Post Visit at Adjengre

Here is the link to my pictures during Post Visit: Click Here for Pictures! This was written when I was in Adjengré and finished in Tsévié. Also I'm sorry for not posting more pictures. Once I get to my site, Adjengré, I will have a faster and more reliable internet connection and that is when I'll upload more pictures and even the movies I've taken here. Here goes: so here I am in Adjengré and I like it. I will be here until Saturday and then return to Tsévié for five more weeks of training. After which I will head back to Adjengré for the remainder of my two years of service. Sam, the volunteer who I will be replacing was evacuated from Kenya in 2008 and placed at this site. He is staying in Adjengré till November 28 because that is when he will complete his 27 months of service. I am glad that we are overlapping our service. On my way from Tsévié to Adjengré Sam texted me asking if I liked to eat cat…I responded with something like, "I’m sorry, but I’m really trying to quit". The Ethnic group in Adjengré is predominately Kabiye with some Kotokoli people. Talking with Sam I found that Kabiye people will eat cat, dog and even apparently baboon because I saw my homologue’s neighbor roasting a huge baboon which his neighbor had killed with a rock because it was eating their crops. However, they eat those “pets” mainly during fetes and apparently my arrival in Adjengré was fete worthy.
Another point of interest that I feel I should share was the journey from Tsévié to Adjengré. It took about 4 hours on the only two lane highway in Togo which everyone refers to as the “Route Nationale” which is the French word for “highway”. The Route Nationale runs the length of Togo and is really the only way to transport people and goods around the country. I believe there is also a train of some sort, but it is in disrepair and hardly used. Since PeaceCorps chartered vans it was quicker than if we took a “Bush Taxi” which is a Togo style taxi. Here is a quick explanation of the various modes of transportation available to the traveler. There are really only two ways to travel around the country one is by renting a car or driver and the other is by taxi. There are three types of taxis in Togo; a motorcycle, a four-door car, and a van. The “motos” are usually for short trips or places where it is impossible for a car to go down. The four-door car and the van are crammed with as many people as there is space and then some. In a four-door there is usually 8 people including the driver. The driver and a passenger in the driver’s seat, two people in the passenger seat and four in the back. It gets a little tight. The cars I believe are usually used for medium trips maybe an hour or two whereas the vans are generally used for longer trips. The vans and cars have similar accommodations, but usually the vans have bigger and heavier items strapped to the top.
One more thing before I continue my story. Let me just preface the next paragraph with an observation of the Togolese people. Every day, as I walk to and from school, I am in constant awe of their ridiculously white teeth. I have never seen so many people with a smile like Regis Philbin. Part of the reason is that no one here drinks coffee. Some people drink tea but not many. Also even though the soda here is a lot sweeter than in The States, they don’t drink much of it either. However, I believe the whiteness is due mainly to the stripped branches that I see people always chewing on. These branches have fluoride and other chemicals that naturally whiten the teeth.
So I rode down to Adjengré with my homologue Nayo, Matt (who incidentally is taller than me by a few inches), Liza, Virginia and all their homologues in the van. For those wondering what a homologue is PeaceCorps assigns each volunteer a person (homologue) who is from the town you will be working in. A homologue’s job is to introduce you to people in the village and show you around. As I got into the van I decided on the seat right behind the driver because that would allow for some extra leg room. Unfortunately I hadn’t counted on the fact that the driver would be chewing those sticks I had mentioned in the previous paragraph for the entire ride. Also this van is normally a Bush Taxi and just temporarily rented by the PeaceCorps so the only air conditioning is the open window. The first hour passed without incident, but as the stick started to really break down in his mouth he had to start spitting it out the window. I believe everyone can guess what happened next. The first time my mouth wasn’t open, the second time it was. Also during our journey we ran over a rooster, but just kept on going. I guess he never made it to the other side.
