December in Togo and Christmas in Ghana

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! This is just a quick update as I'm en route back to village after a wonderful vacation in Ghana for Christmas. Thanks to family and friends' very thoughtful cards and care packages and presents, I had a quiet early Christmas celebration by myself at home in village, but on the 22nd, I left with 2 of my friends (Emily and Fabiola) to first go visit host families from training and then head on to Ghana for a little vacation. We had a blast! Our eyes were bugging out as we entered Accra and saw actual highways and a mall (!!!!). We ate great food (ice cream, mexican food, chinese food, etc.) and saw a REAL movie (Australia with Nichole Kidman, etc.) in a REAL movie theater. After getting out of Accra we went to a cheap resort where we went on a canoe ride through mangroves and where I got to swim in the ocean ... It was all so relaxing and wonderful. Getting from place to place was a little stressful and tiring, but all in all everything went smoothly and we had a great time. And now that I'm rested and refreshed, I am happy to be back home in Togo!

My Christmas decorations at my house

Tea time with peach tea crystal light and peanut butter cookies during Emily's first visit to my village since she dropped me off at post visit

making peanut butter pancakes over a charcoal stove (Danielle's gas for her stove ran out) on Danielle's porch

Edwige and I by her sewing machine

The garden of the uncle who lives in my compound; I'm experimenting with green beans and lettuce here

Lunch at Emily's host family's house

We bought chickens as Christmas gifts for our host families (they don't look excited here but they were!)

My host mom killing the chicken we gave her.


The best breakfast we've had in 7 months - with REAL toast and butter! This picture was taken our first morning in Accra, Ghana

Emily and I in front of the Christmas tree at the Accra shopping mall on Christmas Day. All the other stores were closed but we were excited anyways to be inside a mall!

Ice Cream and a Movie!


On our canoe ride through the mangroves

A view from the canoe

Emily and Fabiola lying out on Green Turtle beach

Green Turtle Lodge

The cute little hut we were staying in

On the beach with Emily

Drinking out of a coconut that some vacationing Germans gave us

Breakfast on the beachfront the morning we were leaving

To Belong

The man lifted the lid and I bent over and squinted through the smoke from the blazing wood fire to look into the pot of boiling sauce. I saw scales - patterned with diamond shapes. I looked up at him. "Is that....snake?"
"Viper," he specified with a grin, his eyes glistening. "Very special meat."
"Where did you get it?" I asked.
"I killed it! This morning - in the bush," he declared proudly.
"Did it try to attack you?"
"No - I was digging a hole. I came across the snake's hole. The snake was inside. I killed it with my machete."
"What were you digging a hole for in the first place?" I was curious.
"Yes."
"No - why were you digging?"
"A hole!" he replied emphatically.
Ok - we were clearly having some communication problems. I dropped the question and peered back into the pot. I noticed about a dozen white balls bobbing up and down with the bubbles. "What are those circle things?"
"Eggs," he said. "Snake babies - inside!"
"The eggs were inside the snake?" I asked.
"Oui!" The way he replied made me feel like I'd asked a silly question. The man's French wasn't very good but he rambled on excitedly. "You eat eggs, you need to drink water at same time." He made a face and a smacking noise with his mouth. I assumed he was referring to something about the taste. "But very good! You'll try, no?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "Sure, why not? I'll try a little."

It was actually really good! You could pull the snake's muscles out in long strips - kind of like string cheese - and they were chewy and kind of reminded me of chicken. I confess I didn't try the eggs. The were the exact size, shape, and texture of human eyeballs which somehow made them unappetizing to me. But the Togolese men who had gathered for the special occasion of eating snake meat were excited enough that I'd even tried the meat itself. I noticed that none of the women were eating the snake. There are some meats (like dog, for example) that men will eat but women won't (or can't? I don't know. Foreigners like myself seem to take exception)- viper must be one of them.

Thanks to my large appetite and my open-mindedness for trying all kinds of food (an attitude for which I thank my parents and their efforts to encourage me to try different cultural foods as a child), I've succeeded in pleasing a lot of Togolese by "Eating like an African!" as they put it, and especially by even acquiring a strong affinity for certain local dishes, like pate. It pleases me to please them. Isn't that the way it is though? I've been thinking about that a lot lately: the longing a foreigner feels to somehow fit in.

