Lavez les Mains!

On November 5-7, I did a USAID-funded project to improve the hygiene in five primary schools in Sotouboua. There are many primary schools in Sotouboua, so I chose the schools based on the presence of latrines at the schools and the commitment of the directors of the schools to enforce new hygiene practices. I worked with an NGO, Education, Sante et Developpement (ESD) and their partners including a state nurse, hygiene inspector, school directors and other health experts who served as trainers. The first day, we trained four teachers from each school on how to improve hygiene and establish Health Clubs in their schools. The second day, we worked with the students on good and bad hygiene practices through science experiments and tours of the school's facilities. The third day, the students and teachers met at their home schools with one trainer to make a map of their campus and create a plan of action to improve the cleanliness of facilities and hygiene practices in their schools. I purchased "laves-mains", handwashing stations, for four of the schools. In the fifth school, I hired a mason and plumber to fix the laves-mains that had been built by a different NGO and since broken. I've already started following up with the schools to see their progress and I've been impressed by the energy and the commitment of the staff and students in each school.


I did a demonstration using "charbon", or coal, to show how germs spread
This is the lave-mains that I had repaired
Kids testing out the new lave-main
The kids recieved bandanas at the end of the training to identify them as health peer educators in their schools
Welcome to the Project to Improve the Health of Children in Schools!

Dance Off...to America

Last night, I organized a World Aids Day Dance-Off with the other volunteer in my town and a few Togolese colleagues.  Four groups of kids competed in traditional dance and also in modern dance- which for most of them was break dance.  A girl's club that I've been working with for about a year now put on two plays, one about the discrimination towards people infected with HIV/AIDs and one about practicing fidelity.  We also had a a condom race, where volunteers from the audience formed two teams to see which team could put on and take off a condom from a wooden penis first.  There were prizes for the participants- tshirts and pens with catchy messages about wearing condoms (like a condom-man giving a thumbs up).  I hope that through fun, humor and interactive games the audience took away at least one new piece of knowledge.  

It felt like a perfect last celebration before my departure to the United States in in two days... I hope to catch up with all my friends in family over the phone or in person so be expecting a call from me : ) 

Le Pays Kabiye

As history tells us, the African continent is comprised of arbitrarily drawn countries with no regard to ethnicity or culture. In Togo alone, there are 40+ ethnicities. There is the “Pays Kabiye”, which is basically the nation, if you will, of Kabiye people who are spread throughout the country in various large cities and small villages. Kabiye culture varies from place to place and even the dialect of the language is different within each “quartier”, or neighborhood, of my town which is a Kabiye stronghold.

I’ve started taking Kabiye lessons because my French has progressed to a comfortable level (in a West African context) and I felt it is time to start humoring my neighbors by speaking their language. Peace Corps actually gives volunteers money to take language lessons, so I hired a friend and long-time partner of Peace Corps to teach me Kabiye. Kabiye is mostly just a spoken language. However, at some point in the history of missionaries, someone decided to create a Kabiye alphabet in order to write a Kabiye bible. When you attend church in Sotouboua, most people possess a bible in both French and Kabiye. Personally, the work of the missionaries turning Kabiye into a written language and then translating the entire bible seems a bit senseless, as the missionaries didn’t teach most of the people how to read Kabiye. In their defense, Kabiye literacy classes are available at certain churches, but from what I’ve seen most people just read their French bibles.

Every ten years, there is a girl’s initiation ceremony for Kabiye girls to “become” women in the eyes of society. It is called “Condonna”, and luckily 2010 is one of the years that the ceremony takes place. The biggest ceremony is held in the city of Kara, a northern regional capitol inhabited mostly by Kabiye people. Other Kabiye towns hold their own versions of Condonna. In Sotouboua, each “quartier” had their own Condonna ceremony on a different day of the week, combined with the boy’s initiation ceremony, “Evala”, (which occurs yearly) and the “Fete des Ignames”, a party to celebrate the harvest of yams. I witnessed four different days of this ceremony, but I participated the most in the ceremony that took place in my quartier, Tchitchao. This was because the husband, Weyo, of my closest friend in the neighborhood was being initiated. Weyo is 27.

