Damigou

I survived post visit! Which was more of an accomplishment than I had anticipated.  Mogou is awesome, and I’m really happy to be there, but it is not without a couple challenges. First of all, it’s about an hour by moto to the route nationale (the big paved road that runs up and down Togo). There is also no cell reception… yet. They were building the tower the week I was there: by hand. Like guys carrying large metal beams, scaling a half-built cell tower. It is so impressive watching people build things without serious equipment. Anyways, besides the far-away from it all-ness, Mogou is great. The people are so stoked to have a PCV and seem totally on board with the promotion and education de la fille. And my homologue is a God-send. He’s the social affairs agent (people in the village call him ‘Affaires Sociales’) for the canton of Mogou, so he’s already doing a lot of GEE work on his own, which is awesome.  I think for the first month or two, I’m just gonna shadow him around and watch him at work.  I had a series of defining moments during post visit week… I guess I’ll go in sequential order.

Number one: not in Kansas anymore. My homologue de contact (a guy from the village who came to get me in Tsevié) and I arrived at about 9:30 pm—very very late at night for a town where the nearest electricity is about 20 kilometers away. But never the less, about half the village was awake and ready to greet me! There was a large crowd of women singing and dancing outside my new house, and all the kids helped unload my stuff from the van. Then they pulled me into a circle of people to watch the chief kill me a chicken. Affaires Sociales told me that a white chicken means welcome, and after they cut its neck, if it flaps around a lot, that is a sign of luck and good things to come. It flapped a lot. Then he asked if we do the same thing to greet visitors where I’m from. Nope, it’s a lil different.

Defining moment number two: when I realized what I’ll actually be doing for the next 2 years. Affaires and I were on our way to a meeting in the next village over, and we saw a girl who was about 10-12 years old walking on the path.  Affaires stopped her and asked why she wasn’t in school, and she explained. She was actually from Dapaong, about a 2 hours drive north, but her brother brought her down to Mogou to get married. Well Affaires wasn’t about to stand for that. He brought her into town along with the brother and the fiancé, sat everyone under the big tree and worked out a contract.  The girl would get to go back to Dapaong, go to school, and best of all, not get married. Good work, Affaires! Then he told me how forced marriage was a big issue in the area, and that he has to deal with it often. In Mogou proper, the middle school has 250 boys and 48 girls. In the nearby village, the ratio is just as skewed even in the primary school. So I think the majority of my work is going to be on getting girls to go to school and then stay in school. But we’ll see. Affaires told me he’s going to let me see for myself exactly what’s going in on Mogou, come to my own conclusions, etc. It’s going to be interesting, that’s for sure.

I have a village name! Damigou. Meaning “God/the Ancestors Protect Her.” For the swearing-in ceremony, I’m giving a 2-minute speech in Gangam, pretty much just saying my name, where I’m from, where my post is, and what I’ll be doing there. I’m really excited for swear-in: there’s a big party at the U.S. Ambassador to Togo’s house, all our host families will be there, and we’re gonna be looking fly in our complets. I heard a rumor that if you fan/ friend Peace Corps on Facebook, you’ll get to see pics from our swear-in… try it out! I’m thinking about all y’all a bunch, and hope things are going well! Take care : )