Monday, March 28, 2011

A through E

Hey everybody, all is well in Togo these days. Just to keep things interesting on the blog, I’m starting a themed series today, the A-Z’s of Togo.

A: Animism

Voodoo, gri-gri, sorcery. Whatever you want to call it, animism is the generic term for the wide variety of local religious beliefs you’ll find almost anywhere you go in Togo. For example, in my village, the religion, to all outward appearances, is Islam. But there are still plenty of people who practice traditional religion. The other day, the chief of the village was complaining to me that he has to do the ceremony for the big village holiday in secret, because the serious muslims don’t like it. The ceremony involves sacrificing an all black sheep under a giant tree where the first chief of the village pronounced his own imminent death and promptly vanished into the earth. He also told me that they used to throw suspected sorcerers off the cliffs in the mountains behind the village, but assured me that they don’t do that anymore.

B: Bush-taxis

Bush-taxis are the standard mode of long-distance travel in Togo. There are two general varieties, 15-seaters, which often hold more than 20 people, not including children under five, and people sitting on the roof of the car. It’s basically a large gutted minivan with 4 rows of seats for 3 people, onto which 4 people are crammed. I’ve seen a driver’s apprentice climb out the window and onto the roof of one of these while moving at full speed, because it was too crowded in the car and the roof was more comfortable. The roof is typically covered with all sorts of baggage, including live goats, which is, of course, preferable to the goats staying in the car. The second kind of bush taxi is a 5-seater, which is basically a small hatchback. My personal record for people in a 5-seater was ten, with two men sitting in each seat in the front (the driver reaches over the other man to shift) and 5 women and I crammed into the back three seats, four of us on the seats, and two smaller girls sitting on the women’s laps. Bush-taxis are not fun, for obvious reasons. It should also be mentioned that you’re almost guaranteed to break down at least once on a long voyage, and that the roads are full of potholes and enormous, slow trucks that are exceedingly difficult to pass. Once passed, you can rest assured that the driver will soon stop to pick up more passangers, buy water, or argue the price of yams with roadside vendors, and the trucks will pass you again. In this fashion, on a day’s voyage you may pass the same truck 5 or 6 times. I try not to travel much here. Luckily, Peace Corps Togo sends a well-maintained, well-driven, air-conditioned vehicle up and down the country twice a month, and if you’re near the national highway and smart, you’ll plan your travel around its schedule.

C: Cinq cent francs

Cinq cent francs, or five hundred CFA, is about equivalent to one dollar. What you hear about people living on less than a dollar a day is definitely true. I don’t know exactly what the people around me live on, but I think they’d be doing better than they are if they had a dollar a day. And that’s not even thinking about if they had a dollar a day for each of their kids. I can buy breakfast for 100 CFA, and a beer for 500 CFA. Togo supposedly has pretty good beer by West African standards. There’s a lager, called Lager; a pilsner, called Pils (pronounced “Piss”); and there’s a dark beer called Awooyo. You can also get Guiness, but that’ll cost you more than 500 CFA. The saddest thing of all is that 500 CFA is about the average going rate (it can be more or less depending on where you are) for a prostitute in Togo and by prostitute I don’t mean someone who makes a living selling sex, I mean any girl who needs some money. There’s a lot of work to be done in the area of women’s rights here. All volunteers, not just Girls Education and Empowerment volunteers, see this stuff and take it upon themselves to at least talk with their Togolese neighbors about why it is that women have it so tough here and what we can do to make it better.

D: Doucement

Potentially the most popular word in Togo, doucement translates to “softly” or “gently.” It basically means “careful there” or something like that, and chances are I’ll hear it doing just about anything, because people assume that I am suffering horribly here as an American. I’m constantly being told to get into the shade, because the sun will give me malaria if I don’t.

E: Existential Crisis

A common dilemma faced by volunteers, at least three times a day. If you don’t have cell reception, don’t have any work to do, and have been sitting on your porch watching the rain all day while your entire village takes shelter in their houses, do you really exist?

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Anasarrawa!

Written 3/15/11

Hey everybody, I’ve got electricity in my computer again, so I can write another blog entry! Using a French keyboard is just not an option. What language places a bigger emphasis on the letter Q than the letter A?

Luckily, I don’t have to speak that much of that dreadful tongue in village. I spend most of my time speaking Kotokoli, which is a lot more fun. I’m getting pretty decent at it. Now, when someone asks me where I’m going, instead of dumbly pointing at the mountains, then my cell phone in a futile attempt to explain that I’m climbing the mountain to try to find cell service, I now have a few options:

A simple reply: “Mangba bo.” (I’m going to climb the mountain.)
Specifics: “Mangba bo, manjaadi recu.” (I’m going to climb the mountain; I’m looking for reception.)
Vague generalities: “Mali tchouko.” (I’m out for a bit.)