The ceremony starts with eating beignets for breakfast and fufu (pounded yams) for lunch. In the afternoon, the inductees put on their ceremonial garb. For Condonna, girls have to wear only bras and underwear, and for Evala, boys wear only athletic shorts. Then people from the entire quartier gather together, along with the inductees and dance from house to house to the beat of steel cowbell like instruments and drums. The boys must stay bent over the whole time. If you speak to the inductees during the ceremony, you are required to buy them a beer. In the “yard” at each house, there is a keg of tchouk (locally brewed beer) waiting and all of the inductees sit down around the yard, while the townspeople chug tchouk and dance around them. You spend about 15 minutes at each house and then dance/run to the next house. I followed the ceremony to about seven houses. The ceremony was pretty wild, especially when a fight broke out because someone accused a woman of being a sorcerer and poisoning one of the kegs of Tchouk.

In a very convoluted way it reminded me of the party scene at my college when kids would dress up in ridiculous costumes and migrate from house to house surrounding the campus to fill up a solo cup of keg beer, dance a little and move on. In a way, in those four years we were being inducted into the world of adulthood. Although some of us never really entered the real “adult” world….

Greenbacks

Money has been on my mind lately because I’ve been applying for a couple of grants to help fund my projects. It’s also the end of the pay period so I’ve all but run out of money until we’re paid again. The challenge of the next week is to see just how cheaply one can live in Togo.

I’ve been struggling with the role money should play in the Peace Corps. I was initially attracted to the Peace Corps because it is a volunteer organization that normally focuses on cultural exchange and grassroots projects and encourages volunteers to live at the same level as community members. Once I arrived in Togo, I realized there are many opportunities to do funded projects, anything from receiving money to hold a one-day event on birth control to building a high school. Initially, I thought I wouldn’t be involved in any funded projects, as I wanted to make my priceless Colorado College Bachelor of Arts skills stretch as far as possible. But, as money always does, the possibility of a funded project seduced me.

The seduction did not happen over night. I live in a large town with a plethora of NGOs with massive budgets to do glitzy, fancy, funded projects. It also turns out these NGO workers have equally impressive paychecks. Sometimes, living at the level of community members, or at least my peers in the development field, seems impossible as a Peace Corps volunteer. I attended a “causerie” (informative talk or event) about the importance of fidelity in preventing HIV/AIDs, put on by the largest NGO in my town. This causerie felt more like the Oprah Show; the NGO workers were giving away fans, DVD players and other prizes to the attendees. I understand that this particular NGO has a different model of development than the Peace Corps, but it is discouraging to think that many people in my town are used to receiving rewards in exchange for listening to important information that would improve their lives.

My town is so used to having foreigners come to Togo and give away things for free that I think that sometimes it is expected that I give away presents or money. I appreciate that foreigners are generous to the less-advantaged, but it is difficult to explain to community members that Peace Corps is not about giving away things, its about increasing the capacity of the workforce and creating sustainable projects.

I decided to apply for funding for projects not because of the pressure from the community but because Peace Corps (in partnership with various organizations) has money available to volunteers. I justified these projects to myself because I believe that money will improve that quality and sustainability of my projects. Nevertheless, I will continue to try to implement projects run by Togolese volunteers in my community that cost little to nothing.

I applied for funding for my Vacation Enterprise Program, which gives ten girls small loans to start a business over the summer to pay for their school fees. The girls sold vegetables, kolico (like French fries) and tchouk (local beer) and were expected to come to weekly meetings to pay back some of the loan and learn small business skills. There is not enough room in this blog to extrapolate on the headaches caused by the project, but in the end, 7 girls succeeded in earning their school fees and some of their school supplies.

I am also working with an NGO build “lave mains” (hand-washing stations) at four primary schools and fix one “lave-main” at a primary that was built by a different NGO that has since broke and is not currently being used. We will also train health and education leaders in the community about hygiene and hand washing who will in turn train teachers and peer educators at each school. I’m fairly confident in the NGO to conduct the project and my role will be to distribute the money appropriately and add any additional information I can to the trainings. I’m passionate about this project because I am completely mortified when I often see people peeing and pooping anywhere and everywhere and then not washing their hands before they cook and eat.

