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.