I’ve got quite the dilemma. Most volunteers have a pet of some sort, usually a dog or a cat and I’m pretty sure I’ll get one of my own once I’m at post. But the dilemma isn’t whether I should choose a dog or a cat; it’s whether or not I should get a monkey instead. That’s right a monkey. I have a friend here who can get me a monkey for free. But I’m just not sure whether or not I want to have one as a pet. At first the idea of owning a monkey sounds incredibly appealing. It’s an adorable animal that you can teach words and the thought of the furry little creature swinging through the trees, devouring the bananas you give him and most of all perched on your shoulder just sounds absolutely amazing. Not to knock dogs or anything but they’ve got nothing on monkeys. Then there’s the other side of owning a monkey, the part with the responsibility and hard work. First of all I don’t know the first thing about raising a monkey and I can only imagine that it’s pretty damn tough. It’s probably like raising a child, a child who throws his shit. And while the responsibility which comes with owning a monkey is great and should be enough in itself to turn someone away it’s not what will probably stop me from getting one. There are two reasons that will probably stop me. First there is absolutely no way in hell I could ever possibly part with my monkey. I definitely can’t bring him back to the States with me and it would tear me apart to leave him behind. I keep thinking about that Thora Birch movie Monkey Business I watched as a child. The other reason I don’t think I’ll get one is that I just don’t think it’s a very ethical thing to do. Plucking a monkey out of his natural habitat and taking him for my own. I’d be wonderful to my monkey but I just don’t think I’m what he needs. If I left and released him into the wild he would probably die. He’ll have to adapt and it wouldn’t work quite like those heart-warming animal movies like Andre or Free Willy (1-3). Yes owning a monkey would be pretty sweet but I think I’ll go with a dog.
Another bit of animal related news, the other night I saw the biggest spider yet. I’ve seen some pretty big ones so far but this one was bigger than my hand. We were playing cards in the hall when I saw it scurry across the floor. When I pointed it out to my host siblings I watched in amazement as two tiny barefooted children immediately ran and began grinding their heels into it. They left it dead on the floor and when I used my sandals as tongs to pick it’s carcass up and throw it out the window they all burst out laughing.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Food Talk
Well here I sit eating some pate. Pate is a traditional dish of I’m not exactly sure what. It seems like millet. Its served as a big soft white ball from which you pull apart pieces and dip them in the accompanying sauce. Members of my family eat pate daily and the first time I tried it was outside with my brothers one evening. Following their lead I dipped my fingers into the pate to pull a piece apart. What I didn’t expect was that pate is served scorchingly hot and my tender fingers couldn’t mimic their course, tough hands. Thankfully when I’m served pate now, they provide me with a fork which makes eating much less painful. The other common traditional dish is fufu which I had heard of and will have for the first time this coming Sunday. I’m kind of excited since I know it’s a common meal all over Africa. Although I don’t know of what it consists I did read that it’s nutritional value is about the same as eating a paper bag.
Went to Church
Today I went to church with my family and I must say it was definitely an experience. The Jehovah’s Witness congregation wasn’t large but they were all very excited to see me there. My father was especially glad I decided to attend and he even gave me the Watchtower program in English! I don’t know where he found one in English, his was in French but everyone else’s was in Ewe. While I’m not thinking of becoming Jehovah’s Witness, it was nice to see everyone so excited that I was going especially my brothers. I just hope I don’t get their hopes up. I’m excited about different religions and I would like to attend ceremonies of all sorts but I don’t think Jehovah’s Witness is for me and I’m worried about telling them that. My cousin who is one of the ministers and who told me after the service he was glad I came and that he had books to give me. I’ll take the books because I find the stuff interesting – hell I own a copy of Dianetics and you don’t even want me to get started on how I feel about Scientology. I just don’t want him to think I’ll join. I enjoyed the two songs we sang and I tried to sing along even though it was in Ewe. Meh, I’ll just go work in the garden on Sunday mornings and go every now and then to make them happy.
