Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! We had quite the turkey day up in Dapaong. All of the Savanes volunteers plus some guests from down south gathered together at the Campement Hotel in Dapaong for a real feast. We had everything from stuffing to green beans to mashed potatoes and gravy to pumpkin pie, thanks to a couple super-chef PCVs. Our Country Director came and brought three turkeys with her on the Peace Corps car for us. About two hours into the twelve-hour journey, one of the turkeys tried to make a break for it and launched himself off the roof of the car. He traveled the rest of the way on ice, and the other two were moved into the trunk. Just like the pilgrims, right?

It’s been a busy month for me, or rather one with lots of change. I’ve now been an officially sworn-in volunteer for a year…fourteen months total in Togo. It’s kind of reassuring to be seeing everything the second time around, and other volunteers have told me that the second year goes by so much easier and faster than the first. Some of my really good PCV friends are COS’ing (close of service, aka going home), so it’s been not very fun getting used to going to Mango and Dapaong and not seeing them there. But! We’ve got a great new group of volunteers that just swore in, and I’m really stoked for my two new neighbors in Mango and Takpakpieni.

The season of Harmattan, the windy season, has just started. It’s super dry and dusty and very cool at night, which has been great. I have to sweep out my house a couple times a day, but the fact that I can sleep with a sheet over me at night totally makes up for it. It was amazing watching how fast everything turned from green to brown… the last rain was in October, and within two weeks it was a completely different landscape. Now everyone is busy with the harvests: corn, beans, sorghum, soybeans, rice, peanuts, and cotton. Our soybean field did really well—Aichetou says we got six sacks of soy out of it. It was a tough year for beans, however the cotton is looking good, so people seem pretty pleased overall with the harvest. And that’s all for the farm report… : )

Now, a plug for the 2^nd Annual Women’s Wellness and Empowerment Conference! I went to the Plateaux regional conference last year, and it is one of the highlights of my service so far. This year, the conference is expanding to three conferences, and I’m one of the regional coordinators for the Kara/Savanes Women’s Conference which will take place in March 2012. Thirty dynamic women from villages and towns all over the north will participate in this four-day long conference focusing on health and wellbeing. There will be sessions on personal finance, family planning, agricultural techniques, goal setting, nutrition, and much more. The project is being funded through a Peace Corps Partnership, meaning we’re looking for donations from people like you! If you’d like to donate, or just learn more about the conference, check out this link: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=693-389. Grand merci!

Of all the times to forget my camera, I thought as I watched three men load a cow into the back of a bush taxi. The red Toyota Starlet, from whatever year Toyota was making Starlets, looked like it would buckle under the weight of the animal, or maybe the sacks of grain, bicycles, and people already loaded into the vehicle, but miraculously it did not. You could tell from the windshield (held together with tape) and the doors (held closed with rope) and the ignition (hot wired) that this car had seen worse than cattle in its long life, and was up to the challenge. This bush taxi is my favorite car on my route into Mango, which involves biking 32km on “dirt” (read: sand/mud/rocks/river, depending on the season) roads, and then 25km in the Starlet. The driver has spent time in Ghana, and always greets me with “Good morning, sister! Let’s go to Mango! You go take your tea, and I will wait. Go and come.”Awesome. I get coffee in a can to go from the egg sandwich guy at the corner (and a sandwich, of course) and off we go, cow mooing all the way, to Mango: the big city.

But the big city is quickly coming to Mogou—this past week, big news—we got electricity! They turned on the big generator! The streetlights are on every night, and I have a lightbulb and a socket in each room in my house, which work from 6:00 pm until 11:00 pm. Other (larger) villages have electricity periodically throughout the day, but we don’t have quite the office worker population to support daytime electricity. So for the time being, it’s five hours. But what a difference! The first night we had it on in our compound, I was so excited I started dancing and hollering around the house, once again confirming my neighbors’ theories that I’m crazy.  I then plugged in everything I own and watched ten episodes of “How I Met Your Mother” until it went off at 11. Wild times in the village.

Girls Club is going again this school year: we meet every Wednesday and talk about different Life Skills topics for about an hour, and then dance it out in the courtyard. We’ve also started Reading Club with all of the donated books. The students LOVE them, and have started checking them out to read at home. I’ve had lots of other people in village asking to borrow books as well, from the teachers to the bartenders. Go reading!

I’ve been pretty busy with my national project work: Our first Lève-Toi Jeune Fille (our girls magazine) issue came out (theme: Girls in Science), and we’re working on our second right now. I’ve also been spending time in Kara getting ready for the Women’s Conference, scoping out hotels, getting our team together, etc. And, of course, taking advantage of the pool at Hotel Kara : )

And now, a shout out to all my readers who remember the battle I had with cockroaches in my apartment: check out this bug, which was in my house. It was one of many, attracted by the electric lights. Enjoy : )

Family visit pics!

Me and Kevin in the marche

We call this one "dinner looking at dinner." One of the goats checking out the chickens on the menu for the party.

The ladies of Mogou escorting us to the party, singing and dancing all the way

Mom joins in the dancing circle

My family at my house!

Wow, where did I leave off?? So much happened in the month of August, and only now am I getting enough of a break to stop and think about what all I’ve been doing.

First, Camp Etoiles du Nord was a huge success. The girls loved it, and really it was hard to tell who was enjoying themselves more: the participants or the organizers. For me and my Mango cluster gang, it was lots of work and pretty stressful making sure thirty girls plus all of our panelists and other counterparts were having a good time, but when we had the chance to step back and appreciate all that was going on… it was pretty impressive. The girls were fantastic; lots of energy, participation, and great attitudes. We also had four female university students who grew up in the Mango area helping us out as counselors. They stayed with the campers at the center overnight, and were able to answer more of the girls’ questions, having already been through their same situations. They were a big help to us… I really don’t know how we would have done the camp without them.

