Christmas 2009

To celebrate Christmas this year, my friend Heather and I started our Christmas week out by going to visit Annie - a friend of ours who lives on the western side of Togo, just 10km from Ghana. Her region is lush with vegetation including lots of banana and cocoa trees, and there are a lot of hiking trails that lead to waterfalls! We all went on a little hike to see one of the biggest waterfalls there.

Afterwards, Heather and I met up with Emily and went to a nice little oasis on Lake Togo where we stayed in a cute little hotel for Christmas. We ate well and got to go swimming and even got to go out and do some activities on the lake. It was a nice relaxing Christmas.




Me at the beginning of the hike; the landscape reminded me so much of Jurassic Park!



Heather and I on a bridge on our hike



A neat tree



The beautiful waterfall!(that's me below)



Trying to cross the falls to get to the waterfall



Heather and me in our Santa hats at the bottom of the waterfall


We all ended up jumping in to the cold water... in our underwear :) We were all just girls and no one was around so we just did it


Annie figured out how to do a black-and-white mode on my camera; Heather, Annie, and me below



When we got back, we made snickerdoodle cookies in Annie's Dutch oven while listening to Christmas music!

Inside our hotel room



Our balcony



Catching up on American gossip magazines that are only 3 months old



Me and Heather relaxing in the hotel mini pool


On our way across the lake to Togoville in a canoe......with Santa hats




Heather and I watched a Charlie Brown Christmas on her computer on Christmas Eve


Me swimming in the pool


Heather



Emily, Heather and me in a paddle boat we rented .... for some exorbitant price for only 30 minutes of use ...
... But we enjoyed ourselves enormously

Emily went fishing with a bamboo stick and a piece of string that she bought off of a Togolese fisherman. We didn't catch any fish though. I tried and all I caught was Heather's hair.

Heather and Emily coming back from fishing on the shore. You can see a canoe in the background that the Togolese use to traverse the lake.

Thanksgiving and my trip up north

This past Thanksgiving was the last Thanksgiving my stage group would spend in Togo since we’ll be leaving the country next August. So my friend Emily and I decided to go all out this year and kill our own turkey for a Thanksgiving feast.

We wanted this to be somewhat of an authentic dinner, and thanks to packages from our generous mothers, we were able to collect packets of instant stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie filling, etc. to help make such a dinner possible. All that remained was finding a turkey. Now, believe it or not, they actually raise turkeys here – huge, scary ones. With the help of Emily’s host mom, we were able to acquire a sizeable one for 15 mille (about 30 dollars) – which is quite a large sum of money here. I can’t tell you how much it weighed, but I picked it up by its wings (see picture below) while it was still living and it was pretty heavy. We named him Don the Dendon (dendon = turkey in French).

Early Thanksgiving morning, Emily and I along with our friends Drew (another Peace Corps volunteer) and Isaac (a friend of mine from high school who just arrived in Togo and is working for the Clinton Foundation in Lome) went over to her host mother’s house where Don was tied to a piece of wood and waiting for us. Emily and I had decided that we were going to kill him as a team effort, so her host brother held him down while Emily and I grasped the knife together. Well, we went at it, sawing away at the neck but the blade was too dull so we ended up having to switch knives (that poor bird). On the second attempt, we succeeded but were unprepared for the blood that squirted out onto our arms and legs, so I admit we did squeal then. Emily’s host mom teased us for that later. Since we had been explaining the Thanksgiving story to her earlier (we even did a mini skit for her where Drew and Emily p
layed Indians – with turkey feathers in their hair – and Isaac and I played the Pilgrims; see picture below), we simultaneously responded to her saying, “Oh but the first Americans squealed too.”

After boiling some water, Emily’s host dad poured the hot water over the turkey to make the feathers come out easier. The plucking process took a while, but at the end, the turkey looked just like what you’d buy at the supermarket. At that point we threw plucked Don into a cement bag and brought him to the bruschette guy (a vendor of skewered roasted meat) who we’d arranged to have roast our turkey. We brought him prepared stuffing and provided him with the needle things necessary to close the turkey up after stuffing him. He was baffled by the idea of stuffing the turkey, so Drew ended up having to do it for him. Then we left him to his work, but only after having him again reassure us that he’d do a good job. “Oh the turkey will turn out great, I guarantee it,” he said. “I can’t say as much for what you stuffed it with though.”

So we left him to his work and went back to Emily’s house to start the other dishes. Everything went pretty well (with the minor exception of half of one of the uncooked pumpkin pies spilling onto the floor). We started up the charcoal to have an extra “stove” to work with so that everything would be hot by the time we were ready to eat. When we were informed that the turkey was done, we sent Drew back to the road on his bike with a big basin bungee-corded to the back. And thus our roasted turkey came to us wrapped in foil and resting in a metal basin on the back of a bike. Emily de-stuffed him and I “carved” him, which was not the easiest task. We were all quite amused that the bruschette guy had given us the neck and head of the turkey as well. After having fun taking pictures with it, we ended up giving it along with what remained of the cooked carcass to one of Emily’s Togolese friends.

Thanksgiving dinner was absolutely delicious. All in all we had turkey (which turned out amazing), mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, green bean and sausage casserole, corn casserole, salad, cornbread, pumpkin pie, and apple crisp. In going around the table saying what we were thankful for, the first thing we said was, “Thank you to our moms for helping us put this together!” We couldn’t get over how well everything had turned out. There were 5 of us in total (the 4 of us I mentioned before and then Ben, another one of Emily’s closest volunteer neighbors). Originally we had planned for 6, but Emerson (another volunteer neighbor) had unfortunately gotten in a moto accident the day before and had to be sent to Lome for medical care. Thanks to Isaac’s help though, we were able to send her a plate of leftovers the next day. We also made sure to send Emily’s host family a little sampling of all the food to thank them for their help during the turkey butchering process. What was left over after that, we all shared for breakfast the next day – with the exception of the pumpkin pie, which Emily and I greedily finished in bed early in morning while the boys were still sleeping. Early bird gets the worm.

So we had a great Thanksgiving!




Don the Dendon



Weighing the turkey by hand



Emily and I with the killing knife



Emily and I killing the turkey; you can see the blood on the knife below.