Weekends and Religion
Gbatope is a relatively small town but it’s only 6km away from Tsevie, a much larger city. This is where the GEE group has their training. Occasionally on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon the Peace Corps will give us a ride to Tsevie. There we can hang out with our GEE friends, play ultimate, and walk the dirty streets. On Mondays and Fridays the market in Tsevie is bustling. There you can peruse the venders and dicker and haggle over prices. A trip to Tsevie means internet access at the cyber café but usually we all end up at the bar with GEE. Last time we were in Tsevie a couple of us bought some street meat from a vender on the side of the road. It was the first time I’d bought food in Togo and although I’m not entirely sure what it was, it was delicious. The vender was Muslim so we figured he probably had some choice meats. One fun thing about living in Togo is that you can litter. I know that probably sounds awful but it actually makes sense. Togo doesn’t exactly have a fantastic waste management system and all the trash will be burned anyways. Sunday means no class so we’re free to do whatever. Sometimes I’ll sleep in until 7 which is nice. Sunday morning is the one time I’m alone in the house, because my whole family is at church. Church for them lasts about an hour and a half. Other churches have longer services as my buddy Luke found out after he spent 8 hours at church with his family. Shoot me. Religion in Togo is varied. According to Lonely Planet 12% follow Islam (there’s a mosque in my town) and 29% are Christian. Now it’s important to note the way these religions are practiced here are really more of a blend with traditional and local beliefs. This makes sense because the dominant religious practices in Togo are indigenous beliefs and animism at 59%. One particular indigenous belief is quite notable as it originated in Togo and neighboring Benin and has since spread to other parts of the world. The religion was originally called Vodun a word that means “the hidden” or “the mystery.” Many of the slaves who were shipped to the New World were from Togo and Benin and they took the practice of Vodun with them. In Haiti and Cuba it became known as Voodoo.Voodoo tends to draw negative connotations but it gets a bad rap and here it’s just a part of people’s daily lives. Voodoo is mainly practiced in southern Togo but I haven’t seen much of it there in Gbatope. A local farm we toured has a sacred forest next to it and there is a small fetish inside. Donny carved a face on a block of wood and we’ve made it a fetish for our garden.My family are Jehovah’s Witness which I honestly don’t know that much about because back in the States I would always turn them away whenever they knocked on my door. That’s just because I simply wasn’t interested. I’m not one to easily judge a religion (especially one I know very little about) because I’m still asking questions myself. But I do know one thing about Jehovah’s Witness and that’s that they don’t believe in the use of modern medicine (herbs and natural medicines are ok). One volunteer has a Jehovah’s Witness temple in her village and she told me about a girl who suffered complications from pregnancy and ended up bleeding to death because Jehovah’s Witness doesn’t believe in blood transfusions. The whole story was pretty disturbing. It doesn’t seem like my family is uber- religious although they do sometimes have morning prayer sessions which I’ve accidentally interrupted a couple of times. My little 10 year old brother Jacque asked me to go to church with them and I told my dad that I would one day so I suppose I will as long as it’s not 8 hours long.
A Day in the Life
Let me take you through a typical day in lovely Gbatope. I usually get up around 5:30, the last to rise in our humble abode. I wrap my panga (google it) around my waist, pick up my shower bucket and stumble outside. Immediately all eyes turn to me and one of my little brothers runs out of the kitchen (a straw hut in our backyard), grabs the bucket from my hand and fills it with water gathered from the well. I then head to my own private latrine where I shower by continually dousing myself with water from the bucket. I enjoy my bucket showers although the first pour always makes me catch my breath. It’s theonly time in the day I’m even remotely cool. Taking bucket showers makes me realize how much water I waste when I shower in the U.S. as I never use all the water in my bucket. Finished I wrap my blue and yellow pagna around my waist and head back to my room where my breakfast is usually waiting for me. I eat as much of it as possible and then I take my doxycycline. This is the most important thing I do all day. Chloroquine-resistant malaria accounts for 40% of th deaths in Togo. By the time I’m done with breakfast I’m already sweating profusely. That’s just how it is here.
I head to the Tech Center at 7 and this involves biking up the road which runs through Gbatope. The time spent on this road, going to and fro, is thrilling to say the least. The lowly cyclist I must share the narrow road with whizzing motorcycles and huge, thundering cement trucks. My fellow Peace Corps Trainees and I are somewhat celebrities in the town, at least with the children. I say this because virtually every child you pass points at you and screams “Yovo, Yovo” (“white person”, “white person”). It’s unavoidable and happens at least 10 times every trip to and from the Tech Center. If there is a group of children they sing “Yovo, Yovo, Bonsoir, Ca Va Bien, Merci” mocking our small French vocabulary – “Yovo, Yovo. Good day. I’m Fine. Thank you”. By the time I get to the Tech Center I’m drenched in sweat and wondering why the hell I took a shower in the first place.
From 7-10 it’s technical training – agroforestry, food security, and garden time. Then it’s French class until 12, when we return home for lunch. 2:30-5:30 is more tech and French. At 5:30 the sky begins to darken and I head home. Traversing the “road” in the dark is absolutely terrifying as trucks and motos squeeze by you. The best time to take a bucket shower is at night. After a long, sweaty, grimey day you want nothing more than to douse yourself in cold water. Plus there’s the view above you. To the left of my latrine is a huge African palm and to the right is a towering Baobob tree. The night sky is filled with stars and it seems almost romantic the way they are spaced between the giant branches of the palm tree when I gaze upward. The absence of light pollution here compared to Charlotte makes a remarkable difference as to what you can see. I swear it’s a different sky. On clear nights in Charlotte you can make out a few stars, here the clear night sky brings a view of the Milky Way.