            One thing we’d overlooked was Ramadan. Our camp took place during the second week of the holiest month of the year for a town with a population that is about 90% Muslim. So, we had about 10 out of the 30 girls fasting, that is not eating or drinking water, from 4:00 am until 6:30 pm every day of camp. I know I would have had a hard time concentrating, but they really rose to the challenge and we had very few problems overall.

            Camp Etoiles had three major components: panel discussions, educational sessions on different topics, and site visits. Our panelists were a great group of women (and a few men) from the Mango area who shared their different careers and experiences with the campers, and we as PCVs had a great time getting to know them. Really impressive people. We had a female civil engineer (the regional director for public works here in Savanes), a policewoman, an accountant, a nurse, the manager of the post office, teachers, NGO workers, etc. I think the panel presentations were just as interesting for us PCVs and the university students as they were for the participants.  The part the girls liked the most was the site visits. We went to a microfinance/ credit union, the hospital, and the radio station. The radio station was the best; each girl got to speak on air and say her name, her village, and what she wants to be when she grows up (along with a few “Hi Mom!”s).

            When camp was over (literally, the same day), I went down to Lomé and over to Accra to pick up my mom, dad, and Kevin. Yay family! They stayed for 8 days, and we saw it ALL. Lomé, Mogou, and everything else in between. It was so awesome to see them and be able to show them what my life is really like here. We had a party in village in honor of their visit…which was in the end a success but caused a lot of stress along the way. I didn’t realize that there is no such thing as a “small” village fête. The entire village came to eat, drink, and dance with us at the school. The chief made a speech, and Mom and Dad made one as well, which everyone loved. The Mogou women showed off their traditional dances and let me, Mom, and my PCV friends join in—really fun! Kevin and Dad had matching batik pagne shirts made for the occasion, and even Toby came to party it up with us. I was really impressed with how well my family put up with everything Togo threw at them: strange food, French, crazy/ uncomfortable travel in a bush taxi, chickens and radios waking us up at 5:30 in the morning… not quite a relaxing vacation.

            Then, about a week later, Kelsey and Cindy came visit! Kelsey did a mini tour of West Africa, visiting Cindy at her site, then the two of them came to Togo to hang in Savanes with me. We saw the Moba caves, which are cliff caves that the Moba people hid in during the Moba-Tchokossi wars in the 18^th century. We biked out there with one of my PCV friends who lives nearby… he forgot to tell us they were cliff caves and thus we would be climbing a mountain to get to them. But we rallied and the hike was totally worth it! Awesome views, a waterfall, caves, what’s not to like? The next day we kicked it down to Mogou, did the marché, and hung out on my porch watching the rain. Kels brought me pop tarts and cookies that she and Cindy baked… first of all, I love how she remembered my pop tart obsession. Second, wow, cookie baking? I need to step up my game. Although, thanks to chef Dad, I am now a confident okra-cooker! But anyways, Kels, GOOD LUCK at your new job! So freaking proud of you. And Cindy, I’ll need to plan a Burkina trip sometime soon so I can see these tall goats you’re talking about.

            Well, my busy-ness didn’t stop there. I went right down to the Gender and Development Committee meeting in Kara, and while it was great to see all my friends, I could tell I’m in need of some village time. But, our first Lève-Toi Jeune Fille issue is out! We’re now working on our next issue, themed Community Action!, with a community service/ Camp Unite focus. Should be done by December, we hope.

            So now, back to village. I might sleep for the first three days. Then, prep for the first day of school! I’m hoping to do a girls’ club at both the middle and elementary school this year, and I’m eager to get back and start planning with Affaires. We’ve been in Togo for one year now… some days it feels like we just got here, and sometimes it feels like I’ve never been anywhere else. Yikes!  

“I don’t think this is the same pork we bought last time.” “No, it’s not, I’m almost sure. I saw what was written on the package…” “Me too! But I wasn’t going to say anything…”

“What are you guys talking about? What kind of meat is this?” I was lost. We were nearing the end of a delicious chili dinner, made with pork we bought from nuns in a village near Mango, and as I had been washing dishes, I didn’t watch much of the preparation.

My PCV friends looked at each other. “The package said ‘Pâté de Tête.’ ” Pig head meat. “Are you kidding! And we ate it!” I was thoroughly grossed out. But both my friends defended the pork. “Oh, it’s all the same! Like, what do you think is in sausage? That’s meat from who knows where on the animal. And maybe it’s just regular meat with some brain in it.” “I ATE PIG BRAIN?? And you think that’s reassuring!” I couldn’t believe it. Two Americans, one of whom had been a vegetarian for eight years prior to coming to Togo, were trying to convince me that pig head meat and/or brain was not only ok, but that I was the weird one for freaking out. Indeed, we have come a long way.

Before leaving for Togo, I heard from lots of people that Peace Corps changes you. I didn’t really understand at the time… “Change how? Do I need changing?” I thought. I couldn’t think what about me could change… I’d traveled before. I’d seen things. And now, with my friends and family coming to visit really soon (YES!), I’ve been thinking about it again. Has Peace Corps changed me? Apparently not in the same way as my friends, who don’t think twice about what kind of meat they eat as long as it tastes good. But I’m pretty sure I’ve changed in one way or another. Life is just… well it’s different here.

Here are some events from this past week:

-I was cooking dinner  one night with Toby and Jabenjezu (my neighbor’s dog) curled up on the kitchen floor. Then my neighbor’s cat wandered in. Then a mama duck and her 8 baby ducks wandered in. “Hey duck family, get out! All the animals, out out!” I shooed them out, and kept cooking. Ducks in my kitchen. Surprising, but not unbelievable. I’d been the one to leave my door open to a courtyard full of ducks, guinea fowl, cats, dogs, and chickens. And two weeks ago, we’d also had 2 giant bulls staying with us that my neighbor had rented to plow his field. As my friend from Mango has helped me to discover, I talk to animals a lot more now. I was telling her a story that started with the line, "So as I told Toby the other day..." and she burst out laughing and said, "Please, you don't even need to finish that sentence."

