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
February 23, 2012
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.
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| 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 2nd annual Women’s Wellness and Empowerment Conference are well underway. The Savannes/Kara conference is on March 8th (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
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| Placard for a barber in Dapaong. |
December 12, 2011
Bring on the Harmattan!
I get a lot of questions about the weather here in Togo. Last week, my stage celebrated 6 months in Togo (crazy, right?), so I’ve now experiences half a year of the country’s weather cycles. When I arrived in June, rainy season was just beginning. It actually came a little late this year, which delayed the planting season and thus delayed the start of the school year (harvest was later and the kids were needed to tend to the fields). My first two months during training were held in the southern-most region of Togo, Maritime, which has a much different climate than my current region, Savannes. I told my APCD that I couldn’t handle the humidity (and mosquitoes) in the south and wanted a post in northern, drier Togo. I was in Lomé last week and it’s still incredibly humid and I got eaten alive by mosquitoes. So, in Savannes, rainy season lasted until the beginning of October. It rained every 2-3 days, only for an hour or so during the day and night rains were incredibly loud and torrential. Togolese do not like the rain and any time a sprinkle begins to fall, you can expect any meetings to be cancelled. Personally, I love the rain, but I received serious concerns from random Togolese on the streets if I walked around while it rained, even with an umbrella.
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| Rainy Season |
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| Dry Season (Photo cred: R. Chang) |
After rainy season came une petite chaleur, or a tiny hot season. Everything dried out and the gorgeous green landscape turned brown. This also meant it was time for the harvest. They burn the dried stalks left over from the crops and little brush pile fires have cluttered the landscape the past couple of weeks. As a Californian, I am particularly concerned about the safety of this method and think that every burn pile is going to get out of control and turn into a wild brush fire–especially when it’s burning right next to a house (including my house). There was one night last week where a fire off in the distance seemed to be larger than they had originally intended. It burned all night and I could hear the crackling from inside my house. I made up an emergency action plan that night. Despite my fears and the dryness, the fires seem to be well controlled. People apparently do die in fires annually, so we dutifully taught a group of 50 kids at Club Espoir (a monthly meeting for kids affected by HIV/AIDS) how to stop, drop and roll–arrêter, tomber, et rouler. The kids had a lot of fun rolling around on the ground.
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| Stop, drop, and roll |
Harmattan has really picked up in the last week. What is harmattan, you ask? It’s when the winds from the Saharan Desert blow south, carrying with it lots of sand and dust. There is now a permanent haze everywhere and my nasal passage is greatly suffering. (Don’t worry mom, I’m using the netty pot!) It’s also the coldest time of the year–high mid 90s, low mid 60s–which means that the Togolese pull out their parkas, scarves and ski masks. No joke. The babies are bundled up so much that they become immobile. It’s really cute. I actually have to sleep with a blanket at night. I’ve heard contradicting remarks about when harmattan usually ends, but most say mid to late February.
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| (Photo cred: R. Chang) |
After harmattan comes la saison seche, or dry season (i.e. hot season). I picked a random day in March 2011 and looked up the weather. Lows were mid 90s and highs reached 110°, with humidity peaking at 56%. Kill me now. I don’t know how anyone survives that type of weather. Most insects don’t (mosquitoes…), which is one benefit. Apparently people are active between sunrise and 10am, then disappear under a mango tree to repos for a few hours, and reemerge hours later when the heat has lessened a little.
Some people have asked me when would be a good time to visit. The answer really depends on what kind of experience you want. I don’t have a choice–I’m here for all of it!
November 26, 2011
A Togo Thanksgiving
This was the second thanksgiving I have spent abroad. I was in Italy for the first. While I had had a good time, I remember thinking that it didn’t feel like thanksgiving, and I was scared that I would have the same feeling here in Togo.
I’m not sure if I’ve explained this before, but PC Togo groups volunteers into clusters, for safety and also for sanity. I’m part of the Dapaong cluster, which is the biggest in country with eleven PCVs. The Savannes region is the furthest north (thus furthest from Lomé, i.e. admin and availability of Western food) and mainly rural, so they try to keep the volunteers close together and it creates a sort of family. I’m really grateful to be a part of this great group of people. Well, most PVCs went to a big thanksgiving party in the Centrale region, but us Dapaongers decided to throw our own fête.