In my experience, there is no magic formula for development and the best solution I have found is to try different approaches and see what is most successful in my community. Money is essential to development but it can just as quickly pervert and reverse the process when it is not handled with diligence and expertise.

Lessons from Hitchhiking

I had my first (inadvertent) hitchhiking experience in Togo when I was traveling south and flagged down a car on the road that I thought was a bushtaxi, until I noticed that it was built within last decade and made by a recognizable manufacturer- Toyota, a rarity in Togo. As I entered the car the other passengers disembarked, making it clear that this was a personal car, not a bush taxi. While hitchhiking may present many hazards in the States, it was definitely the better option as the car had a seat belt, air – conditioning and a conscientious driver. I discovered in the first ten minutes of the journey that the driver was an engineer for Togo’s Minister of Health and had only picked me up because he wanted company as he drove home to Lomé.

This guy had clearly made it. Living in Lomé, driving in a car imported from Belgium nice enough to pick up young American women- it doesn’t get much better than this in Togo. We started talking about opportunity and the qualifications needed for his line of work. I was especially interested because I just finished “Take Our Daughters to Work Week” in Sotouboua with the hopes of encouraging girls to seek their potential. The girl I had nominated for the program had professed that her dream was to become the Minister of Health for Togo. I was also interested in finding out how this guy became affluent in a country where success is rare.

Opportunity in Togo is extremely hard to come by. Most students only finish college or junior high, which gives them just enough education to be fluent in French. To graduate high school, one must pass the BAC, which I’m told is next to impossible and requires near fluency in English. Many students spend years repeating their last year of high school, Terminal, and retaking the BAC at the end of the year. It is not unusual to find students in Terminal to be anywhere from 19-25 years old.

Take Our Daughters to Work week was a week long camp for girls in their last years of junior high to challenge them to attend high school, to plan for the future and to give them the skills avoid things like sexual harassment and early pregnancy. The participants were selected from villages all over the Centrale region to come to Sotouboua. I discovered that not a single one of them wanted to solely work at the house like many of their mothers currently do and that all of them had lofty dreams to be journalists, doctors, midwifes and school directors. We invited female role models from the community come explain their professions and encourage the girls. We also made site visits to a pharmacy, hospital and library to show the girls professional women in action. We taught them income-generating activities to pay school fees, like how to make lotion, liquid soap and popcorn.

It was clear that these girls have the drive to succeed. However, my engineer driver had different opinion of students in Togo. When I asked my engineer driver what was wrong with Togo, why the development was so far behind places like Ghana, he said it was laziness. I argued, saying that all the people I knew worked hard and farmed every day for many hours. He countered by explaining that all the hard workers are old people and the young people just wander the streets looking for trouble. This problem is endemic in all Francophone countries because they just copied the French model and “the French people don’t like to work hard”, while the Anglophone model has led to rapid development. Well, that’s one theory!

Ne Va Pas Au Nigeria…

…for child trafficking. One of the biggest challenges faced in Togo is the fight against child labor and trafficking. The most common story of child trafficking heard in Togo goes like this: a man approaches a child and offers the him/her the opportunity to go to another country with the promises of getting rich and leaving the “boring” village life for something better, oftentimes to Nigeria. The kid agrees to go, under false pretenses, often without consulting their parents. When they arrive at “utopia” they find themselves working under horrible conditions for little or no money. The good news is that many of the kids do find their way back to their home in Togo, but unfortunately not without grave damage to their development, education, physical and mental health.

I work at a center for apprentices, as mentioned in the previous blog entry, where many of the apprentices are victims of child trafficking. The kids from the center are sometimes invited to Peace Corps’s Camp Unite (a week-long camp to train peer educators) to speak about their experience as a cautionary tale to others. The name of this blog post, “Ne va pas au Nigeria”, comes from the title of a song about child trafficking written by a previous Peace Corps volunteer in Sotouboua to raise awareness about the issue.