-On Friday, I stopped through a village on my way to Mango to talk to the director of the middle school there and invite him to the opening ceremony for camp. “Oh sure, I’ll be there, that’d be great!” he says. “And by the way, of the three girls you thought were coming from this village, only one is coming. And she’s bringing her baby, is that ok? The other two left… I think they’re in Lomé.” Camp starts in four days. I went to talk to the parents of one of the girls. “I heard the camp was called off! That’s what my sister told me. (What! Who is her sister?? Where are we getting this information?) My daughter’s in Sokodé… I don’t know when she’ll be back. Sorry.” So we scrambled and found two replacement girls. Fingers crossed, camp looks like it’s going to go really well, and we’ve now verified with the rest of the girls that they’re coming, so hopefully no more snags. Well, who am I kidding, there will be snags, but here’s hoping they’ll be small.

-Yesterday, in an effort to remind all of our participants that camp is YES, still happening, my PCV friend in Mango and I went on the radio to talk about the camp. It was really cool… I don’t think I’ve been that nervous in a while! Everyone in even the tiniest of villages listens to this radio station all day, and I knew it would be on in my compound at least. We talked about the goals of camp, who was going to participate, what we were going to do, and how we hoped it would help the girls and the community. The radio had a guy translate what we said from French to Anufo and Gangam, back to back. I will admit, that must be tricky work, but I was still miffed to hear him open each translation with “The Peace Corps ooboumpié says” or “The Peace Corps batouli says,” meaning “The PC white lady” in Gangam and Anoufo, respectively. C’mon! We were so close! Just stop after Peace Corps… but honestly, calling me ooboumpié probably helps all the peeps out in Mogou and beyond recognize who’s talking better than saying Corps de la Paix.

NOTE: Starting today, Togo is changing it’s phone numbering system to 8 instead of 7 digits. If you’re trying to call me, my new numbers are:

Togocel (doesn’t work in village, but is my main phone when I’m out of village):

92.22.63.12 [used to be 722.63.12]

Moov (works in village):

99.40.31.03 [used to be 940.63.12]

LOVE to you all! xoxox

One of my PCV friends from Savanes came to visit me in Mogou on Monday. As she got off the taxi moto, the first thing she said to me was, “How did Peace Corps FIND this place??” Since the rains started, both of the roads leading out of Mogou have been hit pretty hard. The “good” road to Gando is more like a river for large stretches of way, forcing motos and bikes to ride in the grass on either side. The not-so-good road to Mango is about to close for the season because it goes through the Oti river floodplain. So, we’re slowly turning into an island…which I find all the more strange because not more than two months ago it was so dry and hot here that it only took an hour for all my laundry to dry on the clothesline. But nobody in Mogou seems too concerned about it; Everyone is way too busy planting and working in the fields. My half-hectare of soybeans just sprouted with the last rainstorm! My Gamgam teacher and I have a shared field and she decided that soy was the thing to plant. Afterwards she felt badly because she didn’t think that yovos ate soy. “We should have planted beans! You love beans!” But I assured her that yes, yovos eat soy and that even if it were beans, her family would be getting most of the crop, anyways. Her cousins and aunts did all of the work for the field, so I feel a little badly taking the credit for it… but come harvest time it’ll all get repaid. We also have fresh corn in the market now! I was so excited when I saw it and bought 5 ears right away. All the marché mamas started talking, and my Gamgam teacher translated: “They’re surprised you eat that! We thought only Africans ate corn. Yovos eat corn? Right off the cob like that? And you know how to cook it?” It’s like in People magazine or Us Weekly—the section called “Stars: they’re just like us!” They shop for shoes, they play with their dogs, etc. “Yovos! They’re just like us!” They eat corn! And soy! They travel in bush taxis! They ride bicycles! We yovos are pretty unpredictable, I guess.

We’re in the final stretches of work for our girls’ camp… oy, lots to do. I’ve been in charge of tracking down the girls in southern Oti (Mogou, Gando, Sagbiebou) to have them fill out questionnaires, permission slips, etc. Most of them are pretty shy but seem eager to go, so it will be fun to pull them out of their shells a bit at camp. It’s also been fun working with my PCV colleagues in Mango… we just made a delicious lunch of macaroni and cheese with REAL cheese and butter. We’re up in Dapaong printing and photocopying all the documents for camp, and taking advantage of all the luxuries of the “big city.” And, in spite of electricity cuts, copy machines from 1999, Mac-formatted USB key issues, and only one functional color printer in all of Dapaong (meaning all of Savanes), we printed and copied everything we needed for camp in a day. Boo-yaaa! Togo is really helping me gain some perspective and appreciation for the weirdest things. Like Kinkos. And dairy products.

Hope you’re all doing well and enjoying summer! LOVE xoxox

Oh, one thing I forgot! One of the volunteers up in Dapaong put together a CD of music by artists in villages around Dapaong called Songs of Savanes. You can order it at http://cdbaby.com/cd/moba, and proceeds go to buying a donkey and cart for one of the villages. Check it out! : )

Hello from Lomé! This summer is really flying by… I can’t believe it’s July already. June was a blur. I was a counselor for Camp Espoir, which is a Peace Corps-organized camp for kids infected or affected by HIV/AIDS, and they have a week for each region in Togo. So I was there for the Savanes week and was the counselor for the little girls (aged 9-11). Really cute. So many games, songs, dancing, talent shows, soccer games… I don’t know how camp counselors in America go for entire summers with that much energy.

But, moving from one camp to another, we in Mango cluster are really busy with our preparations for Camp Etoiles du Nord: a career development camp for middle school girls in the Oti prefecture. One of my fellow organizers, Megan, made a blog for the camp: http://campetoilestogo.wordpress.com/ Check it out! We’re down here in Lomé to buy supplies, meet with PC staff, and get all of our sessions and documents organized... and to eat some delicious food. Next week we’ll trek out to all of the villages to meet the participants and make sure they’re ready to go, double check transportation, food, and lodging arrangements, organize speakers… it’s all happening. It’s nice to have some real worky-work to do, especially because my village is really busy with planting season right now.

