Tuesday, December 22, 2009

There Won’t be Snow in Africa this Christmas (Except at my house)

That’s right, the holidays are upon us. And I think I have shared with some of you that I have been pleasantly surprised by the lack of homesickness accompanying this season. Of course, a lot of that has to do with the lack of Christmassiness. Or at least a lack of the American kind. It’s not cold, there is not a Jackson Five Christmas album in sight, not a single person has reminded me how many shopping days are left, I’ve seen no one dressed as Santa, and no one’s sung about parts to a Mustang GT. Additionally, I do not feel stressed out about gifts or travel plans or gaining weight, and I missed out on the annual treat that is Advent Lessons and Carols. Luckily, I have fantastic friends and family who won’t let me forget Christmas altogether, and my sister Jenny, in addition to sending me a completely vegetarian, air mail friendly Thanksgiving dinner also included wrapped gifts, ornaments, and icicles, which I think fit perfectly in my 95 degree winter wonderland. Combined with the moringa tree I planted a few weeks ago, I feel like a regular Better Homes and Gardens article.

Despite all my powers of homey décor, I think this Christmas will be unlike any other I’ve known thus far. At Thanksgiving, I kind of lucked out. About twenty volunteers got together, and by combining our culinary prowess and preservative filled goodies from loved ones in the land of Stove Top and Sara Lee, we were able to pull together a really lovely dinner complete with a locally grown turkey prepared by a very talented Togolaise chef. Other menu items included macaroni and cheese, green bean casserole, bread and butter, stuffed tomatoes, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, and malaria prophylaxis. It was a really great time and had for about eight American dollars per person. Not a bad deal. However, since I did spend Thanksgiving away, I have plans to do all my Christmassing in Namon. So far the festivities will include two church services, a pig, several kilos of fufu, a barrel of tchouk, and lots of dancing. It’s not exactly like home, but I think it will be a good time nonetheless. If I can’t be at home with all of you, this isn’t a bad second choice. Certainly, it should be at least as interesting.

In my last post before Christmas, this seems as good a time as any to say thanks to all of you who have been so wonderful at keeping in touch and making things easier for me here. It’s hard for me to believe that I’ve already been gone more than six months. As for all the important days I’ve missed in the two months since my last post, you once again have my apologies. I hope they were all happy.

Happy Birthdays to Bryon T, who is older than his hair suggests; Thomas C, who is younger than his hair suggests; Rachel J, who, I hope, got her first fancy wifey birthday card this year; Kate L, who seems to have celebrated thirty by moving to Brazil; Varina and Zachary, the birthday twins who both have great bottoms; Taylor T., who still likes Avril Lavine regardless of what she tells you; and to Connor L., whose party, I hope was even greater than Potterfest ‘08!

In the near future, Happy Birthdays to Erica, who will never get over having to share with Jesus; and Johnny, who doesn’t care who he shares his birthday with as long as he can do it in Atlantic city. Also, very soon, a happy 19th anniversary to my parents.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

A Day in the Life

Okay, one of the questions I get the most from all of you at home goes something like this, “Wow, Emily, Togo sounds really interesting and cool. I especially like hearing about all the ways you’ve humiliated yourself, but…what do you…you know, do there?” When I first got to post, this was a somewhat difficult question to answer. Well, if not difficult, it was a sort of embarrassing question to answer. It takes time to get things started in this part of the world, so the truth would have been something like, “I have two or three ‘meetings’ a week, I sit around the clinic, I make French language flashcards, and I do crossword puzzles in astonishing volume.” You can see why I wasn’t eager to broadcast my busy schedule. Now that I’ve finally figured out how to start doing actual work, I thought I would share a little of that with all of you.

In a normal week, I spend three or four mornings a week at the clinic helping with various initiatives. On Mondays, we have a program for malnourished children at which we give out enriched flour and nutrition lessons and track the growth of all the babies to make sure everyone is making progress. On Wednesdays, we do more general growth/health sessions for healthy babies. These times also serve as an opportunity to identify those children who could use extra help on Mondays, and on Thursdays, we do vaccinations. I obviously cannot give the injections, but I help prepare them, and I give the oral Polio vaccination and vitamin A capsules to the babies or nursing mothers. Each of these sessions starts out with a brief health lesson, and preparing and presenting these lessons to the mothers is a big part of my work. Right now, a lot of my time is dedicated to bring a little organization to the way we run these sessions. Those of you who used to appreciate my nanny text messages reading, “I just got peed on,” or “I have poo on my shirt,” or “The clerk at the grocery just pointed out to me that there is vomit in my hair,” will be happy to know that all of those things are still happening. Babies here don’t wear real diapers but usually just a piece of folded cloth with the absorbency of a dinner napkin. In the course of weighing thirty or forty babies, there’s almost always at least one accident. While I can’t afford to send mass overseas text messages, you can just giggle to yourselves virtually any Monday or Wednesday morning a know that I have been dampened by some small person’s urine. The difference is that now I get to do the laundry by hand. Fun.

