Triumphs!

Hey everybody, I’ve been at post for a little over a month now. I’m doing well, though there are tons of challenges every day. Some of my greatest triumphs so far?

Finding eggs was a big one. Despite an overwhelming abundance of incredibly annoying chickens that start crowing at 3 am and poop all over my porch everyday, eggs were not readily available for the first few weeks at post. Then, one day, while searching for phone credit, I wandered down to the local bar (no electricity, so not that appealing unless you’re into beer that’s at the nice warm temperature of Africa degrees Fahrenheit) and discovered that while phone credit was a no go, they had eggs! Since then, I’ve enjoyed fried rice on occasion and French toast on Wednesday, which is market day, or as I like to call it, bread day.

Another triumph was building a table to prepare food on. I purchased a garde-manger (basically a cabinet with a screen door to keep mice out), a coffee table, and a bench (so versatile!) from a carpenter and had it shipped in to village on a giant truck. But while not having to cook on the floor was a definite improvement, my stove took up most of my coffee table space, and didn’t leave much room for chopping the onions. Onions, by the way, are great, because you can find them in village, and they can survive through the week to the next market day without refrigeration. How did I solve this seemingly intractable kitchen-space conundrum? Well, I can tell you that I certainly did not buy another table. Instead, I took my bedroom door off its hinges and rested it on top of my garde-manger and two logs made from a tree I had a little kid cut down. No, I have not planted any trees yet, so yes, that does put me in the hole as far as reforestation goes, but cut me some slack; I’ve got two years here to plant trees, and having a big kitchen countertop with a door handle in the middle is oh so convenient.

Also, I’ve triumphed over the noises that used to keep me awake at night, those noises consisting of rats scrambling around above my ceiling (made out of cement bags sewn together), bats chirping above my cement bag ceiling, sheep bleeting outside, and kung-fu movies being played at ear-splitting volume a few houses away Every. Single. Night. There is no worse soundtrack for sleeping than a crummy kung-fu soundtrack, what with the badly dubbed voices and over-the-top kicking and punching noises. Contrary to popular belief, village is not a particularly quiet place. Animals, motorcycles, movies and music being played as loud as possible, as is the norm in Togolese culture, and people just plain yelling at each other all contribute to a very loud environment. The notion of “inside voices” doesn’t really exist here as far as I have seen. This may have something to do with the fact that people live the majority of their lives outside, be it cooking, going to the farm, or taking an afternoon nap. But all the same, I’ve triumphed, and can sleep like a champ no matter the sonic assault taking place on my nice little bedroom.

I hope that the next time I post (a month from now, maybe? If I’m lucky?) I’ll have some stories of work-related triumphs. But for now my job is simply to get at home in my new surroundings. All I have to do is learn a complicated tonal language, make friends, find my way around the commerce system here, much of which involves going to people’s houses and asking for peanut butter, and figure out what the most pressing environmental needs of this community are. Easy, right? A cinch. Until then, I hope you all had a happy holiday season, wish you a happy new year, and hope you’re coping with winter well. It’s hard here during Togolese Harmattan, when the temperature can drop below seventy degrees, with a breeze to boot! I’ll survive though, so don’t worry. Or maybe worry just a little, just enough to send me a care package. Yeah, worry that much.

Billa batasi!

-Ben

Ah Bo Bo

Hey everyone, I’m happy to say that I’m alive and well in Togo. The other trainees and I left the comfortable confines of Lome for our training sites about a month and a half ago. The Girl’s Education and Empowerment (GEE) folks are in a fairly large city, where all have electricity, a few have overhead showers, and one is lucky enough to have glass windows. Ridiculous, right? The Natural Resource Management (NRM) folks and I are in a smaller village. What we lack in electricity, we make up for in goats.

My day usually starts around 5 am when I wake up to rain pounding the roof, roosters crowing, and people singing and beating drums. It’s incredibly dark in my room, as there’s no light outside and no light inside. I wrap a length of cloth around my waist, and grab my soap, sponge (really more like a length of rough fishnet), small bucket, and larger bucket. I put my shower flip flops and walk across the yard (compacted dirt) to a concrete shower stall, where I dump water on my head and soap up. I didn’t use the “sponge” for the first month, and, as a result, the first time I used it dirt literally came out of my skin. But I’ve been vigilant about using it since, and I haven’t had any similar experiences.

