A Final Note.

Every story has an ending. Some, though, are harder to write than others. How can I sum up my last days, weeks, months in Togo? How can I even sum up the last two plus years? People like one-liners, but one-liners couldn’t do my experience justice…though for that matter neither could anything short of a book. My life was a world of opposites: challenging yet at many times routine, trying but relaxed, crowded though so often lonesome. If pressed, though, I can definitively say this much: If I could go back, I’d do it all over again. I’d take the heat, I’d take the bugs and the bats, and I’d take the bush taxi rides with chickens at my feet, goats in the trunk and people jammed up next to me in every imaginable position. I’d handle the dysentery and the amoebas, the machete mishaps, the unexplainable rashes and the falls off of motorcycles into puddles of deep, dirty water. I could manage the hawkers in the market and the scammers on the street, and all the other hassles that came with my life. All this because now I know what I only suspected three years ago when I went onto the Peace Corps website and hit that button to start my application: today’s pains lead—more often than not—to tomorrow’s pleasures. Uncertainty breeds worry in everyone, this is inevitable; but vindication ultimately arrives if you let it. Two years in an underdeveloped, forgotten, African country was never going to be easy, I knew there would be hard times and hard times there were. Yet, sitting under the shade of the mango tree outside my house on my last day in Sodo, my village, eating corn mush with tilapia from my fish pond, surrounded by villagers who first saw me as a stranger, then a friend, and finally as a local was vindication enough.

On a final, personal note thank you to all of you who didn’t forget about me. Not just those of you who sent packages and letters (though special thanks to all of you are in order), but everyone who ever gave me a passing thought. The feeling that the world has passed you by, and that those closest to you before departure have all pushed you out of their minds can easily creep into your thoughts on dark, quiet nights out there in ‘the bush’. I know that that wasn’t the case with the people in my life…thanks for that. To my friends still in Togo who might opt to use some of their precious internet credit on reading this: keep going! There aren’t many feelings quite like the one when your plane takes off after close of service…(although if your flight is at 4:00 in the morning like mine one of the main feelings may be exhaustion). And finally, if there is someone out there reading this who is thinking of taking the leap my advice is pretty simple: stop thinking about it and do it. A lot of people have passed up a lot of life changing experiences because they thought too much, try and avoid making that mistake!

Thanks to all, J.

p.s.-if you’re wondering what I’m up to now, I’m currently sitting next to a space heater avoiding the somewhat surprising cold of the High Atlas Mountains outside of Marrakesh, Morocco. Tomorrow Meghan and I are hiking around the base of the highest peak in North Africa, attempting to get by with the few long sleeved items we own. Next up is a month harvesting olives in the deep south of Italy in the Salento, or the heel of the boot, followed by a little respite in Paris to polish up our distinctly African French accents and finally to Lithuania to get back in touch with my roots before flying back from Warsaw to Chicago in time for my Mom’s birthday.

It seems that two years abroad hasn’t done much to alleviate my travel bug…

Je Suis La Toujours

I'm in Lome so that I can buy airline tickets for my quickly approaching close of service. Walking around the market area trying to find ATMs that not only take American cards but also have money in them is a bit of a challenge. The ticket I was eventually able to get will take me from Lome to Casablanca for a week long "lay over" before heading to Milan. I'll fill you all in on the final itinerary when its complete, but for now I just wanted to put up a few pictures to make up for my lack of posts before today.

My pig, Queen Maud, enjoying some arugala I grew.

Maud and I

This is a hanging tomato bag that I made that hangs next to the pig house...

...Which can be watered using the water from the pig's bath tub.

And finally this is a neighbor's pet monkey that lives next to Maud's house (I imagine they're friends)...I'm not really into the underground pet monkey trade in Togo, but c'est la vie, I suppose.

All the best!

J

Bonne Anniversaire a Moi!

Lea* was late getting a bush taxi out of Centrale. I usually wouldn’t mind—it was still the morning, either way—but today was my birthday, and a serious lack of funds after a recent trip to Lome had me stuck in Sodo with few people I could kick back with.

