I'm published!

Ok, so it's not my actual work that is published, but it's articles that have recently been published about the work that I do in Togo. You can check them out here:

The Press Democrat

Peace Corps Press

AllAfrica.com

Merci!

Préparation de Kalma

*It’s been a while since I last posted. Nothing has really struck me as worth writing about recently. I think it’s because my life here has become so normal that things don’t surprise me as much anymore and I’ve gotten into somewhat of a routine. Well, here’s a little write-up of a Togolese dish I made today with my counterpart Rachel. This week, the new Volunteers swear in and Peace Corps celebrates 50 years in Togo. They’re renting out a large concert hall and it’s set to be a huge event. They’ve even invited Faure Gnassingbé, Togo’s president! (Doubtful he will come though.) I’ll be showcasing Rachel’s work with the other artisans PCVs work with in country, along with promoting the Women’s Conference (WWEC). Then, this weekend I leave the African continent for the first time in over 15 months and travel to the amazingness that is America, the land of bacon, ice cream and blocks of cheese.

Over the past year I’ve grown to love Togolese food. Long gone are the constant cravings for Oreos and my mom’s tuta. I now find myself craving white, pounded yam mush with fish sauce and beans cooked in palm oil. Don’t get me wrong, I am mentally prepared to gain 10-15 pounds from overindulgence on my next vacation, but cravings tend to be for foods that you eat regularly.

One of my favorite Togolese dishes is called kalma. It’s a Moba word and there’s no French translation that I know of. I’ve only ever seen it in the Savannes region and other Volunteers down south have never heard of it. The best I can describe it as is like a bean tamale. Essentially, it is crushed beans made into watery dough and cooked in bags or leaves eaten with tomato sauce or simply oil and hot peppers.

The Kalma:

We started by pounding the fresh beans in a mortar to break them from their shell.

Next, using water, we separated the shell casing from the beans.

Now we were ready to take the beans to the mill. The mill was a metal, gas-powered engine that was housed at Rachel’s neighbor’s house. Togolese use the mill to grind corn, soybeans, etc. and in Dapaong, you can find one every few blocks.

After adding some water, it was time to add the potash, a mined salt containing potassium.

Next we poured the batter in little plastic baggies. I have made this once before au village and we cooked the batter in leaves, but plastic bags are so much neater.

The bags were then added to a giant pot of boiling water. Fun Togolese fact: Togolese don’t use potholder when cooking. They just pick up steaming hot caldrons with their hands without even flinching. I have still yet to acquire “pâte fingers” (where you can eat the still steaming corn mush with your fingers. I either have to wait for it to cool or have someone pull apart tiny pieces for me like a mother would cut meat for her child) so I have no hopes of attaining this level of awesomeness.

The batter cooked for about an hour and when we took them out it looked like this.

The Sauce:

We prepared a tomato fish sauce to dip the pieces of kalma in. Rachel cut up the onions after Sam failed due to a lack of table to cut on. (Another amazing Togolese feat: they cut food while holding it in their hands. Luckily, the knives tend to be pretty dull.)

Next, we crushed the peppers, tomatoes (no seeds), green spices and garlic.

The tomato substance was then poured into a pot with a cup of oil already in it (we later added more oil), salted to taste.

Rachel then peeled the fish and added it to the sauce.

Lastly came the whole peppers. Before coming to Togo, I couldn’t eat anything spicy. Now, I sometimes have to ask for more in my food otherwise it doesn’t taste the same. I’m quite proud of myself for this.

And that’s your Togolese cooking lesson for the day!

Quick Update

It's summer time which means camp season for PCVs in Togo. I've been traveling around the country the last couple weeks. To check out what I've been up to, you can view photos, read our first issue of Farm to Market and watch a video clip that was shown on national Togo television about Camp Joie, a camp for handicapped Togolese youth where I was a counselor (can you spot me?!). More updates coming soon!

Work Happenings

So I recently realized that I have mainly focused my blog on goals #2 and #3 of PC (#2: teach Togolese about Americans, #3: teach Americans about Togolese) and have not touched much on goal #1, which is transferring skills to Togolese. Most of you are probably what exactly it is that I’m doing here besides eating strange food and playing with my dog. To be honest, most of my actual work activities didn’t really come about until a few months ago when I changed sites, but now things are starting to get rolling and this summer is going to be crazy busy for me.