As far as pooping goes, I have, in fact, been pooping more since I arrived. My toilet is basically an outhouse with walls made of dried palm fronds. The nice thing about it is that I always have company, especially at night. Today for example, in addition to the usual assortment of flies and spiders, I was joined by a gecko and a giant toad. The giant toad caused tons of confusion, as I couldn’t pronounce the word “crapaurd,” and I had to take my family on a hilarious night-time toad-hunt to clear things up. Crapaurd, for those interested, is pronounced “crap-ohh.” Very apt for the location. (Side note: I just killed a quarter-sized cockroach who was rude enough to interrupt my typing by climbing onto my desk.)

Back to the pooping. My increased frequency of pooping has nothing to do with parasites or amoebas… yet. It’s merely a product of the fact that my host mama has been feeding me mountains of delicious food that I’m obligated to eat as much as possible of. She only speaks Ewe (pronounced eh-vay), so I’ve been learning a bit of it, petit a petit. I know how to say “I’m full” (Meh-day-poe) and “I’m going to school” (My-ee-mah-vah), among maybe ten other phrases. I learned the word for snail (ah-bo-bo), after teaching my host brothers the trick where you make a peace sign with your hand when someone tries to bump fists with you, forming a snail. I have never had a joke received better than the snail joke was received in Togo. Nothing is funnier than a Yovo who knows the Ewe word for snail.

My host father speaks French and Ewe, and works at the Peace Corps training site, so I see him a lot. He has goats, chickens, and a field somewhere that I haven’t seen yet. It’s been raining a ton this year, so things have been good on the farm. There are 7 children in the family, one of whom lives in Lome, and four of whom are very small. Every night they sing and dance in the yard. My favorite song so far has been, “Je mange la Pate” or “I eat the paste.” They love the “you say potato, I say potato” song, and all other songs I’ve tried on them so far. My attempts to explain geology and astronomy in garbled French are less popular, but received patiently nonetheless.

All my days here have been pretty similar. I wake up at 5:30 or so, shower, have a giant egg sandwich and tea. I go to training from 7:30 to noon, have lunch, go back to training at 2:30, finish at 5, have dinner, and then relax until it’s time to go to bed around 7:30 pm. Training is awesome; I have French classes with a bunch of super smart and hilarious Togolese teachers. They’re all fucking brilliant, and Peace Corps is baller enough to employ them all. My French is improving really quickly; I can hold down simple conversations with ease, and can usually figure out a way to explain or understand more complicated points, especially if I’ve had a Togolese beer, which costs about a dollar and is twice the size of its American counterparts.

Technical training is led by a dashing duo of Togolese agricultural experts, Brad and Blaise, who also happen to be Togo’s greatest comedic minds. We’ve gone over a lot of different things like how to make killer bees give honey and why you should bleach your feet before entering a chicken farming operation. We try to learn in French as much as possible, but usually do things in Franglais, which has become the new mother tongue for all of us. There’s just no good English equivalent for “saluer.” During lunch it gets really hot and everyone tries to do as little as possible. I’m constantly dabbing myself with my handkerchief; I feel like an old British man.

We all spent last week at our future posts. About 10 of them are in the northern half of the country. Most are small (700ish people) villages, that need help with all sorts of things. There are loads of opportunities at all of them, ranging from beekeeping, mushroom growing, agroforestry, reforestation, food transformation, ecotourism, education, income generation, to all sorts of other things. The most desired post before they were assigned was “Monkey Mountain.” I think you can guess why.

