Alrighty, its been a long time coming but I finally feel like sitting down and writing a little bit. It is now the 11th of january and I'm back in village now for “good” per-se. I have to leave at the end of the month for a week for training stuff, but I get to actually rest here and enjoy life. I think the last update I wrote on was for AIDS ride, which was in october, so I kind of have some catching up to do. Here goes:
November: Did a 3 day formation on Web Design with CODHANI, a handicap cooperative here in Togo. That organization is the one that my buddy Rayan is assigned to work with, so he helped facilitate the meetings and also translate my French into real French. After that, hung out in ville for a little bit, then had thanksgiving at Nikhil's house. Now this was a real dinner and I was actually stuffed beyond normal afterwards. We had all the usual american thanksgiving goods, Nik had stuff shipped from the states. So after 3 plates of stuffing, mashed potatoes, and turkey later (as well as green bean casserole and all the other fixings), I sad there in a food coma and actually explained the concept of a food coma to the togolese guys we invited over for dinner. That pretty much sums up my november. Pretty exciting.
December: Went to Lome to start the month, got pickpocketed, my streak for going to lome and getting something jacked is pretty good, I mean I feel like I've increased the GDP of this country just by “giving stuff away” each time I head down south. Kind of explains why I tend to stay towards the north of the country...Anyways, got my visa for vacation while I was down there and took care of minor health/admin issues. Found out I had Giardia, neat little protozoal infection. Got that taken care of. Came back to post for a bit, got stuff sorted out for the upcoming year, then headed up for christmas in Niamtogou. Helped Rayan set up stuff, as well as play grill master for the kebabs we made for dinner. Our grill was like a wire mesh bedframe over charcoal on rocks. It was awesome. Christmas was a very enjoyable time, got to see friends whom I hadn't for quite some time, as well as enjoy good food. After christmas time came the real fun though, when Matt, Rayan, and myself packed up our stuff and said goodbye to Togo for a short period of time.
Vacation: Our trip started with a bush taxi ride to the border of Benin. After descending at the border and going through customs (which I'd like to thank Obama already because each customs officer looked at the passport, said “oh yes, america, mister obama, it is very good” and just stamped us and let us be on our way) we picked up a ride to a town about 30k from the border to find a car to Paraku, a city in the middle of the country where we could get a ride northward. This ride was fairly easy, the ride to Paraku though was one of the more memorable car experiences I've had in life. It started with us driving in circles for a period of time finding more people and getting gas, then finally getting on the road...then the driver stopping to make change for about 20 minutes with a car packed full of people on a hot day. Yea, we were in a real good mood at that point. During this stop though, I got to witness another taxi driver pulling over, getting out a water bottle and proceeding to urinate into it, then put the cap back on and put it in the car. Free radiator fluid? Also during this ride, while going down hills, the driver's door would open randomly as we hit every pothole on the road and he would just pull it shut like nothing was happening. I was laughing at the situation and the other people in the car were probably confused about the whitey giggling at normality.
The next fun part came when we stopped to get gas. We fill up, but the car wont start because there is none in the carburetor. Well, thats easily fixed around these parts. Oh, I neglected to mention that most of the gas stations around here are stands on the side of the rode with old alcohol bottles filled with a liter of gas each. Anyways, the driver goes to a bottle, opens it up, takes a big swig of gas, and spits it into the carburetor. One way to take care of things. We make it to Paraku about mid day, get some lunch, then hop back into another car going north towards Malanville, a town on the Niger border. We had to wait at the station for a few hours, so I wandered around a little and got a feel for the area around the place. Reminded me a lot of Kara here in Togo. Got a little agitated towards the end as we were getting ready to leave and started messing with people trying to sell stuff, I bargained prices for some lady who was sitting in the car and wanted toothpaste for 200 francs as opposed to the 250 the guy was selling it for. I told him he should sell it for 200 and it was good, so he did. The magic of the white skin I guess. That or we were stir-crazy enough at that point I was just coming across as a little insane. I'll take either guess.
The ride to Malanville was another enjoyable experience. We started counting potholes that we were hitting about halfway through the ride and stopped after we got to 231. Didn't get up north until around 11pm and got into a hotel just as it was closing up for the night. Passed out pretty much right after getting there, showered first though because dustiness is a way of life when you travel. Woke up the next morning and headed towards the border. Again, crossing was a snap, and walking across a bridge over the Niger river was beautiful, its really quite large and I'll come back to it a little later. We made it to Gaya, a town right across the border, and proceeded to wait for a car heading north to Niamey, the capital city of Niger. Most stations are a pain in the ass to sit at and do nothing while waiting. Gaya has been the sole exception. Upon arriving and finding a car as soon as we got there, we had to wait for it to fill. The next five hours of time killing was some of the most fun I had on the trip. We got out cards to play to sit around, and were immediately swarmed by guys asking us to come play with them. We got usherd into a side stall and sat down and played poker with guys who were there. It wasn't quite a full deck, and I seemed to pair up quite easily, but I managed to win a little money. Then got completely dropped by betting it all on a full house and having one of the guys there pull out a four of a kind on me. Only lost 500 francs total, so about a dollar spent for an hour's worth of entertainment was worth it. We had people in a huge circle watching the white people play cards and I was loving it. Plus they had some of the best rice and beans that I've had in Africa. Then we got on board and left around one in the afternoon.
Niger is predominately muslim. That means we stopped for each and every prayer on the ride up. It was alright though, gave me time to stretch out a bit. Car rides here are quite cramped, especially when youre sitting next to two large women who have kids on their laps. But the ladies were awesome, they kept buying random local foods and giving me tastes to try them out, delicious! We managed to get into Niamey around 8 or so and got a car to the Peace Corps bureau, where they directed us to the hostel for volunteers in the city. We got there and met a few people, went out for a beer to get to know each other a little, and then came back and crashed. Niamey was quite the experience.
We wandered around the city, enjoyed the market and zoo as well as an artisinal center. Also went to go visit the giant mosque in the city and got to climb up the spire and see out all over the place. Was a very flat view, could see almost the entire city. It was really sandy but there was meat everywhere, quite unlike Togo. There were guys on the side of the road selling rotisserie chicken stuffed with couscous that were phenomenal. Plus the beef there was tender and actually enjoyable to eat. Plus there was ground beef all around, had an egg sandwich with beef as well as the best cheeseburger I've ever had while there. We stayed in Niamey until January 2nd then took off for Burkina. Which means we spent new years eve there, which gets its own paragraph.