*Also, May 31st marks one year from the day I left California. June 3rd will be a year in Togo. Wow, time sure goes by fast.

Rachel

Rachel is my official homologue and an amazing woman. Her trade is upholstering, but her skills and ambition surpass that. Upholsterers (in French, tapissiers) are usually male and she did her apprenticeship with a male employer and other male apprentices. She now owns her own workshop and has 15 all-female apprentices (she had 9 when I moved in February). Our first project that we’re doing together is collecting photos of her work to ultimately make into a catalogue to show potential customers. She tends to only do made-to-order because otherwise people (mainly family and friends) come to her and say that they like something and then they take it promising to pay later but never do. It stems from a cultural belief that family members who are more well off should help those that are less well off.

Christoff (Sam's Homologue), Sam and Rachel enjoying a burrito lunch we served them the other day. Goal #2.

We are also working to expand her merchandise to offer bags, wallets, etc. She already makes the bags for CEDAF (see below) using their woven pagne but has the ability to use other materials (pagne and leather, for example). I have given her some sample pictures that she is using to replicate, but in her own artistic way. I’m really looking forward to working with her throughout my next year of service and hope to help her improve her business in any way that I can.

The bags Rachel makes with the CEDAF pagnes.

CEDAF Weaver’s Group

CEDAF is a co-op group of women in Dapaong that offers support to women and young girls with few or no other options and teaches them skills and life lessons. They are known for their production of traditional woven pagne. There have been many volunteers before me who have worked with them and I was eager to see how I could add to their already well-established organization. I recently helped the women receive and process a very large order from an NGO in the US, and taught them skills such as how to create an invoice, exporting and quality control. The NGO was pleased with their work and, if they should receive future orders, I hope to make them self-sustainable in the process. We just shipped off the first order last week so now we’re discussing what will be our next step.

World Map Project

My site mate Sam and I share a love of geography, so I was excited when we both wanted to do a World Map Project and decided to do it together. What is a World Map Project? It is a tool that was designed by a PCV in the 80s to help spread geography education to areas where maps and textbooks are not widely available. It allows you to draw and paint a detailed and proportional world map on a wall or floor area. We found an elementary school in Dapaong that was interested and held a drawing contest with the CM2 students (the US equivalent of 5^th grade). We picked 25 of the best artists of 100 students to assist us. At our first meeting, we began by asking them to draw what they could of a world map from memory. Most were able to draw Togo and a few more could draw Africa, but nothing more than that. We asked who had ever seen a world map before, thinking that in a regional capital it would be more likely than in the smaller surrounding villages, and two students raised their hands. In a country where adults commonly ask me “Where in Europe is America?” I shouldn’t have been too surprised. It took a week and a half, and lots of patience and trying to suppress my detail-focused OCD, but the end result looks amazing and the kids were so excited. One of my favorite parts was when Sam (who’s from Michigan) and I showed where our hometowns were on the map and then the kids realized the distance compared to the size of Togo and their mouths would just drop. Togo is their whole world and my attempt was to try an open their world up a little. We already have a request from another school for another map and I’m excited to start!

The school's director even got in on the action.

Togo–PC Partnership

Women’s Groups

Must like in the US, women here commonly form interest groups amongst their community. They aren’t groups that play Bunko, however, and use the groups to form a coalition of women who sell the same thing in the market or women who live in the same quartier and profit from the security formed between the group members. Many groups either save money or take out loans together, but they could just meet to share advice about family and ways to improve their lives.

I have met a few times over the last several months with one women’s group in Dalwak and have taught basic business skills such as marketing and how to see if your product or service you are selling or want to sell is profitable and a good business venture. I did an example on how much capital it requires to start selling tchakpa, a local fermented millet drink. Start-up materials alone are over 50,000cfa ($100US, a lot of money here) and after half the total quantity was given away as a cadeau, most women would lose money for the day–not what the women expected but they had never took the time to calculate it before so therefore never knew. To see it just click in their minds was amazing. Throughout the next few months I will be presenting on other topics to this group and a few others nearby as well.