What does fitting in mean for me? Well, I still haven't successfully balanced a big bowl of corn on my head yet (I'm still trying!), but I love that I'm at least now known by name. Every time I go out, the kids in my village run out to wave to me, calling out, "Davi Kristine!" until I'm a long way down the road(Davi is a title used for young women). Others have mastered "Kristina" while still others (usually younger ones) call me "Sakina" or even "Sissine". I know what the younger ones mean though and I'll take it (Please - anything other than "yovo")! Sometimes when I'm making the 45 minute bike ride up to Danielle's village on the dirt road that's a direct route between our two villages, I'll pass someone on a moto who will call me, if not by my own name, at least by my village name in salutation as they drive by. I love it too when I'm at another market in a neighboring village and I'm approached by someone who recognizes me as Kristina. Slowly but surely I'm getting a hang of the Togolese names too and learning who everybody is! I can tell they feel just as good as I do when addressed by name. There's nothing like being recognized and acknowledged to make one feel at home here (against all else)!

I was walking home from my girl's club the other day with 2 of my favorite girls who had insisted on helping me carry all my materials. They're older and confident and really pleasant to be around. As we were walking and chatting and laughing, one of them suddenly clapped her hands together and exclaimed, "Oh - the other volunteer left, which is sad, but now we have Kristina and she's one of us!" She couldn't possibly understand how good that made me feel; To be accepted like that - I couldn't ask for a better Christmas present from Togo.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hey everybody - I just wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving! In the spirit of the season I just wanted to say I'm very thankful that I have all of you family and friends who I love and who care enough about me to follow my stories... All of your comments and emails and calls mean more to me than you can imagine.

This'll be a short blog; I just thought you'd be interested in what I did for Thanksgiving since people have already started asking. Every year the Togo Country Director has people over to her house in Lome for a big prepared/part-pot-luck feast. It was the most unique Thanksgiving dinner I've ever had! The following is what was on the food table:

Turkey
Goat
Couscous
Cucumber Salad
Sweet Potato Salad and various Potato Salads
Mushroom Gravy
Pita bread and Hummus
Rice and Beans in Coconut milk
Green Beans
Coleslaw
Corn Fritters
Assorted nuts
Chili

for dessert
Pumpkin pie
Banana cake
mini pecan pies
pound cake
other little sugary cookie things

There were a LOT of volunteers there so the food went fast (the dessert didn't last 5 minutes). For those of you who know me well, it may not be a surprise to you that I was among the people at the front of the line and had 3 servings of the main course, helped Emily finished her (first), and then was also there at the front of the line for the pumpkin pie - which is all I really wanted for Thanksgiving. From 3:30 in the afternoon on, I was in a food coma, and spent the rest of the afternoon talking on the phone with family at home. It was a great day!

Emily and I before dinner

Just watch the sunset at the end of the day

IMPORTANT INFO
1) I've posted pictures! See this entry and the ones entitled "Pictures","A true story", and "AIDS Ride" for recent photos.
2) For those interested in sending mail: Due to some problems with missing mail, I opened up a new B.P. with my neighbor Danielle, which seems to be working MUCH more reliably. The address (which I would recommend you use, although the other B.P. will remain functioning as well) is:

Kristina Jacobsen
B.P. 17
Elavagnon, Togo
West Africa

Three months into living permanently at post and I was taking pride in how busy I was keeping myself, thinking, "I don't understand the PCVs who complain that there are some days when they have nothing to do"! Well, I must confess, this past weekend I felt the first pangs of boredom. I'm currently in Lome - a trip that has been planned for some time now as I'd been planning on coming down to the PC Country Director's house for her Thanksgiving dinner (which she offers annually to volunteers), taking advantage of the trip down to simultaneously pick up some work-related supplies from an NGO here, to get a Ghana visa from the Ghana Embassy (for my anticipated trip to Ghana for Christmas with some friends), and to go personally file a complaint with TOGOCELL about my phone's now long-term inability to receive texts (I learned fast how completely useless trying to fix the problem through the customer service line was, as, to put it briefly, customer service does NOT exist in Togo as it does in the States). In any case, I didn't have anything to prepare for this week in village, and this last week was similar to the other weeks in November - somewhat slow due to the absence of people to work with. November is bean harvesting season and my village is literally a ghost town during the day since everyone is in the fields. As a result, my sensibilizations at the dispensaire have been put on hold as the midwife and I agreed that the few women who come and go between 9 and 11 (but not all at the same time) do not constitute a substantial enough crowd to bother with a sensibilization. The last couple weeks have been exam weeks at the local middle school, so my girls club meetings have been put on hold too. My house renovations are now completely finished so I don't have any of that to tinker around with anymore either... So I've been frequently finding myself with a book, sprawled out on a wooden arm chair under the gazeebo in my compound, fanning myself with a bookmark and reading the hot afternoons away.

