It’s official; I’ve now been living in Togo over a year. My group arrived in Togo to begin training September 19, 2009, and now in mid-October the one year anniversary of our swearing-in as a Volunteer (December 5) seems just around the corner, from there I will be officially half way finished with my service.
To risk using an extremely clichéd phrase, time has really flown. Compared to my first year of college, my first year in Peace Corps seems like a blink of an eye. If someone told me I had only been here a month, I’d be inclined to agree with them more than someone pointing out that I’ve actually been here an entire year. I hope this observation has more to do with the bustling, ever busy life of a Peace Corps Volunteer and not the first signs that, despite my best efforts I am growing up (I’m told that as you grow ever older, time continues to move ever faster).
While I am happy and proud that I have made it halfway through my time here, successfully living in Togolese village society, and without catching any bizarre, terrifying, tropical diseases, I cannot believe that I only have one more year left in country to do all that I want to do. It seems such a terribly short amount of time. I suppose I am only now beginning to realize the truth to the common RPCV complaint that two years just isn’t enough time to accomplish what you set out to do in village.
I suppose you, reading at home, won’t really grasp what I’m saying just as I, one year ago, couldn’t really grasp what all the older PCVs who had already been in country a year were saying. Two years seems like such a long time to be halfway around the world from your family and friends, in a remote location, among people whose language, worldview, and cultural background differ from your own in nearly ever way, and without any extensive means of communication to the outside world. This is certainly true, but when you think of the reasons you are in this remote corner of the globe, two years seems like hardly any time at all.
The fact that you are placed in among a people entirely different from you own is one of the big reason two years is such a short amount of time. Since I’ve been here, I have learned infinitely more than knew coming in about the Togolese culture and society (as I continually reaffirm to myself by talking to new Peace Corps arrivals), but just because I’ve found some answer doesn’t mean that I have less questions. To the contrary, every small piece of knowledge I manage to scrap out of my experience tends to present a whole other set of questions. For example, first I learned how to greet someone in local language, but then that posed the question of when to greet someone in village, when to use which greeting, who to greet, when to ask about the family, the wife, the work, and the food, when to just ask about the person, when to squat down to show respect, when to expect another to squat down before me. Though I’ve answered some of these question, I’m still working out the details for many of them, and not hardly a week goes by when I startle someone with an overly elaborate greeting, made only in passing, or embarrass myself by not squatting before a village chief. My service here may seem like a long time, but if Peace Corps gave a cultural competency exam at the end of service, two years would be hardly enough time to cram.
All this says nothing about the actual work that you do here in village. In the states, two years wouldn’t be enough time to educate an entire town on the importance of sustainable agricultural practices, of soil fertility science, forestry and integrated agriculture, and then on top of that education, encourage people to adopt new methods by which they can provide sustenance for themselves and their family. Consider that, and then take into account the extremely limited resources in a rural Togolese village, the low level of education, the language barrier, and the fact that these people have being practicing agricultural techniques handed down to them for generations. Two years to alter the basic method of sustenance for an entire society really isn’t very much time at all.
This realization of how fast my service has gone was really accented by my time spent as a Volunteer Trainer this week for the new NRM stage. In just a months time, the volunteers who came in a year before us will have finished their service, and this new batch of trainees will be sworn in to take their place, making all those who sworn in with my in 2009 the oldest volunteers in country. I still remember my impressions of the volunteer trainers who helped during our training. They seemed totally at ease in such bizarre surroundings, they were never fazed and didn’t seem to make the everyday cultural blunders that characterized my life at the time, and though they still seemed to think their French could use improvement, to me they seemed totally fluent.
I don’t know if I made the same stunning impression among these trainees. My week as a trainer suggests to me that my impression of my own trainers must have been a bit starry eyed to say the least. Though the trainees this week were comforted when I explained to that I came in with no prior French speaking experience (“look how well he speaks now”, they often remarked), I know that my French could still stand some serious improvement. Furthermore, I often feel fazed in this country, and am certainly not innocent of the occasional cultural blunder. I will say that stage certainly seemed easier this time around. Stage is largely conducted in French, so I think that is partly because I actually understood what they were talking about this time around. Still I can see how I may seem at ease and well versed in the culture in comparison with these new trainees, which only speaks to how far I’ve come, but as I said before, it is clear to me that I’ve still got very far to go as well.
All told, however, the week was very enjoyable. It was a real treat to get to know the new volunteers before they actually become volunteers. PCVs are a pretty tightly knit group, in a world of bizarre and unfamiliar sights, sounds, and experiences, other Americans tend to be both a reference point for keeping ones sanity, and in the absence of family and friends from home, the only support network available. So it was cool to get a glimpse of who my new best friends will be in 2011. Frankly, I think they will be a pretty good group, and I’m excited for them to swear in, they were fun to hang out with this week, and seem eager to head off to post.
Before that week at stage, I managed to use my short time here to accomplish one major personal goal. On September 26, I ran the Accra International Marathon. This was my first marathon, but after having run it, I doubt it will be my last, they say running gets addicting, and it seems as though I’ve caught the bug. The marathon itself was actually miserably hard. I had trained hard for nearly 4 months leading up to this marathon, in training actually running the first twenty miles (though I would like to run marathons in the future, I don’t know where I will find the time to train like that again, my long runs, which I started at 5 am, would take up nearly the entire morning). I had felt fairly well prepared for this marathon, and the twenty miles that I had trained for went by swimmingly. The last six miles, however, were probably the hardest physical thing I’ve ever forced myself to do.
