So we’ve been at our new homes for four days now. Because of Peace Corps safety regulations, I’m not allowed to post the name of the village where we’re training, but I can tell you that it’s a small village about an hour away from Lome by heavenly air-conditioned Peace Corps vans. Our group of 25 has been split into Small Business folks and Health workers. The Small Business people are staying in this completely cush city with running water and electricity. We health workers, on the other hand, are embracing the realities of Togolaise village life.
There are some difficult things:
1. There is no electricity, and it gets dark around 6:30. This means that you get to eat dinner by the light of a kerosene lantern, which is pretty cool except that it makes it considerably more challenging to find those tiny and very hot peppers in the food.
2. Latrines. For those of you who are experienced in these lovely little novelties, I needn’t say more. For the rest of you, a West African latrine is basically a wooden chair with a hole in the bottom which leads to a deep hole of yuck. There is a lid which covers the hole, and it’s a good idea to knock on the lid a few times to frighten away the animals which live inside. This includes but is not limited to cockroaches, lizards, spiders, and snakes. I will admit to having had some trepidations about this system. Most of you know how I feel about animals in general, and you can probably guess that my attitudes toward those four kinds of animals is even less friendly, but so far, so good.
3. It is HOT. There is no thermometer to be found, but I am comfortable saying I’ve never been this hot in my life including my short visits to the Middle East. I think a lot of that feeling has to do with the fact that it is unbelievably humid here. A favorite volunteer pastime seems to be sitting very still in the shade and sweating. Luckily for us, we got here during the rainy season, so some days there is a torrential downpour, which makes everything seem a lot better. Of course this means that we are also perpetually muddy. This isn’t so bad, though, because it’s a good excuse for a…
4. BUCKET SHOWER. I am putting this under the difficulties column because I’d much rather have running water, but in truth it’s not so bad. Basically, a bucket shower is just what it sounds like. You have a bucket (roughly 1-2 gallons) of cool water and a little scooper, and you go to it. Needless to say, this is very refreshing on a hot afternoon, but it’s not like you ever feel as clean as you do standing under a serious shower head at home with your loofah and moisturizing and exfoliating vitamin enriched body wash. One friend said it best, “You know how gross and dirty you felt after the overnight trans-Atlantic flight? Ugh, you just think the grossest feeling is waking up after a night on an airplane to a day spent in an airport. You’re not clean, you don’t feel well-groomed, and you feel icky about it. THAT WAS NOTHING. That feeling right now would be phenomenal. We didn’t know what gross was.” People say our bodies will adjust to the climate. I hope they’re right. For the moment, I’m trying to like the smell of my own sweat.
5. My French is not so good. I mean, when I came to Togo, I knew I wasn’t going to awe anyone with my language skills, but I thought I would be okay. So far, my inability to communicate has been a source of endless frustration. Part of the problem is that French is everybody’s second language, so none of us is able to speak as fluidly as we’d like, but I think a bigger part is the accent and dialect of French spoken in Togo. In many ways it is starkly different from the Parisian French I learned in school. Thankfully, my host mother is wonderfully patient, and when she speaks slowly, I can understand almost everything she says. With my host father, it is considerably more difficult. That’s the time for a lot of nodding and smiling. I have no idea what he is saying, but I am determined to look as though I find it deeply interesting and pleasurable.
6. My Ewe is worse than my French. Ewe (pronounced Eh-vay) is the local language where we are, and we are all trying to pick up as much of it as we can, but it isn’t easy. It is a tonal language, which is really hard for my American tongue to figure out. For the moment, I have to satisfy myself with repeating things like “cocolo” (chicken), “enmo” (motorcycle), “tehtahn” (truck), and “kay-kay” after my host brother in a sort of game he made up for the two of us to play. It’s a little like I’m his pet parrot. I haven’t yet determined whether the purpose of this game is to entertain him and his friends by my failure, but I do think I’m improving, so I’ve decided it doesn’t matter. I’d better get used to being laughed at anyway, as it seems to be a pretty common theme here.
We like to tell ourselves that all those things are just character building and try instead to focus on the really great things:
1. My host family is fantastic. I can’t post their names, but I have Maman, Papa, Brother M (17), Sister-in-Law R (20), Sister P (14), Sister N (6), and Niece B (7 mos.). There are also two other sisters and a brother who are soldiers in Lome, but I haven‘t met them. Upon arrival I was much relieved to discover that my baby whispering skills translate better than my French. This way, even though I am useless at charcoal and wood fire cook stoves, I can at least keep Baby B calm. I have decided that in Togo as in the rest of the world, it remains a good philosophy to make children like you, and then their parents will like you, too. J However, being otherwise useless is sort of a blow to me because though I have never been the Martha Stewart my mom is, I have always found my skills sufficient to cooking and cleaning demands. It turns out that at all those choir concession stands and family reunions, I should have spent less time on the megaphone and more time carefully observing Gail and Andy and all my uncles work their magic on the charcoal because apparently charcoal is more difficult than you might think. I am beginning to feel like all those North Quad guys I made fun of in college. Karma.