The conquerors and our victim




Isaac and Emily's dog, Fenway



Our Thanksgiving skit



Little Indian Drew and Emily's host mom boiling water for plucking the turkey



Pouring hot water over the turkey to facilitate plucking




Plucking



Fenway and one of the pigs in Emily's host family's compound



Me and the plucked turkey


The bruschette guy who roasted our turky; (below) the turkey stitched up after being stuffed with the stuffing

Isaac and Emily cooking




Making mashed potatoes on charcoal



Isaac and the cooked turkey head



Green bean and sausage casserole and scalloped corn on the gas stove



Removing the stuffing from the roasted turkey



Me carving the turkey





Indian Emily and Indian Drew and the turkey head



There weren't enough bowls for everything so we had to put the salad and carved turkey in the laundry basins



(thanks to the self-timer) A picture of all of us



Yum! This was our Thanksgiving food!



Drew and his drumstick



Apple crisp and pumpkin pie(s) for dessert



Leftovers for breakfast



Random extra picture: Drew and a Togolese child who was subjected to a permanent marker




I also wanted to briefly write about a week trip I took up to the northern region of Togo. Togo is made up of 5 regions which all relatively differ in climate and geography. From the south to the north, there’s Maritime, then Plateaux, Centrale, Kara, and Savannes. To give you some perspective, I live in the northeastern corner of Plateaux, and for this trip, I went and visited 3 volunteer friends of mine who live in villages in the northeastern corner of Kara region. This time of year is called Harmattan and is characterized by dusty winds that blow down from the Sahara desert. The northern regions of Togo logically suffer more from these dry, dusty winds than does my region, for example, and that was one of the first things I noticed in going up there. My skin and lips were always chapped and I found myself suffering from a dry cough while I was up there. By the end of the day, my skin was also just covered in dust. The general terrain was also fascinatingly different; it was much rockier and there was less vegetation.

First I visited Taylor, one of my friends from my stage. Taylor does a lot of work with an AIDS organization in her village, which is more a large town and big truck-stop for vehicles going north. It was interesting talking with her about her work just because, even though we’re both volunteers in the health domain, due to the absence of similar resources in my village, I don’t have the opportunity to work a lot with AIDS. Her experience as a volunteer is thus very different than mine in that she encounters a lot more death, which is obviously very difficult. Just the previous week, in fact, she had lost her best friend in village to AIDS, a tragedy which she was still recovering from while I was there.

On a more positive swing, Taylor has a very motivated Togolese counterpart with whom she works who created a huge community garden and employs local orphans to work the garden, using the profits from the sale of the produce that grows to pay for their school fees (which they otherwise have difficulty finding the money to pay for). What a great sustainable project! I enjoyed roaming around the huge garden and seeing plants from which produce like pineapple and ginger grow – things I’d never seen before.

After Taylor, I went and visited Karen, who was in the stage that came in 3 months after mine. Karen’s village is actually a World Heritage site, as it is home to the Batammariba tribe, who are renowned for the unique architectural structure of their huts, which are called la takienta, or more familiarly, the tata’s. I enjoyed touring some of the tata’s (which you’re able to do if you pay a fee to the families who live there) and learning about them with the help of one of her friends who served as a guide. I wanted to share some of the fascinating things I learned:

The architecture of the tata’s is original and elaborate and corresponds perfectly with the culture and belief s of its inhabitants. Nothing is accidental; everything either has a function or symbolic value. For example, the tata represents a male-female duality separated by the east-west axis. The southern part is the sacred side of the man, and the northern side is that of the woman. This appropriation of sides is significant when it comes to grain storage; certain grains, like millet, sorghum, and rice have masculine connotations and are therefore stored on the southern side of the house, while the grains with female connotations (beans and peanuts, etc.) are stored on the northern side.

The front of the tata is always oriented towards the west to protect it from the dominant rains and Harmattan winds, and also in order to face the “village paradise” of Kuye (the Batammariba are animist, and their beliefs are cultish and centered around ancestors who are believed to rise up to the level of the creator God, Kuye, incarnated by the sun). Sustaining relationships with dead ancestors is absolutely essential to the Batammariba, which they accomplish by sacrificing to the fetishes which are located in large number both outside and inside their houses.

The tata’s are constructed primarily with wood, straw, sand, and clay. If they need to be renovated, renovations are done during dry season (for obvious reasons). The upper terrace is the principal part of the house; it is where grains are stored, where one cooks, and where one sleeps (the “room” on the top of the house where they sleep is more of a low-roofed cave). The ground floor houses more ancestor fetishes and has designated space for the different animals (cows, sheep, chicken, and guinea fowl – all under one roof!), as well as access to a turret where there is a covered kitchen in the event of rain . There is only one door to the house, which was historically designed as a defensive feature. It was all really fascinating to learn about - especially because the historical traditions of the Batammariba tribe are carried on today by the descendants of the original families.

After Karen, I went and visited Brittany, another friend from my stage, although we unfortunately didn’t get to spend enough time together for me to see her work. We did continue on south together to meet up with a bunch of volunteers at our friend Nikhil’s house though. Nikhil's parents, who were in Togo for a few days, had arranged to make Indian food for any volunteers who could come visit. So we were treated to delicious vegetarian Indian food along with some other treats brought from the States – like truffles, which arrived in a completely melted state, but which we thoroughly enjoyed nonetheless with the use of spoons. It was a fun trip!

The arid north



Taylor in her counterpart's garden next to the ginger plants



They found and killed a snake while we were there.



Me and Taylor at the garden entrance



Karen walking through the fields in her village



Inside one of the Tata's; that's our guide in the kitchen area.



Going up onto the roof of a Tata



Me looking into a grain storage area (the grains are pictured below)




The sleeping "cave"



A Tata from a distance



Karen and I on the top of a Tata


I was trying to get a shot of cockroaches in one of my co-volunteer's latrines but I took this in the morning when there weren't that many; the night before, they were coating the walls and crawling all over the latrine lid. Yum!



Melted truffles from America!



Nikhil's family cooking dinner



All of us spoiled volunteers eating delicious Indian food

FARN

I’m sorry I haven’t had the chance to update my blog lately. This entry will make up for it though; bear with me because it’s really long, but I think it’ll be interesting for those of you who are interested in details of the kind of work I do here. It also includes pictures at the end!

For the entire month of October, I was busy in village preparing for what is called Foyer d’Apprentissage et de Rehabilitation Nutritionelle (FARN). I am at a loss for how to translate that title word for word, but essentially it is a program designed to teach mothers how to rehabilitate their malnourished children. The structure of the program is based on the notion that the best way to promote behavior change (on the part of mothers that will help improve their children’s state of health) is to actually practice certain behaviors over the course of the sessions; the idea is that they will gradually become habituated to what we practice and will therefore bring the behaviors and helpful things we do back into their own households – meaning sustainable behavior change.