What better way to ring in the new years just out of college than in the middle of Africa? Exactly! We went out with volunteers who were in the city to some local bars, and ended up at one around 11 oclock where we planned on ringing in the new year. Side story: One of the volunteers in Niger was also named Marcus, and his family happened to be visiting. I made friends with them, and helped them buy drinks at the bar because they spoke no french. This led to them buying me drinks for helping, which turned out to be shots of vodka. Then after talking to Marcus's mom and learning she had never had tequila before, got us into that sort of mess. So basically, I met and managed to get an entire family to take shots with me in the same evening. They were loving it. As was I. At about 11:55 or so, one of the Niger volunteers cheer'd another volunteer with his beer bottle and it broke, then he managed to slip and fall on it. I saw him fall out of the corner of my eye and went to help him up, only to notice after picking him up that my arm was covered in blood and that he was gushing from his forehead. Rayan and a few other guys got him into the bathroom and cleaned up, I helped the bar folk clean up the mess on the floor. See in the states, you'd all be kicked out or something, here its just common place and they just kept right on going. But we missed the whole 12 o'clock countdown thing, no biggie. Hung out there for a bit, got a little sick up on the roof, and headed back to the hostel to hang out and sleep. The next day was a hungover relax day, and we got packed and prepped to head out on a 12 hour bus ride to Ougadougou in Burkina Faso.
The bus was supposed to leave at 6 am, and they said to be at the station by 530. We hired a driver to pick us up at 430 to get us to the station, so we wouldnt be late. Well, the bus line we chose had a three word motto. In english, it was “Punctuality, Comfort, Security”. Lets enumerate why these words do not begin to describe the experience. First off, the bus itself did not show up until around 930. The three of us, riding about 3 hours of sleep each, were not to thrilled with that. Then we saw the bus itself. The front windshield looked like it had just been used to drive through a barricade or an angry mob, the glass was nice and cracked all the way through and was held together by some unknown yellow substance...so much for security. Oh and comfort. The seats were basically unpadded and the three of us were crowded together shoulder to shoulder for 12 hours. Yea. Little pressed. But we made it into Burkina and to the PC hostel in Ouga.
We only hung out there for about two days, we were pretty exhausted and getting low on cash, so decided to head back early from vacation. Ouga was beautiful though, reminded me of downtown cleveland in the actual downtown of the city itself. Met some cool people there, actually travelled back to Togo with a volunteer and her friends who were on vacation and heading down this way. That bus ride was another long one, but a little more comfortable. The cool part was having 4 military police on the bus with loaded AK-47s because of bandits on the route that would stop busses and raid them. We didn't get to see any action though, and crossed over the Burkina-Togo border with no problem. Got into Kara around 1am and crashed out. Headed back to ville soon after, where I currently rest.
Getting back here was great, stopping by to see people was enjoyable just to see the excited looks on faces as they realized I was back here. I had kids running up and taking the bags I was carrying and telling me that I shouldnt carry them because I was tired and then walking with me to my house. Went out and said hi to everyone and got very warm receptions, haven't been back to work yet, that starts tomorrow. Theres a big national holiday on tuesday where I get to go dance the local dance, Kamu, so we'll see how that goes. I'm sure I'll have some sort of fun report on it. Spent the majority of the morning today with three of the local kids who I help with schoolwork. They just came over and hung out at my house and we talked for a bit about life stuff. Also had a girl from one of the private schools come over and ask me for help with english homework, so I'm starting to work with her later on this week. Its starting to feel truly like home here now, the beautiful simplicity of life here is both enjoyable and also insightful as to how truly different the rest of the world is, yet how much similarity exists in humanity itself.
So thats where I rest now. Going through life on a day to day basis and just kind of taking things as they go. Hope you enjoyed reading this, I also appreciate the packages and emails that I keep receiving, glad that I have such good friends. Happy new year to everyone and I hope that this year brings both economic prosperity for the world itself, as well as good health and good times. Keep the love coming my way, I'll reciprocate as best as I can. Oh and sorry to hear about the Colts...next year.
From Africa, With Love,
Marcus “Tchilabalo” Lee
Monday, January 12, 2009
Friday, October 31, 2008
New stuff!
Its around 630 on saturday night here in sokode. I just woke up from a little nap that I took due to feeling a little sick today. My stomach/intestinal region decided to not be nice to me or something, I was planning on heading back to village today but I'll have to put that off until tomorrow now. It gives me time to sit here and relax/reflect on this past week though, which I can put into written form for all of you guys to read!
My AIDS ride adventure began last friday with my ride up to sokode. I met two other volunteers who live close to me, Tony and Sam, in Tony's village about 18km from my own. We then had a quick egg sandwich breakfast and a calabash of Tchouk (local millet beer, tastes kind of cidery and is delicious) and hit the road. We get up here and spend the rest of the day just relaxing, its a ~60km bike ride from my house to the transit house in Sokode so its a little workout for me. The ride itself was concentrated in the northern part of the region, so the other volunteers from the southern part of the region started to trickle in on Friday. We spent saturday at the market picking up supplies for the upcoming week, for me that consisted of sachets (little plastic bags) of peanut butter and peanuts for snacking on. I kind of live on those two things here for protein, the peanut butter is delicious. Anyway, we spend quality volunteer bonding time here in town, and then Sunday morning take off for Kaboli, a town close to the border of Benin and in the very north of the Centrale region here in Togo. We stopped to pick up volunteers who live on the way there, bringing our little band of bikers up to 11 volunteers and 2 Togolese counterparts, one of which was from my village and another from Kaboli. We get up to town in the mid afternoon and get everything unloaded from our bush taxi that we rented out to follow us biking for the week, as well as carry all our random stuff from big bags full of sachets of water to the straw mats we used to sleep on. One of the volunteers, Angela, lives in Kaboli so we stayed at her house for the first night before we got started. I got to sleep outside under a paillote in a hammock while a thunderstorm went on around me, definitely an amazing experience.