It’s been raining in Mogou about once a day or every other day, which really cools the temperature down. I’ve been enjoying sitting on my porch with a cup of tea and watching it rain… while Toby whines because it’s chilly and hides under my chair. Now that the kids are out of school, I’ve had more visitors to my porch library. A HUGE thank you to everyone involved in sending me French books—the kids love them. I had a boy about 9 or 10 years old come over one afternoon asking to read who I know from around village; He’s kind of a sassy kid who gives me a hard time and teases me when he can, but I told him to take a seat and brought out some picture books. As I handed them over, he took them so carefully and had such wide eyes… I could tell it was the first time he had ever held books. He opened the covers and just felt the paper of the pages, and then sat for hours reading. It was pretty cool to see. I’d like to work out someplace to have a permanent library in village, but in the meantime the porch is working pretty well. There’s one girl who just came back to Mogou after working as a nanny in Nigeria for 5 years, so she speaks English and together we’re working on the English picture books as well as the French. And then there’s one boy who comes every evening after dinner, and we sit together with our respective books and read with the lantern. Pretty cute. I’m flying through books by the way… no electricity has its perks, I guess. Recommendations, anyone?

Hope everyone’s doing well! LOVE LOVE!

Bonsoir, bonsoir! Long time, no write, I know… I’ve been really on the go, and I’m afraid it’s going to be like that for most of the summer. It started with the Women’s Wellness and Empowerment Conference in Kpalimé in late May, which was a huge success. The conference was organized by volunteers in the plateaux region, and next year they plan to hold a conference in each of the 5 regions. I attended as the Savannes rep, meaning next year I’ll be planning the conference for our region (with lots of other people, I’m sure! It looked like a ton of work). They hosted 30 women from villages all over the region and presented themes and sessions from all four program sectors here in PC Togo. The women ate it up. From nutrition to family planning to budgeting to container gardens, they loved every minute, although it was hard to tell who was having more fun: the participants or the PCVs. We all did yoga together every morning at 6:00… the first morning, my fellow regional reps and I were slow to get out of bed and arrived to yoga still pretty sleepy. But we were the only ones. The women were so excited and greeted us with huge smiles on their faces. And we realized: this is a huge vacation for them. For three days, they don’t have to wake up at 4:30 am to sweep the compound, make breakfast, wash and dress the kids, etc. Instead, as Madame Rose pointed out, they were served all of their meals by men. It was awesome to see what an impact each new session had on the participants, especially on topics like family planning, which is usually taboo. I left with such a renewed feeling of purpose… it’s not everyday that you see people loving work that you do. And even though my role was very small (I was more of an observer than facilitator), the energy surrounding the whole event was contagious.

            On that awesome note, I left on another equally fantastic adventure: Molé National Park in Ghana. My friend from Mango and I trekked over to northern Ghana to see the game reserve in Molé… so fun. We saw elephants! And baboons, crocs, red monkeys, antelope, and warthogs. It was interesting seeing a part of Ghana that looked so much like our part of Togo, instead of the beach version of Ghana I saw on my last trip. It was kind of a hassle getting there… we crossed the border at Mango, but let’s just say there’s a reason that border crossing didn’t make the guide books. And, for the record, I thought Togo transportation was sketchy, but at least here we don’t make people stand in the aisle for a 5-hour long bus ride. Don’t worry, Mom, we had seats : ) We also hung out for a few days in Tamale, which is a very large city at the same latitude as somewhere between Kara and Mango. They were used to tourists in that town, and we took full advantage. We went swimming at the pool, ate meatball sub sandwiches, and went shopping in the touristy art market. But it was really nice coming back to Togo… I was relieved to know what I was doing again. I feel more comfortable speaking French than Ghanaian English, and in francs CFA I can tell when I’m getting ripped off, instead of having to guess and convert. We designated the day we got back in country as “I Love Togo Day,” so we loved our crowded bush taxi, our hotel room with the broken air conditioner, the moto taxis, and the bar-resto blasting Toofan while we mange-d cafeteriat spaghetti. It was just so familiar.

            And my Togo loving has continued—I spent one week in village and then didn’t want to leave to go to the GAD (Gender and Development Committee) meeting. I usually miss things about Mogou when I leave, like Affaires and my Gamgam teacher and Toby, but I’ve never not wanted to leave before. Making strides. 

 The Girls Club at CEG Mogou. They loved the letters from BEHS!

 Club des Filles!

 Big day in Mogou: Electricity!! Almost. They came to install the counter box on our house. Still waiting for them to turn on the generator.

My neighbor with her new foyer-- improved cookstove. So proud.

 TOBY!! When I first got him. He was about 2 months old.

Toby now! Emily says he looks like Toby from the Office. He's chewing up everything in sight...so far he's gone through 2 pairs of my flip flops and 2 chew toys.

I’m almost at the end of two really busy weeks in village… yeah, busy! Village! Wild, huh?

Last week my neighbor from Gando came over and we organized a tree nursery with a women’s group (project to be continued tomorrow) and made an improved cookstove for/ with one of the women in my compound. She makes tchuk (local beer made from sorghum) in a huge pot to sell every week, but until now she’s been cooking it over an open fire, and that takes up a lot of wood. The improved cookstove is made out of clay, sand, and straw all mixed together and molded over three big rocks to fit to the shape of the pot. It went really well and she’s super stoked about it. Now I’m getting requests to make stoves for other women in town, and judging by how much tchuk and tchakpa is in the marché every week, something tells me I’ll be busy for a while.