A popular savings technique that is surpassing microfinance and even basic tontines (rotational savings groups where each week a different member receives the “pot” of money) is a village savings and loans association, or VSLA. The original success of microfinance was based in the idea that it allowed the poorest of the poor to secure loans but the original design has been commonly been modified into a for-profit business and the result has made microloans inaccessible to the poorest of the poor. A VSLA aims to use the security of locally formed groups to help members save amongst themselves and give each other loans, usually closing out a year later with a substantial (30-40%) interest rate. I knew coming into PC that I wanted to help start a VSLA but it’s important that the interested group actually is interested, otherwise the project won’t work. My Dalwak women just asked me if I could help them set up a savings group so that’s another project I’ll be working on over the next few months.

Business Club

I had a group of high school students approach me a couple months ago about the possibility of starting a youth business club. We now have a group of ten students and together are starting our first project. We will be selecting between 5-10 female students to give a small loan to for the summer to start her own small business. She will learn basic business and management skills, as well as the fundamentals of taking out a loan and the business club members will be the ones teaching them these skills. I will be supervising. It’s a model that former Togo PCVs have used and I hope to help these girls save money for their school fees in the fall and instill my students with the ability to teach these skills to other groups.

Additionally, the business club wants to open a computer informational learning center in Dapaong, catered mostly to students. Computer/Internet café type centers exist, but few places teach how to actually use a computer and classes are expensive. This is an expensive endeavor but ultimately one that I think could greatly benefit the community and be very useful in today’s technology-based society. The students (and me, actually) will be learning how to write a business proposal and investigate funding options. If successful, this will be a lengthy process but also hopefully very rewarding.

Lastly, to work on their computer and Internet skills, they students have asked to be put in touch with students in the US with whom they could converse in English. If anyone knows any high school kids who may be interested, please let me know.

WWEC

I’ve talked about WWEC a few times already on this blog, but I never wrote a follow-up post to our regional conference in March. Basically, it was a huge success and the women were amazing and fun to interact with. We taught them a variety of things from yoga to nutrition to gardening to accounting. I was chosen to be a national coordinator of the event for 2013 so you’ll be hearing a lot about it in the coming months. It’s going to be a lot of work but I truly believe that it is an extraordinary event that really empowers women and brings together women from a variety of backgrounds to share information and work towards bettering their lives, that of their families and of their communities.

WWEC women doing yoga.

Club Espoir

Club Hope, as is the English translation, was started as an expansion of the summer Camp Espoir to help reach youth affected by HIV/AIDS throughout the year. Once a month, Savannes PCVs host a morning of fun, games and a little bit of educational lessons. While my schedule doesn’t allow me to make every month’s meeting, when possible it’s a fun and rewarding experience.

Duck, Duck, Goose

Farm to Market Newsletter

Farm to Market is a quarterly newsletter produce in a joint effort between the SED and EAFS (Environmental Action and Food Security) programs to link the work that we both do. Although produced by Togo PCVs, it is shared throughout PC West Africa and with similar programs. I am one the new editors for the next year and am very excited to collaborate with my fellow editors and put my design skills to use as well. Our first issue is out in July.

Camp Joie

PC Togo offers many summer camp opportunities for Togolese youth. Camp Espoir, as mentioned above, is one and Camp Joie (Camp Joy) is another. Camp Joie invites children who are physically disabled to participate in a week-long summer camp where they have fun and come together with other disabled kids in a setting not really found anywhere else in Togo. I’ll report more after the camp but this is another one of things on my upcoming busy schedule.

Musings

I knew when coming to Togo that most Africans had a different outlook on time than Americans. Americans hate when people are late, rush to complete errands and view their time as a valuable work component. Togolese, in my experience, operate on ”l’heure africaine" and only show up at meetings once they know you have already arrived, they bike slowly on the road until they notice you passing them (at which point they speed up), they can space out for hours in a long bush taxi ride, and they wake with the sun, not an alarm clock. Despite this, I have learned that they are surprised when I am on time and respect me for it. I have learned that they get impatient when a bush taxi is full yet the driver takes an additional 30 minutes to leave and we form a comradeship over our shared frustrations. I have learned that they don’t like to wait in line and will march to the counter and demand service immediately without thought of the others already waiting. However, when I refuse the instant service offered to me because of the color of my skin and declare that I will wait my turn, their irritation quickly diminishes. I have learned that they will continue with a time-consuming task even after you show them a faster way, purely for the enjoyment of the company they share. Most importantly, I have learned to slow down and take the all that I can during the quickly depleting time I have left here.

