Torn

A storm was coming. Lightning was illuminating the cumulonimbus clouds every few seconds as they rolled in faster and faster with the increasing wind. I was in the thatch-roofed cooking hut with 10 year-old Solim, who was at work making dinner - the usual meal of pate (corn and manioch flour boiled and stirred into a consistency similar to that of play-dough). The hut was dimly lit by a lantern hanging on a nail on the wall, but Solim had propped a weak flashlight between her cheek and shoulder to better see into the pot as she used both hands to stir with a wooden spoon half her size. She was thinking about and calculating out loud the difference in our ages: 23 and 10. We had just been talking about birthdays; as is the case with the majority of children in the village, she doesn't know her exact birthday - only that she was born on a Wednesday (the Togolese use the days of the week to determine the name of their children), and that sometime this year, she will turn 11. Outside, a handful of men were wandering into the compound, weary and still dressed from their all-day work in the fields. Now that it has started raining regularly again, everyone is hurrying to plant their fields of corn. The sooner you plant, the sooner it grows, and the sooner you can sell it for money. But the rush can mean taking a risk; if you plant your fields immediately after the first rain of the season, but then it doesn't rain again for a while, you could waste an entire crop - and that's a serious consequence for someone whose main source of income comes from the yield of their fields. I don't know a single farmer who doesn't immediately go get a drink upon arriving home from the fields. Even the threatening storm couldn't keep these men from crowding into my host mom Edwige's one-room boutique to take a shot or two of Sodabi - the local equivalent to vodka.

"So that means, when you were 13 years old, I was born!" Solim said triumphantly with a grin.
"That's right," I confirmed. "Now see if you can calculate what years we were each born in," I challenged. But right then we were interrupted by shouts from outside. Solim and I looked at each other and then jumped up and sprinted out of the hut to see what was going on. The wind had really picked up by now and was whipping sand into the air. I squinted and tried to shield my eyes with my hand to see. Then I saw him and my heart started pounding. He was dressed in a light grey suit and was moving slowly, putting one foot just in front of the other, heading directly for my porch. The way the light from the flashlights of the shouting men illuminated his suit made him look like a ghost. He stopped about 5 feet from my porch gate but still refused to turn and face the men and Edwige, who were quickly approaching and yelling at him in Kabiye.

I mentioned in my last entry that, only recently, I'd started having problems with this village fou, who was coming and hanging out on my porch during the days. It was a little annoying, but he seemed harmless - just a little crazy is all. Edwige or somebody would usually chase him away right away. Truthfully, I felt sorry him. As the story goes, he had been a student and was going to enter his last year in high school when, after coming back from summer vacation with his Dad in the north, he started acting differently and was never the same since. He only continued to spiral downward, affected by an undiagnosed mental illness. He's my age.

So I pitied him more than anything. But then he started stealing stuff from my porch. Everything was retrieved and he was forbidden to come back again, but he kept returning anyways. The first time I really began to feel anxious about his visits was when one day he showed up and no one else was in the compound and all of my neighbors were at their fields. As harmless as I believed him to be, I realized that if he did try anything, no one would be around to help me. After that visit, he was seriously warned by members of the village who were intervening on my behalf - and with the support of his parents- that if he showed up one more time, he would be gravely beaten.

And yet here he was again. I don't know if my heart was beating fast out of fright for wondering what his true intentions are for coming back again, or out of anxiety from seeing Edwige break off a large branch from a tree and hand it to the burly mason who then advanced quickly towards the fou. I knew what was coming.

Bolts of lightning were tearing across the sky directly above us now. I couldn't help but feel as if I was in the middle of a scene from a horror movie. The mason stopped only inches away from the fou's face and, yelling, waved the big stick above his head, but the fou didn't budge. The mason then pressed the stick against the fou's chest and pushed it hard enough that the fou stumbled back a couple steps before regaining his balance and planting his feet firmly against the ground again. That was it; the mason raised the stick high and, with a loud crack, brought it down hard against the fou's chest.

I immediately cringed and turned away, hearing myself whimper. I could not for the life of me understand the entertainment that the crowding observers saw in the beating that followed. I turned to look again only when I heard loud shouts from the crowd. The fou had started fighting back! Now, I can barely handle fight scenes in movies much less in real life. I was on the verge of tears.

The fou was so strong that he was beginning to gain advantage over the mason, so other men now jumped in. The fou was wrestled to the ground, and his arms were pinned behind his back. One of the men grabbed the stick and brought it down twice on the fou's face. Horrified, I turned away again, praying that this would all just end. The women were rushing about trying to take down part of the clothesline to use to tie the fou up.

Right then, a big drop of rain fell on my nose. It was followed by another - and then another. And then the rain started coming down in sheets. Solim and I rushed to take everything in from outside and put it under cover. In all my haste, I lost track of what was going on with the fight. It was only 10 minutes later, when I was catching my breath under the shelter of the porch in front of Edwige's boutique, that I saw the dim lantern light over under the gazeebo about 10 meters away, where everyone seemed to be seated. I couldn't see where they'd put the fou. Then the lightning lit up the sky and the compound and I gasped; the fou was standing outside under the pouring rain, his arms tied behind his back with a rope whose other end was tied to the wooden pole of the clothesline. "Are they forcing him to stand outside in the rain?" I exclaimed angrily. Solim looked up from the cuvette of freshly prepared local tchouk drink that she was in the process of filtering and sucked her teeth as an expression of disapproving confirmation. "They've already beat him, and now they're going to make him sick too?" I was furious from the inhumanity I saw in the situation. But a wall of rain separated me from the people to whom I felt I needed to express my feelings that this was going too far. Suddenly, one of the men emerged from the downpour, on his way into the boutique. I yelled my concern to him as he passed, and, half drunk from the shots he'd taken before the whole incident, he only scolded back, "He could have been trying to kill you and you're worried about the rain?"
"But he wasn't trying to kill me!" I shouted back, irritated by the exaggeration, as he disappeared into the boutique. But my voice was lost to the thundering rain on the tin roof.

