on this computer, so my lack of exclamation points does not mean I am not enthusiastic. Please just insert an exclamation point in your mind whenever you feel one would be nice. Basically, I wanted to post about my site placement. About a week ago I found out I will be going up North to the northern most region Savannes. My post will be 4 km from the larger town/city of Mango, which you can find on the map listed as Sansanne Mango or just Mango. Im excited about my post because it is near Mango so I hopefully will be able to use internet on a regular basis and will be close to a post office and electricity for when I need my fix. Speaking of post offices, please write me letters, they make me really happy and I promise to write back to you. Anyways, we visit our posts in one week, so I will be able to describe it in more detail then. The climate will be completely different from where I am now in the southern Maritime region where it is incredibly humid and currently the rainy season. The north will be much drier and in the ten hour voyage to post I will be have no choice but to see all the different terrains in Togo, Im actually very excited about this since so far Ive just been in one small portion of the country.

In general things are going well and I am excited to see my post and my home for the next 2 years. Training is going well and Ive had time for some bike rides and relaxation with new friends. Funerals seem to be occurring on a weekly basis and while interesting, the all night music can make it hard to sleep. I have now succesfully killed multiple cockroaches and a scorpion in my room, so i am taking control. I miss everyone at home and please send me updates about your lives...

Emily

Written October 1st, 2010

It’s hard to know where to start this post since it feels like so much has happened since I posted from a hotel room in Lome a couple weeks ago. The past 2 weeks have felt so long and I feel like I’ve been in Togo for months, rather than weeks. I’ve been staying in the village of Gbatope with the family Maglo Koffi. I live with my host “mom”, who is actually only one year older than me, my host dad, and my little host sister, Esther, who is two. Although it is only the four of us who officially live at the house, there have been several guests staying over since I’ve been here. The first weekend there was a Ghanaian family staying for a funeral taking place in the village. A women from the village who lived in Ghana passed away and after burying her in Ghana, they brought her hair to be buried in her home village. Her relatives from Ghana were staying in my house during the funeral. This funeral was a 3 day event with lots of music and dancing that I was able to take part in one evening. The dancing involves this jerky arm motion that looks a bit like a cooler and hyped up version of the chicken dance. Tonight, there is another funeral preparation underway for a man in the village who passed away this week. The event is being set up near my house, which means I will probably have trouble sleeping tonight through the music and the new wave of friends and relatives that will be staying in my house.

My house here in Gbatope is definitely one of the nicer ones in the village. My family is related to the chief, so I live in the chief’s compound a few houses away from the main chief’s house (there are multiple chiefs in the village, but the head one is my neighbor). I have my own room and have slept quite well since the first night when I was convinced a bat was flying around my room. As it turns out, lizards running on a tin roof sound an awful lot like bat wings. There is no electricity, which has definitely been an adjustment, but I’m getting used to using my kerosene lantern and I’m definitely appreciating how beautiful the sky looks at night. Bucket showers are actually very nice and I’m fortunate to have a cockroach-free latrine. I’m also really lucky to have pretty good cell phone reception in my room, so I have been able to talk to people from home when I’m feeling lonely! If you want to give me a call, it works best from skype and I believe it costs about 40 cents a minute...I put my number up on facebook and would love for friends to call!!!

Training has been pretty intense. We have classes from 730am to 530pm with a 2.5 hour lunch break. Classes are on health, language, bike maintenance, policy, and technical skills and everyday seems very long because it is so full from start to finish and because I’m waking up at 6am every morning, something I don’t think I’ve ever done before… Today, I learned how to compost and plant tree seedlings…so I’m learning some useful skills! This week, we heard where all the posts will be and we gave our post preferences, but we don’t find out until next week where we are placed. There are posts in all five regions and there were many that sounded really great and interesting. We’re all anxious to find out where we will be, but we have to wait just a little longer!!!

Overall, the adjustment over these past 2 weeks has definitely been difficult and I’ve thought a lot about home and the people I miss. However, as I’m becoming closer with the other trainees and feeling more comfortable at my homestay, things are getting easier and time is beginning to pick up speed a bit. I can’t wait to find out where my post is and to begin making a life for myself in my village!! I hope everyone is doing well at home and with your new jobs!!!