Of course there's always work I could do: preparing for future presentations and meetings, sorting paperwork, etc....But as proactive as I pride myself in being, I do have a procrastinating side to me as well. And especially when it's just so darn HOT during the day these days, my heat-induced lethargy finds support in the thought: "Well I can always do that later". In that sense, my boredom is my own fault. My boredom this past weekend was certainly short-lived though. I've been so busy here in Lome that I can't even keep my thoughts and plans straight. And when I get back, my weeks will be busy again with a number of PCV visits and as I get back into the full swing of things with the onset of December (I can't believe it's the end of the year already!).

The last chance I got, I was reading some of my fellow volunteers' internet blogs, and their creative and humorous writing made my blog seem so comparably dry and boring! I'll tell you - the greatest thing about being in country with a number of other volunteers with whom you can meet up with every once and a while is that you can laugh your heads off with them over situations that were probably frustrating and stressful in the moment, but somehow, in the presence of a sympathetic camarade, become hilarious. [To better understand my meaning of this, please read my recent blog entry entitled "A TRUE STORY" for an example of such a situation]

As a foreigner in this country who hasn't quite yet grasped an understanding of the reasons for everything that goes on, I can't emphasize enough how important it is (I've discovered) to have a sense of humor about things. Sometimes I think someone could crazy here if they couldn't just laugh things off (Emily - my best laughing partner - agrees). It's become my favorite thing about those "every-once-and-a-while" times when I can meet up and share stories with other volunteers.

As for the time in between ... I'll tell you something: As exhaustingly busy and stressful some days can occasionally be, or, in contrast, as bored as I can feel on some other seemingly endless days, there's something about those sunsets...
Especially when I'm over at the dispensaire, which is set far enough away from the heart of the village that all I hear is the chirping of the crickets, and I'm watching that sun turn from yellow to orange to hazy pink as it sets over the cornfields, with the stalks swaying in the cool breeze that's finally providing respite from the heat of the day... In the sheer utter peace I feel in those moments, I will never deny that I'm glad I'm here.

PICTURES!

I finally got the chance to post pictures from the last 3 months! See "A true story" and "AIDS Ride" blog entries for more as well.

my compound

Andre, Michel, and Sylvere (sons of the family with in front of whom I share my compound) in front of my house

Andre in the boutique the family owns

Edwige and Mondano (mother and daughter in my compound) preparing roasted peanuts

Edwige and Solomn grinding pima (hot pepper) for the sauce for lunch

(sorry it's blurry) Edwige, Florence, Solomn, Sylvere and me in front of the cooking hut

me and Michel in front of the fence we made around the moringa tree we planted

Yvette (another daughter), Andre, and Sylvere dressed up in their pagnes for church

Me and the family under the compound gazeebo

my porch

the mill in front of my house under the Harmattan mist

Mr. Pelenguei (the Dad of my compound/my landlord) grinding corn flour at the mill

more huts in my village

another scene from my village


market day (the busiest day in town)

The CEG (middle school) at sunset

The CEG during the day; I spend a lot of time here

the local elementary school

the road on the way to the dispensaire

the village dispensaire (health center)

my homologue, Emma (a midwife) giving a malaria shot

The nurse (Mr. Beleyi) and the pharmacy manager (Mr. Kezie) doing paperwork. They are some of the nicest people I've ever known.



The wound treating room, the prenatal consultation room, and the delivery room where women give birth at the dispensaire



Mark (a college student who helped me translate during my first sensibilizations). This picture was taken one evening when we were seeking out the CEG director in his fields -There was such a beautiful sunset!

bagging enriched porridge flour on my porch


One of my favorite village women making corn porridge, and then me taking a turn at it

I love this picture: This is Danielle, one of my best PCV friends. She lives in a village just 15K north of me. This is her new puppy Tache, which means "Spot" in French.

Doing laundry



Visiting Emily; cooking dinner by candlelight (not like we have a choice - she doesn't have electricity either), taking a nap on her cement floor one afternoon (it's way cooler on the floor in the hot afternoons), and Emily drinking Tchouk - a popular local beverage that one of her neighbor girls brought by for her - after having spilled half of it on herself

Talking on the phone in a local church building, one of the few places in my village where I can get reception and where I usually have privacy - although this photo was taken by a child observor who was lucky enough to be trusted by me to take a few pictures when he saw my camera and asked if he could...