Child labor extends beyond Nigeria. Togo is an agricultural based society and farming corn, rice, millet and yams is sustenance and children are not excluded from working at the “champ” (fields). Now that school is out, many children are preoccupied with farming. But, when farming infringes on the child’s access to education it becomes an issue of concern and a violation of the child’s rights. I was recently asked by the director of the center for apprentices to speak to the female apprentices individually to gauge how they were feeling about their apprenticeship and their lives at the center. He was concerned for their wellbeing and felt that they would not be open with him about their feelings due to his gender. He asked me to focus my questioning around the forms of punishment inflicted upon the girls as well as the prevalence and type of manual labor they were assigned.

I discovered that corporal punishment is frequently used on the girls; those who are late to class receive a slap on the hands with a stick. Less serious offenses such as a sewing error warrant the collecting of gravel or staying late to finish an assignment. These forms of punishment are common in almost all schools and centers for apprentices in Togo, and this information didn’t really faze the director. What was of concern to the director is that the girls were being sent to the fields to farm up to three days a week on top of the scheduled Saturdays of manual labor to maintain the center. The girls admitted that they are habitually sent to both the patron’s and the patron’s friends’ fields to work many hours a day, with no compensation. Conversely, they are paying the center to be apprentices and learn the trade, not to be farmers. The girls often miss meals because they are in the fields and are often very exhausted from farming and have trouble focusing on their sewing lessons.

The director was enraged by this discovery, so we had a meeting with all of patrons to set new rules for the center. He proposed that the girls may only go to the fields to farm once a week, they may not be sent to the patron’s friend’s farms and that they should be somehow compensated. I spoke to the patrons on the importance of children’s rights and explained that the practices at the center were bordering on child slavery.

The campaign for children’s rights seems to be igniting throughout Togo and progress is being made to eradicate child labor throughout West Africa. I was recently watching my friend’s child, Ellie, practicing for the kindergarten school play. Ellie played a wife who was telling her husband to do some work around the house- to sweep the yard, to cook the dinner and take care of the kids, decidedly promoting gender equity. She then sang a song she’d be performing during the play:

“Je suis enfant et j’ai aussi mes droits” (I’m a child and I also have my rights)

I asked Ellie if she knew the significance of what she was singing. She pointed to her hand– she thought the words were:

“ Je suis enfant et j’ai aussi mes doigts” (I’m a child and I also have fingers!)

Luckily, Ellie is only four years old and just learning French so there is still time for the message to sink in before it’s too late!

Photos

Pregnant Mom and The Family in Tsevie

Host Dad and New Baby!


Domestiques

Host Family at Swear-In

Path to my house in Sotouboua

New Year's Party

Dressed to kill for the new year

Chez Moi

Making Tchouk, traditional beer

April Showers

I celebrated the wedding of a colleague last weekend. It was my first Togolese wedding and I found it to be a love filled ceremony. It was held at the Evangelical Presbyterian church at the same time as the weekly Sunday church service. The church doors were adorned with arches of red tropical flowers, a reminder that a rainforest once prospered here. The bride and groom were dressed in fancy complets, or two-piece outfits made with pagne (African printed fabric). After hours of singing, praying and dancing, the couple said their vows and kissed and everyone cheered and threw confetti at them.

Then the gift giving began. There’s a shop in town that wraps presents so all of the couple’s closest friends in the congregation brought colorful metallic shiny wrapped presents with bows. To receive the gifts, the couple stands at the front of the church and the gift givers are called to the front by the day of the week they were born. I was born on a Sunday, so I went with the Sunday group. I brought dishtowels wrapped in purple paper and danced to the front like my present was glow sticks and I was at a rave. The congregation wouldn’t accept anything less. When I arrived at the front, I handed over the present and hugged the bride and groom, which was a bit awkward because they both tilted their heads the same direction as I and in front of the whole congregation, nonetheless (apparently I never learned the proper way to hug in Togo).

After the service was the reception and the bridal party and friends posed for professional pictures. A band of teenagers on guitars and drums played while the congregation was separated by age and sex for refreshments. I went with the women to eat rice with pieces of meat and drink tchouk, the traditional beer. The service was lovely, and I am very happy for the new couple.