Emily

So, I’ve arrived safely in Togo!!! We’ve been here 48 hours, but it already feels like so much longer, especially since the days have been jam packed. We arrived in Lome on time on Saturday and were given the VIP treatment. We got off the plane and were taken to a special waiting room with couches and air conditioning and waited while Peace Corps got our luggage and passports stamped. It felt very official!! Since arrival, we’ve been really well taken care of. The past 2 days have been full of sessions with program managers, health officers, administration, and more. There are also a lot of volunteers who came down to Lome to welcome us and help out with training. It’s been great to finally be able to ask the questions about Peace Corps and Togo that I’ve had for the past 4 months. Last night, a welcome party was held for us that even the U.S. ambassador attended!!

Overall, since arriving, I’ve just felt really excited and happy. Getting off the plane, there was that well-known smell of smoke from various things burning that immediately brought me back to Niger. However, the air in Lome is thicker and more humid and mixed with the salty smell of nearby ocean. So far, we’ve been shuttled around, so I don’t have a good sense of the city yet. However, my first impression is that it is a very laid back city with not too much traffic. We’ve been mainly on side roads that are dirt and currently covered in huge potholes that have filled high with water due to the rainy reason we arrived in. There seems to be fewer livestock wandering the streets than in Niamey. I’ve only seen one goat so far, but there are familiar sights of women carrying enormous loads on their heads and both men and women walking around in colorful pagne outfits. It’s hard right now to not compare Niger to Togo, but I know this will be a unique experience and I’m excited to get to know the country and culture. However, in many ways it does feel like I’m coming back to something familiar and a region of the world that I really love.

We have 3 more nights in Lome and then we move to our training site where I will not have electricity, so I don’t know how many times I’ll be able to post over the next 8weeks. Apparently, we find out our site placements in about 10 days, which is earlier than usual, so I’m really excited for that. I’ve talked to volunteers from all regions and they each sound interesting and challenging in their own way. I just can’t wait to know!!!

So far, I just feel so lucky to have been placed in Togo. The staff are great, the other volunteers are really welcoming, and I just feel like I’ll have a well-run training to give me a good start and will be well taken care of throughout my service, which is all I can ask for. So far, I’m so glad with my decision to join the Peace Corps!!

It’s the final countdown to my Peace Corps departure and as expected, this comes with mixed emotions. I’ve had a really amazing summer and have been fortunate to spend time with lots of family and friends. In the past week, I’ve had a goodbye party where I was able to see most of my closest friends in Boston, I spent a few days at the beach in Rockport, and now I’m sitting in NH looking outside at the beautiful White Mountains that are beginning to show the signs of fall foliage. It’s easy in these last few days to think of all the things I’m sad to leave behind, from friends and family to crisp fall days and the first snow and skiing. Unfortunately, starting a new adventure comes with the unavoidable task of saying goodbye, which is something I think no one enjoys doing. However, what comforts me is the knowledge that these goodbyes aren’t permanent. While daunting now, in the grand scheme of things, 2 years really isn’t that long and there will be plenty of future moments to spend with the people I care about and in the places where I feel most comfortable. While it’s easy now to be looking behind at what I’m leaving, I’ve been trying to focus on what’s ahead of me. I applied to the Peace Corps about a year ago, so I’ve been thinking and talking about becoming a volunteer for a long time. Surprisingly, I don’t feel that nervous. I’m more anxious, excited, and curious to finally see what it will be like. I’ve also received a lot more detailed information from Peace Corps in the past week, so I have a more clear image of what my next few months will be like. After I arrive in Lome on September 18th, I will be spending four days in the capital with all the other trainees. We’ll be in a hotel and will go through an orientation to Peace Corps Togo. Then, I move with the other NRM (Natural Resource Management) volunteers to the village of Gbatope where I will live with a homestay family and go through 9 weeks of training. Gbatope is not on google maps, but you can google the town of Tsevie and Gbatope is apparently 6km northeast of Tsevie. While in Gbatope, I will go through language, cultural, technical, and health training. Also, this one is my favorite, I will be trained in bike care and maintenance, since I will be given a bike for transportation in Togo. Anyone who knows me is aware that I lack any ability to fix or maintain things, so the bike maintenance lessons should be interesting. I’ll be in training until late November and by the end of October I’ll know where my site is and will spend a week there. In a little over a month, I’ll finally be able to answer the question: where will you be living in Togo?!! Overall, I’m really excited to get going. I’m almost done packing and I think I’ve managed to fit everything in under the weight limit. I also have a lot of cool new gadgets like a solar charger and hand-cranked shortwave radio and flashlight. Although I know there are a lot of things I will miss, and I’m sure there will be many moments when I will wish I were back in the U.S., I’m also completely confident joining the Peace Corps is the right thing for me to be doing right now. I’ve envisioned different scenarios of graduate school, jobs in the US, or other opportunities abroad, and Peace Corps continually is the most exciting and appealing. I get to live in Africa again, part of my job will be cultural exchange, I get to work on community-based development projects, I will be working within a support network and structure, and, from what I’ve heard from other volunteers, there will be a lot of fun!! So, come visit if you want and otherwise, we’ll keep in touch and I’ll see you when I’m stateside once again

