Goats and Catholics

The goat has been sick for a while – monts and months, with bony hips that stick out showing the hollowness of his sides, and a tumor-like growth as big as his head that hangs from the underside of his belly.

« You know, » Kokoutsé said to Bogavi in Ewe, then translating for my benefit, looking at the goat speculatively, « maybe a charlatan got to him. » The two teenaged boys leaned back and prepared to go on with their game of checkers. I demanded an explanation.

« Well, sometimes the feticheurs want to do something bad to a person. But they don’t know if it will work. So they’ll send the bad thing to affect an animals first, to see if the spell works. »

« So it’s not intended against anyone in our household ? No one is trying to cast a spell on us or anything, right ? » I asked.

Kokoutsé made the deep noise in the back of his throat that means No. We sat in silence.

« Unless…. » he started again. « Unless… sometimes, if they want to send evil onto a person, but that person is a believing, practicing Christian, the evil can’t touch them. So it wil go to an animal instead. »

There you have it – African Catholicism, so deeply intertwined with voodoo and black magic that, unlike the West, Togolese Catholics don’t reject the uncanny and the unnatural. Rather, they believe their God is stronger than other gods or the forces of the voodoo and that the Holy Spirit surrounds them with armour. Forces of good and evil coexist to such an extent that sometimes you cannot tell where one ends and the other finishes, and you are forced to merely trust that as long as you have done your duty and gone to church with a calm and believing heart, then God will figure out the difference for you and prevent devils from touching you….

back in africa

Requiem

And then lying in the darkness, surrounded by the mosquito net through
which was seeping the African night, the open window letting in the
loudness fo the quiet hour, I remembered what I had forgotten – how in
the utter stillness you can feel the cold reality of your solitude
penetrating to your bones. That this is the challenge, the burden,
the load to bear.

Adieu Akoko (Introducing Fika)

Two days before I left, Koko wandered off. This did not worry me too
much, because he occasionally did this, always returning after one or
two days. But upon my return to Togo and to village, Justine told me
Koko had never come back. Around the same time, the chief’s cat, the
school director’s cat, and the midwife’s cat all went missing too.
This being Togo, the chances of Koko coming back are pretty slim, and
I can only hope that the hungry hunters who caught him killed him
quickly and mercifully. I miss his rascally meow and his complete
certainty in his own importance, sitting on Justine’s knee while we
cook dinner or begging underneath the table for scraps or waking me up
at 5am to come back into the house. He had such beautiful green eyes
and long whiskers and full tail.

In the States, you don’t normally rush out and get a new pet right
away on the death of the previous pet, but this is Togo, where
companionship from animals means an extraordinary amount to lonely
Volunteers. So now I have a lovely little grey tabby kitten, still
with blue eyes, now scampering around my house. I’m probably going to
call him Fika (‘where”) because the first 24 hours I thought I lost
him because he hid himself so well. He has yet to learn that his job
is to cuddle, and spends his time pouncing on anything that moves. He
is the most playful cat I’ve ever seen, turning somersaults, stalking
big toes, leaping through the air to catch a wiggled finger. I can’t
even shine my flashlight on him because he gets so distracted hunting
the shadows. (I almost want to call him Shadow — Vovoli in Ewe).
Now if we can only get him to sleep on my lap or underneath my chine
like Koko did… In a whole week, I’ve only ever seen him sleeping
once! I thought kittens were supposed to play, play, play and then
konk out?

Homeleavings and Homecomings

The flight back to Togo was relatively good. At the last minute they
bumped me from the flight to JFK and sent me to Atlanta. In Atlanta I
sweet-talked the Delta agent into changing my seat to an aisle seat
with two empty ones next to me, so the long flight to Paris was pretty
comfortable. (And this time I was dressed for the weather, unlike
when I left Togo…) On the flight from Paris to Lome I made friends
with a nice French boy and I was relieved to find out I hadn’t
forgotten any of my French. We spent most of the flight chatting,
except for two hours when I just couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore.
Once in Lome aeroport, the hot humidity slapped my face when I got off
the plane. My bags took forever and I thought they had been lost
again (especially since they had been checked originally to go to
JFK). As soon as we landed in Lome I felt very comfortable in my
surroundings and back at ease. Paris was merely a place where I
happened to speak the language but Lome is where I know the elaborate
social dance steps of protocol and ritual and flirtation that I know
so well; the guards take the time to ask about your trip and everyone
is ready with a joke and everyone is yelling out greetings in Ewe….

Becka was waiting for me at the hostel (thank God for awesome friends)
and the next morning we went out to Vogan where I took one last
shower, one last time before going back to being continually sweaty
and glowy … I found a taxi to rent back to village. Justine was
waiting for me, followed in quick succession by Simon, and Viale, and
Michel, and Emmanuel, and Kokoutse. And Adjo and Akou who screamed
and flung themselves at me and wouldn’t let me go. And whose eyes lit
up when I gave them their jump ropes. Merci merci. Akpe akpe.

So I was in the States for a month. How long a time and how short a
time it seems! I wonder if people think my being there was a dream.
Sometimes I wonder that too. But I have my photos and the videos and
all the lovely presents I brought back and the tools for work (I
already started teaching the kids how to play baseball and all the
French flashcards are being put to good use in English club!). The
first week was difficult because of jet lag and getting used to
Togolese food again (had to use the latrine at night for the first
time!) and missing my sisters.

While in the States, I went to a specialist about a gum infection that
started in September. By this time it had spread to my sinuses and
was pretty serious leading to bone loss. I ended up having to have
surgery on it and hopefully it won’t happen again. Thank goodness for
small blessings that I was in the States and was able to get this
taken care of before it got any worse. Ironically the medication made
me more sick than I’ve been in Togo.

I was also touched by the pleasure of many (mainly old) women in the
village who were excited to see me and came up to hug me hello.

I’m still processing the return and couldn’t put down everything. In
the next coming weeks I’m sure I’ll have some interesting
observations.