This was absolutely the largest project I have attempted to undertake since starting my service in village last year. I was motivated to do it by the recognition that there is a large problem of malnutrition where I live. To get rough statistical evidence for my claim, I kept track at our weekly baby weighing sessions of how many malnourished and severely malnourished children came in for a month. To explain to those of you who aren’t familiar with baby weighing, it’s a way of tracking the growth of a child for the first two years of his/her life; mothers are supposed to bring their baby in once a month for weighing, and the weight of the child is plotted on a growth chart supplied by UNICEF, which uses drawn-in lines to demarcate whether the trajectory of the child’s growth is following that of a healthy, malnourished, or severely malnourished child. If a child is identified by this means as one who is not growing at a healthy rate, the mother can be informed as what steps to take to increase the child’s weight.

It seems simple enough, but not long after coming to post, I became aware of and disturbed by the fact that mothers were not always informed about the status of their child’s weight after weighing and – what’s worse – didn’t seem to care for the most part. If babies are weighed and their weight, plotted, but their health status is not understood by their mothers, quite frankly, baby weighing is a useless activity. As our health facility is understaffed (there is only 1 nurse and 1 midwife who serve my village and the 10 small villages surrounding it), I eventually took over the actual process of baby weighing so that the nurse and midwife could do all the vaccinations that occur simultaneously. Although I now tried to take advantage of my new position to explain each child’s status to each mother after weighing, I encountered 3 problems:
1) Sometimes the women come in such great numbers that they are overflowing out of the dispensaire (health center) and there is not enough time for me to carefully explain the growth chart of every child to every mother myself if I also want to weigh every child in a reasonable amount of time. Even though I often try to take time to do so nonetheless, how much important information can you fit in on the spot? Not much.
2) Even if the dispensaire is NOT terribly busy on baby weighing days and I DO have the time to discuss each chart with each mother, often the mother does not understand French, and there is no one available to translate for me. Or what I hate more is – and this is a very cultural thing – I’ll ask if the mother understands French (in local language) and she’ll nod yes, and then feign comprehension as I explain things to her, but really she understands nothing at all.
3) Even if the mother DOES understand French, and I can successfully explain a problem of her child’s growth rate to her and advise her as to how to proceed, she may understand but, more often than not, will not put my advice into practice at home (which is proven by the consistent underweight status of her child in following months).

After keeping track of the number of healthy vs. malnourished babies that came in over the course of a month (which is roughly supposed to represent the number of children in my village, as every one of them is supposed to be brought in once monthly), I calculated that nearly 40% of those children were malnourished to some degree. And those were the ones of parents who actually understood the importance of making use of the local health facility! I could only imagine how many more malnourished babies lived way out in the farms and were never brought in for healthcare purposes.

I decided that the FARN program was a good one to undertake because it would allow me to identify and work solely with mothers of children who had been consistently malnourished for an extended period of time and therefore give them the appropriate amount of necessary information in less time-constrained situations. I was worried, however, because, as many of you know, one of my greatest obstacles over the course of my service has been a lack of motivated counterparts with whom I can work, and FARN was absolutely not a project I could do on my own.

I brought my rough statistical evidence of the problem of malnutrition in the village to the next monthly meeting of the ASCs (Agents de Sante Communautaire) or local health workers (who, quite frankly, are not usually the most motivated people in the world, which is what made me nervous). I gave a general explanation of my idea of the FARN program and asked if anyone would be willing to work with me. I got nods, and so I scheduled a meeting which would give more details for the following week; I asked those who said they were interested to show up (although in my head, I worried that no one actually would – it has happened before).

But the next week, they actually showed up! It ended up being just the first pleasant surprise of many. The ASCs ended up successfully helping me actually locate the mothers of malnourished children that I’d identified during baby weighing sessions (but for whom I only had names and their general “neighborhoods” in the village), collect the fee we’d established that they’d pay for the week of food and activities (we decided on 300 cfa per woman for the entire week; that’s roughly about 75 cents), and then the ASCs themselves actually showed up for the training sessions I arranged for them (again, showing up doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it is)! I was so pleased with the ASCs’ cooperation; I absolutely could not have done everything without them.

Let me explain a little more about the actual FARN program. Normally it’s a program that takes place over the course of 2 weeks or up to a month. Women meet in small groups at someone’s home (they’ll all take turns hosting; the importance of having FARN take place at a home is so as to provide a comfortable environment) once or twice a week for about 2-3 hours each time. Local trained health workers meet with them and lead what we call a sensibilization, or informative session on an important topic (it’s important that local trainers teach these sessions; if it was always just me, this wouldn’t be a sustainable project!). After that session, the women cook together to prepare a nutritious meal for their children; cooking together allows them to actually learn how to prepare such a meal (all the food is bought with the money that each woman contributed before the week started). In addition, there is a maman lumiere present at each session who helps teach and cook. Maman Lumiere stands for “Mother of the Light”, and she’s a very key part because she represents a model mother who is at the same socioeconomic status as the rest of the mothers, but who has at least one healthy baby at the same age; this proves that even if you are poor, you can still find ways to adequately care for your children. If women actually put what they learn into practice, their babies will actually gain weight by the end of the program (FARN is a well-known program that has been used in many underdeveloped countries in the world and has consistently shown positive results).

I had to make a few changes in the program. First of all, I was under a time constraint. Thanks to what I learned last year, I knew that beginning in November, women would be occupied in the fields because November is bean harvest month. And then in December, they’re busy earning money to prepare for the many end-of-the-year holidays, so they’re inaccessible then as well. This meant that I had to finish FARN by the end of October, which left me only a little time to prepare and train the ASCs, and I had to condense the program into one week with daily sessions, which I planned to take place the last week in October. I also didn’t have time to arrange “hosting” houses, so we planned for FARN to take place at the dispensaire. My idea was that this could be a practice FARN of sorts which would address the malnourished cases before the end of the year, and then we could actually do the real thing next year.

I organized a different topic for each day of FARN week. The following is a summary of what we taught the women (Excuse the rough titles; it was hard to translate them directly from French). I’m also including the meal we prepared each day, and pictures from each of the sessions:
Monday – Good Hygiene and Sanitation
The importance of washing your hands with soap, drinking potable water, and covering and protecting your food from flies. This presentation included a demonstration for which I rubbed my hands with fresh ginger and rinsed them with water (which is usually what the Togolese count as “washing your hands”); I showed them how even though my hands looked clean, you could still smell the ginger which proves that there are sometimes things (bacteria) on our hands that we can’t see, and rinsing does not suffice. Only using soap gets rid of the unseen. This was the first subject we taught of the week because we wanted them to understand the importance of and get in the practice of washing their hands with soap before eating/preparing food over the course of the week.
Meal of the Day: Enriched porridge made from corn and soyIn this picture and all the ones you see below similar to it, the people standing up teaching the seated women are my ASCs


Washing hands; by the end of the week, the first thing the women were doing upon their arrival was washing their hands and their kids' hands with soap. I was so proud of them!