After my soothing shower and heartful dinner, I either hang around with my host family and teach card games to my siblings or I go and meet up with my fellow PCTs at the local bar for a couple beers. But regardless I’m not up late. Bedtime for me here is usually around 8. I blow out my lantern (no electricity in Gbatope) and crawl under the mosquito net drapped over my bed. Sleeping here is it’s own ordeal. I’ve gotten better at sleeping than when I first arrived but it’s definitely a nightly challenge. Often there are sounds of singing and beating drums or the cacophony from the church in my backyard where it sounds like members of the congregation have screaming matches. These usually carry on late and by late I mean 9:30 but the other night there was chanting and singing which lasted from 2-3 a.m. Then there’s always the chickens and the goats that roam the town unfenced, waiting to become delicious meals. One night I came home and found my mother on a ladder chasing a chicken that had scaled a tree in an attempt to avoid her knife. I won’t lie the animal calls are pretty annoying. The first three nights I awoke to roosters calling to one another at 3 a.m. I checked my watch and each night they were nearly on the dot come 3 a.m. If the animal noises aren’t enough to make your night restless, the heat in bed is. A minor shift in position results in immediate sweating. But hey this is Africa and you get used to it.
I head to the Tech Center at 7 and this involves biking up the road which runs through Gbatope. The time spent on this road, going to and fro, is thrilling to say the least. The lowly cyclist I must share the narrow road with whizzing motorcycles and huge, thundering cement trucks. My fellow Peace Corps Trainees and I are somewhat celebrities in the town, at least with the children. I say this because virtually every child you pass points at you and screams “Yovo, Yovo” (“white person”, “white person”). It’s unavoidable and happens at least 10 times every trip to and from the Tech Center. If there is a group of children they sing “Yovo, Yovo, Bonsoir, Ca Va Bien, Merci” mocking our small French vocabulary – “Yovo, Yovo. Good day. I’m Fine. Thank you”. By the time I get to the Tech Center I’m drenched in sweat and wondering why the hell I took a shower in the first place.
From 7-10 it’s technical training – agroforestry, food security, and garden time. Then it’s French class until 12, when we return home for lunch. 2:30-5:30 is more tech and French. At 5:30 the sky begins to darken and I head home. Traversing the “road” in the dark is absolutely terrifying as trucks and motos squeeze by you. The best time to take a bucket shower is at night. After a long, sweaty, grimey day you want nothing more than to douse yourself in cold water. Plus there’s the view above you. To the left of my latrine is a huge African palm and to the right is a towering Baobob tree. The night sky is filled with stars and it seems almost romantic the way they are spaced between the giant branches of the palm tree when I gaze upward. The absence of light pollution here compared to Charlotte makes a remarkable difference as to what you can see. I swear it’s a different sky. On clear nights in Charlotte you can make out a few stars, here the clear night sky brings a view of the Milky Way.
After my soothing shower and heartful dinner, I either hang around with my host family and teach card games to my siblings or I go and meet up with my fellow PCTs at the local bar for a couple beers. But regardless I’m not up late. Bedtime for me here is usually around 8. I blow out my lantern (no electricity in Gbatope) and crawl under the mosquito net drapped over my bed. Sleeping here is it’s own ordeal. I’ve gotten better at sleeping than when I first arrived but it’s definitely a nightly challenge. Often there are sounds of singing and beating drums or the cacophony from the church in my backyard where it sounds like members of the congregation have screaming matches. These usually carry on late and by late I mean 9:30 but the other night there was chanting and singing which lasted from 2-3 a.m. Then there’s always the chickens and the goats that roam the town unfenced, waiting to become delicious meals. One night I came home and found my mother on a ladder chasing a chicken that had scaled a tree in an attempt to avoid her knife. I won’t lie the animal calls are pretty annoying. The first three nights I awoke to roosters calling to one another at 3 a.m. I checked my watch and each night they were nearly on the dot come 3 a.m. If the animal noises aren’t enough to make your night restless, the heat in bed is. A minor shift in position results in immediate sweating. But hey this is Africa and you get used to it.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Nampoch
Well I had written a bunch of posts but my flashdrive doesn't exactly get along with this computer so better luck tomorrow. These French keyboards are such a pain. It literally took me about 2 minutes to write all that I've written so far. That's because the "a", "w", and "m" letters are out of place, just to name a few.