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of Togo’s independence. I attended a defile (parade) to celebrate the occasion. The National Road that runs from the head to toe of Togo was blocked off so that civil society of Sotouboua could be showcased. I was amazed by the breadth of clubs and associations that were represented and marched down the street in matching pagne. In addition to the students of every school there were unions of flip flop vendors, motorcycle drivers doing wheelies, karate club breaking boards, cheerleaders with Togolese flags, women’s soccer teams, just to name a few. Viva La Independence!

I have started working at a center for apprentices who are economically disadvantaged, orphans or victims of child trafficking. Americans, through the Embassy’s Self Help Fund, which gives motivated Togolese money to do projects, funded the center. The kids live at the center and they learn a trade for a discounted fee. I started working with the female couturieres (seamstresses) to teach life skills and women’s issues. I enjoy working with the girls because they are very respectful and eager to learn but it is challenging because many did not finish primary school. Everything I say has to be translated into local language and I’m afraid my intermediate French being translated by intermediate French speakers into Kabiye (extremely different from a romance language) might be hindering my message. Nevertheless, my “Self Confidence” lesson seemed to sink in when I asked the girls to make self-affirmations and everyone said things like, “I am an intelligent girl” or “I am a pretty girl.” I am also in the process of helping the kids and their patrons (teachers of the trade) to start a garden because the center is near a river and with an endless supply of water there is no excuse not to have a garden. The kids are responsible for providing and cooking their own food, so with some extra vegetables to boost their diet, both their health and economic situation will improve.

April is the beginning of rainy season so Sotouboua has become green and lush and people are spending days and nights at the “champ” (the farming fields). I have yet to go to the champ but one of these days I will grab a hoe and get to work. But for now, I have my herb garden to tend to and protect from my hole-digging puppy, Tchouk!

How to Ride a Bush Taxi in Togo

I was riding home in a “bush taxi” yesterday from a Peace Corps meeting in a town about 100k from me, squished in the shotgun seat with another person with rather large hips. Consequently, I was jammed against the clutch so that every time the driver wanted to shift gears he had to press the clutch into my leg. It was quite painful, and today I have a large purple bruise on my thigh. To make matters worse, the driver was reaching over another full-grown man who was sitting IN THE DRIVERS SEAT WITH HIM in order to shift gears. It got me thinking about how many things in Togo have become commonplace now that I’ve been in this country for almost seven months, things that would be incomprehensible to me back in the states.

1. Transportation
The above story is not an exaggeration, but the norm for travel in this country. “Bush taxis” are small cars or 15 passenger busses that must be older than I am. They are not “full” until there are multiple people sitting on each other’s laps, chickens squawking about and a roof stacked so high with baggage it rivals the Beverley Hillbillies. Travel takes about twice as long as it should as a result of stopping about every 10k to load and unload passengers, or sometimes just for the driver to chat with his friends. One time my bush taxi stopped in a town for an hour because the previous day the driver had hit a child on the road there and he was negotiating paying for the child’s broken bones.

2. Time
It is completely acceptable to arrive up to an hour late for a scheduled appointment, or in some cases, not to arrive at all.

3. Requests
If you see anyone who possesses anything you want, you may ask for it. This includes dogs, women, shoes (even if the person wearing the shoes is smaller and a different sex than you) and hair. I’ve had people ask for me to cut off my hair and give it to them. Most appropriate responses are to either hand over the object/person or simply say “prochainement” (next time). This works both ways, I have a PC friend who buys vintage Chicago sports jerseys off of Togolese people’s backs.

4. Night Time Parties
Many parties and events are scheduled for the entire night and there are no “Disturbing the Peace” violations in Togo.

5. Farm Animals
Free-range advocates would love this place – pigs, goats, chickens,
duck and sheep roam freely. This is hazardous to bike riders because the animals are always on the path and often in front of tires. Somehow people know who's animals are whose and stealing animals can be deadly (I’m not kidding).

6. Animism
People say Togo is 50% Muslim, 50% Christian and 100% Animist. While most of my friends here are more enthusiastic about sharing their Christianity with me than Animist beliefs, it still is not unusual to hear about it now and then. A young man across the street from me died, and when I asked his neighbors about the cause of death, they said he was a sorcerer and his sorcerer friends put a spell on him to kill him.

