Standing Fast

If you search the latest news coming out of Togo on any given day (which I assume all of you do on a regular basis) the headlines usually have little to do with the actual country. For a while the world turned its attention to the tragic attack on Togo’s beloved national soccer team, Les Eperviers (the Sparrow hawks) in Angola. Usually, though, the results on Google are much more soccer, and much less…well, Togo. Typically, stories are just about one player, Emanuel Adebayor: if not the most famous Togolese person in the history of Togo then a close second…and he plays in rainy Manchester, nowhere close to West Africa.

Yet, every few years or so that changes with the arrival of a presidential election and/or protesting of the election—for a brief period the world’s 24/7 news coverage actually touches upon actual happenings inside of Togo. This period came and went about a month ago, with the presidential election being scheduled for February 28th and eventually held after a delay on March 4th. I would highly suggest that you do a quick search online to learn a bit more about the outcome of the election and more importantly the state of Togolese politics, as I really don’t want to get into it much myself.

I’d be remised, though, if I didn’t mention that for a couple weeks I stayed with a friend in my nearby prefecture to avoid any possible disturbances in my village. This was solely a precautionary move and, luckily, nothing happened in my village and outside of some demonstrations in Lomé nothing of significance happened in Togo in general. Again, check out the reports online for more info if you’re interested, or email me for more in-depth observations.

In other news, I found out last week that I have to change houses in my village, and though I know it has something to do with the owner and nothing to do with me, I don’t know much more. For the time being I’m waiting for another house, and though I believe there is one available across the street from my current house I need to wait for the proper maintenance and such. I learned about this at my in-service training actually, a week long conference with the other members of my training group three months after the end of stage. It was sort of an awkward timing to hear about it, really, as I now have all these new ideas from training I want to bring back to village but am sort of pre-occupied with housing issues reminiscent of those from when I first arrived at post.

Speaking of in-service-training I thought all of you might like a better idea of what sort of things we are trained in here; here are a few of the sessions we had:

-How to mix charcoal waste (the powder that falls to the bottom of the bags, which in turn is left all over the road) with something like tapioca, derived from manioc or cassava root, and sawdust to produce a more heat efficient briquette.

-Domestic animal vaccination, which included live chicken demonstrations.

-Permagardening: a rainy season, biointensive take on a standard vegetable garden. Instead of just making separate garden beds or putting plants directly into the earth you make a system of beds around a border bed that works to divert water to holes in the ground next to a thirsty papaya or banana tree. All the beds are given a mixture of compost, ash, and manure and the seeds are sowed especially close, so that you grow more food in a closer space. It’s a good gardening technique for a HIV/AIDS affected families, as it requires less time to tend to.

There was much more, those were just some of the more interesting to me.
The next time I’ll be online will probably be in a couple weeks before I head to Ghana for a small vacation.

I’ll be in Lomé, so hopefully I’ll get a couple pictures up. Until then!