We arranged to have the dinner at a hotel. Hotel Campement is one of the nicest and most Western hotel/restaurants in Dapaong. I had actually been there the week before for my birthday. (My birthday, btw, was great! I bought a Roman candle and we set it off that night, but I found out after the fact that fireworks are actually illegal in Togo. Oops!) The chicken cordon bleu is absolutely mouth watering. Based on this experience, I knew the food was going to be good. The hotel prepared servings of French onion soup, mashed potatoes and green beans for everyone. Two Volunteers (one of which recently COSed and had already left Togo) received packages from their moms full of thanksgiving dinner essentials, such as stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie filling and even themed napkins!
The PC Togo Country Director decided to make the trip of north to fête with us. Her name is Carolina and I give her major props because the trek from Lomé to Dapaong is no easy feat. We had tried to find turkeys locally but had some difficulties so she brought two with her. They had put the turkeys in cages and loaded them on top of the car. As they were driving down the Route, they heard a big thump and stopped the car. One of the turkeys, probably knowing his fate, had escaped from his cage and jumped off the car. Yes, the turkey committed suicide. Not wanting to waste the meat, they loaded the dead turkey into the car and kept it on ice for the last 8 or so hours of the journey. (I have no idea where they found the ice and must have had the AC on full blast the whole way to keep it from melting.) Knowing that we were expecting to cook two turkeys, they stopped along the way and found another turkey. We ended up cooking the suicide turkey so we had three turkeys for twenty people. It was probably the freshest turkey I have ever eaten and completely void of any hormones.
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| The suicide turkey |
In unrelated recent news, I got a puppy! I had wanted one for a while but wanted to wait until I was more settled in at post. I’d been searching the last few weeks and finally found one that seemed healthy. It’s a boy and I’d guess that he’s probably around 6 or 7 weeks, although I was told he was two months old. I named him Achu (like the sound when you sneeze) and so far he’s been very well behaved. He whined to be let out of my house, went outside and then exited the compound before pooping. Who knew Togolese dogs came potty trained?
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| yes, I know I have dirty feet... |
November 21, 2011
Le Marché
“A lot of money changed hands on Fridays, but more than anything else the market was Lavié’s weekly social occasion: a sort of shopping center, bar, restaurant, pool hall, and ladies’ club packed under one cluster of grass roofs.” – George Packer, The Village of Waiting, 1982
Every sizeable village has a marché. The size of the village usually determines the size of the marché, as well as its frequency. Most dedicate two days for the marché (one is normally larger than the other), chosen to correlate with the surrounding villages. For example, Tandjoaré’s marché days are Wednesday and Saturday, attendance, however, on Saturdays is pitiful. I can visit Bombouka’s marché on Tuesdays and Fridays. It’s a larger town located directly on the Route Nationale where I can find bread and mail letters. Or I can bike 10 minutes west (return trip is 30 minutes uphill…) on Mondays and Thursdays to enjoy Bogou’s marché. Nano is another large village about an hour bike ride away whose days are Sunday and Thursday.
It’s not only the day of the week that you visit the marché that is important, but also the time. Some tend to be more bustling during the morning while others don’t really get going until 14-15:00. I have found the atmosphere to be a little too rowdy after 17:00, as there are likely to be people who have spent the entire day at the marché drinking tchakpa (“chauk-puh”–a fermented millet drink I will talk more about in a later post). If one wants to purchase any type of animal, they must go around 7:00. I went last Saturday at this time to look for a puppy and the area was crowded with men and boys selling chickens, guinea fowls, pigs and goats. I did find a boy selling two puppies, but they were too young to leave their mother so I passed on them.
Marchés usually consist of a collection of stalls built with trees and a thatched grass roof. Sometimes, in the larger villages and towns, there will be covered cement structures with numbers designating each spot. Every person who takes a permanent spot for the day must pay for the spot. I’m not positive on the price, but I think it’s a couple hundred francs–less than a dollar. Controlled by the local governing body, this process is overseen by one person who goes from stall to stall to collect the day’s fee. To avoid this, many women walk around the marché selling stuff that they carry on top of their heads.
The size of the village also alludes to the variety of things one can find at its marché. Tandjoaré, despite its political advantage of being the prefectural capital, is a small village (I’ve been told pop. 5,000) and thus has little variety. Over 50% of the vendors are selling tchakpa. Then there’s the food section, which in my village I can usually find pâte, koliko (fried strips of yam eaten with a tomato sauce, similar to French fries…), beignets (fried bean dough balls), and kalma (kind of like a bean tamale, dipped in a pepper sauce). Mini boutiques are scattered throughout selling the basics such as various condiments, pasta, cans of tomato paste and small bags of beans and rice. Women also sell produce, such as corn, onions, tomatoes, okra, etc… As per Togolese culture, one is given a cadeau (or gift) when purchasing these items. I base how many onions I buy on the idea that they will cadeau me one or two extra ones. Every marché also has a meat section. Au village, the men nail the leg of an animal to a post and carve off sections of meat as it’s ordered. Let’s just say that I try to avoid walking through this area… The meat section is generally the only place where you will see men selling stuff. Women control the majority of the marché.
