Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Arrival

I am sorry that this post is so late. The combination of at first simply adjusting to the lifestyle in Togo and then the extremely busy schedule volunteers have coupled with the internet café always seeming to be down when I am free is the reason for the tardiness. So let me start at the beginning.

My parents drove me to the Hampton Inn on Race Street in Philadelphia in the morning of Thursday, June 4th, 2009. Our PeaceCorps group (referred to as Stage here) is made up of 13 people in CHAP (Community Health and HIV/AIDS Prevention) and 12 people SED (Small Enterprise Development) a total of 25 volunteers. There are 2 guys in CHAP and 6 guys in SED. The day in Philadelphia involved general paperwork and activities to get to know each other. The next day, June 5th, we left for Paris. The flight went well. However our layover in the Paris airport was a little rough because everyone was so jet-lagged.

We finally arrived in Lomé (pronounced low-may) the capital of Togo at some point in the evening of June 6th. At that point everyone was deliriously exhausted. PeaceCorps immediately took us to a hotel called Mamy’s. Originally, I believe it was some type of bed and breakfast, but has since been turned into a PeaceCorps’ hotel for the new volunteers. However, four volunteers couldn’t fit into Mamy’s, so we were put up in the Hotel de Galeon for the next few days.

Hotel de Galeon was pretty nice. I stayed with Ben, a CHAP volunteer and Sam and Madhav took another room on the same floor. The hotel rooms were big, we had our own bathroom with shower. Also free wireless internet! The hotel is located about 3 blocks from the water whereas Mamy’s more like 6 or 7 blocks. Over the course of the next four days we had health sessions teaching us about the health risks in Togo, emphasizing if we don’t take our malaria medicine we will get “administerly separated” aka sent home. We also received short presentations by both PeaceCorps staff and some current volunteers about Togolese culture.

After the pre-service training (PST…they are all about acronyms here) orientation in Lomé, the volunteers who were part of CHAP headed to Gbatopé (pronounced baa-tope-ee) to meet their host families who they will live with for about 10 weeks. The SED people, who I am a part of, headed to Tsévié (pronounced ch-vee-a). It took about an hour from Lome to Tsévié. Tsévié is a pretty big city by Togolese standards. The population is around 50,000 and there are two big market days, Mondays and Friday when people from all around come to sell their wares.

When the SED group made it to the Tsévié the van’s first stop was the PeaceCorps house in Tsévié which serves as our school and general center and hitherto will be referred to as the “Tech House.” The whole place is surrounded by white walls and a large main gate. When you get inside the compound you see a very nice one story white house with a big porch and terrace. It is very nice. To the left there is a small wall that separates the house from the big, thatched roof gazebo type structure. The big gazebo is where we have our general SED session, such as business training, business culture training, presentations by current SED volunteers, etc.

As soon as we got out of the van and walked to the gazebo we saw all our families sitting on one side of gazebo and empty seats on the other side. Also as we neared the gazebo all the families started clapping until the last person sat down. It was very nice. Before the meeting our families all the volunteers were given the names of our own family on a small strip of paper and from what I saw our families had the same thing. Once everyone was seated our PeaceCorps trainers (hitherto referred as formateurs) said, “find your family.” Everyone stood up and with papers in hand started calling out the name on the slip of paper.

I found my family pretty easily. My family name is Afatachao (pronounced Ah-fatch-ow) and it turns out that my host father’s name is Justin. So my host father’s full name is Justin Afatachao and my host mother, Denise Afatachao. They are both retired school teachers. Then they each hugged me and said, “Welcome!” Next Justin turned to me and said, “We are your African family now. This is your African Mother and I am your African Father.” I felt immediately accepted. Then the African music started from a stereo someone had set up and laughing and dancing ensued.

After the fun and festivities which lasted probably at most an hour everyone piled into the PeaceCorps vans including the families. The luggage was strapped to the top of the van and off all of us went to our respective houses.

Some pictures of the Tech House, my host family's courtyard and all Togo pictures can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/35809411@N07/sets/72157621329829291/


I will post more pictures hopefully next week when I should have a better connection.

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