I can now proudly say that my post is the most isolated in Togo. I’m in the western part of the Centrale region, but there are mountains cutting me off from all of Centrale. My trip to post is really long, in that I have to go north to the town of Bassar before moto-ing for four hours on what amounts to a cross between a BMX dirt course and a dry river bed. You can say what you will about it’s practicality, but it’s a great core work out. My village is awesome. There’s a cell tower, so feel free to CALL OR TEXT ME whenever you want. There’s also a guy with a satellite dish who shows European soccer games almost every night. Yam cultivation is the main game in town, along with occasionally eating one of the hundreds of goats, sheep, chickens, guinea fowls, ducks, or pigs that wander throughout the village at all times. The village is predominantly Muslim, and tons of people speak English, because we’re really close to Ghana. My chief, for example, speaks no French, but speaks good English. He also brought me bananas, which basically saved me from starvation during post visit. The people are excited to have me there, and even happier when I say hi to them in Tem, the language of the Kotokoli people. I’d tell you how what to say, but saying hi changes depending on the time of day and usually takes a minute or two because it consists of like ten questions about the state of someone’s life. I have some great neighbors (if someone four hours away can be called a neighbor) up in Bassar too, one of whom just discovered Jersey Shore, and one of whom had a beach house there growing up. I’d love it if one of you burnt and sent me season two. Now I’m back at training, and I love training, but I’m really excited to get back to my post. Once you get a taste of freedom, it’s hard to give it up.

To summarize, things have been great here. I’m adjusting well to the humidity, my host family is awesome, my post is sick, and my French is basically functional. It’s exhausting learning so many things all at once, but I’m compensating by moving as slowly as possible at all times, and sleeping ten hours a night, despite waking up at 5:30 every morning. Everything, from speaking, to walking, to drinking chorine-bleach-treated water, is a bit more difficult here, but it’s been well worth the effort so far.

I hope everyone reading is doing great, and that you’ll follow the directions on the side of this blog and call or write me!

Du courage!

48 hours in

Hey everyone, I’m writing from Lome, the capital of Togo. I’ve only been here for about 48 hours, but it feels like a week or more.

Highlights of our trip from Philadelphia to Togo include passengers on both our flights requiring medical attention (they were okay) and all of the Peace Corps trainees forming a small shanty camp in the Charles de Gaulle terminal, with 5 or 10 people passed out on the floor at all times.

We’ve spent most of the past two days getting immunizations for things like typhoid and rabies, learning about malaria and petty theft, and acquiring essentials like buckets, toilet paper, and chamber pots. In the Peace Corps, as they say, every fart’s a gamble.

We also had a great welcome party with all 29 trainees, a lot of the staff, some current volunteers, and the US ambassador to Togo. Current volunteers were hungry for information about pressing stateside topics like Justin Bieber’s mystifying popularity. Sadly, I could provide no answers.

So far, things couldn’t be better. Everyone is incredibly nice, the weather, while humid, is wonderful, and we’ve been fed super well. For those of you that are worried about me, I’ve been ensured that Togo is a safe place, with no terrorism, no organized crime, and nothing that can’t be avoided with a little common sense. As long as I remember to take my daily malaria drugs (ladies, I now know your struggle), don’t wander alone late at night, and watch out for motos frantically dodging potholes, I should be better than fine.

I’m safe, happy, and very, very busy over here. My training village has no electricity, so you might not hear from me for a bit, as we’re meeting our host families and moving in on Wednesday. Until the next time, enjoy football season and being able to veg out on the couch for me.

Du courage!

Who? What? Where? When? Why?

Hi, everybody! Welcome to my blog!

If you're reading this, you've probably got all sorts of questions about me, the Peace Corps, and many other relevant topics, so I thought I'd break the ice with a little Q&A.

Q: Who are you?

A: I'm Ben Conway. I grew up in Seattle, WA. I'm a recent graduate of Pomona College, where I majored in Environmental Analysis, with a focus in geology. I like basketball and cats, among other things.

Q: What are you doing?

A: I'm joining the Peace Corps! My assignment is to promote the smart use of natural resources like forests, soil, and deep-water oil fields. (Just kidding about the last one.)

Q: Where are you going?

A: I'm going to Togo, a small West-African country located here:

Q: When are you going?

A: I'll be leaving for Togo in mid-September. One term of Peace Corps service is about 27 months, so I should be finishing up in early December of 2012, a couple of weeks before the apocalypse.

Q: Why are you going?

A: First of all, it's going to be an adventure. Second, though I won't be making much money, I'll be putting my $200,000 education to use where it's needed most. (Take that, parents!) I'm also excited to meet new people, learn new languages, and take nightmare-causing antimalarial drugs.

All said, I couldn't be happier with my assignment, and I'm very, very excited to go to Togo.