Then on Monday I ran a neem soap demo for my Gangam teacher’s women’s group. The oil from leaves of neem trees is a natural mosquito repellant, so when you make soap with it, it helps keep off the mosquitos. The women loved it, and afterwards asked if I knew how to make lotion too, (in theory, yes, I was taught how to make lotion. Expert levels of lotionmaking, remains to be seen) and they had a ton of questions about what kind of oil they could use. When I told them they have to get the nice oil in bottles from the stores in Mango, they were discouraged for a second, until one of them said, “No, wait, why can’t we use this oil we have here? It’s oil of karité, and we can make it here ourselves so it’s much cheaper.” Karité? Where had I heard that before…. Omg yeah that’s shea! As in shea butter. Yes, ladies we can most definitely use this really cheap local oil that just happens to be perfect for making lotion! I don’t think they believed me when I told them how in America, shea butter is one of the more expensive lotions you can buy. So, we’re planning to work on that project in a couple weeks when I get back from the women’s conference in Kpalimé… should be fun!

Other news headlines from Mogou:

-The electric company came through and installed counter boxes on some of the houses (including ours!!) that have already paid for the installation. Now we’re waiting for our landlord to install outlets and light bulbs and all that, and for the electric company to come back and turn it all on. Apparently we’re second on the list of villages waiting to be connected, so my estimate is that we should have it by Christmas this year. We’ll see, tho.

-They’re arrangé-ing the road from Mogou to Tchimonga, a medium-sized village to the north of us. When it’s done it should be really nice, but for the moment there are four foot deep trenches on either side of the road, which makes it pretty hard for anything that isn’t a donkey to get around.

-My taxi-moto guy, Express, got a new moto! It’s a black Sanya. Runs like a dream.

-On marché day, three teenage boys showed up on my porch with 10 Euros. “You need to exchange this for us,” one of them said. “Um, no, wait where did you get 10 Euros?” “In a pair of pants I bought.” Ah yes, the dead yovo clothes. There’s actually been a surge in Bucks jerseys in the clothes piles recently… and even knock-off Bucks attire. I saw a lady wearing a shirt that said “Milwakey Bucks” with a picture of a buck that looked more like a moose than anything else. Anyways, the bargaining continued. “Just give me 2 mille for it! Please, this is your people’s money!” “No, it’s not my people’s money. I’m an American, and we use dollars. And I don’t know the exchange rate for Euros to francs CFA. And even if I did, I am not a bank. I have no use for Euros right now. I use CFA just like you do. You can try taking it in to the bank in Mango, but since it’s two 5 Euro bills, I don’t know if they’ll accept it.” “Aw, c’mon Hélène! How about 1 mille 500?”

Sometimes, I really don’t like being the yovo.

Happy May Day!

The first of May (Premier Mai, aka Labor Day) in Togo is a HUGE holiday. Or at least it was in Mogou. Granted it was wild, but it was definitely the most fun I’ve had in village thus far. One of my Mango PCV’s and I joke about “potential friends”: people in village we would like to be friends with, thus a work in process. There are lots of great colleague-type people, the marché lady who always slips you an extra onion, and packs of kids sing/chanting your name, but vrai friends, that’s not always there. My Gangam teacher, however, is one such potential friend, and we made great strides on Premier Mai. She took me in her group of 8 women to celebrate together, and we were quite the scene, parading around town in our neon red and yellow pagne. I really won points when I tied the third pagne around my head “à l’africaine.” Oh yeah. Pictures to follow.

The holiday continued for about three days afterwards, and it put my whole village in a great mood. In Girls Club this week, the girls opened their letters from the BEHS French Club—GIANT success!! The girls were so thrilled with their correspendentes and the pictures, silly bands, etc that were included. Decorated with markers, some of them typed up with pictures from prom printed on the same page… really impressive. They read and showed each other their letters for about 20 minutes straight, and then the room was dead silent as they worked on their responses. It was really hard to tell who was more thrilled, though: me or the students.  If you’re reading this, bon travail et grand merci aux élèves de BEHS ! Les réponses viennent : )

Besides that, things in Mogou are continuing to go along. I got a new kitchen cabinet (garde manger) to keep the mice out of my food, and it has transformed my kitchen! I really like cooking now, and with an organized food situation, it makes it even better. Toby’s getting bigger and bigger and continues to follow me around… well, like a puppy : ) I don’t know what I’d do without him.

Really good news: our Camp Etoiles du Nord was approved! It’s going to be a Take Our Daughters to Work-style camp for 30 female students from middle schools in southern Savanes, set for the second week in August. We’ll bring them into Mango and do career-related activities, have them meet with women of different professions, and try out computer skills, etc. It should be really fun, and so far the girls and women sound equally excited for it. For the funding, we’ve been granted a Peace Corps Partnership, meaning some of the funding comes from the community itself, with the rest from outside donations. If you or someone you know would be interested in donating to Camp Etoiles du Nord (Northern Stars), please check out our project on the PCPP website: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=693-374. If it has you search for the project, use the project number 693-374. Merci beaucoup!!

Love you all-- I’m thinking of you all the time! Take care and ttys!

La vie continue here in the M-O-G-O-U. Toby is about the best thing that has happened to my village life… he follows me around all day, makes friends with people and other dogs, has learned “sit,” and is (fingers crossed) house trained. My neighbor’s dog, Jabinjezou, and Toby are bff’s, and I usually have the two of them following me around to meetings, through the marché, to girls club, etc. I also got a new rooster as a cadeau from a neighboring village, and named him Billy. Let me know if I start to sound animal crazy… or just plain crazy.

I had a really busy day last Friday. Affaires woke me up yelling “Good morning! Bonjour! Hélène est la?” outside my door. It was 5:37 am. I stumbled out on to the porch and told him it was not yet morning and that it had better be important. Turns out it was. The night before, one of the rockstar girls from my girls club came to Affaires’ house at 11pm, saying her family was trying to marry her off to some guy who wanted to take her to Nigeria to work. She said she didn’t want to marry him and wanted to stay in school. We had just talked about good communication skills and standing up for yourself at girls club, and she was one of only three girls who volunteered to participate in skits. I was so proud. Affaires arranged for her to spend the night at the Chef du Canton’s house, and now this morning we had to go sort it all out.