Eating the porridge. The kids in these three photos (above) are among the most severely malnourished (with the exception of the kid on the right in the bottom picture; he's a nice fat brother)



Tuesday – Good Nutrition
The importance of breastmilk and well-balanced meals (for children under age 2). In Togo, for simplicity’s sake, development workers teach 3 food groups: Energy foods (i.e. grains and fats), Construction foods (i.e. protein foods), and Protection foods (i.e. fruits and vegetables). I drew a large diagram with pictures of these 3 groups and, after explaining what each group does and that an ideal meal contains at least one food from group, we had the women come up and give us examples of “well-balanced meals”.
Meal of the Day: Enriched porridge made from corn, beans, and peanuts



The ASCs who did a FANTASTIC job on the nutrition section.



My wonderful "Maman Lumiere", Clarisse



Clarisse's kids (above and below)





Wednesday – Good Childcare
How to prevent prevalent illnesses but what to do if your child actually gets sick. The 2 most prevalent illnesses we see among cases of children at this age who are brought into the dispensaire are malaria and diarrhea. We talked about preventative measures but I also did a demonstration with a “thermos baby” (I drew a face on a thermos); I poked a hole in the bottom and patched it up with tape for the first part, for which I showed that when you hydrate the baby (pour water into it), most of the water stays inside. But when the baby is sick with diarrhea (I took the tape off the hole), water comes out fast and if you don’t rehydrate a lot and more frequently, the baby can become “dry” and die. We also taught them how to make a rehydration drink that will stop up diarrhea with clean water, sugar, and salt.
Meal of the Day: pâte (a corn-based dish) with baobab leaf and bean sauce
We always had the mothers help Clarisse prepare the food so that they would learn how to prepare the nutritious meals themselves - in case they didn't already know (we used common meals with local ingredients so many already knew).






Thursday – Good Motherhood
The importance of vaccinating your child, following your child’s weight/growth chart, and practicing family planning (spacing your children). Again, I used more drawings and had the women try to interpret various growth lines. I also brought in physical examples of family planning methods to show the women, who were fascinated and interested by the idea that you can actually do something to prevent getting pregnant all the time; though knowledge of family planning is growing more and more widespread, there are still many cases of women who don’t know anything about it.
Meal of the Day: watchi (rice and beans) with a tomato and fish sauce








My favorite picture of Clarisse and her daughter



Friday – Review
Because most of the information we taught these women this week was new to them, I thought it was important to do a review session of all we had learned. I made up little “question cards” and posted them on our chalkboard, then had the women come up and choose a question that reviewed something we had learned this week (for example: How do you make a rehydration drink if your child has diarrhea?). If they answered the question right, they got a gift of bar soap. I was so impressed and proud of my women; overall, they rattled off the answers with no problem, and I could see that they were happy and proud of themselves for what they had learned. It was amazing.
Meal of the Day: pâte with peanut and okra sauce




The group picture we took at the end of the week. Most of the women wanted to hold up their gifts of soap for the picture - if you look really close you can see the yellow bars.


Overall the project turned out incredibly well. I was absolutely exhausted by the end of it all, but it was so worth it for a number of reasons: I was so encouraged that the ASCs actually pulled through with their part (it gave me hope that they’re not an entirely unmotivated lost cause; I think they became even more motivated too to see the positive results); everything came together thanks to their help. My Maman Lumiere was absolutely fantastic (a couple weeks before, I had been trying to think of who I could use for this role. I thought of this woman who I knew only because she came occasionally to baby weighing and always had such a positive energy and was always interested in the weight increase of her baby, who was always nice and fat. The problem was I didn’t know her name - I only knew her daughter’s first name, and that she sometimes sold oranges and cheap used clothes at the market; using this information, I went out to the street one day, told someone all I knew about her, and this person asked someone else, who asked someone else, and within 10 minutes, this woman was standing by my side. Talk about advantages of a small village, huh?) Her name was Clarisse and she was always in a good mood, always on time, was an incredible facilitator of the food-making, always stayed to clean up, and did all of this out of her own good will – never asking for compensation (which is so rare for a Togolese person). I could not have been more blessed to have her help me. Overall, women came on time (which is incredible); I reinforced that behavior by giving out gifts of enriched porridge flour or bananas to those who came before 7AM (when we started everyday). A lot of participating women also came to baby weighing that week and we already started seeing an increase in weight in their children, which really encouraged them and made them proud. And then I just got a lot of great feedback from the participating mothers, the nurse and midwife at the hospital, and the ASCs about what a great project it turned out to be. It made me feel good, but especially because I saw how they recognized that their participation helped make it a success. That was my greatest reward: to see the people of my village begin to recognize their own capacity. That is the start of sustainable change!

I think of other villages where my peer volunteers are, and I think of how, if this project had taken place there, it wouldn’t have been that outstanding a thing. But every village is different. And for mine, where there has been a constant struggle with getting people to participate and be motivated and actually pull any kind of project together, the success of this project represented a big step in the right direction.



OTHER RANDOM PHOTOS FROM OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER
Me and the gingerbread man Danielle made for me at our "autumn party"


Me and some other Peace Corps friends, Chrissy and Brittney



This picture truly represents the epitomy of my relationship with Danielle



nap time



fabric fall leaves from mom - the closest I get to Autumn around here



The welcome meal Danielle and I made for Danielle's replacement, Michelle, when she came for her post visit. We made homemade tortillas with bean and chicken filling, nacho cheese sauce, fruit salad, and cake with white chocolate and cranberry cookies (thanks to ingredients sent from the States).



I made Michelle a cake; that's her below!




Me and Danielle, sweaty and gross - but it's our last picture together at her house, so I had to put it up.



Kids studying by lamplight in my compound. Every night they use the chalkboard in my compound to study and I like to join them and help them with their homework when I can.




Watermelon that I found in my market! It's a rarety!



Michelle spent one night at my house during her post visit week and my gas ran out so I taught her how to use the charcoal. We made pizza!




Danielle, me, and Michelle (below) at Danielle's goodbye/ Michelle's welcome party




The president of the NGO where Danielle worked gave her a nice going away speech and gift and we took a group picture with everybody she's worked with.