In other news, March was quite an eventful month starting off with the presidential elections on March 4. In light of violence surrounding past elections in Togo, we were told to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Leading up to the elections, campaigning in my town brought many events and anticipation. One of these events was a visit from President Faure, who was campaigning for re-election, which prompted teachers to cancel class, everyone to sport their favorite Faure paraphernalia and organize groups to sing, dance and play instruments to greet him. It appeared as though roughly half the town, or 10,000 people, attended the event. In the end, the elections were overall extremely peaceful.

Towards the end of March was “Semaine Culturel” (cultural week), when there are no classes for a week - only games, picnics, music and dances. I expected this to be focused on more traditional culture and was surprised to see the influence of modern hip-hop culture on the event – the high school-ers were booty dancing to modern African rap and hip-hop blaring from large speakers. After Semaine Culturel, the students had a week of vacation for Paque (Easter). There weren’t many apparent celebrations for Paque; however, many people of all ages get baptized during the holiday. Now, work is picking up again but I’m taking off for my first vacation during Peace Corps to Ghana (The Land of Plenty)! À Bientôt!

On Gift Giving

Having just ended the holiday season, the last horrah being my birthday, it seems to be an appropriate time to comment on the gift exchange culture here in Togo. It has occupied much of my thought, caused me anxiety, excitement and resentment.

I was admittedly a bit melodramatic about my birthday this year, professing to be experiencing a quarter-life crisis. I woke up on the dreaded day with a small dark cloud over my head and aching bones, but then the delicious food started showing up on my doorstep so my mood changed very quickly. I was given Galettes (savory bean cakes) and a bucket of Tchouck to share from my closest Togolese friend. Another girl in my neighborhood made me a plate of Fufu (pounded yams) with peanut sauce and chicken.

The evening of my birthday, I had a small get together with local Peace Corps volunteers and Togolese/Nigerian friends and acquaintances at my favorite restaurant in town. I made it clear to the Togolese people that wanted to come that I had no money to have a proper party. In most social situations in Togo, the person who invites others to the bar or restaurant has to pay for all of the guests’ drinks all night. Paradoxically, two of the guests paid for several rounds of drinks in addition to giving me other gifts. The fete was lovely; a guitar player came and sang for us and someone called a professional photographer who was snapping pictures of the fete like a paparazzi.

The night of my birthday I was overwhelmed by the generosity people showed me, and was giddy when opening each casserole dish or black plastic bag with a gift in it. But the next morning, I began to grapple with the question, “What are the implications of these gifts?” and “What is the appropriate response to receiving a gift in Togo?” In America, I’d whip out the ol’ Thank You Notes and call it a day. But here, I am in uncharted territory. I have been reading a book called “Remotely Global, Village Modernity in West Africa” by Charles Piot, an anthropologist who lived among the Kabiye people in Togo for three years and studied the culture. My town is chiefly Kabiye ethnicity, and Piot describes life among Kabiye precisely. I recommend the book to anyone who’s interested in learning more about Togolese culture and my reality.

Piot also received a great deal of gifts when coming to Togo and wasn’t sure how to respond. The Kabiye people he cooked for didn’t like American food. When he refused a gift once, the giver stopped speaking to him. Piot states, “Gift-giving became for all of us a kind of surrogate language: the gifts were attempts to communicate, to bridge the gap between us, to express relationship.”

Piot concludes that Kabiye give gifts as a way to form social relationships and ties or “ikpanture” in Kabiye language. He also says, “They were attempts to contain and control us. Gifts obligate and indebt, and in doing so they render the receiver subservient.” Time will tell if the givers on my birthday were simply trying to reinforce a friendship or if they are expecting something in return. In all likelihood, each individual had his or her own motives.

My own attempts to reciprocate kindness in Togo have been slightly clumsy, and I am not sure how to judge the reaction of the receivers. For example, when I made macaroni and cheese for a family once, each member only had several bites and asked why I hadn’t put salt and piment (hot peppers) in it. I tried to explain that mac and cheese is a favorite dish among American kids, but the Togolese kids turned up their noses and continued eating the food their mom had prepared. The food didn’t go to waste; they served the leftovers to the children for breakfast with a pile of piment on top. Hopefully, they appreciated the gesture but I’m not sure the American proverb, “It’s the thought that counts” translates.

