The Last Few Months

Well it has been quite some time since I have written a blog and the amount of stuff I have to share is somewhat daunting, but I will do my best. I left off right before my parents came to visit. They arrived at night and I greeted them at the airport in my full complét, the one I wore for swear-in. I was expecting more of a surprised reaction to the violently clashing colors I had on, but I assume they were so overjoyed to see me that it surpassed their disgust with what I was wearing. After I had a brief argument with two random Togolese men, who out of the goodness of their hearts I’m sure, decided that my parents and I wanted them to help carry our bags. Then afterwards they asked for a small gift of some sort. Despite my better judgment I offered them 50cfa each, however they thought it too little and when I wouldn’t give them anymore they walked away rather than pocketing the change. It became very apparent again to me at that point the chasm of difference separating a small town like Adjengré and a big city such as Lomé. Besides 50cfa being a sufficient tip, people in Adjengré help you without any thought of a monetary return for their services.

Before my parent’s arrival I had gone around to the various hotels in Lomé and investigated their suitability. I came to the conclusion that The Mercure Hotel on the beach road was the best choice. It worked out very well for them and I profited as well from their decision to stay there. It was nice to take a warm shower and sleep in air conditioning. For the next few days we toured Lomé which encompassed seeing the PeaceCorps office, visiting my host family who has a house in Lomé, going to a Tchouk stand and visiting the National Museum, among other things. After a few days we headed up to Adjengré. My host brother was able to take us in the family’s car which made the journey to Adjengré significantly more pleasurable. On route to Adjengré we stopped for a bite to eat and for my parents to meet Jane, a SED volunteer in my stage who grew up around where my parents live now.

In Adjengré my parents stayed at the Bon Compte Hotel. It costs around $20 a night and is definitely one of the nicer hotels in Togo, meaning that it has electricity and running water. Over the next few days they met my neighbors and various friends around my village. We also went to an impoverished rural school which supported a number of the surrounding villages. Nayo assisted us as we gave out school supplies to the top students as both a reward for the students doing so well and an incentive for the others. After Adjengré we went up to Kara and met up with some of my fellow PeaceCorps Volunteers there. It was a lot of fun. Then, luckily, we were able to take a PeaceCorps car from Kara all the way back down to Lomé. The journey lasted 8 hours. My parents left for America a few days after we arrived in Lomé. I stayed a few days longer in the capital, before heading back to Adjengré.

Since my parent’s departure I have been involved in numerous activities. February all the new SED volunteers were required to head down to Pagala for 3 days of something called IST: In-Service Training. How it works is each SED volunteer takes their homologue with them to the PeaceCorps Center in Pagala. PeaceCorps pays for the transport to the PeaceCorps Center and the food and lodging there. Apparently the PeaceCorps Center in Pagala was where staging took place in 1980s. Instead of going to Tsevie or another location to live with a host family, PeaceCorps would house us, feed us and teach us at this PeaceCorps Center. It is a little bizarre. It is one of a plethora of relics of a once prosperous Togo scattered throughout the country. Once I put up pictures you will see. While beneficial to volunteers, IST seemed to be most beneficial to our homologues. Afterwards many volunteers commented on how their homologues seemed energized by the conference and were finding more ways to help the volunteers they were assigned to. However, the volunteers benefited as well. A lot of ideas were thrown around and collaborations on projects discussed. One such collaboration which came out of IST is a project with a volunteer in Kpalimé involving connecting PeaceCorps Volunteers together over the internet. There seems to be a great disconnect between volunteers and even a greater one between new volunteers and volunteers who have already been in country for a year. There needs to be somehow to share the information, and that is something I’m working on now. In addition to all this, in IST we learned about Perma-gardening which is a way in which you set up a garden to yield the most produce in the smallest space. It is a lot of work at first, but afterwards the extra work pays off.

In March I continued working on building the library in Adjengré. Right now the books are temporarily being housed in Nayo’s living room. He is acting as librarian, forcing everyone to sign in and out. Only two days after we opened it the first person came in to use, so that was pretty exciting. From then on there has been a stream of students coming in to read and study in their free time. They all seem particularly partial to the “The History of the United States,” book in French I received when I visited the library of the American Embassy. When I visited the library at the American Embassy I discussed with them what I wanted to accomplish with my library and they assisted me with some material they give away for free. In addition to the library I continued the English Club and even taught a few classes in English when I found the time to do so. Towards the end of March a sudden rain started and continued for a number of days. This is hot season and so raining for that long is both uncommon and detrimental to the crops. At one point it even hailed, which was something I never thought I would see in Togo. The storm did a number on my fence as well, destroying it so it looked like a small tornado came through. There were a number of similar casualties. My neighbor’s paillote (pronounced pie – oat is a gazebo type thing made out of straw and wood) collapsed. Also a house of another neighbor, right behind my fence, fell in upon itself and one of the roofs on the little hospital a few minutes walk from my place, was ripped off.

April commenced with my birthday and the ending of an era, my early twenties, but as well as the beginning of a new dawn, my mid-twenties. My birthday was a lot of fun. I went to my Sotouboua to celebrate it there. I received presents, was cooked food by Kara and baked a kind of cookie cake by Meg and Jonathan. All in all in was an exceptional birthday. From then until now I have been working on a proposal to teach traditional healers about nutrition, the signs and symptoms of malnutrition and how one can achieve better nutrition by just using the leaves of the Moringa tree. In addition I am planning to start up a kind of Summer School for kids who want to learn English. This would be for 2 months, 3 hours a day of total immersion English class. I have an outline of a proposal for the Summer Class which I will finish up when I get back from my trip to Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire. Today I am leaving at 10:30am my time and heading straight to Accra by taxi. It should take about 3 hours. I will be traveling with Lorena, Matt Whalen and Matt Hix who are all from my stage and all SED volunteers. The plan is to spend a few nights in Accra then head North to Kumasi, then head back down to the South of Ghana. Afterwards we will head to Cote d’Ivoire and spend a few nights in Abidjan with family members of a host family Matt Whalen stayed with in France. In total we are traveling for 12 days. This is my first time out of Togo so it should be an interesting experience.