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