Adjengré was the first stop so everyone got to see my house and take pictures of me in front of it. It is of normal size, but has a big yard where I intend to start a garden. Here are some pictures of the house and yard: Click Here. Since Sam is pretty low maintenance there isn’t much on the walls or even furniture for that matter which actually suits me just fine. I will get to be able to have the local carpenters make me whatever I want. Sam and Nayo introduced me to many people during my stay including the Chief and the people who work for him, the local police (called the Gendarmes), the post office, various Microfinance organizations, etc. I also met my future French tutor, Jean-Claude. He is really a great guy and has so much energy. Sam is working with him now and one project that I will be helping him with, hopefully right off the bat, will be an English club in the school where he teaches. I also suggested a long-term project to him and he sounded very interested. The project would be to create some type of English language teaching tapes because first and foremost there is a major problem finding English teachers. Also the quality of English spoken is usually not very good so having a native speaker “teaching” would be highly advantageous. Other possible projects that Sam and I discussed my eventual involvement with is bee-keeping and teaching people about the wonders of the Meringue tree which I have many of bordering my yard.
So far my days here have followed this schedule. I wake up at 530-6am. Bucket shower at 630am. At 715ish Sam and I ride down to a small café where I have an egg, tomato and onion sandwich. If anybody is wondering, yes it is delicious. Afterwards we stop at Nayo’s house. Then my activities have varied from French lessons to meeting people. Then Sam and I end the day watching a French game show at the Bon Compte hotel restaurant bar about 2 minutes from the house. Then I head to bed around 10pm.
Monday, July 21 followed this schedule, but got a little exciting around 3am Tuesday morning. I woke up from a combination of the sound of a storm hitting the tin roof and my body suggesting that I should take a pee. When I came back inside after doing my business I turned on the light in my room. To the left of the door a large insect was following the crevice formed from when the wall meets the floor. As it made its way around my room I thought this is a large weird looking beetle. So I moved in closer for a better look and I realized it wasn’t a beetle it was a large black scorpion. It was then, as I stood there barefoot and in my boxers that the power went out and the scorpion and I were plunged into darkness together. At that point I said to myself…”Really Togo?”
After I imagined various scenarios involving the scorpion going rogue and attacking me I made my way carefully to my bed to look for my new cell phone with the built in flashlight. When I found the phone I switched on the flashlight and pretty quickly found the sucker. It hadn’t diverted far from the direction I had last seen it going. I kept him in the spotlight and grabbed a shoe I had lying around. With shoe in hand I stealthy made my way towards him and brought my shoe down as he raised his stinger. Here is a picture of it: Click Here. Sam had never seen a scorpion in this house or even in Togo before. I feel lucky.
The next few days passed without incident. I was able to meet the other current volunteers who live close to me and will be leaving around the same time Sam is leaving. Also I met up with Lorena, a fellow SED who is in my stage, in her town in Lama-Tessi which is about 20km away or a 20 minute taxi ride. The people who she will be working with threw a fete for her and I in Lama-Tessi. I believe we will be working on many projects together. Her first project, as of now, looks like she will be working with a really talented artist and teach him book-keeping among other business related things. I saw his artwork and I am definitely going to buy a lot of it for my house.
Friday I went south to Atakpame with Lorena to experience the PeaceCorps Transit House there. PeaceCorps will be removing this Transit House at the end of this year because of budget issues. Transit Houses are big houses to be used by PeaceCorps volunteers who are traveling from place to place within the country. There is a guard on duty 24 hours, a kitchen, multiple beds, showers, bathrooms, etc. You have to pay a little bit each night you stay at the Transit House but a lot less then if you stayed at a hotel and safer. Only the Atakpame Transit House is left, but there used to be a total of four in the country. The Atakpame Transit House was really cool. Atakpame is a pretty big city and about 20 minutes from Agbo where Sam M. (the Sam in my SED stage) will be living. Lorena and I stayed the night. It was really fun. We met a lot of older volunteers and the people from my Stage who are posted relatively close to Atakpame stopped by so it was fun to hear how they enjoyed Post Visit.