So we interviewed the family: Maman and three older brothers, who all claimed to know nothing about it. All Maman did was yell at her daughter for telling us and embarrassing the family. Affaires then took the girl to Gando to talk with the police chief, who issued warrants to the whole family and the potential husband, and we all showed up to court Saturday morning (except the potential husband, who fled to Nigeria). I really like the CB in Gando: super nice guy who seems really good at his job. He explained that girls who go to school, no matter if you think they actually want to marry someone or not, don’t get married. Especially if they’re only 17. He even pounded his fists on the desk a few times. It was awesome.

Now I’m in Mango for a couple days turning in my VRF (Peace Corps reporting form) and basking in the electricity. I slept all night last night! Gotta love fans. Then it’s back to Mogou for the week. We’ve got a parajuriste (paralegal, maybe?) coming in from Gando to talk with the Girls Club on Wednesday, and we’re working on putting together a skit to present at Premier Mai, the next big fete in village. I’m really stoked for Premier Mai: my Gangam teacher included me in her group of women who are celebrating together, and we’re going to have matching pagne outfits. She’s just about the most stylish woman in Mogou, so it’s a good group to be in : )

I can’t believe it’s already April! The months are flying by… even though every day takes about a year. Love you all! xoxox 

Toby!

I did it! I got a puppy! I’ve been asking around village since December for a puppy, but with no luck. Then last week I saw a dog with two puppies following her… so I asked all the kids in the quartièr which house the dog belonged to, tracked them down, and got Toby. He’s about two months old, and has been a lot of work, but so worth it. Seriously, I don’t know how I did it before having a dog. We go for walks and he follows me around village, and everyone is learning his name already. One really awkward moment (thank goodness there is no ‘awkward’ in Togo): I was in the marché with Toby and a group of people asked me his name. “Toby,” I said, and everyone nodded and said “Toh-BEEEEE” except this one guy who said, “Toby? Isn’t that the name of that slave?” He then proceeded to act out the scene from “Roots” in which the nasty slave owner yells “Yer name’s Toby!” and hits him with the whip... to a captive audience. Of course, Mogou has no electricity. Two people have TVs that run on generators that they turn on once or twice a week. But we’ve all seen “Roots.” Thank you, globalization. What are the odds? Mortified, I grabbed Toby and ran off to buy mangoes.

In hot season, there are not too many good things. But there are a couple. One, no bugs. It’s too hot and dry. Two, mangoes! I’ve been eating them til my mouth gets sore. First it was just the little stringy ones, but now we’ve got the nice big normal mangos almost every day in the marché.  It makes the 115 degree heat kinda bearable. We were hoping to get the electricity up and running before hot season, so we could all buy fans, but no such luck. Maybe by next year…

Apart from the heat and the dog, I’ve been working on a planning a girls camp for students in our canton this August. Working title: Camp Etoiles du Nord. It’s been really fun planning it with my Mango PCV neighbors and Togolese homologues, and the girls from Mogou are already getting really stoked for it. More details to come, as we’re turning in our application for funding this month, so stay tuned!

Hope you’re all doing well—I miss you tons! xoxox

Vacay au Ghana

Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000198 EndHTML:0000006524 StartFragment:0000002392 EndFragment:0000006488 SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/ellenvancleave/Desktop/Vacay%20Au%20Ghana%20and%20Toby.doc

With hot season fast approaching, I was really excited for my birthday vacation to Ghana—the beach! Delicious food! Electricity! Nothing could go wrong.

It got off to a rocky start, to say the least. I planned to take the Poste bus down from Mango to Lomé on my birthday même to meet Joe, get my Ghana visa the next day, and then kick it to Accra. This all happened, but for about 8 hours I was not so sure. The Poste bus, which had been running later and later recently, wasn’t showing. I got there at 8 for the 8:30 arrival. 9:00, 10:00, 11:00 passed with no bus. “Ca arrive, ca arrive,” (it’s coming, it’s coming) we were all assured by the Poste staff, with varying degrees of certainty. I was sitting outside on the steps of the office with my iPod, listening to “This American Life” and probably looking pretty miserable, when one of the Poste employees came out to talk to me. “Come with me,” she said. “I’m going for a walk, and I think you should come with.” “Huh? What if the bus comes? Where are we going?” “Trust me, sister, leave your stuff behind the desk and let’s go.” So I went. It turns out this was Madame la Chef de la Poste, the manager, and she could tell I was having no fun. Most of Mango’s population is Anufo, Muslim, and therefore doesn’t drink. This is a big change from my Gangam tchuk and tchakpa drinking community, and from the Moba in the north. As this woman was Moba, she led me to a Moba hangout on the other side of town: someone’s compound that had about 30 people in it, drinking tchakpa and eating roast pork. Quite the party! When I walked it, three guys were arguing over how to read the meat scale, on which was a precariously placed pig head, and someone pushed a calabash of tchakpa in my hands. “I thought you needed to get out of there. You looked miserable,” Madame de la Poste told me. “But what about the bus! What if it comes while I’m here?” “Hun, it hasn’t left Dapaong. It broke down last night and the mechanics didn’t show up to fix it until 8 this morning. The Dapaong office will call me when it leaves. Relax!” And with this, I did my best to relax. She took me on a tour of hidden drinking spots in Mango along with a policeman would-be travel buddy of mine, who tried to reassure me the whole time that I would leave Mango that day. I stayed calm and patient until about 2:30... it was getting late, and I was ready to take drastic action. If I didn’t get to Lomé until the next night, I couldn’t get my visa, couldn’t go to Ghana, plans ruined. Joe called, and I was in the middle of explaining my plan to hitchhike with a trucker (“It’s ok, they call it ‘autostop!’ I’ll pick a nice looking trucker!” “Um, no, absolutely not, you’re crazy. Do not hitchhike with truckers that’s a terrible idea.”) when Madame de la Poste got a call from Dapaong. The bus just left! I was saved! It arrived in Mango at 3:30 and we got in to Lomé at 3:00 am… happy birthday!

