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

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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 : )