Quick Notes…

–>  New photos added!! (See album : “Birthday fete / Church fete”)

–> “Send me mail / Wishlist” page updated

–> Blog post to follow on Friday from Vogan!

 

Let the Rain Fall Down and Wash My Soul

 

 

à New photo album up!! (Entitled Camp U.N.I.T.E.)

 

It’s rainy season ! Yes, I know I’ve been saying that a lot lately, but now it’s really true.  Apparently what I thought were big rainfalls were merely teasers.  So far the record is 10 hours of non-stop rain, turning the streets into treacherous, slippery mudholes (yesterday I finally just took off my flipflops and walked barefoot).  I’m regretting not bringing a raincoat! My poncho is much admired but doesn’t quite cut it . With brief rains, the humidity only increases and tends to make my house stuffy since I must shut the windows; but with long rains it becomes chilly and yesterday for the first time since Harmattan I wore my Duquesne sweatshirt and pants (plunging me into a fit of nostalgia for college life), which my village got a kick out of as I very rarely wear pants. Most times you can see the rains coming – dark clouds that thicken and deepen and come nearer and nearer.  Some times there are ferocious winds (that knocked down my fence!) and other times an eerie calm which in itself warns of the coming storm.   I sleep with my windows shut now, so that in the middle of the night I don’t have to worry about waking up in time to close them.  The rain can drench anyone and anything in 30 seconds.  I always wake up anyway though; as I’ve mentioned before, rainy season at night terrifies me; both the storms and then the rain simply by itself, so loud on my tin roof. I had thought my spider phobia would be a fear to battle in Togo but instead it’s this new unknown enemy.  If it rains I tend not to leave the house, since I know no one else will be going to school/meetings/market etc until the rain slows.  I sit on my porch for as long as the direction of the wind will allow me to stay dry.  The fields are flourishing and most people spend their time cultivating.  Sometimes I enjoy the rain – for instance I have a constant water supply now since I just leave buckets outside permanently – and other times it’s an annoyance – ie., it makes the roads too dangerous to take motos, it can mess up travel plans, it can put me in a bind as to my obligations (aka , I  am supposed to be at the collège at 9am but can’t leave my compound without getting wet and dirty)

 

Speaking of rains I am worried that they will mess up my plan for… my birthday!  I will of course post an update later, but so far here is the plan: On Wednesday Becka and I are going to go to Togoville and swim at the hotel’s pool.  I’m really excited, apparently we have to take a boat over Lake Togo to get to the hotel! I’m also going to spend a lot of money (present to myself) at the artisinal center (which sells tourist traps like masks, drums, jewelry, etc).  Then Becka is going to come back to village and we’re going to fete at my house.  Justine is going to make my favorite meal: pate rougel and on Friday in Vogan I bought 2 kilos of beef.  I invited Justine’s family to come over, and there’re several people that I hope kind of “show up” even though I don’t want to formally invite them because outside of Justine’s family once I start inviting people then everyone is going to play the “But why wasn’t I invited?” game.  Becka is going to spend the night and in the morning I’m hoping to show her Lake Togo and more of my village.  

 

It doesn’t stop there.  The following weekend is the parish’s celebration of World Youth Day (or something like that) and this year is Sevagan’s turn to host it, so parishioners from several different villages will be here.  I’ve already told them that the Saturday fete is also for my birthday (yes I’m shameless) and so that will be my way of celebrating with the community.  Then on Sunday I’m going back to Vogan to spend the night and have salsa dancing lessons with Becka and another PCV, and rumor has it fabulous Fabiola might show up and bake me a cake.  So, you can see why I’m looking forward to this week!  (Work? What’s work?) I’m hoping all this fun stuff will prevent me from feeling too lonely or wistful.

 

I’m spending today and tonight in Lomé because Tuesday I have a meeting and I wouldn’t have had enough time to do things like internet, shopping, Peace Corps business, etc. So I decided to come in a full day early – a first for me, as normally I come in and out in one day. I’ll go back to village Tuesday evening.

 

The meeting on Tuesday is to discuss Camp Espoir (hope) which will be held in August for children affected by / infected with HIV/AIDS.   At the end of May/beginning of June I was a counselor at Camp UNITE (it’s an acronym …) .  Camp UNITE happens every year and it has four different waves of young people: girl apprentices, boy apprentices, boy students, and girl students. 

 

UNITE was a lot of fun.  We had a three day training and then were there for a week with the participants – 40 female apprentices.   We had a full schedule (and lots of speaking French!) and covered a lot of life skills, such as Self Confidence, HIV/AIDS, Income Generating Activities, Family Planning, Adolescence and Puberty, Time Management and Goal Setting, Sexual Harassment and Rape, and so on.  Every volunteer was responsible for leading at least one session along with a Togolese counterpart.  (My session was on sexual harassment and rape.)  Additionally, there were lots of team-building problem solving exercises, and singing and dancing.   Every participant also had to wear a fake pregnancy outfit, which is why the photos show me pregnant haha.  At the end of the camp there was a big march through Pagala and a “sensibilization” against HIV/AIDS , all led by the girls.  It was great to see the girls proud of their work and proud to feel like they mattered.  I had sent two girls from my village and they are already coming up to me, back in village, and telling me ideas for projects they want to launch.  On Tuesday evening I hope to meet with the two boys, two girls and see how they would like to work with me more closely from now on. 