This is a shot of part of the (horrible) road that leads out of my village.



A few weeks ago, an 8 month old baby died, and the cause was determined to be sorcery. The "sorcerers" held accountable were identified, and there were huge meetings that took place with hundreds of spectators to determine what steps should be taken to avoid any further deaths. The consensus was to "dig up the souls of living people that the sorcerers hid" under the palm bush you see in the picture above "to free them before the sorcerers can kill them too". I snuck a picture of the digging process; I unfortunately couldn't fit in the MASS amounts of spectators watching from my compound.



My neighbor boy in his cute overalls


Solim (my little host sister) helping me pick baobab leaves for one of my FARN meals



Small world! Me and Isaac Gross (both from Belmont High's graduating class of 2003); Isaac is working for the Clinton Foundation for a little while in Togo (just arrived last week) and we went out to lunch to catch up.

Some Amusing Anecdotes from Togo and Ghana

Talk about the occasional culture clash :) ....

The Phone Conversation

At the end of July, I went on a short vacation to Ghana. I returned to Togo only to realize that I’d left my beloved headlamp at New Haven Hotel in Accra. The following real conversation is the one I had (verbatim) with the desk clerk(s) when I called the hotel to see if they’d found it. (Note: The official language of Ghana is English, but with the different accents and terms for things, miscommunications occur frequently)

Clerk: Good evening. You have reached New Haven Hotel. How may I help you?
Me: Yes, hello. My name is Kristina. I was a guest in your hotel last night. I stayed in room #2, and I believe I left my flashlight on the bed. I’m calling to see if it was found.
Clerk: Ok well what day do you want a reservation for?
Me: No – I don’t want a reservation. I was just there – last night.
Clerk: Ok well you can’t make a reservation for last night.
Me: Yes, I know that – Look, I don’t want a reservation. I stayed there. Last night. In room #2…
Clerk: Yes
Me: …And I left my flashlight on the bed.
Clerk: Yes yes yes.
Me: Was it found?
Clerk: Yes yes yes.
Me: ….So you have it?
(silence on the other line)
Me: Are you following me?
Clerk: No, I don’t think I am.
Me: (sigh) Ok look…
Clerk: Hold on, I’m going to transfer you to someone else.
Me: Ok.
(babbling in local language on the other line. A different man picks up the phone)
Clerk #2: Good evening. This is New Haven Hotel. How may I assist you?
Me: Hello. I was a guest, last night – Sunday night – in your hotel. I stayed in room #2 and I left my flashlight there. I want to know if you found it.
Clerk #2: So you want a reservation for Sunday.
Me: No – I DON’T want a reservation. I lost my flashlight at your hotel and I’m trying to locate it.
Clerk #2: You lost your flash …?
Me: FLASHLIGHT
Clerk #2: Flash …. Light?
Me: Yes – you know – a light, you use – at night – when it’s dark?
Clerk #2: Flashlight?
Me: Look – it’s black. Did someone find something BLACK on the bed in room #2 this morning when they cleaned the room?
Clerk #2: Ok you are going to have to call back tomorrow.
Me: Well can’t someone just go look in the room right now?
Clerk #2: That man isn’t here right now.
Me: What man?
Clerk #2: The man who goes in the room.
Me: Well did the cleaning man turn anything in this morning?
Clerk #2: That’s who I’m talking about – He isn’t here right now. You will have to call back tomorrow.
Me: (sigh) Ok, what time?
Clerk #2: Any time.
Me: Ok – I’m going to call back tomorrow.
Clerk #2: Yes, have a good evening. And thank you for calling New Haven Hotel.

The punchline is: Another 2 conversations (and a couple mille of phone credit) later, I discovered that they miraculously did find my headlamp after all – at which point an almost equally absurd and repetitive conversation ensued in my effort to convey to them that I wanted them to hold it at the front desk until the next PCV who was going to stay there could retrieve it for me. Special Thanks to Larissa, a fellow PCV, for ultimately recovering it.



The Post Office

My personal post box is in the post office of a village 15 km north of my village in Togo. It takes me 45 minutes to get there on bike. There are only 2 personnel who work there; we know each other very well. They're actually quite the amusing pair. In addition to knowing me (because I, in addition to Danielle [my closest PCV neighbor)], receive the most mail out of any of their clients), they know that I have to bike a ways in order to even come and check my mail (mail arrives on Tuesdays and Fridays so I'll often bike all the way up at the end of the week just to check). Nevertheless, the following true anecdote demonstrates how their need for routine necessarily overrides their ability to extend any customer service that accomodates that fact.

I arrive on bike at 7:30AM. The post office has just opened. I check my post box but nothing is inside. I go inside to double check because sometimes they do not get the mail into the boxes in a timely fashion and it's still at the front desk.

me: Marius, Eugene, Bonjour!
M&E: Bonjour! Bon Arrivee (Welcome)!
me: Et le travail? (How is your work?)
M&E: Ca va. Et la maison? (It's fine - and your house?)
(I approach the front desk)
me: Oh ca va. Hey so no mail came for me or Danielle yesterday?
E: Oh, no. None came. (He goes back to shuffling through papers)
me: (disappointed) Oh... Ok. (I'm about to turn away when suddenly I notice a flat rate box with the familiar American eagle on it sitting on the floor against the wall behind the desk) Wait - what about that box?
E: (turns around) Oh ... yeah (laughs awkwardly and then turns back to his papers)
I stand there for a couple seconds, confused about exactly what's going on.
me: So.... can I have it?
E: (looks up surprised) Oh - you want it now?
me: Well ... if I could, yes. See, I did only bike up here just to get the mail...
E: (looks a little stressed) Well, you see, we just opened.
me: I know...
E: It's just that we have things we need to do first. Do you mind waiting a little while?
me: Oh. No, I'm not in a rush I guess. I can wait.
I go and sit down on a bench against the wall. Eugene and Marius now pick up some towels and beginning dusting down all the tables and folders. They pull out pens and line them up on the table. They rearrange chairs and open the side door to let some air in. They sweep the floor.

20 minutes later they motion me over, and then hand me my package over the front desk.



The Worst Bush Taxi Ride Ever

I am in the front passenger seat of a 5-placer bush taxi. I am the only one in the car. I was transferred to the car after the original driver who was going to take me to my final destination decided not to since he couldn’t find any other passengers who were going that far. So I was swindled into making the (once in a lifetime – never again) mistake of paying the full fare (to my final destination) so that the first chauffeur could figure out how to split the earnings with this new driver [1]. “There’s no one in the car,” I remarked apprehensively when I was moving my bags. The new driver waved the remark off saying “Oh – on va partir, toute de suite, toute de suite!”[2] I know that’s what they all say, but I’m hoping it’s true in this case since it’s market day in this particular village and there are a lot of people milling around [3].