I called Lea to check in.
“So there’s been an unforeseen problem”, she said, “The Muslim drivers are having issues bringing the pig.”

I was upset for not having thought of that problem the day before, when Lea told me I’d finally be getting a little piglet to call my own. The Muslim Kotikoli ethnic group has a corner on the taxi brousse business, which is nice most times (travelling Christmas or Easter is just as easy) but not so good when transporting swine.

Eventually she flagged down a mini bus that was fine with loading the pig (secure in a wicker basket cage) atop the mass of luggage, market goods, and animals that hung on awkward. She and the pig were on their way to Atakpame, halfway to my village.
Atakpame proves difficult for travellers in its own ways, though, and that’s speaking nothing of travellers with 30 pound travelling companions who are locked up and looking to break out. A tumultuous intersection is a must stop for cars travelling north and south along the main route nationale, where they meet with throngs of moto taxis and food vendors. The latter mob all the windows and doors of taxis pulling in, pushing bananas, oranges, bread and cold water pouches into your face, while the former abruptly grab the bags of exiting passengers in a hope they’ll get their business.

As the zemi-johns (moto-taxi drivers) swooped in one immediately grabbed the little pig from the driver’s apprentice who unloaded the mess of baggage off the top of the mini bus. On asking how much the trip to the next taxi station would run her the driver abruptly demanded $2 for the 1-2 km trip into the city. To someone stateside $2 is basically nothing, but here that same amount could buy you food on the street for a day or two if you wanted it to. Lea grabbed the pig from the zemi-john and began to walk away in a show of defiance against such unfair price gauging, but the driver was insistent that he earned her business and wouldn’t be told off easily. He slowly drove the motorcycle next to her along the road as she searched for a new zemi-john, proclaiming all the while that she was, in fact, not a nice person.
She found a new driver who offered to take her but insisted that he not have to touch the little pig—it would have to go on her lap. He asked where she was travelling to and she said Sodo, about 50km to the southwest.

“Are you visiting Jonathan”, he asked.

“Yes”, she said, a little taken aback that I’m apparently that well known.

“Jonathan and I are friends”, the man said (we aren’t, as it turns out), “I’ll take you there after you’re done with your shopping.”

****

I was thinking about taking a mid-morning nap when I called Lea to check in. Might as well pamper yourself with a little shameless relaxation on your birthday, I thought.

It had already been a pretty eventful morning at the fish ponds, and I was tuckered out after chasing my birthday feast all around the rice paddies.

I had picked out Marshall for the chopping block some time before, having rationalized that it was his own fault for losing his spot as alpha duck. He was still a sprightly drake, though, and wasn’t too keen on making his exit from this world.

On arrival, it was pretty easy to spot the three drakes rummaging about in the paddies. The bright red skin flaps on their faces provide a striking contrast from the fresh green, earthly brown and soft gold that make up the palette of colors of maturing rice. Marshall was flanked on either side by the two Georges—two males I’ve never been able to tell apart. All three marched in unison down the length of a roadside paddy, filtering through the deep mud for breakfast, until one, and then all, snapped their necks back and stared me down.

Unlike the innocent, little black eyes of a long island duck (the standard, domesticated duck from the Aflac commercials), the type of duck that was brought to Togo possesses eyes that are giant, cat-like and downright sinister. Every time I go to feed them those eyes, filled with resentment, pierce through me silently.
On my birthday, though, I was set to show them just who the real alpha duck is.

The Chase:
The ducks were a deceptive 10 feet away from us feeding in the muck when I decided to make my move. Ahossou, my work counterpart, told me not to go in after them but I did anyway, thinking that my boots would protect me; they did not, and I was soon up to my knees in inescapable mud. Ahossou held out a stick to help me make it back the few feet I had moved.

The ducks waddled away slowly, over a partition and deeper into the rice. On chasing after them they stood out obviously as their plump bodies broke through the bottom of the rice, shaking the golden grains hanging off the top as they passed. Ahossou took off his sandals and pushed them up a small creek that runs down the plateau, and into the thick brush in between the rice and the ponds.