The rest of the trip went really well after that. Ghana was amazing—parts are very much like Togo, and parts (Accra) are like America. There were 4-lane highways, a mall, a movie theater, and diet coke! And the best roadside fried chicken ever. We stayed in Kokrobité, a beach town west of Accra, and it was fantastic. I really missed water-- just seeing the ocean helped. And it was awesome being really off the job. Even when I’m not doing “work” I still have a village full of people watching what I do, so sitting at the beach surrounded by people who don’t care who I am was just the thing I needed. But then, as much fun as it was, we were really relieved to get back to Togo where everything was familiar. I eased my way back up north, stopping in Atakpamé, Sokodé, and then finally Mango. My neighbor PCVs found these nuns who make pork chops and sausage, so we got some of that and made chili for dinner and sausage sandwiches for breakfast. Delicious. Seriously, I’m very lucky to have culinarily-inclined neighbors : )

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hi everyone, don’t worry I’m still here! I’ve been almost ‘busy’ in the American sense these past few weeks, and haven’t had my act together re: the blog. Our GEE stage had In-Service Training for a week, which was really fun, and I think we all left excited to go back to village and get some work done. A lot of the information was repeated from stage, but expanded upon, and now we each had a context to put it in, so it seemed like we learned a lot more. We went on a couple field trips to see a girls science club and a Village Savings and Loans program that PCVs have started, which were cool to see in action.  I want to start a VSL in Mogou, but it’s going to take a lot of organization and enough motivated people… Affaires thinks we’d have to keep the safe at the gendarmerie (police station) in Gando with a couple guard dogs on it. On verra.

On my way back up north after IST, I stayed in Dapaong for a couple days to do some errands and banking and whatnot.  As it turned out I was really glad I went, because I got pulled into some work with SOS Children’s Villages, aka super-awesome NGO. There’s a Village in Dapaong même, and the PCV in Dapaong and I went over to check it out. They want him to come in every week and teach English to the elementary school kids, and I’m going to come once a month to do games, art projects, etc. with the ‘petit petits’ (kindergarteners). The campus is beautiful—the best-looking school I’ve seen in Togo. The teachers seem super motivated and excited to have us work with them, and there’s even electricity and running water. Score.

OH, other news, I got accepted to the Gender and Development Committee (GAD) as one of three editors of ‘Lève-Toi Jeune Fille,’ a Peace Corps newsletter for girls in Togo. I’m super stoked about it! LTJF is like American Girl magazine, Togo-style, only smaller, in French, and released 3 or 4 times a year. But it’s so cool to see how, for example, my girls club reacted to it when I showed them a copy. There are next to no printed materials of any kind in Mogou (even in the schools only the teacher has a copy of the books), so showing them a newsletter geared specifically towards middle and high school girls—rocked their world. And this means I’ll have solid work to do on a regular basis, get to improve my French, and ‘bouge’ (move around) un peu. My PCV neighbor in Gando says she’s turning into a ‘village rat,’ because she stays in village all the time, and I’m turning in to an ‘all of Togo rat.’ What can I say? I like to go with.

But things in Mogou are going really well. I came back from Dapaong last Wednesday at 16:00—already an hour late for girls club. But the girls were all still there, waiting for me! Love that. And I explained everything I learned at IST to Affaires, who can’t wait to get back to work.  We’re in the midst of a ‘tour des villages’ in the canton de Mogou: there are about 30 smaller villages in our, um, county? and Affaires and I are making the rounds, greeting all the chiefs and explaining who we are to everybody. Affaires loves these trips because we usually end up with chickens and yams, and I’m not complaining either. I have a new egg-laying hen, Nelly, so I’ve been making omelets and pancakes… yumm.

Anyways, hope y’all are doing well!! Du courage with all the snow—I have such a hard time picturing that. Harmattan is over, and we’re in hot season now. It’s been 90-95 degrees in my house at night…the electricity should (fingers crossed) be coming soon. I need a fan.

LOVE! xoxox

Ce n’est que le debut de la commencement

There are a few things I’ve wanted to blog but haven’t yet. I spend a lot of time thinking about food… like hamburgers. And pizza. And anything with cheese. I’ve also come up with a couple lists.

Strangest foods I’ve eaten so far in Togo:

- An entire frog. Legs, body, arms, head. Including bones and eyeballs.

- Sheep intestines

- Chicken necks

Strangest foods I’ve been offered but have (politely) declined:

- A monkey

- Pig ears and intestines (this one was disguised under the question “Do you eat pork?”)

- Rooster testicles

- Dog

- Iguana

Another thing I’ve wanted to do is just write what I’ve done in an entire day. Today was marché day, meaning it was about as animated as Mogou gets, so I figure today is as good as any. Here goes:

I woke up at 6:30—kind of on the late side because I didn’t have a morning meeting or déplacement (outing, quoi), which would probably have been at 7 or 7:30. I went outside and hung my phone on the nail on my terrace to get reception, said good morning to my neighbors, and went to my kitchen to put water on the stove to boil for tea and oatmeal. I was majorly bummed to find mouse poop in my box of oatmeal… it might have been old though because I cleaned up a dead mouse last week. Here’s hoping that was him. So, took my oatmeal and tea back to the house and ate breakfast and wrote a letter. I then swept out my house, latrine, and shower and cleared out some wasp nests.  After that, unlike most days, I had written Peace Corps work to do. I filled out an application for a committee position and worked on my shadowing report (from shadowing my neighbor PCV in Mango who’s been here a year already) to present at IST.  At about 9:00, the mason showed up to work on my latrine seat. Yess! He found cement. I explained what I wanted twice more and he had me sit on a few cinder blocks as a height reference. Then he got to work and I went back inside to draw up a visual aid for girls club tomorrow.  I worked on that and ished around the house, packing for IST and whatnot, until around 11, and then headed out for the marché.