The first night also began my decision to hang out with the Togolese people with us as much as possible during the week just to get a different insight and perspective on the stuff we were doing. As one of the volunteers here, Chris, said to me, “I didn't come to Africa to hang out with Americans.” So I went out to find dinner food with the driver and his apprentice, as well as with Bello and Fredos, the two counterparts with us on the ride. Togolese food is not very nutritious, but definitely filling. The sauces that they make are beyond outstanding though. I have actually drank remaining sauce like soup when all done with my pate or fufu just because it tasted that good. Anyway, I hung out and talked to Bello a lot about the upcoming elections as well as life and the like here in country. He has a satellite dish at his place and gets english MSNBC so he's had some pretty regular updates for any sort of outside news and actually lets me know whats going on in town when I see him. Hes a really knowledgeable guy too, had some good insights and ideas about the American political process.
Monday morning came pretty quickly. We got all prepped and split up into our two groups, Orange and Blue, of which I was of the former. My group stayed in Kaboli for our first formation of the day, while the Blue team went off to another town. We presented to a crowd of about 40 information on HIV/AIDS and how it was transmitted and what it was. Our presentations consisted of a short True/False question session where we posed questions to the crowd, then a game to show what the virus did to the immune system, then how the virus was and is not spread (believe it or not, over half of the villages we talked to believed mosquitos could transmit the HIV virus), the ABCD's of prevention, and then a demonstration on how to properly use a condom. I had the last two parts of the presentation. The condom demonstrations were a crowd favorite, let me tell you that. The first time doing it it was hard keeping a straight face, but I got pretty good at not laughing along with the rest of the people. Plus I can do a flight-attendant style presentation of how to check the condom for expiration date and imperfections, as well as then apply it to a wooden penis. Random sidenote: The condoms that PSI (Population Services International, they fund this tour for us) gives out are Banana Scented. Not flavored, just scented. My hands smelled like bananas all week, the scent that they put in the lubricant was like impervious to soap and scrubbing. I'm still just a little baffled at why they would make a condom just scented. Another African mystery.
After the first presentation finished, which went really well, we hopped on our bikes and took off to meet up with the second team in their village about 18km away. We rode in as they were still working and hung out in the crowd watching. I noticed a building down the street that had white people on the roof, so naturally I headed over to figure out what other yovo's were doing here. Turns out it was a group of German engineers here on a grant to install solar panels on the roof of a brand new library going in and also to wire the building. They let me go up on the roof and see the work they were doing and explained about what was going on. They spoke decent english too. After hanging out on the roof for a little while watching the end of the second groups presentation, I took off back down and met up with the other volunteers and we headed off to the village chief's house for lunch. At lunch, I had the best goat meat that I've had in country. It was so tender it was like falling off the bones. Plus they had actually taken the time to burn the hairs off the skin so it wasnt like eating a furry steak! We got fed until we couldnt eat anymore, and then sat around outside waiting for the heat to die down a little bit so we could bike the ~38km to Tchamba, our village we were staying the night in that next evening. I spent my time hanging out with Bello and explaining to him where oil comes from, and then we discussed how we thought Togo would be different if they found oil here. I explained the concept of non-renewable resources and why that would be bad in the long run for Togo, which mind you I somehow pulled out in French. After that fun little discussion, we hopped on our bikes and took off.
Riding through the African countryside on a mountain bike is something that I don't think I could ever get tired of. Its just so amazingly beautiful. I plan on sending pictures home on a thumb drive to my parents, I'll try and upload some when I'm down in Lome in December too. Tuesday came on, bringing two more sensibilizations to do. The first went without a hitch, and we had an amazing lunch with the chief afterwards also. Beans and rice with fried soy. Thats pretty much my definition of gourmet meal here. We then biked off to our second town of the day. Turns out, we had to ride through the second town to get to the first earlier on in the day, the chief thought that we were going to be coming in the morning so he got the town gathered up, and when we didnt show up they left. We get there in the afternoon when we were supposed to be and the whole town is at another meeting a few kilometers away. So we do a quick presentation to the people available, and take off to interrupt the other meeting to talk to the people there. So we got to do an extra bonus presentation! That turned out to be really good though, one of the village elders told us a story about a group of young girls from that village that was really touching and we retold to every other village we went to afterwards.
There isn't much here in Togo for work, you either have a family who has something going or you spend time in the fields cultivating. There isnt any sort of class distinction, theres poor and then government employees. This leads to a lot of people leaving the country going to find work elsewhere. In this case, the country is Nigeria. A group of 6 girls from this village, Yeliwa, left for Nigeria to try and find work. What they found was forced prostitution. After a year there, two returned back to village. They wanted to get tested for HIV when they got back, but their parents forbid it. So they didnt. They found men there and were married. Each married a man who had two other wives. Life went on, until one of the other wives was around for a free testing session. Her results came back positive. As did all the others involved in that marriage(s), as well as the other set. Due to the stigma of shame that comes with the virus here, the families are unwilling to allow their daughters to know if they were infected. Now 6 more people are living with the death sentence that is AIDS infection. There are amazing anti-retroviral, ARV's, drugs available that make life with HIV manageable, and can even prevent the virus from leading to full blown AIDS. But they're expensive, and not easy to find here in Africa. The continent suffering the most. Really kind of a sobering moment. It only got more so as the time passed.
The next day in the afternoon we got to our village a few hours early, so we grabbed some drinks and hung out under a big tree in the middle of town. Now when white people show up, everyone comes out because they think we have gifts. “Cadeau”, the french word for gift, is shouted by tens of children, arms outstretched, staring wantingly. That gets old to me, I don't like giving out material stuff. I'm here for the gift of knowledge. But anyways, we had over a hundred kids forming a sort of semi-circle around us sitting around. Tony started chasing one of them around, and they all loved it. That turned into us getting a huge circle formed and teaching them the hokey pokey. I then attempted to teach them how to play freeze tag and red light/green light. They didnt understand the concept of not moving. It was still a lot of fun though. Even more kids showed up as I went along, I tried to make the largest conga line then. The older kids were helping me line up the little ones and we had a fun little snake going on, they all wanted to be in the front with me though so it broke down after a little bit. Then I realized that they would copy any motion I made, so I started doing random clapping patterns. That led to a lightbulb going off in my head. I quickly taught them the beat to “We Will Rock You” and started singing the words to it. Well, they started singing the same too. Theres a ~20 second video clip of this that I'll try to get up, its awesome. I love the kids here. Which is another hard part. Standing there feeling like the director of the African production of Stomp and staring out at the hundreds of smiling, laughing little faces and knowing the statistics of how many of them will contract either HIV or be afflicted by Malaria or Tuberculosis just due to the way of life here is heartbreaking. So many little things that could be prevented by government-sponsored vaccination or subsidization of prophylaxis. But no, the government here is too concerned with maintaining a hierarchical society of elderly men who are uninterested in anything but keeping the power they have. Sometimes I lay awake thinking “what can I do for a country that doesn't seem to want to help itself.” Not sure, but I can try.