Hopefully new posts detailing life in Gbatopé shall be up soon. As for what I can say now, things are still going well. We found out where our posts are and I will be spending the next 2 years in the village of Nampoch. A village of about 2,500, Nampoch is locate in the northern part of the country. If you look at this map you will see it is highlighted just north of Guerin-Kouka:
http://www.swarpa.net/~danforth/togo/graphics/togomap.gif
The settings are pretty rural as I'm 50 km away from a paved road. Having said that, most of the roads in Togo are not paved. I'm pretty psyched and fairly nervous about the natural resource management work I will be doing there. We haven't recieved detailed post descriptions yet so I don't know too much more other than a GEE volunteer will be only 9km away which is pretty sick. The local language is Komkomba so I have that to learn as well as French. Two weeks from now we head to our posts for post visit so it's about to get real. I will let you know how that goes.
Hopefully new posts detailing life in Gbatopé shall be up soon. As for what I can say now, things are still going well. We found out where our posts are and I will be spending the next 2 years in the village of Nampoch. A village of about 2,500, Nampoch is locate in the northern part of the country. If you look at this map you will see it is highlighted just north of Guerin-Kouka:
http://www.swarpa.net/~danforth/togo/graphics/togomap.gif
The settings are pretty rural as I'm 50 km away from a paved road. Having said that, most of the roads in Togo are not paved. I'm pretty psyched and fairly nervous about the natural resource management work I will be doing there. We haven't recieved detailed post descriptions yet so I don't know too much more other than a GEE volunteer will be only 9km away which is pretty sick. The local language is Komkomba so I have that to learn as well as French. Two weeks from now we head to our posts for post visit so it's about to get real. I will let you know how that goes.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
I have something in common with Yao Ming
Now other than a love of basketball what could Yao Ming and I have in common. I'm not 7'6'', we don't share the same nationality - hell we don't even live in the same country anymore so what could it be? The name Yao it turns out (although it's pronounced differently). My name in Ewe is Yao. This is determined by what day of the week you were born on. A Thursday birth bears the name Yao and I kind of like it. My host father has started addressing me as Yao. I think I could get used to it.
Ewe is just one of 60 different languages spoken in Togo and is the native tongue of Gbatope, my home for the next 3 months. Though I've only been here for 2 weeks it seems like a lot longer. Days are slow in Togo. I am the newest addition to the now 9 member Ayite family. I'm pretty sure my father only has one wife although having multiple wives is quite common here. I've spent all of my life as an only child but here I have 8 siblings. That's 6 brothers and 2 sisters, ages ranging from 5 - 23. But just because I'm one of nine doesn't mean I'm not spoiled. In Togo the guest is king and so my room is the largest in the house.
I love my new family, they are all very warm and curious about this yovo (white person) who has moved in with them. I'm definitely a source of constant amusement for them as I stumble through my French trying to converse with them. The other day my attempt to gather water from the well garnered a huge laugh, not just from my host family but from the neighbors as well. I tried to carry water on my head, as is the most common method of transporting water. Needless to say I didn't make it very far before it started to spill and amidstthe burst of laughter my little brother Remus came and took the water from me grinning from ear to ear. I honestly don't know how they do it it was so heavy and practically impossible to balance. You wouldn't believe what some people can carry on their head. I've seen everything from a bundle of huge branches to a television!
Ewe is just one of 60 different languages spoken in Togo and is the native tongue of Gbatope, my home for the next 3 months. Though I've only been here for 2 weeks it seems like a lot longer. Days are slow in Togo. I am the newest addition to the now 9 member Ayite family. I'm pretty sure my father only has one wife although having multiple wives is quite common here. I've spent all of my life as an only child but here I have 8 siblings. That's 6 brothers and 2 sisters, ages ranging from 5 - 23. But just because I'm one of nine doesn't mean I'm not spoiled. In Togo the guest is king and so my room is the largest in the house.
I love my new family, they are all very warm and curious about this yovo (white person) who has moved in with them. I'm definitely a source of constant amusement for them as I stumble through my French trying to converse with them. The other day my attempt to gather water from the well garnered a huge laugh, not just from my host family but from the neighbors as well. I tried to carry water on my head, as is the most common method of transporting water. Needless to say I didn't make it very far before it started to spill and amidstthe burst of laughter my little brother Remus came and took the water from me grinning from ear to ear. I honestly don't know how they do it it was so heavy and practically impossible to balance. You wouldn't believe what some people can carry on their head. I've seen everything from a bundle of huge branches to a television!
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