My neighbor wanted tomatoes but couldn’t find any, so I told her I’d keep an eye out.  My first stop was the generator guy, where I dropped off my cell phone to charge. I then found tomatoes and carrots (!) and tossed them in my bag along with some string and bread. Looked for ant killer but couldn’t find any. Stopped by the lady who makes salads (She’s new. Comes in from Mango. ) and sat and ate one for lunch. I already have a reputation for liking salad… she knows me by name and scolded me for not telling her I was traveling last marché day. I then took the veggies back to my house and my neighbor was so thrilled she said she’d make me a salad for dinner. Score! Two salads in one day!

Back at the marché, I headed for the Kabyé hangout: the tchuk stand. Beau Père, Affaires, a couple Directeurs, my Gangam teacher… everyone was there. Chatted and drank tchuk for a bit. My Gangam teacher wants to start, ou bien re-start, a girls club at the elementary school, so we hashed that out a bit. Five old, drunk men stumbled in one after the other to ask to marry the white lady. Dèja mariée, dèja mariée, bye bye yo. The tchuk ran out early, so the tchuk mama and my Gangam teacher and I went shopping. They had to get stuff for dinner: yams, dried fish, dried peppers, etc., and I was just happy to be tagging along. Then they showed me the “good pagne” lady. Gangam teacher and I got matching pagne to make dresses like the one tchuk mama was wearing; the three of us are going to wear them to church together when I get back. So stoked!

After making all the rounds, we went to the couturière’s house to order our dresses. I brought along another pagne to make a skirt, as well as a skirt with a hole in the side for her to fix. She said she would have it all done by tomorrow evening for mille cinq cent ($3). Done deal.

Then I headed home for the day. Bought some colico on the way (fried yams) as an appetizer before my salad. You can’t be too healthy, tu vois? I ran into Affaires on the way and we fixed a time to leave for our déplacement tomorrow morning. Got home, put my phone back up on the nail, and mange’ed my colico. My water girl brought a bidon of water for me, which was really awesome because the mason had used up all I had for mixing the cement. And now here I am, sitting at my desk/ table quoi waiting for dinner at 8. After that it’s bucket shower and bed. Day in the life, yo : )

Yams Make Great Gifts

Bonne Année!! Happy Deux Mille Onze, everyone! My year so far has been a series of ups and downs, mainly a function of just trying to get used to living and working in Mogou, mais on va se débrouiller (I’ll figure it out).

Eloise caught some sort of bug that wiped out almost all of our chickens and she died before New Years Eve. Luckily, Affaires and I had very strategically planned a CVD election meeting in a neighboring village a couple days before la fête, and they sent us back with 2 roosters, a chicken, and a sack of yams as a thank you. On the ride back to Mogou, Affaires gleefully told me that a village once gave him a whole goat to thank him for his work. We divided it all up and I got one big rooster and about 6 yams. To clarify, yams here (ignams) are not like the cute lil orange potatoes. These things are about as long as half your arm and look like logs. They’re super starchy and white on the inside, and when boiled and pounded up, become fufu. The thought of trying to make a meal that other people would want to eat out of 6 yams, a live chicken, and no vegetables really scared me. Luckily, a few things happened. One, my boyfriend came up from his post in the south and brought bread as a gift for my neighbor. She then agreed to cook the rooster. Two, not very many people came to greet me on New Years, and the ones who did were my homologue (who just gave me a hard time about not knowing how to cook), Affaires (same choses), and packs of kids, to whom I handed out candy. Three, everyone was busy giving us food and didn’t seem to notice we weren’t giving much back. We had chicken and rice and sauce with actual tomatoes and cabbage in it…mmmm. And everyone seemed pretty appeased with my offers of café-rum.

After Bonne Année, things settled down quickly in Mogou, and I got a lil post-holiday blues-ish. Classes started up again, the teachers went back to work, and everyone got back in their routine. I don’t have a routine yet per se, so I was feeling a little lost and it took me a few days to figure out what to do with myself. The combined forces of Affaires and my Gamgam teacher gave me the kick in the bum that I needed, and helped me set up some meetings, which then turned into more meetings, and now I’m as busier than ever. Latrine projects for Mogou centre, fixing more broken water pumps, organizing sensibilisations for apprentices, and the girls’ club.

About the girls’ club: last week gave me a very clear idea of where we’re at. Some of the other PCVs in larger towns told me that they had a hard time with girls’ clubs because the girls say “they’ve heard it all before” about HIV/AIDS, self-confidence, goal setting, early pregnancy, etc. My girls have heard none of it. Now, this is at the middle school, but the average age of these girls is around 15 or 16. We’re now down from 48 to 47 girls out of 300 students—one girl is pregnant and dropped out last week. When I asked them what they wanted out of the club, they said songs and dancing and games. So, we’re going to do all of that, plus life skills and the importance of staying in school. Really hoping we don’t lose any more.

Another, un-work related project I’ve got going on is my latrine. Right now, it’s a hole in the cement about the size of my foot. While that’s manageabe-ish for the time being, it’s really only a matter of time before I’m sick and wishing the hole was a lot bigger than my foot. So I biked out to my landlord’s house in the next village over and asked him about making a seat.

“There’s no cement. There’s sand. How much do you need?” “No no, I need cement, and by me I mean the mason or someone because I’m not skilled in concrete.” “Well why do you want a seat? You have a hole.” “Yes but it’s not big enough. And I would really like a seat.” “Are you sick or something? What are you eating that you need a hole bigger than that?” “Please sir I just want a seat…” “Ok fine I’ll get you cement. But you’re paying the mason for this, tu comprends?”

The conversation was immediately turned around when all of a sudden the landlord’s wives and children rushed outside. They surrounded me and greeted me for 5 minutes straight, and then started strapping yams to the back of my bike. Grand merci! Yams for days! I tried frying up one yam, the smallest one, and then decided to give the rest away. With the yams from the CVD elections, I had a small harvest piling up in my kitchen. So I handed them out to my neighbors who loved them and then fed me dinner for the next 3 days. Everyone wins!