The ride from our second sensibilization to meet up with the other group involved a game of wooden penis relay handoff. Doing this while riding down a large paved road with people on the sides and the occasional motorcycle driving by was awesome, and one of my personal highlights of the trip. We passed the night in the village of Wassarabo, where another volunteer lives. After we arrived, we were mulling around waiting to take showers and I grabbed a notebook and went outside of the compound across to by the chase car next to a Dispensaire to write underneath a tree there. After a few minutes of writing, I look up and see that I have a line of kids staring at me. I laugh, put down the notebook, and ask them if they want to play a game. Of course they do, so I get them into a circle with the intention of teaching duck duck goose, but there were too many, so I decided to bust out some clapping rhythm stuff. I taught them a few different patterns and how to go from quiet to loud or vice versa. Then I made each kid make up his own pattern and we went around the circle changing from kid to kid with the whole group following one. They loved that. Then, to make things more fun, I told them that as the whole circle was making up a beat, one person had to go in the middle and dance. I went first to break the ice for them. There is something here about a white person dancing that is intrinsically the funniest thing absolutely possible to a Togolese person. Although, as some of you may know, I'm a pretty amazing dancer, unfortunately white boy moves dont translate to tribal african. After flailing around for a little bit, I sat down and hesitantly one of the little boys hopped in the middle and started going. Then everyone wanted to go. It turned in to Togolese “You Got Served” with some kids breaking out moves that I didn't think would be possible for their size. Yet another wonderful memorable moment of the week.
There was no power in that village, so over a lantern-lit dinner that evening we talked about random goings on. Then there was a huge shooting star overhead. Absolutely spectacular orange and white, I don't think I've ever seen anything like it in the sky. Then a couple Togolese people by me, I tended to go away from the volunteers while eating just to talk to people around, asked me what a shooting star was. I explained what meteors were and also about the trash up in orbit around the earth and what happens when stuff falls into the atmosphere. Then another volunteer who was talking to a Togolese guy asked me to explain why fireflies lit up. Explaining enzymatic reactions in French turned out to be pretty easy even though I knew maybe half of the necessary vocabulary, I felt really awesome after that. I crashed out soon after, staring up at the stars and talking to Bello about what people in Africa thought about the night sky. Every time a star falls, someone dies according to local legend.
The next day we mounted up and headed off to our second to last village. We arrive and are greeted by the headmaster of the school we are presenting at. He takes us over and sits us down and then brings food ladies over and feeds us as a gift from the village. Pretty awesome, I love food so it was a winning situation for me! That presentation was pretty crazy though, we had over 600 people there. Mostly students. The maturity level was not very high, as evidenced by the headmaster starting our introduction with the announcement that whomever was pooping in the classroom everyday should stop because its not funny anymore. The condom demonstration was pretty funny, as soon as you bust out a wooden penis the crowd goes wild. This crowd more wild than most. But it all went pretty well. We then took off, after lunch there, to our final town of Agoulou. We hung out there Thursday night and slept at the Dispensaire, then prepped for our last presentation in the morning. The Country Director for Peace Corps here decided that she would come by and see our final presentation, so that made me a little more nervous than usual. I mean I'm nervous about my French in front of groups but when my like boss boss is there, I was a little shakey. I did fine though, didn't really have too much to say thanks to the fact that we combined both groups for the last presentation, so we had 12 people working. We did our presentation under two large shade trees, which were full of bats. So the kids climbed up with sticks and knocked them around to make them fly away, or knock them to the ground. I saw bats turned into piñatas by crowds of children. The word for bat in French translates literally into “flying mouse”. Random fact for the day. After our final sensibilization, we all piled into the car and headed back into Sokode.
In all, an awesome week. As I look at how much I've managed to write here, I guess you can probably tell that I found what we accomplished was something worthwhile. I head back to village tomorrow, excited to get back to doing something in my community. I find myself missing walking around talking to the people I know there and seeing what they are up to. I'll be spending most of my time there now I think, I've seen parts of the country and the like but I want to do what I came here to do now. I do plan on coming up here to Sokode for election day coverage though, the director of one of the schools here said we could watch it on the TV at the school, so a few of us volunteers are going to. Thats pretty much my life at this point. I'm still working on coping with the loss of a few close volunteers from my stage who left for home already, thats been kinda tough. Plus the loss of a close family friend this past week has been kind of a downer. But fortunately I've got great friends, both in country and back in the states, giving me comfort and words of wisdom. So life goes on, one day at a time.
Until I decide to write another mini-novel, hope that life is going great for all of you guys!
Love,
Marcus
My AIDS ride adventure began last friday with my ride up to sokode. I met two other volunteers who live close to me, Tony and Sam, in Tony's village about 18km from my own. We then had a quick egg sandwich breakfast and a calabash of Tchouk (local millet beer, tastes kind of cidery and is delicious) and hit the road. We get up here and spend the rest of the day just relaxing, its a ~60km bike ride from my house to the transit house in Sokode so its a little workout for me. The ride itself was concentrated in the northern part of the region, so the other volunteers from the southern part of the region started to trickle in on Friday. We spent saturday at the market picking up supplies for the upcoming week, for me that consisted of sachets (little plastic bags) of peanut butter and peanuts for snacking on. I kind of live on those two things here for protein, the peanut butter is delicious. Anyway, we spend quality volunteer bonding time here in town, and then Sunday morning take off for Kaboli, a town close to the border of Benin and in the very north of the Centrale region here in Togo. We stopped to pick up volunteers who live on the way there, bringing our little band of bikers up to 11 volunteers and 2 Togolese counterparts, one of which was from my village and another from Kaboli. We get up to town in the mid afternoon and get everything unloaded from our bush taxi that we rented out to follow us biking for the week, as well as carry all our random stuff from big bags full of sachets of water to the straw mats we used to sleep on. One of the volunteers, Angela, lives in Kaboli so we stayed at her house for the first night before we got started. I got to sleep outside under a paillote in a hammock while a thunderstorm went on around me, definitely an amazing experience.