Hot Season

Hot season. Those two words have haunted me since the day I came to Togo. Conveniently, my stage arrived in June, the beginning of rainy season (and also the end of mango season–yum!) so I had a good 9 months to ask Togolese and older PCVs how they survive and how hot it really gets. The answers I received didn’t calm my fears at all. One PCV said that during hot season she would quickly run inside to house to retrieve something and then rush back to the safety of the mango tree shade. I can now officially say that I have survived hot season (or so the Togolese say–I don’t know, today was HOT). It normally lasts through mid-May but the weather this year has been odd. Rain usually does not touch the Togolese Savanna region from mid-October to mid-May, but this year it rained–no, poured–in the beginning of February, again at the end of the month, and a few more times, as recently as last week. Some villagers have started planting and, with one more rain, the rest will follow.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I know that I have escaped a fiery hell of heat, but it has still been hot. Probably hotter than I’ve ever experienced living in California. There have just been more “not so unbearably hot” and “still hot but with a breeze” days than there are usually. A PCV who lives about 5k north of me clocked the temperature one day at 122°. We’re not sure of the accuracy of that reading though because his digital thermometer may not be able to record temperatures higher than 122°. You can look up the weather for Dapaong online but I can’t verify the validity of their resources.

What is like to live in extreme temperatures? Well, for starters, every pore in your body exudes sweat. Your thighs sweat, your shins sweat and area where you butt becomes you legs sweats. Your bottom looks like you wet yourself when you stand after sitting for just 5 minutes. Your clothes have salt lines from your massive pools of sweat. Sleeping naked at night with a fully powered fan pointed at you still causes there to be a wet sweaty body outline on you sheets when you get up. Food rots and starts to smell within a day of buying it. Your dog would rather be locked in the house all day than forced to be outside because he’s found a special cool spot under your bed. It’s completely acceptable to do absolutely nothing from 11am-3pm every day. You continually have a salty layering on your skin despite the 4 showers you take daily. You avoid cooking because it means that there is a good possibility that the epic beads of sweat cascading down you face will make it into your meal.

I have had the added pleasure of experiencing an extreme heat rash. It’s normal to have little spots of it on different parts of your body but my body has chosen to have it all over my neck, back, chest, stomach and face consistently for the past few weeks. I had experienced a few cases earlier on in hot season but they only lasted a few day. Heat rash is also called ‘prickly heat’ because it can feel like someone is sticking a thousand needles into you skin. I’ve tried everything recommended to lessen it but nothing seems to be working. I have had Togolese pointing at my red spots and expressing their sympathy (or asking why my face looks like that of a pubescent 13-year old–Togolese get heat rash but the red spots show up a lot easier on my light skin).

So how exactly does one survive hot season? Find a magical mango tree to snooze under (it’s amazing how much the temperature drops under one of these things), flag down a fan milk (essentially frozen flavored milk) guy, order a sport actif (closest thing Togo had to Gatorade), wrap yourself in a wet pagne with the fan blasting on you, befriend the workers in the air-conditioned post office, and befriend the workers in the air-conditioned bank (you can never have too many friends). Or you could just strategically plan a long vacation and escape West Africa all together.

The Real Peace Corps

I came across a blog post from a PCV in Ethiopia and, despite coming from a different country, felt it summed up well my experience in Togo. I, as most would, tend to write about my experience positively. People generally don't enjoy hearing the bad parts. However, there's a reason's PC's catchphrase is "The toughest job you'll ever love". I often claim that I have a love-hate relationship with Togo. There are definitely things that I would rather not endure (persistent and price-gouging moto drivers, par exemple) but there are also the parts that make everything worth it (the exclamation people have when I tell them I like fufu AND I eat it with my hand). As the author says, no two Peace Corps services are alike, but he does a good job of summarizing it.

The Real Peace Corps

FAQs

I want to update the FAQ page but would like to solicit questions from all of you. If there's anything that you're wondering about, post it in a comment below! Thanks!

-Katy

Updates

So I’m a little behind on updating this blog… (like two months!) I’ve been moving around quite a bit lately and then whenever I had time to write a post it just felt so daunting since there was so much to write about. I apologize and promise to (try to) not let it happen again. I also apologize on my letter and email writing back habits, which unfortunately have also not been too great…

I’m going to try to give some quick updates on what’s been going on in my life. I’ll start with Christmas since that was the first big event that happened after my last post.