I headed towards the ponds, knowing they would soon seek the shelter of the water. Once there, like a walrus against a polar bear, the ducks have the advantage. Many a time I’ve splashed water futilely from the shore in an effort to get them back into their cages, only succeeding in getting myself wet.

As predicted, one of the George’s made a break for the water, quickly followed by Marshall, who I lunged at in vain. The second George made it passed me as well and soon all three were holed up in the middle of the pond. Ahossou rolled up his pant legs and went in after them, as did I. The ducks waded nervously as we pushed them to the shore.

“Allez!” Ahossou yelled, as I jumped out of the water clumsily and began to run towards the retreating group. Yet it was all for naught, as Marshall soon scampered into the safety of the other pond. I went into the water and made my presence known by splashing at the water with a palm frond. Ahossou copied me and the ducks soon split apart, leaving Marshall out alone. We headed towards him and once again chased him up and out of the water, this time with seemingly nowhere to run. Yet, somehow, he found a way to escape through the tall, jagged grass that separates the pond form the road. I foolishly went after him, and in doing so scraped every uncovered part of my body. I had him within my sights at first, but soon I lost him amongst the fluorescent green grass that rose above my head.

Emerging on the other side I found no sign of Marshall, only more rice. Inspecting the landscape, though, and thinking like a duck on the run, I honed in on his hiding place. Crouching in another creek and looking into the darkness of the large drainage pipe that stretched under the road I spotted the silhouette of Marshall. Ahossou, with a large stick in hand, soon made his way to the opposite end of the pipe, as I climbed out of the creek and onto the road. Ahossou hit the stick against the pipe and scared Marshall enough to push him out of his safety and into the light. As he emerged from the pipe on my side of the road I jumped down into the creek, giving him a shock as I landed right behind him and nearly completing the mission at hand. Yet, again, he evaded capture and found another path into the pond.

Marshall joined one of the Georges in the pond as Ahossou and I ran up to them, upset that this was taking us so long. Ahossou clearly was more upset than I, both at himself and possibly at me for botching that last grab. He silently approached the two ducks from behind, all the while carrying a 15 foot long bamboo pole he had found.

As I slapped at the water in my usual style Ahossou yelled out to me, asking which duck I fancied for the meal. “The white one”, I yelled back, and with one steady motion Ahossou lifted the bamboo far into the air and brought it down upon Marshall’s head. We pulled him out of the water and rested along the edge of the pond.

Ahossou smiled in the bright morning sunlight; “good thing I was on form today”, he quipped.

Behind him the two George’s preened their feathers calmly. They never liked Marshall much anyway.



*Names may have been changed for privacy

A Quick Update on Life and Work...

After yesterday’s topic-based post, I felt it might be worthwhile to update anyone who still checks my page on the happenings of my day-to-day life. In terms of work projects, I’ve been teaching/leading two middle school clubs—one environmental science club in my village, and another girls gardening club in a nearby village. The environmental science club is much more lecture and excursion based, whereas the garden club mixes little lessons with trips to the garden where I give little pieces of advice. Sometimes I fear the lessons are sort of over the heads of my school kids, but I feel that they really appreciate being taught complex topics that challenge them. I try, for example, to present my environmental science club with graphs and figures every week, telling them that when they study science in college they’ll have a head start. Keep in mind, the idea that a child will go to high school (much less college) is by no means certain; in fact, it’s pretty rare for a child from my town to make the 13 km journey to the local high school. Thus, by me telling them they need these science skills for high school and college, as if it was a certainty that they’ll be attending both, I hope I’m raising their own expectations for themselves. In addition to clubs in my own region, I’ll be helping lead sessions at a summer camp for girls interested in science from across Togo. The general idea is that they will be able to go back to their own villages and help establish their own science clubs, without, necessarily, the help of foreigners. As many of you remember, I’m also active with local fish farmers, both by counseling groups I come across in other communities, as well as with the duck project with my own local fish farming group. We’ve had some sad news with the ducks as of late, with three dying of unexpected reasons. After building a ‘duckling nursery’, with one male and three females someone in my group made the mistake of placing a male who had escaped his own cage in with the females and other male. A showdown then ensued and one of the males killed the other in a dispute over the ladies. Then the next week (just a few days ago) the group member in charge of giving food and water must have forgotten to replace the dirty water with clean water, and the alpha male and smallest female died of—presumably—dehydration (ducks need an incredible amount of water for drinking and bathing.) All three were prepared and eaten, though, so I guess I’ll just postpone my planned Easter feast and call myself lucky that I still have six healthy members of the flock. I have also been making several trips to the small villages in my canton just, frankly, as a sign of respect to those who live there and who invite me to come and eat a meal with them. My work always comes up, though, so I get several opportunities to advise locals on food security, deforestation, and other general development issues. In two weeks or so, I’ve planned a walk to two mountain villages in my canton where a few volunteers and I will be discussing the gender equity program ‘men as partners’, which basically seeks to switch some of the burden of gender development from the women of the community to the men. Healthy relationships, fidelity, men’s health (sexual and otherwise), and sharing of household duties are just some of the topics that will be raised.