The first night also began my decision to hang out with the Togolese people with us as much as possible during the week just to get a different insight and perspective on the stuff we were doing. As one of the volunteers here, Chris, said to me, “I didn't come to Africa to hang out with Americans.” So I went out to find dinner food with the driver and his apprentice, as well as with Bello and Fredos, the two counterparts with us on the ride. Togolese food is not very nutritious, but definitely filling. The sauces that they make are beyond outstanding though. I have actually drank remaining sauce like soup when all done with my pate or fufu just because it tasted that good. Anyway, I hung out and talked to Bello a lot about the upcoming elections as well as life and the like here in country. He has a satellite dish at his place and gets english MSNBC so he's had some pretty regular updates for any sort of outside news and actually lets me know whats going on in town when I see him. Hes a really knowledgeable guy too, had some good insights and ideas about the American political process.
Monday morning came pretty quickly. We got all prepped and split up into our two groups, Orange and Blue, of which I was of the former. My group stayed in Kaboli for our first formation of the day, while the Blue team went off to another town. We presented to a crowd of about 40 information on HIV/AIDS and how it was transmitted and what it was. Our presentations consisted of a short True/False question session where we posed questions to the crowd, then a game to show what the virus did to the immune system, then how the virus was and is not spread (believe it or not, over half of the villages we talked to believed mosquitos could transmit the HIV virus), the ABCD's of prevention, and then a demonstration on how to properly use a condom. I had the last two parts of the presentation. The condom demonstrations were a crowd favorite, let me tell you that. The first time doing it it was hard keeping a straight face, but I got pretty good at not laughing along with the rest of the people. Plus I can do a flight-attendant style presentation of how to check the condom for expiration date and imperfections, as well as then apply it to a wooden penis. Random sidenote: The condoms that PSI (Population Services International, they fund this tour for us) gives out are Banana Scented. Not flavored, just scented. My hands smelled like bananas all week, the scent that they put in the lubricant was like impervious to soap and scrubbing. I'm still just a little baffled at why they would make a condom just scented. Another African mystery.
After the first presentation finished, which went really well, we hopped on our bikes and took off to meet up with the second team in their village about 18km away. We rode in as they were still working and hung out in the crowd watching. I noticed a building down the street that had white people on the roof, so naturally I headed over to figure out what other yovo's were doing here. Turns out it was a group of German engineers here on a grant to install solar panels on the roof of a brand new library going in and also to wire the building. They let me go up on the roof and see the work they were doing and explained about what was going on. They spoke decent english too. After hanging out on the roof for a little while watching the end of the second groups presentation, I took off back down and met up with the other volunteers and we headed off to the village chief's house for lunch. At lunch, I had the best goat meat that I've had in country. It was so tender it was like falling off the bones. Plus they had actually taken the time to burn the hairs off the skin so it wasnt like eating a furry steak! We got fed until we couldnt eat anymore, and then sat around outside waiting for the heat to die down a little bit so we could bike the ~38km to Tchamba, our village we were staying the night in that next evening. I spent my time hanging out with Bello and explaining to him where oil comes from, and then we discussed how we thought Togo would be different if they found oil here. I explained the concept of non-renewable resources and why that would be bad in the long run for Togo, which mind you I somehow pulled out in French. After that fun little discussion, we hopped on our bikes and took off.
Riding through the African countryside on a mountain bike is something that I don't think I could ever get tired of. Its just so amazingly beautiful. I plan on sending pictures home on a thumb drive to my parents, I'll try and upload some when I'm down in Lome in December too. Tuesday came on, bringing two more sensibilizations to do. The first went without a hitch, and we had an amazing lunch with the chief afterwards also. Beans and rice with fried soy. Thats pretty much my definition of gourmet meal here. We then biked off to our second town of the day. Turns out, we had to ride through the second town to get to the first earlier on in the day, the chief thought that we were going to be coming in the morning so he got the town gathered up, and when we didnt show up they left. We get there in the afternoon when we were supposed to be and the whole town is at another meeting a few kilometers away. So we do a quick presentation to the people available, and take off to interrupt the other meeting to talk to the people there. So we got to do an extra bonus presentation! That turned out to be really good though, one of the village elders told us a story about a group of young girls from that village that was really touching and we retold to every other village we went to afterwards.
There isn't much here in Togo for work, you either have a family who has something going or you spend time in the fields cultivating. There isnt any sort of class distinction, theres poor and then government employees. This leads to a lot of people leaving the country going to find work elsewhere. In this case, the country is Nigeria. A group of 6 girls from this village, Yeliwa, left for Nigeria to try and find work. What they found was forced prostitution. After a year there, two returned back to village. They wanted to get tested for HIV when they got back, but their parents forbid it. So they didnt. They found men there and were married. Each married a man who had two other wives. Life went on, until one of the other wives was around for a free testing session. Her results came back positive. As did all the others involved in that marriage(s), as well as the other set. Due to the stigma of shame that comes with the virus here, the families are unwilling to allow their daughters to know if they were infected. Now 6 more people are living with the death sentence that is AIDS infection. There are amazing anti-retroviral, ARV's, drugs available that make life with HIV manageable, and can even prevent the virus from leading to full blown AIDS. But they're expensive, and not easy to find here in Africa. The continent suffering the most. Really kind of a sobering moment. It only got more so as the time passed.