Christmas in Togo

I was a little worried about the holiday season as it was the first time I would not be with family and I’m surrounded by an environment that I’d only been a part of for a few months. It actually wasn’t as hard/awkward/sad as I thought it may be. Now, California is not known for it’s cold temperature but my house at Christmas time is usually pretty cold (with frost as proof) since it’s in a canyon so having Christmas when it was 90° didn’t exactly feel real. Add that to the setting and it seemed (almost) like any other day in Togo.

We (Savanners who did not go home for the holidays) threw a Christmas party in Dapaong. Lots of PVCs made the trek up north and we had a great time together. I got to meet a lot of people from the newest stage that swore in in November. We’ve really got a great group here in Togo. There was a minor problem with the hotel people were originally going to stay at (two girls sharing a room were told they must pay 6,000cfa a night when a guy and girl sharing the same room would only have to pay 4,000cfa because the guy would obviously be paying for the girl and it wouldn’t be fair to make him pay the full 6,000cfa) so the house was a little crowded… It made Christmas feel cozy though.

We had a huge Mexican feast on Christmas Eve, followed by a white elephant exchange. I received a pagne (which I made into a dress, see below) and a carved wooden calabash (half-spear shaped bowl used to drink tchakpa-the local drink). Christmas day, we were invited to APCD Paul’s house (EAFS director) and fed extremely well. The food just kept coming and coming and I was surprised that they had enough food for everyone. There were maybe three or four different types of meat and fish. I ate rabbit for the first time. We were also served taro and it was delicious. Nothing really exciting happened but it was just a nice Christmas spent with some great new friends.

(Shout out to everyone that sent Christmas cards/packages and called. Really meant a lot to me so thank you!)

Camp Nadjundi

Fellow Savanner Heidi held a winter session mini camp for some sixième students in her village. She invited other PCVs to come help and I volunteered because it sounded like a great event and I was interested to see how it went. She had set up a couple people to be formateurs and teach several different topics at the camp. They had a meeting a couple days before it started and the formateurs asked about getting a per diem for their time. Heidi was a little thrown off guard by this because they had written the budget for the camp together and had never included per diem in the proposal. She told them she would not be giving anyone money which, unfortunately, resulted in the formateurs not participating in the camp.

Playing red rover. 

Immediately, more PCVs offered to come and help at the camp. I was unexpectedly chosen to present a session on goal setting, which thankfully was co-led with one of her jeune leaders (older students chosen to help with the camp due to their enthusiasm and knowledge). Honestly, the jeune leaders were the saviors of the camp (along with Heidi who is always awesome). They volunteered to lead or co-lead almost every session, sang songs in between sessions and organized games during breaks. It was great to see them step up to the challenge and I think they might have gained more from the camp than the students who the camp was for. Overall, it was another PC Togo lesson in how as hard as you try you can never be fully prepared but that things will work out well in the end.

New Years

I was fortunate to spend New Years with two awesome Savanners Aaron and Sam in Aaron’s village called Timbu. He’s part of the newest group of PCVs and it was the furthest north I’ve gone in Togo. New Years is pretty big here. Every woman gets a new outfit made and it was awesome seeing everyone dressed in their “Sunday bests”. Most of the celebration is on New Years Day, which is an interesting contrast to our traditional NYE festivities. I didn’t even stay up to watch our phone clocks strike 00:00 L

Aaron had informed some people in his village that Sam and I were coming and they wanted to have a party. Somehow this party turned into us making fried chicken (or as they called it, American style chicken) for about 8 other people. We were initially informed that they would be bringing food to accompany the chicken for dinner but there was lost communication somewhere and it ended up just being our chicken with some rice we had thankfully decided to make as well.