 

I finished up my Life Skills classes at the collège.  Last week I offered an “English week” where I was at the collège three times a day, all week, with the troisieme (the class that is the end of collège and which must pass a major exam to finish and continue to high school): first in the morning to give a general English lesson to the entire class, then at midday to eat lunch with six or seven students and tutor them specifically, then in the evening for an hour for a larger group of students (15) to continue to tutor them.  It  was exhausting, but I thought of it as a present for the troisieme since they were always complaining that I didn’t work with them all year.  Tomorrow all their exams start; I hope they all pass, although truth be told a lot of them won’t.  The importance of this exam isn’t just that they can’t continue on to high school; even if they don’t want to go to high school, it’s still important (for employment, etc) that they have this “diploma”.  But a lot of students won’t enroll in school again if they pass. 

 

That’s all for now.  I’m going to grab something to eat, then continue to do some internet work.   I got Sophia and Mom’s packages – thanks a lot in advance J

Hi everyone, I just got back from being a counselor at a PC camp for girl apprentices.  I’ll be back in Lome in about 10 days, so I’m planning to write a nice update and thoughts then.  Thanks as usual for continuing for leaving me messages and comments.  I also enjoy your emails and your news about what is going on chez toi.

Can someone please send me a headlamp?  Mine broke a couple months ago and I’m realizing how useful an object it is (ie reading at night or packing at night, which is normally what I’m doing because I procrastinate too much).   

Note to mom:  I am planning on mailing a letter on Friday.  So it will get to the USA eventually.

Here’s a copy of a letter to the editor I sent to my local paper in PA after they wrote an article about Togo:

———

 Dear Editor:

As a current Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo, and a former resident of Hempfield Township (and a graduate of Duquesne University ’06), I was initially delighted to receive a clipping from your March 10, 2008, issue entitled “Peace Corps Enrichment”.

 

I appreciated your highlighting Togo, a diverse country in West Africa located between Benin and Ghana, as not many people are familiar with it.  There were a few items in your article, however, that I would like to clarify to avoid further misconceptions both on the part of your newspaper and on the part of your readers.

 

For instance, the adjective used to describe a national of Togo is Togolese, not Togoian.  It is incredibly diverse, containing over 51 ethnic groups with just as many languages.  It is a former German colony, changing over to French hands after the collapse of Germany’s empire.

 

Peace Corps Togo has four domains:  Small Enterprise Development, Community Health and AIDS Prevention, Natural Resource Management, and Girls’ Education and Empowerment (I am a Volunteer in the GEE program). Togo has the distinction of being one of the countries with the longest continuous Peace Corps service and we just recently celebrated our 45^th anniversary. Volunteers undergo three months of language, technical, and cultural training before beginning their two years at post.  Peace Corps has two additional goals apart from sending Americans to provide technical aid to other countries: to promote understanding of Americans on behalf of foreign communities and to promote understanding of foreign communities on behalf of Americans.

 

It is this last, third goal that I would have liked to see your article promote.  However, much of the article’s tone did nothing to temper our American stereotypes of Africa.  For instance, using the phrases “mud hut”, “dirt poor” and “always hot” merely reinforces a media-inspired image of Africa as a hot, desolate homogenous continent with starving populations.   In reality, Togo has several distinct climates; during the season known as Harmattan I spent my mornings shivering in jeans and a sweatshirt.  Its landscape varies from jungle to mountains to savannah.  Yes, Togo is admittedly a poor country.  But just like in the USA we see a sliding scale between the “haves” and “have nots”.  There are regions of relative wealth and then there are regions where poverty is more prevalent.  The climate ranges from humid in the south to dry, strong heat in the north. 

 

I would have liked your article to celebrate the beauty of our diverse world and to avoid reinforcing barriers and highlighting negatives – “creepy crawlies”, “predatory” Togolese.  In regards to this last claim, it’s important to note that Togolese attitudes towards strangers greatly depend on the locality.  In areas where tourists are prevalent, male attitudes towards female Americans may seem more aggressive, because they are basing their experiences on women they have previously encountered.  This is definitely challenging for female volunteers, but your article could have found a better way to discuss this issue rather than choosing the most negative, inflammatory word possible.

 

I live in a village in the south of Togo.  My house is cement (2 rooms, and an outdoor, separate kitchen) with a tin roof.  There is no running water or electricity, although many PCVs have one or both of these luxuries.  My village has a multitude of religions, including Catholicism, Islam, various Protestant sects, and voo-doo (otherwise known as fetishism or animism).  I must speak a mixture of French and Ewe, the predominant local language.  As a GEE volunteer, some of my current projects include a girls’ club at the primary school, teaching life skills at three different grade levels at the middle school, establishing women’s savings and loans groups, helping apprentices learn basic business skills, and encouraging reading activities at the new village library.  I keep my latrine clean, and have yet to see a cockroach there.

 

In my time here, I have learned that many of my previous conceptions of Africa were misguided or misplaced, and that American media reinforced much of these false conceptions.  I would have enjoyed reading anecdotes about Togolese culture or the fantastic (and fantastical!) experiences that Peace Corps Volunteers go through.  PCVs are some of the few “foreign aid workers” who actually live among the people they serve, becoming adopted members of their villages.  

 

There are many challenges to my service and daily life here.  But there are also many extraordinary moments and I know that despite any rough times I am experiencing a great adventure in broadening my horizons.  I hope that next time your article could do more to help your readers do the same. 

 

Sincerely,

 

 _____