No time exaggeration: 2 HOURS later, I am still sitting by myself in the stationary car. For the first hour of this time period, the driver had disappeared. Irked, I had finally climbed out of the car and spotted him across the street eating beans and garri [4]. He happened to look up and saw me glaring, at which point he wolfed the rest of his meal down, rushed over, and motioned for me to get back in the car, saying we were going to leave. “You weren’t even looking for passengers!” I scolded. “Yes I was,” he lied. “Get back in the car – I’ll get one more person and then we’ll leave.” He disappeared into the marché [5] again.

Now he has reappeared. He is standing in front of the car, yelling at a vendor of silly bumper stickers and car trinkets because he just bought a plastic butterfly for a ridiculous 400 cFa, which he had the vendor put on the hood of his car, but is now enraged because the vendor didn’t put it on symmetrically enough for his tastes [6]. He has now removed the antenna and is using it as a measuring device to prove that the plastic thing is not precisely in the middle of the hood. The driver is obviously ticked off enough from the argument, but I can tell he’s avoiding my eyes, which are emitting the Glare of Death through the windowshield as I’m sitting on the other side with my arms crossed.

I can’t take it anymore. I get out of the car and grab my bags, which – when the driver sees – makes him all flustered. He drops his argument and motions with his hands for me to get back in the car, saying again that we’re going to leave. I tell him it’s too late, I’ve already been waiting 2 hours, and I want my money back – I’m going to look for another car. He says we’re leaving. I repeat my previous statement in a louder voice. He says to just give him 5 more minutes to look for one more passenger. I yell my repeated statement, now drawing attention which embarrasses him. He approaches me and hushes me saying, ok ok – if I just give him 25 cFa, we can go. I tell him I’m not giving him any more money and besides what does he need it for? He says he doesn’t have any more money and he just wants to buy a cigarette and then we can go. “You know why you don’t have any more money?” I scold in a loud voice, “It’s because you just wasted your money on a pink piece of plastic! I mean – what is that anyways?” I wave at the butterfly on the hood, exasperated. He hushes me, grabs my bags, throws them in the car, swears we’re leaving, guides me back into the seat, and then gets into the driver’s seat – at which point he pulls out and lights a cigarette as he starts the ignition. I didn’t even waste my breath asking why he dared asking me for 25 cFa when he already had a cigarette; I’m just glad we’re finally leaving.

Ten minutes later we pull over to a house on the side of the road because he says he’s arranged to pick up someone. He gets out of the car and then comes back solo 15 minutes later. “He’s not coming?” I inquire, to which the driver responds saying he’s just not ready yet and since I’m so pressée-ed [7], he’s just going to take me ahead first. We get on our way and start mulling over the meaning of his last statement, especially since I’ve become aware that he’s not appearing to look for other passengers. “You know,” I say very calmly, “I’ve already paid.” “I know,” he says. A couple seconds go by. “Meaning,” I further clarify, just to be on the safe side, “I’m not paying you anymore.” Sure enough – his next statement verified exactly what I’d been afraid of. “Well,” he said, “this is like you’ve loué-ed the car now.” [8]

That was the last straw. I went off on the tirade of a lifetime. I started berating this guy at the top of my lungs about how he was a cheat, how he’d wasted my time, and on and on and on. In the seconds I’d pause for air, he’d interject, saying that well, maybe I could at least cadeau him a couple loaves of bread … and some money [9].

“NO CADEAU!” I yell. And now I’m at the point where I’m threatening him with the lie that if he asks me one more time for any kind of extra compensation, I’m going to bring him to the chief of gendarmes (police) in our destination village (who I claim to know personally) and I’m going to have him imprisoned. The driver totally falls for it and waves his hands, saying that isn’t necessary [10]. I finally finish my diatribe and revert to glaring out the window. I'm still fuming, but I'm trying to calm down. In my head, I’m daring him to say one more thing.

He does. After about 5 minutes of silence, I can see him looking at me out of the corner of my eye. He asks, calmly but completely seriously, “Are you mad?”[11]

My head turns slowly towards him in disbelief that he’s really asking me this question. My eyes meet his and he smiles, then starts wagging his finger at me as if he’s just thought up the best idea in the world. “You know,” he says, “You and I should make babies together.” [12]

Cultural explanations
[1] The reason you never do this is because if something happens (such as the car breaks down or you’re not leaving quickly enough), the driver already has your money, and you’re obligated to stay with him – unless you can succeed in getting your money back from him, which is very difficult to do. You always pay only after arriving at your final destination.
[2] Translation: “We’re going to leave – right away, right away!”
[3] A bush taxi will never (or I should say, rarely) go on its way until the car is filled to capacity (meaning 7-8 people in a 5 passenger vehicle). This is why, when you look for bush taxis, it’s better to get in one that already has people in it. Otherwise, you may be waiting for a very long time.
[4] garri is manioch powder. Delicious with beans.
[5] marché is French for market. Every village has a designated market day once a week (or more than once a week if it’s a big city).
[6] The Togolese LOVE car trinkets. Every bush taxi will be ornate with beads or dirty stuffed animals hanging from the broken rearview mirrors, flags from random countries – especially the U.S. flag since they love America, bumper stickers with random euphemisms written on them, overpowerful car fresheners, you name it. They spend a ridiculous amount of money on these things – but then complain about how they have no money.
[7] To be pressé –ed is a term Peace Corps volunteers use, mixing the French and English language, meaning: to be in a rush.
[8] Togolese taxi drivers will often try to con foreigners into louer-ing, or renting, a car. This means that you pay for every empty seat in addition to your own. The advantage is that you can leave right away and don’t have to wait around for other passengers. A disadvantage is that sometimes you’ll agree to louer ahead of time, but then the driver will pick up other people and allow them to occupy the extra seats (which you’ve agreed to pay for) but then still demand that you pay the full fare at the end – which always results in a huge argument. The other thing is, drivers will often try to trick you into it; they’ll take you to your destination and then say that since they had extra seats, you should pay for those too. It’s absolutely absurd, but they’ll fight with you over it and you have to end up yelling to get your way. If you're too meek, they will absolutely take advantage of you (I had to learn to yell at taxi drivers when I came here - it was very difficult for me to do at the beginning, which meant I got cheated a lot at first). This is why you always have to be clear that you’re paying for your seat alone.
[9] To cadeau someone something means to give them a gift. The Togolese make really funny logic out of it. They’ll say that you don’t have to pay, but you should cadeau them something of equivalent value. They are never ashamed to ask for cadeaus.
[10] In this case I'm slightly ashamed to say that I took advantage of a stereotype; the Togolese believe that white people are incredibly powerful and have very high contacts. For example, people here believe that, since I come from America, I know Obama personally. In this particular case, I was lying to scare him, and he found it completely believable.
[11] The thing about taxi drivers is that arguing and yelling is their lifestyle. They do it without ever really taking it seriously. It’s all a game. They’ll yell and scream at someone one day and then be laughing and joking with them the next. It is for this reason that they won’t be able to tell when we’re actually mad because they think we’re just going along with how things just are.
[12] Welcome to my life, and to the life of every other female foreigner around here. You won’t know someone for 5 minutes and they’ll already be talking about marrying you and having babies with you. They’re not always completely serious, but it gets really old, really fast.