Our making the chicken was on the condition that they would kill, clean and gut it for us so we would only have to cook it. They got the first two done but missed the last step. I’ve never actually cut up a chicken before so I kind of winged it (hehe) and cut off the legs and head with no problem but then had some difficulty with the body. Togolese knives are not known for being sharp so you have to sort of whack at it. After about 5 minutes of me trying Aaron comes over to take a whack at it and quickly decides to bring them over to his local meat stand man and have him do it for us. While this was all going on, Aaron and I (Sam was sick and she played DJ from inside on the floor) took turns cleaning and sifting through the rice for rocks. The proper way to do it is similar to how you pan for gold but with 3 giant bowl of rice that took about 3 hours to do. Aaron was in charge of cooking the chicken so that left me with the rice. He’s a new post so he’s still in the process of getting stuff for his house. Alas, he had one pot and one frying pan. The chicken won the pot and that meant I got to cook rice in a pan, which took foreeeever.

The Togolese seemed to like the chicken but you can never tell for sure. They ate a little bit of the rice but since we had not prepared a sauce to go along with it (because we were under the impression that THEY were bringing that) they confessed that they could not eat too much. Overall though, it seemed like a success and I know I finished dinner with a big belly full of meat.

Prepping for Benin

Sam and I decided to take our first vacation in Togo together and go to Benin. She wanted to see animals in the North and I wanted to do beaches in the South, but we compromised with animals (OK she won but I don’t like to admit that). In order for this to happen though, we needed to get visas. So, we trekked down to Lomé.

Without knowing exactly where the Benin Embassy was, we chose the route of hopping in a car and just telling the driver where to take us. After asking him if he knew where it was, he said yes and asked if we knew too. Now, here’s the problem with being white in Africa. If you don’t know where you are going, it’s pretty much guaranteed that you will be ripped off so Sam replies that we do and says it’s la bas, over there, and points in the direction opposite of the beach. We settle on a price and hop in the car. As I’ve come to find out, however, Togolese are famous for saying they know where some place is and then stopping every so often to ask for directions. Apparently though, no Benin Embassy even exists in Togo and our driver took us to some Benin governed area and tried to leave us there. A man holding a machine gun informs us that we cannot be there and the car must turn around. The driver asks the man with the gun where we can go to get visas and he informs us that “Togo and Benin are brothers and you do not need a visa to visit family”. Yeah, maybe you don’t but we kind of stand out a little more than you and might have some difficulties visiting our “brother”.

After calling several PCVs to see if they know where it is, I decide to call a PC staff member. (While on the phone, the driver continues to ask people in the cars next to us if they know where the embassy is, even though at this point we know it’s a consulate and not an embassy that we’re looking for). Come to find out, the consulate is a 5-minute walk from the PC Bureau and not a 2,000cfa taxi ride away. Good to know. The actual getting the visa part went smoothly and we picked up our passports the very next day.

In other Benin news, my dad works with a guy who is originally from Benin. I never met him before coming to Togo but he went back to Benin for the holidays and promised my dad that he would meet up with me. He had emailed me in the beginning of December asking where in Togo I was. Being that I had not heard from him come January, I thought being in Savannes (a 9+hour journey for him) had changed his mind. Knowing that I was going to be in Lomé (a 13hr bus ride for me!), I emailed him and asked if he had time to meet up. The 2-hour journey was a lot easier for him to make and we were able to meet up, have some lunch, and talk about the differences between West Africa and the US. It was a very interesting conversation and great to hear someone’s perspective on things who understands life in both worlds.

Puppy Training

Achu update. He is getting bigger every day, despite me not feeding him so he’ll stay small forever (joking). My aunt sent doggy treats so I’ve been using those to teach him “sit”, “stay”, “down” and “shake”. He’s a smart little boy and has no trouble at all commanding when treats are involved, but we’re still working on situations when there’s no reward…

Despite having a couple chew toys, his favorite (besides my hand) seems to be my mosquito net. It’s cushy so it’s great for him to bite into, plus it also doubles as a humping toy!

In other dog news, I’ve yet to read it but there’s apparently a recent National Geographic article that talks about how Togo has the “Original Dog” and all other dogs in the world originated from it just like humans are believed to have initially inhabited Africa. Togo really only has one breed of dog that comes in a few different colors with the occasional extra fury tail or shaggy-haired pup. On animal vaccination cards, vets write “local breed” as the breed of dog.

Oh, Hi Mouse

So I’ve had a mouse problem since November. It’s just one mouse, but it’s amazing how much one little mouse can do. My friend Rebekah named him Mickey after she slept over one night and experienced the mouse/ants/spiders/cockroaches that I have to deal with every night. I’ve woken up to the mouse crawling over me (accidentally left some food next to me on the bed… oops!) and also a cockroach–both equally unpleasant. I have one shoe that I designate as my insect killing utensil and sleep with it by my side.