The rain finally let up and the fou was escorted back to his house where, I later found out, he was thrown and locked in his room for who knows how long. He hasn't come back to visit me since, which the Togolese who helped me find a triumph, but everytime I ask about whatever happened to him, my question is dismissed with a wave of the hand - as if I'm ridiculous for even still considering him. After the incident, whenever I tried to express my disapproval over leaving him in the rain, I received laughter as a response. "He deserved it," the Togolese would say, and then smile into the distance, as if recalling the 'luck' they interpreted the storm to be in contributing to the punishment they gave him. Even Edwige, who I normally find so understanding, wasn't sympathetic. If she and I couldn't see eye to eye on this issue, how much further, I realized, I was from being on the same page as the rest of the community.

Even using story form, I find it difficult to express exactly what my emotions are regarding this whole event. It was, hands down, one of the more horrible things I've witnessed since coming to Togo. It was a situation in which I felt completely torn. On one hand, I was being being protected by my village. To complain too much about their approach would be interpreted as an insult to their help. On the other hand, while I did appreciate their act of intervention, I did not agree with the way they treated the fou, whose case, complicated by his mental state, only I seemed to consider as delicate. Even if I did say something, convincing the others of the basis of my plea seemed hopeless; I'm just the naive American who doesn't understand how things work in Africa.

I felt utterly helpless.

Happy Spring!

The end of March marked the end of the second trimester at the local middle school. It was finished off by what Togo nationally celebrates as "cultural week" - a week during which the students performed the traditional dances of various ethnic groups (my village is a good mix of at least 6 major Togolese ethnic groups), held a number of soccer matches, played numerous games and activities, and organized a picnic and dance (which scarily reminded me exactly of high-school dances in the States- except now I was one of those creepy teacher supervisors on the side). It was a fun little break and interesting for me to participate in though, in spite of the pre-scheduled time schedule for the events, everything panned out on "l'heure africaine" (African time). Translation: nothing started any earlier than two hours late, which unfortunately ended up negatively affecting some of the sensibilizations I was scheduled to give a few times that week. The American that I am, I showed up at precisely the scheduled time for each event - but with a book, as I anticipated this would happen. I've become very good at waiting.

After cultural week was "spring break", which ended the Tuesday after Easter. For Easter weekend, I went down to Kpalimé with a number of other volunteers for a fake traditional Togolese wedding between 2 Peace Corps volunteers who had started dating at the beginning of their service. It was all just for fun, although it's hard to say if all the host moms who came didn't think it was real - even though I'm pretty sure they were informed. In any case it was really fun to see a bunch of volunteers who I rarely get to see and my host family from stage (training) as well. My host mom was so excited to see me that she immediately ran out and got a whole bag of oranges and made a fresh jar of peanut butter for me as a gift. The wedding was on Saturday, and the next day, Sunday, was Easter. I spent most of the day crammed in a bush taxi with other volunteers heading back towards village, so, for the first time in my life, I didn't get to go to an Easter church service. I missed it. The closest thing I came to a sunrise service was at the street-side rice and bean shack where we were all grabbing breakfast; a couple other volunteers and I were reminiscing about Easter services/celebrations back in the States, and we were all trying to remember the traditional Easter hymns and then belt out as many verses as we could recall - usually dissolving into laughter at the end because we couldn't usually remember much past the first verse of any of the hymns, and because all of our off-key voices together didn't sound too great. I think we may have annoyed the rice and beans guy but, I have to admit, it was nice.

The most eventful parts of this past week were my numerous encounters with one of the village "fou"s ("fou" is the French word for "crazy", and the title the Togolese use for the mentally ill, who are not usually institutionalized due to a lack of facilities in Togo). This particular "fou" is about my age (I'm not sure but I think he's schizophrenic) and, all of the past week, decided to hang out on my porch and refuse to leave. After the family in my compound chased him away with a stick so many times, he seemed to become aggravated and to "punish me", made off with my running shoes, which I always leave out on my front porch. He then proceeded to wear the shoes around village for 2 days, locking himself in his room with them whenever anyone went after him to retrieve them. Finally, some young men were able to successfully tackle him to the ground and remove the shoes by force. Due to his various other (failed) attempts to steal other items of mine, such as my bike and cell phone, and his refusal to obey to stay away from my house, the village people have decided to punish him with a good beating. Needless to say, I am not very pleased with this decision, but I am at a loss for any other effective solution. I have to say though, it is was really nice to see so many village members intervene on my behalf; it was a true testament to how well small villages take care of their volunteers.

I'm in Atakpamé this weekend because Peace Corp's bike mechanic, Paul, is passing through all the major villages in Togo (as he does twice a year) to fix up any bikes that volunteers bring by. My bike gets a lot of use and was in need of a good tune-up and a few reparations, so I rode it in for that purpose (if ever anything goes wrong with your bike in Togo, the worst idea ever is to take it to a local mechanic; they take a hammer to it in effort to fix it, so Paul's services are highly valued and appreciated). I'll be biking back to village this afternoon, though I'm not looking forward to it too much because I've picked something up and am having intestinal problems again - something I'm very used to by now but which is nevertheless still annoying as it always interferes with planned activities.

I'm getting excited because in only two and a half weeks now, I'll be on a plane headed for the States for a 2 week vacation to see my boyfriend, family, friends, and my sister Laura's graduation from college! I can't wait!