Kotokoli is super fun. My favorite question is “Ndaylu ni?” (How’s your woman?) to which I respond, “Maveina alu.” (I don’t have a woman.) This always induces howls of amused consternation, from neighbors of all ages and genders. They invariably ask for confirmation, “Nyaveina alu?!” (You don’t have a woman?!) to which I repeat the previous answer, or say simply, “Aye-yoo.” (Nope.) They then offer to give me a wife, (Mavineya alu.) often a young girl standing around, who invariably smiles embarrassedly. I then tell them I’m not looking for a woman (Madanja alu.) which produces more incredulous howling and laughter. I then set everything right by telling them I’ll look for a woman the day after tomorrow (Manjaadi alu cherray wouro.) The whole thing basically amounts to a long joke, and even though I say it to the same people every day, several times a day, it never gets any less funny. People here really appreciate the effort to learn their language, which makes walking around town for an hour greeting people a lot more fun.

Time for a physical progress report:
  • I have in fact lost a bunch of weight here. I’m down to 170 in clothes, which is 15 or 20 pounds lighter than when I left. The scales findings are backed up by my belt, which has had two new holes added to it, and will need another one soon.
  • Despite the weight loss, I have, boringly enough, not been sick at all in my six months here (HOLY SHIT SIX MONTHS?! More on this later…) I had a head cold for a few days, which was unpleasant given the heat and lack of amenities, but I’ve had nothing interesting or particularly gruesome happen to me, with the exception of...
  • A scorpion stinging me! It was hiding in my shower towel and got me on my right calf muscle. It wasn’t dangerous at all (scorpion stings rarely are) but it did hurt like hell for about two hours. Imagine a bee-sting, just way, way worse. In other dangerous animal news, there’s a dam near my village with crocodiles. They were brought there to keep villagers from fishing or washing their clothes in the lake behind the dam, apparently.
  • I haven’t gotten a hair cut since I’ve been here, and my hair is probably the longest it’s ever been in my life. I’ve also got the first beard of my life, though I’m forced to choose between neat and patchy or sloppy and full, as I don’t have the density or coverage to pull off a Zack Gussin or Scott Levy caliber beard. Still, it makes me look older, and makes people even more confused about my lack of a wife (or two.)
  • By conventional American standards (how many push-ups I can do and how long I can run) I’m in pretty bad shape (20 on a really good day and about 15 minutes before I collapse) but I am kept forcibly active by the realities of life here. Here are some of my favorite work-outs:
  1. Hike the boulder strewn trail that starts behind my counterpart’s house to a mountain pass where I can see a cell phone tower and get functioning service.
    Ride my bike 7 km to the town with a market, stores, and moderately cold Cokes. (There’s no electricity for a fridge, but they buy ice in a bigger town and keep it in a cooler with the drinks.)
  2. Go to the fields and swing a hoe until the skin on my hands starts to come off or I get dizzy from dehydration. Seriously, keeping hydrated here is next to impossible. You can only stomach so much warm water. If you ever need to induce vomiting, chugging warm water is a recommended method.
  3. Washing clothes by hand. Bending over and hand-wringing wet garments really works those hamstrings and forearms.
  4. Walking around saying hi to people on a sunny day. With all the greetings, it takes a while. Also, crouching and doing little mini-squats is encouraged while greeting women.

As far as work goes, things are starting to get moving. I’ve been talking with the schools about a few projects, including planting shade trees at one of the elementary schools, pruning some giant mango trees that aren’t producing at another, protecting some young palm trees from goats and sheep, and most excitingly, planting a cover crop called mucuna in the schools’ cornfields. Schools here often have some land to do a little farming in order to help pay for various things. The soil here is pretty poor, but we’re hoping that mucuna, which adds nitrogen (a favorite nutrient of corn) to the soil, will improve harvests and soil quality at the same time. One school has a big field right on the main road; if things go well it should be a great demonstration to the rest of the community.


I spend a lot of time talking with individuals, trying to understand agriculture here, so that I don’t end up proposing projects that are absolutely ridiculous. I learn new things every day, and try to accept every invitation, as you never know what you’ll find. One morning at the fried bean ball stand, someone told me people were looking for gold here. I was skeptical, and asked if there was gold here. She seemed a little annoyed and said, yeah, why not? Then she invited me to a dry riverbed, where I found about a hundred people tunneling into the earth and sending out buckets of sediment to be panned for gold at the surface. Turns out that along with farming and making charcoal, digging for gold is one of the primary sources of income in my village. And I had no idea for more than a month. In fact, when I first arrived, an old woman asked if I was here to look for gold and I laughed about it, thinking that it was a totally ridiculous question. But you never know what you’re going to find next here.


This place is in fact totally nuts. That I’ve been here for six months is insane; I constantly have to count months in my head to make sure that number is right. It’s true what they say about Peace Corps; days take forever but weeks and months are gone in a flash. My feelings about the rest of my service are paradoxical; I feel like the end is nowhere in sight, but at the same time am panicking at how fast it’s all flying by. Paradoxes define work too. There’s only so much you can do here, but there’s so much you can do. There are a million agricultural and environmental projects I’d love to do, and also tons of work that needs to be done in other areas like health and gender inequality. Figuring out what to do, and then who you’re going to do it with is tough. I feel like it’ll probably take me years to convert all my crazy experiences here into a coherent perspective on development. Right now I alternate between hopeless and optimistic, exhausted and motivated, by the hour, day to day. But regardless of how I feel about my projects, I’m learning a lot, and people smile when I say hi to them, so for the moment, it’s all good.