Emily

Four weeks from today, I will be flying to Philadelphia to meet the rest of the Peace Corps trainees who I will be serving with in Togo. Four weeks from tomorrow, I will be boarding a flight to Paris and then finally, in four weeks and two days I will step foot on a flight to Lome, the capital of the Republic of Togo, my home for the next two years. The reality of my move hasn't really sunk in until now, but at the four week countdown, I think it is finally hitting me that I really am leaving my friends, family, and home behind for what will undoubtedly be one of the most amazing and challenging adventures of my life! After a year of applications, interviews, medical exams, legal clearances, and nail-biting waiting, it's hard to believe I'm finally going to be joining the Peace Corps!Flashback to 3 months ago, the day before graduation: This was the day that Peace Corps applicants dream of, the day my beautiful blue envelope arrived holding the answer to question I had been wondering, and everyone else had been asking me, where in the world will I be living for the next 27 months? When I opened that package and saw the answer, I screamed with excitement and felt enormous relief since I was being sent to one of my top choices: Togo. Why am I so excited to be going to Togo? There are several reasons:1. Togo is in Africa, which was where I really wanted to go as a Peace Corps volunteer due to the amazing previous experiences I've had in Africa and my desire to spend even more time living there. 2. Togo is in francophone West Africa. This makes me even more excited to be going to Togo since I get to continue using my french and I get to live in a different part of the region that I fell in love with while on study abroad in Niger. Togo is also well located within West Africa. It's wedged between Ghana to the west, Benin to the east, and Burkina Faso to the north. It is also close enough to Niger, separated by either Benin or Burkina Faso, that I can feasibly travel overland and visit friends in Niamey. 3. Togo is 60% animist. While in Niger, one of my favorite things was to learn about animist religion and traditions. However, these traditions were hidden underneath the openly practiced Islam. In Togo, apparently about 60% of the population openly practices animist religions and that is something I am sure will make my Peace Corps experience interesting and exciting!4. Togo's size and diversity. Togo is a small country, only about 70 miles wide and 400 miles long. Although Peace Corps says that the infrastructure can be very poor, making travel difficult, compared to many other countries, Togo's size will make it relatively easier to get around, see the country, visit other volunteers, and travel to neighboring countries. Also, Togo's length allows it to cross several different climatic zones. The south of the country borders the ocean, which I'm also really excited about!, then there is a region in the middle with small mountains and lush, humid landscape, and in the north the climate will be similar to Niger with dry brush land. There are also around 40 different ethnic groups with varying languages and cultures. This diversity in culture and climate should make Togo an interesting country to live in. These are the main reasons I was and am excited to be placed in Togo. I feel incredibly lucky and I can't wait to arrive and learn about the aspects of life in Togo that I never expected or anticipated. I'm also really happy with the assignment I've been given: Natural Resource Management. From the small amounts of information Peace Corps has given me, it seems NRM (there are lots of acronyms in Peace Corps), volunteers work on a wide variety of projects from reforestation campaigns, to nutrition projects, to environmental education. There also seems to be a large degree of flexibility and volunteers are encouraged to do side projects that they are interested in and their community wants. I'm sure whatever I'm expecting now will be different from the reality I will face. The advice I've been given from all the volunteers I've met has always been to expect the unexpected. However, what I can count on is whatever happens it will be a challenging, new, exciting, and interesting adventure that will hopefully provide me with interesting insights and stories to share on this blog!For the next four weeks I will be trying to pack my life into the 80 lbs of luggage the Peace Corps allows us and I will be trying to spend as much time as possible with family and friends. I'll probably update right before leaving when the panic really sets in! Until then, enjoy the rest of summer!! :)