I had a really great moment with a Togolese friend of mine, the director of the elementary school last marché day. We were sitting in the bar, chatting like usual, when he asks, “What does your shirt say? GW woohhmeenss creuugggh?” “Oh dear,” I thought. How do you explain rowing to a guy to whom “sport” means only soccer? And who has maybe never been in a boat. So I started… “Well, when I was in university, I did a sport that I don’t think we have in Togo… there are these long boats with 8 people in them, all using, uh, sticks to make them go fast in the water, and they race other boats. And we got these shirts made for the team.” “Oh yeah, I think I saw that on TV once,” he replied, and then looked kind of pensive. “Village life sure is interesting, isn’t it?” he asked. I didn’t know what he was going for… I assured him that I was very happy here… “No no, I mean to say, isn’t life interesting? You look at where you’ve been, where you come from, where you are now, and can’t help but wonder where you’re going to go next. Interesting.” I was floored. First that he’d seen rowing on TV. But also because it seemed like he really got it: how strange it is for me to be here, coming from my old American life and living in rural Togo. Mogou is so familiar to me now—I’m not shocked every time I walk out my front door. But thinking about how two years ago (wow, that’s sounding long) I would spend large portions of my day rowing, something so beyond foreign to Togo that I didn’t have the vocabulary to explain it… I was glad my friend made me stop and appreciate where I am.

In other news, I got a cat! A kitten, really. It seemed like a good idea… I’m sick of my mouse problem, and walking behind my house I saw that my neighbor’s cat had cute little white and black kittens, so I bought one. His name is Leo, and he hates me. Well, all people, I guess, and he’s scared of Toby. I kept him in my house, terrified, for three days, before he made a mess of the place and I moved him to the yard. I’ve kept Toby away from him as much as possible, given him lots of milk and dried little fish, but he’s still scared to death of me and hisses if I get too close. I guess he wasn’t petted or handled at all by my neighbors, and getting taken away from his mother must have been traumatizing…but really now, he’s definitely big enough, and I am not a scary human. Toby liked me and let me hold him from day one. Leo tried to claw and bite my hand off when I set him down next to the milk. I just don’t get cats. My friends and neighbors say he’ll get over it soon, so here’s hoping.

I’ve been spending lots of time in Mogou, which has been relaxing if nothing else. We just had the fete of Dako, which is the “quiet festival” of Mogou. For four days, the village has to be very quiet so as not to upset the fetish (sacred area/ rock/ the gods in animist tradition) of Mogou, who doesn’t like noise from radios, singing, dancing, cars/ trucks, etc. So everyone is supposed to make lots of tchakpa (sorghum beer) and sit around with their family and drink it. Very quietly. They turned off our electricity so as to remove the temptation of playing loud music at night, and told the road construction workers to come back next week because their trucks were upsetting the fetish. Besides the loss of electricity and trucks (our road is a mess), this was awesome… normally people play their radios at top volume all night, but with four days of silence, I got plenty of sleep. My PCV friend came in from Mango to celebrate the end of the fete with us, which was really cool to see. All the women from Mogou danced bambatti, a group dance where the ladies go two by two into the middle of the circle and bump butts, with not a little bit of force. Then the fetishers (witchdoctors) got together and did the ceremony for the fetish, pouring water and sorghum flour on the rock to thank the gods for a good harvest and to assure a good planting season and harvest next year. Dako also marks the beginning of hot season, so now it’s been getting warmer and warmer… I’m not sure if I’m ready! I still need to get a standing fan.

Girls’ Club goes on… Affaires and I decided to mix it up last week and included the boys. We did a Men As Partners (MAP) activity with the mixed group, which introduces ideas of gender equity and challenges the students to debate and question gender norms. The event was fueled by American candy and by the end, the students were more interested in the Starbursts than the debate, but I’d still consider it a success. My girls did had some fierce responses and did well defending their position for the statement “Soccer is only for boys, agree or disagree.” Another PCV friend and I are organizing a MAP Training of Trainers for the Savanes region in May, so this was good practice. Affaires loves MAP, and is really stoked to help out for the Training of Trainers. We’re hoping to take two adult participants from each PCV village in Savanes for a 3ish-day long training in Dapaong… the idea then is that they will go back and run MAP activities in their villages. I’ll let y’all know how it goes.

Update on the gas situation: the prices went down, and then back up again. From my new shortwave radio, the BBC World Service (LOVE it!) tells me that Nigeria is pretty much a mess right now, and with Ghana taking away part of their subsidy too, Togo’s in a jam. My “bike everywhere” solution to the high prices has brought mixed results. My first trip to Mango on the back route (through some fields and then over the river in a canoe), I got hopelessly lost. I hadn’t biked it in months, and in my early-morning haze, I took the wrong tiny path and ended up circling in the wilderness for an hour. It takes a lot to find yourself somewhere in Togo without anyone else in sight, but somehow I managed it, and it freaked me out. I finally ran into some lumberjacks who got me back onto the main road, and from there I found the real path and Mango. On another trip back from Mango, my brakes seized up, and I have yet to get them back to normal. With all the dust and rocks, I’m surprised I don’t have more bike problems than I do (knock on wood). Still, sometimes I wish I could travel like this guy, on his way down to Lomé from Niger:

For once, the kids weren’t staring at me : )