The next day in the afternoon we got to our village a few hours early, so we grabbed some drinks and hung out under a big tree in the middle of town. Now when white people show up, everyone comes out because they think we have gifts. “Cadeau”, the french word for gift, is shouted by tens of children, arms outstretched, staring wantingly. That gets old to me, I don't like giving out material stuff. I'm here for the gift of knowledge. But anyways, we had over a hundred kids forming a sort of semi-circle around us sitting around. Tony started chasing one of them around, and they all loved it. That turned into us getting a huge circle formed and teaching them the hokey pokey. I then attempted to teach them how to play freeze tag and red light/green light. They didnt understand the concept of not moving. It was still a lot of fun though. Even more kids showed up as I went along, I tried to make the largest conga line then. The older kids were helping me line up the little ones and we had a fun little snake going on, they all wanted to be in the front with me though so it broke down after a little bit. Then I realized that they would copy any motion I made, so I started doing random clapping patterns. That led to a lightbulb going off in my head. I quickly taught them the beat to “We Will Rock You” and started singing the words to it. Well, they started singing the same too. Theres a ~20 second video clip of this that I'll try to get up, its awesome. I love the kids here. Which is another hard part. Standing there feeling like the director of the African production of Stomp and staring out at the hundreds of smiling, laughing little faces and knowing the statistics of how many of them will contract either HIV or be afflicted by Malaria or Tuberculosis just due to the way of life here is heartbreaking. So many little things that could be prevented by government-sponsored vaccination or subsidization of prophylaxis. But no, the government here is too concerned with maintaining a hierarchical society of elderly men who are uninterested in anything but keeping the power they have. Sometimes I lay awake thinking “what can I do for a country that doesn't seem to want to help itself.” Not sure, but I can try.
The ride from our second sensibilization to meet up with the other group involved a game of wooden penis relay handoff. Doing this while riding down a large paved road with people on the sides and the occasional motorcycle driving by was awesome, and one of my personal highlights of the trip. We passed the night in the village of Wassarabo, where another volunteer lives. After we arrived, we were mulling around waiting to take showers and I grabbed a notebook and went outside of the compound across to by the chase car next to a Dispensaire to write underneath a tree there. After a few minutes of writing, I look up and see that I have a line of kids staring at me. I laugh, put down the notebook, and ask them if they want to play a game. Of course they do, so I get them into a circle with the intention of teaching duck duck goose, but there were too many, so I decided to bust out some clapping rhythm stuff. I taught them a few different patterns and how to go from quiet to loud or vice versa. Then I made each kid make up his own pattern and we went around the circle changing from kid to kid with the whole group following one. They loved that. Then, to make things more fun, I told them that as the whole circle was making up a beat, one person had to go in the middle and dance. I went first to break the ice for them. There is something here about a white person dancing that is intrinsically the funniest thing absolutely possible to a Togolese person. Although, as some of you may know, I'm a pretty amazing dancer, unfortunately white boy moves dont translate to tribal african. After flailing around for a little bit, I sat down and hesitantly one of the little boys hopped in the middle and started going. Then everyone wanted to go. It turned in to Togolese “You Got Served” with some kids breaking out moves that I didn't think would be possible for their size. Yet another wonderful memorable moment of the week.
There was no power in that village, so over a lantern-lit dinner that evening we talked about random goings on. Then there was a huge shooting star overhead. Absolutely spectacular orange and white, I don't think I've ever seen anything like it in the sky. Then a couple Togolese people by me, I tended to go away from the volunteers while eating just to talk to people around, asked me what a shooting star was. I explained what meteors were and also about the trash up in orbit around the earth and what happens when stuff falls into the atmosphere. Then another volunteer who was talking to a Togolese guy asked me to explain why fireflies lit up. Explaining enzymatic reactions in French turned out to be pretty easy even though I knew maybe half of the necessary vocabulary, I felt really awesome after that. I crashed out soon after, staring up at the stars and talking to Bello about what people in Africa thought about the night sky. Every time a star falls, someone dies according to local legend.
The next day we mounted up and headed off to our second to last village. We arrive and are greeted by the headmaster of the school we are presenting at. He takes us over and sits us down and then brings food ladies over and feeds us as a gift from the village. Pretty awesome, I love food so it was a winning situation for me! That presentation was pretty crazy though, we had over 600 people there. Mostly students. The maturity level was not very high, as evidenced by the headmaster starting our introduction with the announcement that whomever was pooping in the classroom everyday should stop because its not funny anymore. The condom demonstration was pretty funny, as soon as you bust out a wooden penis the crowd goes wild. This crowd more wild than most. But it all went pretty well. We then took off, after lunch there, to our final town of Agoulou. We hung out there Thursday night and slept at the Dispensaire, then prepped for our last presentation in the morning. The Country Director for Peace Corps here decided that she would come by and see our final presentation, so that made me a little more nervous than usual. I mean I'm nervous about my French in front of groups but when my like boss boss is there, I was a little shakey. I did fine though, didn't really have too much to say thanks to the fact that we combined both groups for the last presentation, so we had 12 people working. We did our presentation under two large shade trees, which were full of bats. So the kids climbed up with sticks and knocked them around to make them fly away, or knock them to the ground. I saw bats turned into piñatas by crowds of children. The word for bat in French translates literally into “flying mouse”. Random fact for the day. After our final sensibilization, we all piled into the car and headed back into Sokode.
In all, an awesome week. As I look at how much I've managed to write here, I guess you can probably tell that I found what we accomplished was something worthwhile. I head back to village tomorrow, excited to get back to doing something in my community. I find myself missing walking around talking to the people I know there and seeing what they are up to. I'll be spending most of my time there now I think, I've seen parts of the country and the like but I want to do what I came here to do now. I do plan on coming up here to Sokode for election day coverage though, the director of one of the schools here said we could watch it on the TV at the school, so a few of us volunteers are going to. Thats pretty much my life at this point. I'm still working on coping with the loss of a few close volunteers from my stage who left for home already, thats been kinda tough. Plus the loss of a close family friend this past week has been kind of a downer. But fortunately I've got great friends, both in country and back in the states, giving me comfort and words of wisdom. So life goes on, one day at a time.
Until I decide to write another mini-novel, hope that life is going great for all of you guys!
Love,
Marcus
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Life is fun sometimes
Can't post what I want to here due to administrative reasons. My latest email should say everything ;)
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Its been a long time...
So I'm just going to copy and paste my latest email update.
So its now Sunday the 7th and I've officially been in country for 3 months on the day. It doesn't feel like that long really, I guess Ive kind of just gotten used to things. My ability to write in English has decreased a bit, but I can think and kind of speak in French a lot more. I no longer find it weird to have to go to buy things to eat on a daily basis. I also no longer find it weird to see naked people all the time, that's kind of a normal thing. Im still without electricity which really doesn't affect me too much, I barely use my computer at home anyway. I like reading by lantern light, and also going to sleep at like 830 makes waking up with the chickens at 5ish not too bad. I've been talking to other volunteers who are having kind of the same problem as I: how to remember what sort of stories to tell to people back home. Most of the stuff here really doesn't strike me as different anymore!
