Don't Call Me Yovo

*Hey guys, so internet is hard to get to and slow right now during training. I've writen a few blog posts over the past couple weeks and have just now gotten them up. My togo cell phone on the contacts page so feel free to call me. I'll get back to your emails as soon as i can but realize it may be a while...*

Yovo is the term here in Togo for “light-skinned person”, aka white people. This does, however, include asians, latinos and even African-Americans, so basically anyone not from Africa. It’s not meant to be demeaning, it’s just a matter of fact here. On my 5 minute walk to class I probably hear “Yovo” at least 10 times, and those are just the people who say it loud enough for me to hear it. In general, I think calling out any word to a stranger passing by is inappropriate, so this has been something that I’ve really had to adapt to.

The majority of the time, it’s kids who call out Yovo. (Sometimes, though, adults do it too, which I have been assured by my host mom is not okay for them to do.) The kids get all excited when they see us and start singing a little song that goes like this: “Yovo, yovo, bonsoir. Ça va bien? Merci!” Picture a group of 3 years olds trying to sing this in unison when they don’t even speak French yet, and it can sometimes get pretty entertaining. I’ve found that some days it makes me smile. I try to always be polite to the kids, but there have definitely been days when I just want to yell at them to shut up. Unfortunately, this is something that I’m going to have to get used to.

Volunteers have different methods for trying to combat the yovo callout. Occasionally, a simple bonsoir or bonjour back quiets them, but this generally only works until you turn away from them and then the singing resumes. Another one is to stop and say “Je ne m’appelle pas Yovo. Je m’appelle Katy”, but that only works with the ones who know english and in a town as large as Tsévié there’s no way you can tell every kid your name and have them remember it. I walked the same path as another female volunteer and I’ll sometimes get called her name. Some people have also tried, in the mornings, to tell the kids that the song is incorrect because it says bonsoir (good evening) and the correct way would be to say bonjour (good  morning). We visited one PCV in her village her would do a special handshake with the kids only when they called her by her name and not Yovo. My favorite response, although I have yet to do it, it to say “Ameeba” back to them, which means “black person”. I’ve been told this one really stumps them. We’ll see.

The Yovo calls get worse worse we are in groups. One day, we had a bike lesson where we all road on the Rue Nationale (the main road in Togo, their equivalent to a highway). Not only were there 10 of use riding in a row, but we all have to wear bike helmets that make us stand out even more because the Togolaise never wear them. We started singing the baseball chant that goes “Everywhere we go, people wanna know, who we are, so we tell them, we are the Yovos, the mighty mighty Yovos…” It was a great comic relief for us and now someone will occasionally break out into song and make us all smile.

In other news, I found out where I will be living for the next 2 years. It’s a town called Tanjouaré and it’s in the northernmost region of Togo called Savanes. I’ve been told the town has about 15,000 and it’s right on the Rue Nationale so it should be easy to get to. I’ve heard that there’s a really good group of volunteers up there, which is important because it’s definitely isolated from the rest of the country. I’m going to be working with an NGO that focuses on helping women gain business skills, but this is probably just going to be a small fraction of what I do. More on it later though, as we have a post visit week starting on July 10.