Apprentice Training and Camp UNITE - Now with PICTURES

The first week in August, I was busy preparing for a 2-day training of apprentices from various trades on the topic of sexual health. I may have mentioned this in a previous entry, but my closest volunteer neighbor, Danielle, is nearing the end of her service, and we wanted to do a project together before she leaves in November. So we put together this training session for apprentices, who normally drop out of school to follow a trade and therefore are not well educated on the subject. We chose 2 apprentices from each workshop with the idea that, after the training, they could bring the knowledge they gain back to their respective workshops and share it with the other apprentices, thereby serving as peer educators of sorts. We did the training for Danielle's village at the end of June, but weren't able to get around to doing it in my village until just a few weeks ago. The training in my village was made a little more complicated due to the need to translate into local languages (thankfully we got by with only having to translate from French into Kabiye and Ewe - in spite of fact that there are more than 6 dominant local languages that exist in my village). The Monday prior to the Thursday and Friday training, I had to walk around my entire village to personally hand out invitations to the 17 workshops, which was a little draining to do in the hot and humid weather - not to mention, I was coming down with a bad cold. But pretty much everybody I invited turned up, which made it worth it. I will admit too that the training did end up going better than I thought, although it's always hard to say how much new knowledge stayed in the apprentices' heads after walking away. I did have other villagers come up to me later feeling left out and asking why they hadn't been invited. It's always hard to please everybody.... I'm glad they were at least interested though.

The Saturday immediately following the training, I left to go up north for Camp UNITE; Peace Corps collaborates with local NGOs in Togo to fund a camp every vacation for boy & girl apprentices, and boy & girl students. Peace Corps volunteers from all over the country nominate motivated adolescents in their villages to be picked to go to camp, and then volunteers themselves work as counselors along with other motivated Togolese counterparts (who are nominated just as the kids are). This year I was a counselor for the girl students' camp week. We had a total of 50 girls and about 16 counselors (Togolese and Americans combined). As the camp is organized by Peace Corps Volunteers, it is very much like camp in the States - songs, dancing, recreational activities, etc. But everyday there were also sessions (led by counselors) on topics such as self-confidence, good communication, puberty & adolescence, HIV & AIDS, rape and sexual harrassment, etc. My 2 sessions to teach were on self-confidence and puberty & adolescence - the latter of which is a personal favorite of mine to teach because Togolese kids always have a ton of questions to ask (since it's kind of taboo to speak about at home). We also had "challenges" which girls worked on in small groups, encouraging them to learn the value of teamwork. Over the course of the week, we additionally took time to work on and present skits and traditional dances. At the end of the week, we had a special visit from the U.S. Ambassador in Togo and the Togolese Secretary of State. One of the groups of girls I worked with pulled together a skit on self-confidence and its role in defending oneself against sexual harrassment as a part of the welcoming ceremony for the special guests. My girls were absolutely HILARIOUS in their skit - they could have won Oscars in my opinion. I was so proud of them.

The first day of camp, the girls were all a little timid and quiet, but by Saturday morning - the day we were all leaving - they were all bawling their eyes out because they didn't want to leave. I guess that means camp was a success! My voice was pretty much gone by the end of the week from all the singing and shouting I did with the kids, and I collapsed from exhaustion on Saturday night, but I really did have fun. I'll definitely do it again next year.

P.S. I now have officially finished 15 months and have exactly 1 year left of my Peace Corps service in Togo!


PICTURES!!
The apprentices in my apprentice training



Me explaining the menstrual cycle



Edwige, my host mom - but also the President of the Association of Seamstresses, translating



A carpenter apprentice taking a turn explaining the reproductive systems




Danielle leading a small group discussion



Emma (the midwife at the dispensaire) and Odile (the intern there) presenting Family Planning methods



CAMP UNITE! Girls working on a challenge with us cheering them on



This is Paggie, a character we invented during stage who was supposed to represent obstacles and discouragement. He was a local peer educator dressed up in a way that frightened the girls but made me laugh.




My presentation during camp on Adolescence and Puberty




Another camp session (every volunteer presented a session in collaboration with a Togolese homologue)



Traditional dance night



Me and the girls in my dorm building explaining the traditional dance we presented. How do you like my traditional outfit? :)



Camp UNITE parade through the village on the last day of camp


Me and Martine, my Togolese homologue during camp


Dancing in the middle of the village



Lots of dancing at camp!



Another challenge



Larissa, me, and 2 girls on our Yellow team



Dances for the closing ceremony




Curious onlookers



The Yellow Team



The Ambassador giving her speech at the closing ceremony



My Yellow team girls' skit on self confidence and its role in defending oneself against sexual harrassment


All the camp participants



The presentation of the end of camp certificates; The certificates were given out in order of dorm building - This is my building doing a little jig after we received ours



Candelight ceremony



Bonfire dance the last night of camp



Some sad campers who don't want to leave

Dave's visit

My boyfriend, Dave, came and visited me for the month of July. We had a blast! I felt especially lucky because he was here for my 24th birthday (my 2nd out of the 3 birthdays I will have in Togo). The pictures below are from his visit.


Welcome to Togo, Dave!


Birthday package from mom


4th of July Smores-making over the gas stove (we were too tired to light the charcoal and do it the real way)


a very hot 4th of July 2009 (Dave's first day in my village)


Birthday pancakes on July 5th



Kids playing soccer in my compound with a very attentive audience under the gazeebo shade



Dave eating comme at my market



Cooking at home





Dave helping out at baby-weighing




a view from my village



cute kids on the way home from the dispensaire after a rainstorm



my "neighborhood"



Reading on my front porch



me & Dave, credit to my little host brother's amateur photography skills



Solim and Fofo (my little host family siblings) giving Sudoku a shot




shot from my back window (I just liked this picture)




Dave doing dishes



Rainy days (it rained the first solid week Dave was here - This is why we call it rainy season)



bush taxi full of Peace Corps volunteer yovos on the way north to Kara






Fufu for lunch in Kara




Danielle, her boyfriend Nate, and Dave on the search for our hotel



dinner with real salad!