As always, I’m conjuring up ideas for new projects: my counterpart and I will soon be starting a model fish and rice farm (another form of integrated agriculture), where a sunken plot of land will feature two rice paddies that will flank a deeper canal where we will be able to raise Tilapia. If one manages the water correctly (i.e.-let the rice mature in only an inch or two of water, then flood it with about a foot of water when mature, then drain it again to harvest, while constantly leaving water in the canal), the fish will be able to both provide fertilizer and control some of the pests. Also, a neighboring volunteer and I have plans to start an environmental advocacy and monitoring program with well-known fetish priests in towns with Peace Corps volunteers across the region. The idea to use local religion as a basis for protecting “sacred” plants and animals came to me while on a casual visit to the fetish priest in my village (Americans know their religion by the name voodoo, and may call the priests themselves witch doctors, though in Togo and especially neighboring Benin it is a serious, and well respected religion, that often merges into Christianity and Islam, and is in no way threatening.) Basically, the way I see it is that when the native, biologically significant resources of a region are all simultaneously on the verge of collapse, any help is good help. If the fetish priest in a village can no longer find rare forest herbs because of deforestation, then him admonishing locals to not clear cut their land (for example) just may be the last, best hope for change. I hope all is well back home! Best wishes to everyone! J

My environmental science club...this picture was taken when I was discussing coffee (both the needs of the coffee tree as well as the actual beverage itself.) I had the kids try coffee from three different regions of the world--one of them being their own home grown Togolese coffee.