Mickey likes to live in my closet. Theoretically he shouldn’t be able to get in there but the cabinet thing was made really poorly and the wood has started to warp. Occasionally, I’ll pull out a shirt and he comes scrambling out with it causing me to scream and Achu to be put on high alert. He’s eaten through a canvas bag that I had hanging on the wall to get to food that was left inside of it. He ate through a pagne I left covering my bed one weekend to keep the dust off in order to get to a can of nuts, which he tried to eat through but I’m guessing the plastic lid may have gotten him sick because he stopped before eaten through the lid. He scurries around at night making loud noises and keeping me up. He also chews on my closet, which makes the biggest noise of all and is right at the foot of my bed.

PDM and Breaking News

Mid January, my stage reunited for PDM, which is a week of training for you and your homologue. The two main topics we discussed were behavior change and permagardening (a garden designed to grow things all year round, but requires a lot of water and isn’t feasible for most areas in Northern Togo), both of which were very interesting but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to apply either to my work here. Here are some pictures though that show us hard at work!

On the last day, Admin gathered every volunteer present at the Pagala training center. We were all a little confused as to what was happening. Carolina, the PC Togo Director broke the news to us that we will be phasing out the SED program, i.e. my program. This means that the new stage that was supposed to come in June (1 year after my arrival) is temporarily suspended and the new CHAP volunteers will be combined with the incoming EAFS/GEE stage. The tentative date for them to come is July. What does this mean for me? Well, not too much. My fellow SEDers and I will continue to do work as we normally would but we will not be replaced at the end of our service (there is the possibility that another sector could replace us, but I don’t see that happening for me). Thus, it is more important than ever for us to focus on sustaining our projects now so that they’ll continue once we leave. The thing I am saddest about though is that I won’t get to help train the incoming stage, at least not in the same capacity that I would if it were a group of SED stagiaires coming in. The older PVCs really helped me adjust to Togo during my first few months in country and I was looking forward to doing the same for the next group.

Why SED? Well, PC, just like most government programs, is getting budget cuts across the board. A higher up person came to Togo last fall to investigate the state of our programs and he decided that SED was the program to close in order to allow more resources for the remaining three sectors. It’s feels like a light slap in the face to know that the work I’m doing here is seen as more expendable than the others, but I do believe that the three remaining programs (CHAP, EAFS and GEE) work in areas that must be strengthened before we can address small business development. If you have any more questions about the reasoning behind this and/or its effects, please let me know.

New Phone

I brought an old, unlocked phone with me when I first came to Togo. I had gotten it back in 2007 so it had already had a good life and I didn’t expect it to last my whole two years here. Well, it finally died. One day it just wouldn’t turn on anymore. This meant I got to get a new phone! I chose one that has a double kit, a phone where you can insert two sim cards. Still have my old number but I now also have another number (on the Moov network, which has better rates both in Togo and for calling/texting the States). If you text me and I respond with a different number, this is why. Feel free to use both, as they both reach the same phone and I don’t believe it makes a difference on your end.

WWEC Updates

Preparations for the 2^nd annual Women’s Wellness and Empowerment Conference are well underway. The Savannes/Kara conference is on March 8^th (also International Women’s Day) so were hurriedly trying to get everything in order. Lydia, fellow SEDer, and I will be presenting four sessions for our sector, which are how to do a feasibility study using moringa juice, family planning and budgeting, the importance of saving, and how to save. There’s still a lot of work to be done in the next couple of week, but I’m really excited for it. I nominated a woman from Tandjoaré. She’s 25, married, with two little boys (aged 3 and 9 months) and she sells beignets at the local primary school. She along with two other women have been my companions on marché day. They take me around to all of the best tchakpa stands and teach me words in Moba. I thought the conference would teach her a lot and that she would return to village and pass on what she learned to other women. I’ll be sure to update you all after the event and let you know how it goes.

Filming

Back in November, a youth peer educators group from Bogou (a village neighboring Tandjoaré) and I submitted a script about HIV/AIDS prevention for a film contest that another PCV organized. I found out in January that they had been selected (along with two other groups in country) to film their script. Jeremy came in the beginning of February and it was a lot of fun. I think the kids really enjoyed it and learned a lot since it was the first time they had acted while being filmed. There were simple things we had to remind them about, such as speaking loud, not having their back to the camera, etc. Once he edits the film, I’ll show the kids the final project and hopefully it’s going to air on a Togolese TV station.