I can walk down the road and see ~18 people crammed into a 5 seat car and think "I bet they can fit another person in". I can watch naked kids squat in the middle of the road and pee while not breaking their cadence of "ansai buhbye" which is the salutation that whities like myself get in my town. Ive grown used to not having meat…ever. Although Ive picked up some tinned stuff here in Sokode where Im currently at. I realize that I use a lot of city names in my emails but don't explain much, its kind of one of those things that doesn't seem like anything to me. Id say just google image search a map of Togo and check it out if you want to get a feel for the places, they only really list the big cities but that's about the only places I end up at for extended periods of time. Travelling is an experience in itself, and Ill take the time to write up about that some other time.
As for the continuation of life here: I spent the last few days travelling northward to visit my buddy Rayan in the northern part of the country, and then headed over to the city of Bassar for the yearly Yam party. Yea, we celebrate some cool stuff here. I got to see a lot of the people I haven't been able to since we all left Lome together 2 weeks ago. It was pretty fun, there were fire dancers who walked on flaming logs and the like, but mainly it was just nice to see people. I bought furniture from a volunteer who was leaving too so now I actually have things for the inside of my house! I picked up a bed and mattress, three tables, two chairs, two bookshelves and a fan for a really good price so Im pretty happy with that. They only difficult part is transporting all the stuff. I brought it halfway home to Sokode in a car yesterday, and have to make the rest of the trip today. It can be a pain to get a car to the place you actually want to go, then getting a car that also will haul stuff for you is even more exciting. Then you get to negotiate a price and try not to get ripped off. It's a pretty tiring process, and I expect to make it home today and just want to relax.
That's another thing Ive gotten used to over the past three months, the pace of life. I know Ive mentioned this before, but stuff here just doesn't get done quickly, or at all if its raining. Ive sent for an electrician in the morning, and he came 3 days later in the afternoon. That's just life here. Ive stopped trying to get a lot of stuff done in only one day. Im happy if I get a third of my laundry done in the morning, a decent bike ride in, and then have time to find lunch and other foodstuffs in a 6 hour period. Once I get actual electricity then things can be better for Ill have a fridge to store things in so food can last longer than one day. Plus im going to get a gas stove from a girl who left early if I can make it up to Kara to do it. That should make it easier to cook for myself! On a random side note: if you want to send me stuff, send spices and anything that is edible that is "just add water". Water is about the only thing available that can be found easily and readily. Also drink mixes, like the single serving Gatorade or crystal light type stuff.
I cant really think of too much else to add that is entertaining, im a little tired because of being a little sick as well as staying up til about 10 pm the last few nights and then being woken up early by a combination of a few things. Mainly having to use the bathroom (one of the signs of Giardia is having a big morning bowel movement…which for me is my alarm clock!) as well as Ramadan being in full swing now and the region that I live in is heavily Muslim. So I get woken up pretty early by calls to prayer. Plus food vendors aren't as prevalent due to the fasting. Its all good though, I get to get back to village today and relax so Im looking forward to that. Feel free to write back with questions for me and Ill write like a big response email with answers to everyone.
Hope life is great, school is fun, and work doesn't suck too bad for everyone!
~Marcus
PS If you know someone who wants to get emails from me feel free to forward them, Im at the max amount of autoforwarding by Gmail so I cant add anymore to the list. Ill work on this when I get a solid connection, but that could be a long way off.
So its now Sunday the 7th and I've officially been in country for 3 months on the day. It doesn't feel like that long really, I guess Ive kind of just gotten used to things. My ability to write in English has decreased a bit, but I can think and kind of speak in French a lot more. I no longer find it weird to have to go to buy things to eat on a daily basis. I also no longer find it weird to see naked people all the time, that's kind of a normal thing. Im still without electricity which really doesn't affect me too much, I barely use my computer at home anyway. I like reading by lantern light, and also going to sleep at like 830 makes waking up with the chickens at 5ish not too bad. I've been talking to other volunteers who are having kind of the same problem as I: how to remember what sort of stories to tell to people back home. Most of the stuff here really doesn't strike me as different anymore!
I can walk down the road and see ~18 people crammed into a 5 seat car and think "I bet they can fit another person in". I can watch naked kids squat in the middle of the road and pee while not breaking their cadence of "ansai buhbye" which is the salutation that whities like myself get in my town. Ive grown used to not having meat…ever. Although Ive picked up some tinned stuff here in Sokode where Im currently at. I realize that I use a lot of city names in my emails but don't explain much, its kind of one of those things that doesn't seem like anything to me. Id say just google image search a map of Togo and check it out if you want to get a feel for the places, they only really list the big cities but that's about the only places I end up at for extended periods of time. Travelling is an experience in itself, and Ill take the time to write up about that some other time.
As for the continuation of life here: I spent the last few days travelling northward to visit my buddy Rayan in the northern part of the country, and then headed over to the city of Bassar for the yearly Yam party. Yea, we celebrate some cool stuff here. I got to see a lot of the people I haven't been able to since we all left Lome together 2 weeks ago. It was pretty fun, there were fire dancers who walked on flaming logs and the like, but mainly it was just nice to see people. I bought furniture from a volunteer who was leaving too so now I actually have things for the inside of my house! I picked up a bed and mattress, three tables, two chairs, two bookshelves and a fan for a really good price so Im pretty happy with that. They only difficult part is transporting all the stuff. I brought it halfway home to Sokode in a car yesterday, and have to make the rest of the trip today. It can be a pain to get a car to the place you actually want to go, then getting a car that also will haul stuff for you is even more exciting. Then you get to negotiate a price and try not to get ripped off. It's a pretty tiring process, and I expect to make it home today and just want to relax.
That's another thing Ive gotten used to over the past three months, the pace of life. I know Ive mentioned this before, but stuff here just doesn't get done quickly, or at all if its raining. Ive sent for an electrician in the morning, and he came 3 days later in the afternoon. That's just life here. Ive stopped trying to get a lot of stuff done in only one day. Im happy if I get a third of my laundry done in the morning, a decent bike ride in, and then have time to find lunch and other foodstuffs in a 6 hour period. Once I get actual electricity then things can be better for Ill have a fridge to store things in so food can last longer than one day. Plus im going to get a gas stove from a girl who left early if I can make it up to Kara to do it. That should make it easier to cook for myself! On a random side note: if you want to send me stuff, send spices and anything that is edible that is "just add water". Water is about the only thing available that can be found easily and readily. Also drink mixes, like the single serving Gatorade or crystal light type stuff.