I have also started teaching classes at my local middle school, and one of the great cross cultural lessons I’m learning is that middle schoolers are a challenge in any culture, but things are going relatively well in this department as well. I teach there Monday and Wednesday afternoons and Tuesday mornings, and I have a lot of freedom about what I teach. When I started, there seemed to be a lot of enthusiasm in my community about HIV/AIDS, so I began there, and I feel like we are making some progress on it. The hard part has been trying to remember that there isn’t a lot of knowledge I can take for granted. A couple of weeks ago, I spent several hours getting together a lesson about STIs. It covered all the major infections facing Togo, and I even included a review game at the end, which is always a hit. So I gave the whole lesson, and they seemed as attentive as one can ever expect seventh graders to be, but when the game started, they were supposed to race to match the symptoms with the diseases that cause them. I said go, and everyone just stood there. Then they asked me what a symptom is. We had to start over from the beginning.

Another thing I do is go to meetings with my ASCs (stands for Community Health Agent in French). This is usually pretty fun, as I am lucky to have a lot of dedicated people in my community, but it also requires some adjustments from me. For example, a couple of Fridays ago, we had a meeting at 8am. I had some notes I wanted to go over with the employees at the clinic, so I got there around 7:30 just to iron out exctly what was on the agenda. Of course, I was running a few minutes late, and I was worried there wouldn’t be enough time before the meeting started to get everything done. No such worries.. The first person didn’t show up until about nine, and by ten, we had nearly half of our attendees. Now, most of you know that I am not one to throw stones about punctuality, but this seemed ridiculous even to me. Finally I asked where everyone else was, and it turned out they were all in the market having a morning calabash of tchouk. Excellent. Once everyone was successfully rounded up, the meeting went really well, but I’m definitely going to have to adjust my expectations on this front. Yes, I hear all of you laughing. And you’re right, karma is a drag.

Bean Cakes for Breakfast

Once again, it’s been some time since I’ve been able to update this blog, so I ask your forgiveness. In the past few weeks, we have welcomed some new volunteers to our region and said farewell to some others who finished their service. I have begun some new work which is both challenging and rewarding, and I have survived my first illnesses as a Peace Corps Volunteer (super fun!). Also, I have begun to be efficient at killing the mice who are trying to take over my life. In short, a lot has been going on. As I get busier in my village, I find my time there more and more enjoyable. I’ve said before that virtually everyone I meet is friendly and helpful, and as I get to know these friends and neighbors better, I genuinely enjoy their company. Namon is beginning to feel like home for me.

Despite all that, I still look forward to visiting other volunteers from time to time. Because there is no electricity or cell phone coverage in my village, I usually make my way to a nearby volunteer’s house once a week or so to make phone calls and recharge both my electronics and my personal energy. These are great times to relax a little bit, hear about other people’s work and ask for help with my own, and speak English! For the moment, my closest two volunteers are 27km and 39km away (in opposite directions), which is longer than it sounds like given the condition of the roads, so more often than not, I spend the night when I make these visits. The idea is to take advantage of the electricity, hang out with some people, and head back to work the next morning.

In my village, I find myself going to bed pretty early because there’s only so much you can find to do after the sun sets at six o’clock. When I visit other people, however, the electricity is so miraculous to me that I find myself staying up as late as midnight working on my computer and making phone calls (crazy night life, I know). Many of you will also remember that I am not at my personal best early in the morning, so it’s also a nice chance to reclaim my old life by sleeping in a bit. This is great except for two things: the call to prayer and bean cakes.

The part of Togo where I am is largely Muslim, and I am enjoying learning about a religion and culture I didn’t understand well when I came. People are very open to explaining their beliefs and customs to me, and I am learning a lot. One of the thing I learned is that there is a call to prayer several times a day, and I like that I’m beginning to understand how that is structured. What I do not like is that the first one is at 4:30am. In my village, someone just stands outside the mosque and cries out that the prayer is about to begin, but I can’t hear it from my house. In cities with electricity, however, there are loudspeakers. I am beginning to hate loudspeakers. There is a cry loud enough to wake the dead and more importantly, me. Three times for several minutes each between 4:30 and 5:00am. This does no wonders for my beauty rest, and I am beginning to see the benefits of an electricity free lifestyle.

After the call to prayer stops, since I don’t have work in these villages, it’s usually possible to go back to sleep for an hour or two, which is blissful. Except at my friend M’s house. At his house, the call to prayer is followed by his neighbor screaming at the top of her voice. At first I thought something might be wrong, but M explained that she is screaming at the top of her lungs in local language, “I HAVE BEAN CAKES!” I asked why she does this, assuming that it was more than her joy over her breakfast selection. As it turns out, she sells the bean cakes to people who are on their way to work, school, the market, or their fields, which is fairly standard, but rather than selling them on the road where people will see her, she just cooks them at her house and periodically screams out that the bean cakes are there for the desirous. Somehow, this seems to work.

Which leads me to my new idea. I think when I get back to the US, I’m going to open an advertising firm. We won’t use any radio spots or television commercials. There will be no ads in magazines, no promotional offers, no posters, billboards, slogans, or signs. I’m simply going to hire people to walk around screaming about my clients’ products. Something along the lines of, “GEICO HAS CAR INSURANCE!” or “BUDWEISER MAKES BEER!” Given my experience here, I can see no way in which this business plan could fail. Plus, I know how much people will appreciate it. I think nothing will endear our products to the general public as much as someone screaming about them at sunrise. I’m going to make a killing. Interested investors can send cash any time.