As we were wrapping up the day, something happened though that reminded me that I am a foreigner and, despite my attempts to integrate, I will always be viewed as an outsider. The president of the peer educators group is a local primary teacher and worked extensively with the previous volunteer in Bogou. She introduced me to him and he’s been a great friend to me here. We had walked to Bogou, but since the return trip was uphill and it was almost dark, we planned to moto back. Normally, I ride my bike between the two villages so I had no idea how much the trip should cost. Every price in Togo is negotiable, but as foreigners we often end up paying more than Togolese either because we don’t know what price we have to haggle them down to or because of the color of our skin. This is a continuous problem, especially when taking moto-taxis, made worse recently by the laxation of the oil subsidy in Nigeria which cause gas prices in most of West Africa to skyrocket.

I asked this guy, my friend, how much the trip should be and he said I would have to discuss it with the moto driver. Getting ripped off on moto rides is the thing about Togo that pissed me off the most and can easily put me in a bad mood. I asked the driver how much he wanted He replied “700 cfa”. I gasped and made a face that said “you must be kidding me” and the driver laughed, as they typically do. I offered 500 and he refused saying 600. I felt uncomfortable with this price, as the trip was less than 4km and he wouldn’t be using gas on the way back since it’s downhill. In Dapaong, I once paid 500 cfa to go to a village 12-15km away so I knew the price was steep. Moto drivers in Bogou are limited though and I didn’t have much bargaining power so I agreed to 600. The driver left, as we weren’t quite finished filming yet, and I turned to my friend and asked what he thought. He said “I normally only pay 400”. I was furious! How could he stand by me and watch as I got ripped off? I trusted him as a friend to protect me from something like that. I asked why he didn’t say anything and his response was that I was white and therefore had to pay a higher price and if he had tried to help lower the price at all it would have been since as disrespectful to the driver because it would be cheating him out of gaining a little extra money. This made me even angrier because a bond that I thought I had formed with this man was just proven to be illusory, and it made me question the relationships that I have made with other Togolese.

To top off the day, when we got back to my house, Jeremy realized that his headlamp and iPod had been stolen. Realizing that the chances of getting it back were slim but knowing that thievery is not tolerated in Togolese culture, we called the same guy who hadn’t helped us with the moto to ask if he would help us find the stuff. He called back the next day with news that everything had been found. Three sons of the Muslim leader were the culprits, and while it was great that Jeremy got his stuff back, I wonder how hard of a beating the boy got.

Some Togo Life Changes

This is a really long post so I’m going to end it with one last topic. Work in Tandjoaré has been slow to progress so I requested a transfer to another site. I don’t want to get into the details on this blog as to why, but feel free to email me if you want to know more. My request was approved last Thursday and I moved into my new house in Dapaong on Monday. I wanted to stay in the Savannes region and in an area that speaks Moba, since that is the culture that I have come to know and feel comfortable in.

I’ve moved up in the world for living conditions as I now have running water, electricity all day, a spare bedroom (for when you all come to visit me!), and a giant living room I need to furnish. I share a compound with a very nice, large family. There’s the husband, his three wives and their 12 children. Achu’s adjusting well to being a “city dog” and I’m enjoying supplementing my diet with a lot more fruits and vegetables.

My new homologue is a woman named Rachel who is a seamstress but specializes in making things such as bags, cushions, wallets, etc. I’m still learning about all that she does and will be sure to post about it as I know more. I will also be working with several women’s groups, some local schools, a women’s weavers group and hopefully be helping develop a tourism directory for the region. Sam, my new site-mate, and I are working with a local elementary school to paint a world map on the side of a building in their school. It’s a project many PCVs all over the world do and it address a topic–geography–that both she and I feel everyone should be knowledgeable about. When a grown Togolese man asks you where in Europe is America, you know there’s a problem.

That’s all for now. I’m going to make a big effort to post again soon. If you have any questions about anything, post them in the comments below or email me. I love reading the comments because then I know people are actually reading my blog. J

Placard for a barber in Dapaong.