The last main sector of the marché is dead yovo. What is this, you ask? Well, it’s the Togolese equivalent of a mall–where they buy all of their Western style clothes. Why is it called that? The idea is that no living white person would ever give up clothes as nice as the ones found there unless they were dead. My first experience buying dead yovo came last week in Lomé. A group of us went to a marché in the capital where all the clothes come after leaving the ships in the port. We hoped this meant that there would be a good selection. I ended up buying three shirts for 1,500cfa (approximately $3, bartered down from 3,000cfa), one of which is from H&M and I have the exact shirt and color hanging in my closet back home and had actually wished that I had brought it to Togo. The amount of clothes (and shoes and bags and belts and underwear) was overwhelming and I was ready to leave after an hour, but au village, dead yovo stands are smaller and much easier to navigate.
Side note: My fellow stage Savanners and I want to make bingo cards with various Togolese fashions in each square. Togolese fashion ranges from President Obama’s and Togo President Faure’s face plastered on a t-shirt to crocs to silk pajamas.
An interesting note: The further en brousse one gets (in the countryside), the more isolated a village is. This creates an internal economy, where the same money is exchanged on a daily basis. One woman today buys tomatoes from her friend and the next day the friend visits the women’s tchakpa stand a buys a calabash from her. Thus, the money becomes very worn and dirty–but then, Peace Corps volunteers enter these villages with their new, crisp banknotes and break the cycle!
November 6, 2011
If you get a chance...
The first big project that I'll be working on is a Women's Wellness and Empowerment Conference. It's a national event, 2nd annual, that brings together all four sectors of Peace Corps Togo to put on a conference for 30 women in our region. Please, if you have the time, take a look at the link and donate if you can. I'll write more about my involvement as it gets closer, but let me know if you have any questions about it.
https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=693-389
November 4, 2011
Out of Village
After IST, our savannes crew headed to Atakpame for the post visit party for the new stagiaires. They arrived in Togo back in September and will swear in as volunteers Nov. 17 and I will officially become a sophomore! I met the 5 new people coming to my region and they all seem really cool. Then my friend and I headed to Kpalime. Other than Lomé, it has the highest concentration of foreigners that I’ve seen so far in Togo. It’s also one of Togo’s only tourist destinations, meaning there are nicer hotels, restaurants and tours geared towards travelers. I got to take a hot shower and felt clean for the first time since I’ve been in Togo. The scenery reminded me a lot of Costa Rica. We hopped on the back of motos and when up the mountain. From the top you could see miles in all directions and I got my first glimpse of Ghana. We also explored a small village on the crest of the mountain and saw some gorgeous drawings by local artists using colors made from nature. It was a nice escape from Togo but after a couple days I was ready to get back to my small, quiet village where life is cheaper and people don’t try to rip me off.
I just finished my first three months at post. That means… I’m allowed to have visitors now! Anyone who wants to come visit, start planning your trip now! Email me if you have questions. Also, I’ve been trying to have a theme to each of my posts but let me know if there is anything specific that you have been wondering about that I haven’t touched on yet.
October 14, 2011
Laafie
When I first arrived in Togo, I was given the task of learning French. Then two months later I was sent to my permanent site and advised to start learning the local language, Moba. I will be working with numerous women’s groups in the Tandjouaré prefecture and, on average, maybe only 2-3 speak enough French to be comfortable conversing with me. Either way though, I need to have somebody with me in order to translate. Speaking the local language is a great way to integrate in the community. Passing someone on one of the numerous paths usually involves an inquisitive stare, but then I say duan guam (dwan gwaum) and their face breaks into a smile as they respond with the standard laafie (lah-fee-eh).
At the beginning of September, I started Moba tutoring with a guy who teaches English at the elementary school in the next town over. He reads Moba, which is not very common, as Moba is historically a spoken language and the spelling of most words is debatable. Although his English is very good, he teaches me in French. Yes, I’m learning an indigenous language through a language that I started learning in June.