2. The food is great. Seriously. I have no complaints about the food. It can be a little spicy, but that’s mostly because I am a wimp. My host mom has been really accommodating about my diet, and she hasn’t tried to make me eat anything with meat in it (though I did have to compromise on the bouillon cube). Every morning I get tea English style (a little nicety to which I became absolutely addicted in London, thanks in large part to Katie, Amy, Di, and company) and an onion omelet on bread. It’s all very nice. Lunch is usually some sort of tomato, fish and vegetable sauce with rice, and dinner is some sort of pasta with fish. I think when I said I don’t eat meat, my host mom wasn’t sure what to do, so she bought out all the fish in a 10k radius. In truth, I will be happy not to eat fish for awhile once training is finished, but for the moment I’m trying not to let her down by eating too little. Every meal someone walks up to be and says, “Il faut que tu mange beaucoup!” Literally, “It is necessary that you eat much.” It’s like trying to share a pizza with Andy Magee and Brendan Hanehan. I’m doing my best, folks.
3. Because there is no electricity, there is nothing to do after dinner but sit around and talk. (well, and sweat, of course), and since my talking is not so hot yet, I have been teaching my family American card games. This is great because it’s a good diversion for everyone, it’s a good chance for me to practice my French, and it lets me be social with my family without my dictionary. For the past four nights we’ve played Uno and Go Fish by the light of my kerosene lamp, and I think everyone is having a good time. By the second night of Uno, I think everyone pretty well mastered it (except for the part where you shout “UNO,“ which they don’t like) despite my poor teaching abilities, but “Go Fish” has proven to be significantly more difficult. I would like to be able to blame my family, but I think it’s mostly due to Franglais instructions which translate to, “It is necessary that when it is not your time for going, you listen to the time for going of others. If you listen to their demands for cards, it is possible that you know the cards and in the hands of each person what cards there are.” Yes, Emily, good strategy tips, really. After an hour or so of playing they overcame my poor instruction, and I think everyone had fun. Maybe this week we’ll try something like War.
4. I have a posse. Seriously. As far as I can tell, I’m the only one, but there is a gang of small children who follow me singing the “Yovo Song.” None of us has quite deciphered the words, but yovo is their word for a person with fair skin, and as we walk, children often shout out to us, “Yovo! Yovo! Ca va?” It’s always very friendly, and with most of the volunteers, they just shout this greeting and wave a lot. For some reason, however, there are a few children who really like to follow me all the way to the door of my house. They talk a lot, and I nod and smile. This doesn’t really bother me, and they’re very nice, but it would be okay with me to be slightly less conspicuous, so when we got our bikes, I was looking forward to commutes that were a little less overwhelming. Imagine my dismay (and embarrassment) to discover that many of the children can run up the hill to school as fast as I can ride my bike. Ouch.
5. The other trainees are great. Training so far has been full of unexpected delights and frustrations, but it’s really nice to know that there are twelve other people with similar concerns. We all help encourage one another’s dedication and fortitude. Already, we’re adopting the Togo PCV’s mantra, “Du Courage,” which is a little like “Be a champion.”
6.The classes and trainers are excellent. It’s been a long time since I spent eight hours a day in school, but it’s worth it. We’re learning great things about the health problems facing Togo and about the Togolaise medical system. I thought all this information would seem daunting, like we’d never be able to make a dent, but the trainers have a way of presenting it in a way that helps us to feel empowered to make discernable and beneficial changes. Always, our mission is “Educate for a Behavior Change.” So far we’ve learned a little about everything from traditional healers and midwives to nutrition and family planning. We won’t know for another two weeks what our posts are, but already we’re beginning to think about projects.
Finally, many of you have asked about the timeline, so here it is.
For the next ten weeks, we will be in training in our host families. Next week, we will hear presentations about the conditions and necessary work at each of the possible CHAP posts, and we will have interviews in which we can express our preferences about which post we are assigned. Sometime during the fourth week (June 29-July4), we will find out what our post assignments are, and we will spend week 7 (July 21-27) at our respective posts before returning to training for three and a half more weeks. We will leave our training sites and be sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers on August 20. On the 22nd, we head off to our posts for two years. It’s all a little daunting, so for the moment, I’m trying to focus on not getting sunburned because of the malaria meds.
Okay, that’s all I’ve got for now. Thanks for all the email. Keep it coming. My host family is great, but it’s a little lonely, so I love to hear from you all.
A quick shout out to the birthdays I missed in the past couple of weeks:
Happy Birthday to
Logan who celebrated his 9th !
Dan-Hope a Kigali birthday was all you hoped it would be.
Steph-22 is not nearly as exciting as last year….
Joe who looks fantastic for being nearly 50
And
Grammy who also looks fantastic for being nearly 50 J
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