Hello Togo!: June 2009

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.

From May 5 - May 21, I went home to the States for a brief vacation! I had a blast but unfortunately lost my camera during the trip, so I can't post any pictures from the trip or from the several weeks in Togo just prior to leaving. However, a few days after arriving back in Togo, my Dad came for a 10-day visit. Thanks to the use of his camera, I've been able to post some pictures from his trip.

Dad's first day in Togo; a picture of us in front of the Peace Corps headquarters in Lome.

Taking a nap at the hotel, exhausted from the long trip and the heat.

Fabiola and me at the Grand Marche in Lome. This is my last picture with Fabiola before she ended her service this past week :(

On the way to Notse with some other volunteers for a Peace Corps organized festival advertising the benefits of the Moringa tree to local Togolese (Dad's first bush taxi ride)

Arriving at the hotel in Notse.

Setting up the charcoal at my booth for my presentation on the transformation of Moringa seeds into oil.

Grinding the Moringa seeds

Kids' Corner

Unloading Moringa trees to sell

Moringa advertisement poster

Moringa parade

Explaining oil transformation to interested Togolese

me and Dad!

Teaching the Togolese how to play musical chairs

Our audience

View of the marche from Dad's and my hotel room in Notse

Breakfast of bouillie the morning we left Notse

Gas station - bush taxi style

Walking to the Atakpame Peace Corps transit house with some other volunteers on the way back to village

Hanging out/Talking on the phone at the transit house

Dad and the little friends he made on the way to the Atakpame marche

Stocking up on vegetables - because I can't get them in village!

street food lunch

Dad's first moto-taxi ride in Togo - the last leg of the trip before we finally got to my village

nap time at my house

On the way to visit Danielle (that's me on the moto up ahead)

Chez Danielle

Touring Elavagnon (Danielle and Dad)

Now that rainy season is starting, Danielle and I wanted to try planting a vegetable garden. Dad helped plant.

Dad drawing water from the well

Dad and his favorite part of my village: the pigs

Visiting the school where I teach during the school year

The mill outside my house

Cooking and eating dinner - courtesy of the self-timer feature (The sign on my wall in the above picture is the sign Danielle made and put up for my arrival back in Togo - it was really sweet)

Dad's first taste of Tchouk (the local beer)

We went to the fields to show Dad what that's like. On the way we crossed paths with some Fulani cows being herded off to the market to be sold.

At the fields

Helping my host family plant peanuts

We stopped by one of my village neighbor's houses on the way back from the fields because he wanted to show off the skin he had kept from an alligator he caught