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!