The next morning Lorena and I headed north to Nikhil’s house which is about 12km south of Adjengré. One could say that it was an interesting journey. About 15 minutes before we arrived at Nikhil’s house the old woman I had been sitting next to in the back seat got out. This was a four-door car so there were four of us crammed into the back seat. Happy with the extra room I started to move over, but stopped because I noticed some bits of food particles on the seat. As I started to brush it off the seat I noticed that a small bit of orange color on my shirt, close to my pocket. When I pulled on my shirt I noticed more and more orange stuff. The realization of what it was and that some was actually on the inside of my shirt finally hit me and I gagged. Unbeknownst to me the woman had thrown up in her hand and as she got out of the car had secretly rubbed it on my shirt. I have witnesses who can attest to the fact that there was actually a hand print on my shirt.
The reason for this trip was because the current volunteers in the Centrale Region (or in other words my “cluster” which means the volunteers in the same region as your site. My site is Adjengré which is in the Centrale Region) were throwing a party for all the people in my Stage who are posted in the Centrale Region. Also my fellow stageers around Kara came down for the party. It was really fun. Nikhil made Indian food for all of us and I was able to meet all the volunteers who I will be living close too in Adjengré.
The next morning, Sunday, July 26, my fellow stageers and I, who were at Nikhil’s, took a taxi back to Tsévié.

Up To Now

My host family stay is half over. I have lived with them for about 5 weeks and I have 5 more weeks to go. So this post should bring everyone up-to-date with my life here in Tsévié. First, I do have electricity, not running water so every morning I take a bucket shower. This is where I get the water from: Click Here. The well is refilled by a rainwater collecting system that my family installed. When it rains the water runs off the roof into gutters that funnel the water down into the well. Here is a picture of it: Click Here. So bucket showers are actually surprisingly great. If you find the water is too cold you can always heat it up, but I find that it’s nice to have a cool shower here.
My day goes like this. I wake up at 6am and take a shower. Then my family, actually my host sister is the only one living at the house with me now, boils water with citronelle (not sure how that is spelled but it is called “fever grass” in the states) and I mix in coffee, cocoa and milk. For breakfast she either makes me a couple eggs or I will get cheese and freshly baked French bread that they picked up that morning. All of it is really very delicious. Then I head to school around 710am. It takes me about 10 minutes to walk to the Tech House and pretty much every time a small child sees me they call out “Yovo!” (pronounced yoo-vo meaning light-skinned in Evé, the local language in the south of Togo) at least 10+ times a day. Also at least a couple times they break into song,
Yovo, Yovo bonsoir
ça va bien?
Merci!!
They have also been known to call me “Le Giante” on occasion.
730am is when classes start and it could be either language class or technical (business class) or maybe we might head to Gbatopé to have a one of the health workers present something to us. Then we have a 30 minute break at 930am. At 10am we could have any combination of any of those classes mentioned before for another two hours. 12pm we break for lunch and everyone heads back to their respective houses to eat. We have two hours to eat, but it isn’t as leisurely as you would think. Usually during that time I wash clothes (by hand) or clean out my room or study. At 230pm classes start again and run till around 5ish. Afterwards there might be tutoring for an hour. It gets dark around 615pm and it isn’t safe to really walk around at night so we all try to make it home before dark.
However, this next week will be a bit different. It is “Post Visit” week! Saturday morning around 6am I will head to my post, Adjengré, where I will be living and working for two years. It is located in the exact center of Togo and on the main highway. I am looking forward to it. In my house in Adjengré I won’t have running water, but I will have electricity. I will be replacing a former SED volunteer, Sam, who has lived there for two years. He is actually going to staying in town a few extra months when I’ll be at post to finish up his work there, but he will be living in a different house. I will let you all know how it goes.

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 4^th, 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 5^th, 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.