Alcohol(ism) in Togo

The passion that Ahossou shows for his sodabi (the local moonshine) is matched only by the animosity he shows for other—less refined—spirits. On top of telling me to never drink sodabi from anywhere outside the very tight confines of our region (and God forbid I should ever sample that swamp water they sell in Benin), my work partner and close friend always finds time to remind me to never share sodabi with anyone ‘on the street’ in our village. This admittedly sounds a bit less threatening when one realizes that there isn’t really a street in my town so much as a quaint little square with a rather nice church and a rather decrepit palais royale—though the old chief’s house does take a bit of charm from the traditional mud and bamboo construction and the two widowers the size and shape of lawn gnomes (canes and fuzzy bellies to boot) who reside there. They guard over a petite marché with a few ladies selling a few vegetables and three or four boutiques, which keep in mind have maybe ten things behind the counter. One (or usually more) of those ten things, always happens to be a myriad of sodabi bottles—multiple roots, herbs, and chili peppers infused therein as medicament for all your aches and pains. The liquor itself is the distilled product of palm wine, which in itself is the sweet, milky looking liquid that is naturally fermented inside of the palm trees that litter the landscape of these parts. Though it smells like vomit, it is actually rather tasty, and not at all strong tasting. Sodabi, on the other hand, packs a hell of a punch. The appetite for sodabi in southern Togo, like that of tchouk and tchakpa (local, unfiltered millet and sorghum beer) in central and northern Togo is simply insatiable. Sodabi stands can be found in almost every other familial compound in my village, and locals will stop to take it in the morning before work—just as we do with coffeehouses—straight through lunch and into the night. Just the other day I was told by a very respectable man that he only drinks the stuff in the morning before he goes to the farm and before dinner, as if that was downright puritanical. Others have more difficulty abstaining from the beverage: glossy eyed and with debatable motor skills a chunk of the population merely stays drunk. Their often foolish banter—normally somewhat innocent, though at times borderline abusive—seems to only grow louder when I enter the scene. Maybe it’s my friendly disposition, I don’t know, but drunks seem to be drawn into conversation with me every day. I usually don’t mind, so long as they only are looking to say hello or quiz me on my local language skills. Yet at times the knowledge that I’ll be confronted by someone who sees me as the source of their next shot is enough to make me steer clear of their usual haunts—especially at night or after a festival/funeral. The sad truth, that I’ve wanted to say for quite some time, is that alcoholism is secretly stifling the hopes of small communities across this country by stealing money out of men’s pockets: money that could be used on much more productive purchases (food comes to mind.) Don’t get me wrong, the money is at some level fed back into the local economy—people here are staunch supporters of their local stills—but that reasoning only goes so far. These concerns of mine, though, are not easily raised in village. If on one side of the advocacy spectrum (we’ll call it 10) are the ladies of prohibition who took axes to barrels of beer and bottles of whisky, and the other side (we’ll call it 1) is simply saying nothing at all, I’d probably—pitifully—be about a three. I’ll bring up the topic to close work partners and I’ve been a part of discussions on the issue at more formal conferences, but trying to ‘develop’ a ‘developing’ country means picking your battles (lest you lose your mind.) This, unfortunately, is one battle that will need a lot more than a few volunteers to be won.

J

Back in Togo…

After a wondrous three week vacation back home, and a three day decompression period on the beach in Ghana I found myself surpisingly content as I moseyed back into village. I had tentatively planned on a slow transition back-- a couple days in Lome, a couple days in my regional capital—so as to ease slowly back into small town life. It turns out, though, that the lure of my own bed was too strong for me to resist for long, and I soon squeezed myself into a cramped bush taxi and headed to—what is for now—home.

It should be noted that returning to any volunteer house in Togo after an even brief period away is an interesting event…to put it frankly, you never know what kind of new critters have decided to reside/die in your abode.

When I walked into my place the first thing that caught my eye was the tattered remains of seed packets (radishes, tomatoes, beans, moringa, and more) laying all over my small house. On further inspection I found a very interesting collection of half eaten things all over my house…here are just a few examples:

-tube of hydrocortisone cream
-tube of athlete’s foot cream (its precautionary people…)
-pepto bismol tablets
-half the label off a hot sauce bottle
-the plastic cap of a bottle of body powder

The list goes on, but I’ll leave it at that. I soon found the culprit, lying bloated on the ground, surely dying from the cocktail of ointments and plastic it ingested.

After cleaning the scene up it was time for a shower…where I just knew there was going to be something waiting for me. I slowly entered my bathroom, crossing my fingers hoping that there wouldn’t be a mamba waiting there to pounce. The coast appeared to be clear, and I soon relaxed…that’s when I saw it: a dead bat at the bottom of my shower bucket. At least I thought it was dead—the high pitched (but very much audible) screech that filled my bathroom proved otherwise.

I’m still not quite sure why it was in there, or why it couldn’t fly out, but I didn’t let it hang around long enough to ask…soon it was thrown out along with the mouse, and I eased back into the slow, quiet, and hopefully pest free life that I’ve grown so fond of.

It’s good to be back.

J

HAPPY Holidays...

I had heard that Togo was—reportedly—mécontent du vie (unhappy about life) from other volunteers in the past. Though at that time I didn't know that it was the prime example of a poor, unhappy little country; that is, at least, if I am interpreting this figure from The Economist correctly:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/daily_chart_1

Here's to celebrating a very happy holiday season at home...