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.