I cant really think of too much else to add that is entertaining, im a little tired because of being a little sick as well as staying up til about 10 pm the last few nights and then being woken up early by a combination of a few things. Mainly having to use the bathroom (one of the signs of Giardia is having a big morning bowel movement…which for me is my alarm clock!) as well as Ramadan being in full swing now and the region that I live in is heavily Muslim. So I get woken up pretty early by calls to prayer. Plus food vendors aren't as prevalent due to the fasting. Its all good though, I get to get back to village today and relax so Im looking forward to that. Feel free to write back with questions for me and Ill write like a big response email with answers to everyone.
Hope life is great, school is fun, and work doesn't suck too bad for everyone!
~Marcus
PS If you know someone who wants to get emails from me feel free to forward them, Im at the max amount of autoforwarding by Gmail so I cant add anymore to the list. Ill work on this when I get a solid connection, but that could be a long way off.
Monday, June 30, 2008
One More Things
Another quick post before I forget:
If you want to send letters/packages, I added my address to the side panel. Its PCT after my name until August 21st when I swear in, then I'm a PCV. Other than that, here is a short list of things that would be awesome to have:
DVDs of anything, TV series are usually the best
Beef Jerky
Trail Mix
Bandanas
Pictures
USB Thumb Drives
American Candies (sour patch kids please)
Anything else that you think would be useful in the middle of nowhere in Africa!
Thanks~!
If you want to send letters/packages, I added my address to the side panel. Its PCT after my name until August 21st when I swear in, then I'm a PCV. Other than that, here is a short list of things that would be awesome to have:
DVDs of anything, TV series are usually the best
Beef Jerky
Trail Mix
Bandanas
Pictures
USB Thumb Drives
American Candies (sour patch kids please)
Anything else that you think would be useful in the middle of nowhere in Africa!
Thanks~!
The saga continues...
And an update for today!
Me and my buddy Matt are here in Lome (the capital) due to our amazing ability to be ill for extended periods of time! I've been fighting some sort of bug for the past week, and now it decided to be a sinus infection and resulted in me getting a 104 degree fever this morning. Matt had the same fun fever, so we got to be shipped out for the day. We ended up getting Malaria tests, which neither of us happened to have, and then got Z-Packs for our infections with the instructions to rest.
...so we went to the grocery store here in Lome and bought cookies/candy for our buddies back at the training site. We get to head back tomorrow, so they better be appreciative...I don't doubt that they will be.
Other than todays med fun, its been kind of the same here. I've gotten into a routine and have just been enjoying the time here in training. We find out our post assignments this week, so I get to learn where I will be spending the next 2 years of my life starting in August! I already have an idea of where, but I'm not sure yet. I've also got my hands full with figuring out what to do for the 4th of July here. We get the day off from class, so we're organizing something fun to do.
Sorry about the lack of updates, we don't have much internet access during stage; the only reason I'm posting this is because I'm at the med unit. I'll keep stuff going as much as I can, feel free to keep emails coming!
Me and my buddy Matt are here in Lome (the capital) due to our amazing ability to be ill for extended periods of time! I've been fighting some sort of bug for the past week, and now it decided to be a sinus infection and resulted in me getting a 104 degree fever this morning. Matt had the same fun fever, so we got to be shipped out for the day. We ended up getting Malaria tests, which neither of us happened to have, and then got Z-Packs for our infections with the instructions to rest.
...so we went to the grocery store here in Lome and bought cookies/candy for our buddies back at the training site. We get to head back tomorrow, so they better be appreciative...I don't doubt that they will be.
Other than todays med fun, its been kind of the same here. I've gotten into a routine and have just been enjoying the time here in training. We find out our post assignments this week, so I get to learn where I will be spending the next 2 years of my life starting in August! I already have an idea of where, but I'm not sure yet. I've also got my hands full with figuring out what to do for the 4th of July here. We get the day off from class, so we're organizing something fun to do.
Sorry about the lack of updates, we don't have much internet access during stage; the only reason I'm posting this is because I'm at the med unit. I'll keep stuff going as much as I can, feel free to keep emails coming!
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
6-10-08
Today continued! I am currently sitting in the second floor of the hostel and talking to people right now. I spent the evening out at one of the local establishments watching the Greece vs. Sweden match for football and seeing Sweden won was awesome. Today was another exciting day full of shots, per usual...I'll be vaccinated for almost anything before I leave I feel like. After shots and learning how to take a stool sample, we came back to the hostel and then got cultural training! Anyone who has seen The Office's diversity day episode will appreciate what we did...it was almost as bad. Following that, Joe and I went for a run. I have a feeling that I am going to be in ridiculous shape by the time I leave...there is a marathon being held in Ghana here in September, and I plan on entering. Yay for running for fun!
So far, Togo has been absolutely amazing. I know I may sound like kind of a broken record right now, but this country is awesome. I can't wait until tomorrow when we get to go to our host families and then start our actual training! I won't be able to mooch wireless from the hostel anymore, so updates may be quite few and far between, however I'll continue to write when I have free time. I hope that all is well, and you guys continue to keep in touch!
Today continued! I am currently sitting in the second floor of the hostel and talking to people right now. I spent the evening out at one of the local establishments watching the Greece vs. Sweden match for football and seeing Sweden won was awesome. Today was another exciting day full of shots, per usual...I'll be vaccinated for almost anything before I leave I feel like. After shots and learning how to take a stool sample, we came back to the hostel and then got cultural training! Anyone who has seen The Office's diversity day episode will appreciate what we did...it was almost as bad. Following that, Joe and I went for a run. I have a feeling that I am going to be in ridiculous shape by the time I leave...there is a marathon being held in Ghana here in September, and I plan on entering. Yay for running for fun!
So far, Togo has been absolutely amazing. I know I may sound like kind of a broken record right now, but this country is awesome. I can't wait until tomorrow when we get to go to our host families and then start our actual training! I won't be able to mooch wireless from the hostel anymore, so updates may be quite few and far between, however I'll continue to write when I have free time. I hope that all is well, and you guys continue to keep in touch!
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