Harmattan Holidays

Harmattan is the dry season here in Togo, and it is also considered the cold season. This means that when you walk down the street you feel like your lungs are being coated with a layer of orange dust and your eyes swell with tears due to the high concentration of dirt in the air. It’s pleasantly chilly at night and in the mornings, temperatures dropping to around 50-60 degrees Fahrenheit. Togolese people ask me, “How do you like Togo? How do you like the cold?” It takes a lot of will not to say, honey, you don’t know cold.

My first day at post (the town where I will be living for two years, the name of which I can not mention) was also Tabasky, a holiday celebrated by Muslim Kotokoli people here in Togo. I was drawn to the music and costumes as I was wandering the town trying to comprehend the fact that this town is my new home. I was standing on the outskirts of the tent which encompassed a huge crowd of people of all ages and genders dressed in traditional outfits but accented by bright colored sunglasses, hats and shoes that one might find when visiting a vintage shop with 1970’s garb. The mélange of traditional dress with outrageous Western style is a microcosm of how modernity has touched these traditional societies. It’s also oh so very hip. As soon as the men who were dj-ing the fete saw me standing there, they invited me to sit under the tent, gratuie, of course. I accepted, swept in by the excitement of the loud drums, sequined headscarves and candy. I had barely sat down, when I was told, “Il faut danser”, or “It is necessary for you to dance” and I found myself in the middle of the circle trying to awkwardly imitate the one other person who was the center of attention with me in front of at least 300 people. Then someone put a scarf around my neck and started pressing play money on my forehead, which stuck since I was so hot, and throwing hard candy at me. At the same time someone else was handing me pastries. Each dance move was a step out of my comfort zone and after the song was finally over I jetted out of there before I could be talked into another dance.

I’ve learned not to feel too awkward or embarrassed in these extremely uncomfortable situations, as the people I’ve encountered do not hold me to the same standards as I hold myself. Togolese people actually tell me my French is good and that they didn’t think Americans could speak French. For example, I was invited to observe a club meeting for “fille leaders” or girl leaders at the CEG (junior high). “Observe” being the keyword, I hadn’t prepared anything to present or teach. After a half an hour past when the club was scheduled to commence, there were no adults there but me. The girls of the club informed me that they were told an American would be running the club. The “American” was presumptively me, so I had 30 minutes improvise a presentation in French. Usually when I give any presentation in French, I prepare ahead of time with a dictionary and maybe practice pronunciation in front of a native speaker. But this was on the fly, so I just talked about America, something I know pretty well, and led a debate on gender equity in Togo. I thought it was a total bust, but the girls truly appreciated it. The girls walked me home, offered me non-fermented tchouk, offered to take me to climb the one tiny mountain in town and seemed completely unconcerned with the quality of my presentation. Alas, my panic attack was not as severe when the exact same situation occurred again the next week at the high school for the club of girl leaders there.

The students in Togo have a 2-week holiday vacation for Christmas and New Year’s Day. Therefore, my work for the last two weeks has been heavier on the cultural integration side than on technical work, since most of my work will be done in schools or with apprentices. I’ve spent time trying to form relationships with Togolese women and girls. I have a new friend who is a couturiere and has her own atelier to make clothes. We’ve been sharing meals and hanging out all week. She cooks the most delicious Togolese food, like fufu (pounded yams) with sauce arichide et tomate (peanut tomato sauce with hot peppers and fresh –as opposed to dried and crunchy- fish) that you eat with your right hand. Call it integration - or hunger - but I’ve truly enjoyed vrai Togolese food for the first time while eating at her house. It’s still a bit of a stressful situation because as soon as she senses that I’m slowing down eating the meal she says “Il faut terminer la fufu” or “It is nessecary that you eat all of the fufu.” I told her that I want to be skinny, like her (she is beautiful and thin and could be a model in America), and don’t want to eat too much. She told me that it’s an insult to call a Togolese person skinny. I feel like I’m in this alternate universe where you have to eat yourself sick to make friends and being chunky is the beauty ideal.