As I sit here, writing my blog before I upload it in Lomé, my neighbor Koffi, has brought a locksmith to copy my key. A couple Sunday afternoons ago I arrived at my front door after having some excellent Indian food prepared by Nikhil’s parents. Nikhil is the CHAP volunteer who lives in Sotouboua, the town 12km South of me. Upon getting to my front door and realizing that I had no key and having no other copy I was forced to turn right around and travel back to Sotouboua where I was greeted with another tasty Indian meal. I told Koffi, so Monday morning he arrived at my door at an early hour while I was slipping between dreams about joining a dance troop and the reality of people passing outside my bedroom window speaking in Kabye.
It took a few hours for Koffi to return with the locksmith who by hand had made a rough copy of my key. The locksmith then spent a few hours trying to file the new key into a shape that my lock would accept. It ended up not working so he had to go back to his shop and make an entirely new one. Here are some pictures of him filing down the key and attempting to fit it into the lock. I didn’t go to his shop so I’m not sure what went on there.
So what have I been up to if I haven’t been diligently chronicling my thrilling adventures in Togo? Well I have actually been starting to do work here in the Adjengré. There is an English club at the local school which is in need of direction. It is fun working with these students because they choose to be in this club and sacrifice a longer lunch period for the chance. The members clearly show love for the language, but also I believe they realize its potential for the doors it opens ranging from the financial to the academic. One of the advisors for the club is also my French tutor, Jean-Claude and we have been discussing possible activities for the members to participate in. One such idea for an activity is a correspondence with students in the states either over email or through hand-written letters. I also plan on having a few weeks of Cinema Studies class in which we would watch movies, always in English, and discuss them after, also in English.
Besides the English club, each Friday I take my guitar to the orphanage here and play for the kids. The previous volunteer in Adjengré, Sam, had helped get some crops started for them in order to bring in some extra money. They also have goats, chicken and turkeys there. So a project that I am beginning to work on is preparing a dietary program for the animals which will be heavy on the Moringa. It has been proven that Moringa is not only beneficial for humans but is great for raising animals. Also the animals just naturally like it. It is pretty interesting, the neighbor’s goats who besides frequenting the plastic chairs under my paillote (outside gazebo type structure. A mini version of what was in the Tech House in Tsévié), will stretch up till only his/her back feet are on the ground to eat all the Moringa leaves within reach or will search the ground sucking up fallen leaves like some type of weird vacuum cleaner.
I am still working on the proposal for the Moringa project. The project, as of now, will involve Lorena and I traveling around to 19 villages surrounding Adjengré and teaching the people there about the wonders of Moringa. In addition the teaching/training sessions besides explaining about the general nutritional benefits of Moringa, we will also discuss that being Moringa is so high in nutrients it is especially helpful to people with HIV/AIDS. The proposal is to be submitted to PeaceCorps so that hopefully I can receive some funding for the project. I have also talked with representatives from PSI (www.psi.org an international NGO involved in safe sex practices to try and curb the spread of HIV/AIDS, among many other health related things) for obtaining t-shirts, caps, etc. The villages, in there way, will offer some of the labor and whatever else then can. Another project that I am still working on is the Audio English library. I have not forgotten about that. I have not only found a place, but discussed the project with my APCD who really thinks that it has a lot of potential. The only obstacle is maintaining the library is when I’m gone, but I have some ideas on that front and when it comes closer to that date those problems will be assuaged.
Before I end this entry let me just update everyone on what I did for Christmas. Well Christmas Eve isn’t that special here. Christmas Day is when people celebrate, however apparently, Christmas is generally more for the kids here and not so much for the adults. The big fête is really January 1st and that fête continues for a week or more. So the previous night I visited Lorena in Lama-Tessi because Olga the CHAP volunteer in my stage who is placed in Gapé-Nyassivé (which is about an hour west of Tsévié) was heading up with Lorena Christmas Eve morning to Dapong. Dapong is about the same distance to Lomé, but North, not South. There was a big Christmas party there with many volunteers, but I decided that since I will be spending New Years in Lomé I thought it would be nice to celebrate it here, in village. Also I wanted to experience what Christmas was like in Adjengré. So I headed up with Lorena and Olga the next morning, but got out at Sokodé to get some flour, sugar, bread, vegetables and fruit. They continued their journey up to Dapong and reached the city around 7pm.
I completed my shopping in the marché then headed to a place in Sokodé volunteer dub, the brochette place. They make excellent sandwiches with brochette meat (either goat, sheep or chicken) cooked with onions, tomatoes and a little pimonte (the hot pepper here) all for 500cfa (about a $1). The brochette place is right outside a bar and so I sat on the veranda and bought one for me and one for Nayo. While I was waiting for the sandwiches Jacques, the fou (crazy guy) who sometimes passes by the brochette place stopped for second to say hello. That day he was pretty lucid. He’s nice and a really smart guy who speaks perfect English. Tony, the volunteer who recently ended his service and until a month ago was my closest neighbor in Babadé, located about 4km North of Adjengré, always used to have Jacques sit down with him and had long conversations with him and I have been continuing this practice. However, today I was just trying to get back to Adjengré so I didn’t have time to really sit and talk. Jacques saw I was reading “A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man,” and took out a slip of paper and pen and motioned for me to write something from the book on there. So I took the paper and wrote down a sentence I had just read and liked, in the book, “dawn glimmer before the wanderer and show him strange fields and hills and faces.” He took the piece of paper back, read it, nodded to himself and then looked up and thanked me briefly. Then he bowed his head and walked off talking to himself and reading again what I had quoted.
When I arrived in Adjengré I stopped at Nayo’s house and hungout with him for awhile, eating the sandwiches I had bought. Nayo cut down some oranges from the orange tree that’s growing by his house. He knows by now how I like fresh fruit and when I come over I always have a choice between fresh oranges or fresh coconuts from the trees just growing wild around the house. Tough life. I headed home after a little while and relaxed, cleaned and listened to Christmas music.
The next morning, Christmas Day, Nayo came over in the morning and started helping me prepare. Since Nayo doesn’t have any family in Adjengré, they are all in Lomé, we had Christmas together. When he came over he also brought some Sodabi. Drinking Sodabi is an important part of culture here for fêtes so while we were preparing the food we partook in sampling some of that moonshine. Before we started preparing everything we went over to Jean-Claude’s house in the morning and ate some Fufu and chicken and drank some ginger Sodabi. Then we left and went back to my house to prepare the food. The menu was, Asparagus soup (the can I got from the Mudricks and saved it from Thanksgiving so I could enjoy it with fewer people), pintade (guinea fowl and which I bought live from the neighbors next door) over steamed vegetables with some of those turkey gravy packets I still had from Thanksgiving. Then for dessert I had planned for scones, oatmeal cookies and banana bread. Nayo killed, cleaned, dismembered and cooked the pintade while I started baking. It was fun and everything turned out pretty well. The scones turned out excellent and Nayo and my neighbors really liked them. I will upload the pictures tomorrow. The cookies I thought weren’t bad, but not great, however everyone else liked them. I think it was because of a combination of lacking baking soda, having only old chocolate bars and using margarine, not butter. Also I needed backing soda for the banana bread so I ended up not baking that either. Otherwise everything was a great success. I made the Asparagus soup with Peak powdered milk which turned out well because Peak mixed with water is surprisingly quite delicious. After dinner and dessert Nayo and I watched the Christmas movies which had the option for them to be dubbed in French. Let me tell you, it is quite a strange experience watching Jimmy Stewart in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” speaking in rapid French. However, I enjoyed it all the same. Christmas was good.
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