When I was 10, I remember inventing a language with a friend of mine. We spent hours creating vocabulary lists and testing each other. The words were simple, one or two syllables, and had no connection to the English language. Learning Moba reminded me of this because of how foreign both languages seemed. (We lost interest in creating our own language after a few days.) Even the quarter of Russian that I took in college seemed less foreign, and that included learning the Cyrillic alphabet.
One of my teachers in training told the Savannes group, “Don’t worry. Moba is the easiest of the Togolese languages to learn.” I don’t know what he based that statement on, but I wonder about its validity. Essentially though, Moba is a basic language. Verbs have no conjugations. Bé means `to be’ and the conjugations `I am’, `you are’, `he is’ need only a pronoun added before the verb–n bé, a bé, b bé. But that’s where the simplicity ends (in my opinion).
Moba is a language, as are most West African local language, in which intonation denotes a word’s meaning. A word can have one spelling with multiple definitions depending on the inflection of your voice. I have chosen to ignore this tiny detail, focusing on pure memorization of the words for the time being and hoping that I don’t say a bad word while trying to buy onions at the marché. I won’t even get into pluralization. It’s a concept with no systematic order than I have also chosen to ignore for the time being.
For those of you unfamiliar with the French language, they have adopted a unique style of counting. Up through sixty-nine, there exists a logical, continual progression of numbers. Seventy, however, can be literally translated as `sixty-ten’ and continues with `sixty-eleven’ up to `sixty-nineteen’. Then, at eighty, you switch and say `four twenties’ and ninety becomes `four twenties ten’ so by ninety-nine it’s ‘four twenties nineteen’ or quatre-vingts dix-neuf. I thought that was confusing; then I learned Moba. First of all, there exists two separate sets of numbers, depending on what you’re counting–individual items or money. I learned basic counting first. Yent, bãnle, bãnta, bãnna, bãnmu, bãnluob, bãnlele, bãnnii, bãnyie, piig. “Okay,” I though, “I can do this.” From there, the numerical progression made sense. Twenty took the first part of ten and combined it with the last part of two, piinle. Same for three, piinta, and so on. The West African Franc currency, however, is based on a system of five. Thus, 20 beans (piinle tua) can cost 100 francs (piinle), with the idea being 5x20=100. I won’t go into it any more than that, but let’s just say that saying 715 francs in Moba takes quite a bit of brainpower (multiplication, addition and knowledge of an indigenous language), and that’s coming from someone who likes math.
So just when I get comfortable saying something, I can go down the road 20 minutes and learn another way to say the same thing. It could be something subtle, like laafie changes to laafia, or something a bit more drastic. This originates from the time when traveling was limited to within walking distance, although, for many Togolese, this remains their main mode of transportation. One Moba can identify the village another Moba comes from based on the dialect he speaks. In the northern Savannes region, there are two main local languages–Moba and Gourma. I’ve been told that Gourma can understand Moba but Moba can’t understand Gourma, but who knows how true that is.
Greetings are the most important part of learning local language. It’s the best way to assimilate into the community and can help you to quickly make friends with anyone. Most foreigners are just passing through and don’t bother to learn any local phrases and they usually appreciate the attempt by a yovo. The basic good morning, good afternoon, good evening and good night are duan guam, tun-po (toon-poh), juog-po (johg-poh) and yë nyiog (yehn nee-yohg)–because I know you all were wondering. This is a typical Moba greeting for me that I have maybe 5-10 times a day:
Togolese: Ye soml!
Me: Nfa, tun-po.
Togolese: L man-i?
Me: Laafie.
Togolese: A tuon po-i?
Me: Laafie.
Togolese: A naag-i?
Me: Laafie.
Togolese: Sie-yog nnya.
Me: Nfa.
Which roughly translates to:
Welcome! / Thanks. Good afternoon. / How are you? / Fine. / How’s the work? / Fine. / How’s the house (including all people and animals, it’s different if you’re only asking about the people)? / Fine. / See you later. / Thanks.
Yeah, I try to be on the receiving side of the conversation. It’s a lot easier. The funny part is that once you engage in this greeting, they assume that you’re fluent and start babbling on in Moba with the assumption that you can understand everything that they’re saying. I usually just smile, nod and say laafie.
BTW: The picture of the women bending over and pounding the ground is the traditional Moba way that they make cement floors. Only the women are allowed to partake in this activity (while the men sit lazily and watch). They combine cement, water and sand, pour it on the ground and repetitively pound it with a wooden implement. A space of 20ftx30ft took 20+ women about 6 hours to complete. With the sun shining on their backs, they broke only to throw on more water or to take a shot of palm wine.
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