On the way to Danielle's friend's home village in Kara region where we were invited for lunch




Danielle's friend's family




We met up with some other local volunteers in Kara





>Evala- the coming of age ceremony for young Kabiye boys. The events were packed. In this last picture if you look closely, you can see the man in the grey suit at the desk; that's Togo's current president, Faure Gnassingbe



Soccer game in Emily's village




Dave, Emily, Fenway



Togolese doing laundry in the river



Dave with Fenway & Wrigley (Emily's pets)



the whole ensemble


Dave on a moto on the way to my village




Bike ride up to Elavagnon (Danielle's village)




Our garden is growing!



Lunch chez Danielle; courtesy of Nate, we had enchiladas with real cheese from America





Nap time on the cool cement floor




Look familiar? (refer to pictures from Dad's visit) My little host brother later asked me why American men don't like wearing shirts.




Making peanut butter



Eating coconut after I finally got it open





Dave's new Togolese outfits




This is how I get water during rainy season





The last step of peanut butter-making: grinding the peanuts into butter at the mill


My youngest host brother, Fofo, volunteered to fix my latrine door which was falling off because the nail had rusted out. It was really cute and I had to sneak a picture.





The cute kids in my compound (notice Solim dancing by herself in the background)





Dave's goodbye pictures with my host family (in the last picture though, I don't know the kid on the far right; he was just a neighbor kid who decided to jump in last minute)



These last pictures are just of Green Turtle Lodge in Ghana, which is an isolated "resort" by the ocean where we spent time right before Dave went back to the States.

June activities

Hey everyone! This'll just be a quick update because I don't have a lot of new news, but I haven't written an entry in a while now...

Since Dad left at the beginning of June, I've been trying to adjust back to solitary life in village. I felt a little unfocused since I was in the States for most of May on vacation, and then Dad came out right afterwards, so I felt a strong need to be productive again, but the biggest adjustment I needed to make first was getting used to being alone again. I will say though, contrary to most warnings I got from people, it was not that difficult to come back to Togo after having gone back to the States. It was hard to say goodbye to everyone again, but the thing is, I don't currently have a place of my own in America; my house and my work and projects and current friends are all in Togo. So interestingly enough, I almost felt like I was actually away from "home" while in the States.

A new stage, or Peace Corps training class of volunteers, came in at the beginning of June, which kind of smacked me in the face with the reality that I only have just over one year left of service now. Time flies. It'll be really hard to say goodbye to all the volunteers who are ending their service this year, leaving in August, and being replaced by these new people.

Over the course of June, I've been focusing on a select few number of projects. I gave several expositions and sensibilizations on the importance of the Moringa tree in my village, and then successfully distributed about 150 of the trees that we (the middle school environmental club and I) planted back in April on Earth Day. I distributed them to students who sat in on the sensibilizations - the hope being that once they understand what an essential tree it is, they'll take good care of it. I also sent each kid home with one to give to a neighbor, instructing them to pass it on along with a verbal summary of what they now know about the tree. My goal is to eventually give a Moringa tree to most families in my village and equip them with the knowledge of its benefits.

My closest Peace Corps volunteer neighbor, Danielle and I have also been working hard organizing a training on sexual health for apprentices in our villages. Most apprentices have dropped out of school in order to devote all of their time to learning a profitable trade. The disadvantage to that is that they are therefore not exposed to information about different sexually transmitted illnesses, how one gets pregnant, the significance of the changes the body undergoes during adolescence, etc. So Danielle and I, with the help of some of homologues, organized an intensive 2-day training on the material; we went around to all of the ateliers, or workshops with apprentices, in each of our villages and selected the 2 most dynamic apprentices from each workshop. The idea is that after the selected adolescents are trained, they will go back to their ateliers and spread the message to the other apprentices - thereby serving as peer educators of sorts. We already did the training in Danielle's village last week, and it seemed to be very successful. The apprentices seemed very eager to learn all the material. The training in my village is scheduled for next week - and I'm a little more nervous about mine than I was hers because my training will have to be in local language (and so much information and effect and time is always lost in the process of translation), my homologues aren't quite as dynamic, and my kids are a little quieter too. But I'm hoping for the best.

I've also started planning a really big project for the end of August/ beginning of September based on a frustration I've developed over the fact that there are malnourished children of a number of women who've been coming to the baby-weighing sessions and have not shown much improvement (i.e. gained a satisfactory amount of weight) for months now. It's always a difficult situation for me on Thursdays, when we do the baby-weighing at my dispensaire, because there are usually so many women, and then there's the language barrier (the midwife and nurse are usually in the other room doing vaccinations, so I'm usually on my own), so I don't have the time or ability to convey detailed messages to the mother concerning what she must do to get her baby to achieve a healthy weight. And then sometimes, even when I do do that, the mother will give me an understanding nod to appease me, but then she'll go home and do nothing. It's that same frustrating fact I always allude to that I can only do so much, and then it's all in their hands. But I came up with the idea to do a training over the course of several meetings per week for a month with the mothers of all these consistently malnourished babies. The way it would hypothetically work would be that 3 times a week for 2 hours or so, we would all meet together and actually cook a nutritious meal to give them a demonstration of the type of food they should be feeding their child. While the food is cooking, I, with the help of some homologues and a maman lumiere (a mother in the same socioeconomic status as the rest of the mothers with healthy living habits and a healthy child - i.e. a model mother) would give one sensibilization per day on subjects such as the importance of hygiene, what to do when a child has diahrrea, the essential food groups that must be incorporated into a child's diet, etc. etc. The children are also weighed at the beginning and end of the month-long training, and the hope is that, if the mothers start incorporating the information into their behaviors at home, the child will ultimately show an improvement in weight by the end of the training. It's an opportunity to finally give exclusive attention to the women who are obviously struggling to support the health of their children. I'm really excited about the potential for success with this project, but I still have a lot of planning and work that needs to go into the organization first before this can all get pulled together.

So that's what I've been working on, and I've been glad to feel busy again. My boyfriend Dave is coming out in 2 days for a month, so I'm really excited about that too. He'll be bringing me a replacement camera so hopefully by the next entry I'll be able to post pictures again too.