By mile twenty two, every part of my body hurt in a different way. My back was sunburned (with not a cloud in the sky to offer relief), my thighs cramped with every stride, the arches of my feet felt ready to collapse, my stomach stung as a sucked for air, my underarms had chaffed from the stride motion, and on top of all of that a bee stung me right about the tail bone. Nonetheless, I managed to push my way across the finish line, not in record time, but at least I finished.
Upon finishing a friend of mine who had run the half-marathon greeted me and immediately asked if I would ever run a marathon again. Without hesitating I told her absolutely not. However, upon reflection, I think I probably will run again, training, though difficult, was in a weird way very enjoyable, and the race atmosphere was a lot of funs, all sorts of interesting people come out to run marathons. I met Ghanaians who had run a marathon the day before, and were out to try it out again (I couldn’t move correctly for about a week after running, how they ran two in a weekend blows my mind), I met PCVs from other countries who came out to run, and one old man, probably in his seventies, who claimed to have run 335 marathons in his lifetime, averaging about 15 a year (when I asked him how he does it, he replied “Well, I’m retired”).
Though I will likely run again, I doubt if I will ever run a full marathon in Africa again. Accra is the capital closest to coordinates 0-0 on the map, and the equatorial sun was unforgiving, the race, which started at 6:30 was run under unseasonable heat after about 7:30. Furthermore, many of the road upon which we ran were semi-paved, with uneven ground and plenty of potholes. The marathon, which only had about 200 participants, was certainly not big enough to close off roads, and so often we had to run in traffic. They say there two races to every marathon, the first twenty miles and the last six (as I’ve described above, I couldn’t agree more), and for us, the last six miles took us through an open air street market in oceanfront Accra. For the last six dreadful miles, not only did we have to deal with traffic, but also heckling natives, crowded street corners, and vendor carts.
After the race, I talked with a PCV from Mali, he an older man, and though he had only come to support other volunteers for this race, he said he had been a runner all his life, and to have ran many marathons before. As consolation he offered that these were the hardest course conditions he had ever seen for a marathon. So I think, with that in mind, in the future I will search out other races in colder climes, with perhaps a little more race support. He told me of one race in Bordeaux, France where all the water stations are positioned outside of famous wineries, who offer free samples of their finest vintage to runners (along with complimentary cheese and sausage of course). The runners themselves all dress up, some in friar’s outfits, some in tradition French peasant wear, or whatever creative impulse comes to mind. Though he said only a limited number of foreigners are allowed to run each year, I think I might try my luck, and see about running this “race” sometime in the near future. Of course, I wouldn’t harbor any delusions about improving upon my time for this race, but in such cases, competition certainly isn’t everything.
This coming week, I shall be returning to Ghana once again for a very different reason. Emily comes out to begin work on her Fulbright, and we have arranged to stay at a beach resort in Ghana for a few days before she is introduced to her new job here in Togo. When I last crossed over the border, I was nervous and uneasy about the upcoming race. This time the tenor of my visit feels entirely different, and I absolutely elated, and have taken to counting the hours. Even now, with just two days left until I start my voyage, I can’t seem to think of ways to fill up the time. Writing this blog helped, but unfortunately for me and you, the reader, my battery life in dwindling and I will have to bring this entry to a close. Until next time, thanks as always for reading what I have to say.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
C'est Comme Ca
When I last left off, I had written mostly about Camp UNITE. Now I am sitting in my room, writing this blog entry, the Sunday before heading back up country to the Peace Corps training center to be a camp counselor for Camp Espoir.
Sundays are quickly becoming my favorite day for writing blog entries. Everyone is at church, and so I have the entire morning to myself to do as I please. In this regard they feel a little bit like Sundays at home, albeit without the big bacon and eggs Sunday breakfast. Occasionally I have made eggs, though they are a hard find, as they are not available in village (despite my best efforts to promote chicken raising), and transporting eggs, by bicycle, over the five miles of bumpy dirt road from my market to village, can be a tricky task. Still, eggs without the greasy goodness of bacon seem incomplete, and bacon is simply non-existent in this country. The last time I’ve eaten pig of any kind in this country, it was from a bag of picnic bacon sent by a caring and devoted well wisher from the states. To her I am sincerely indebted, and she is all the more dear to me, thanks to the generous and hearty gift.
Fresh bacon, however, is hard to come by in these parts. The people of the south tend not to raise pigs, and though I’ve found no one with a specific food taboo against eating pigs (with the notable exception of course of the entire Muslim community), southerners seem to generally have an aversion to big not shared by their counterparts up north. When I mention how much I enjoy pork, and the various products to be made there from, friends in village look disgusted, and starkly exclaim “Pork is gross, if you eat it, you’ll die”.
While I know that pork is a meat with the potential to make its consumers very sick, and for this reason it has historically been a food tabooed by many cultures, I was very surprised to hear this from a people who will, generally speaking, eat almost any kind of meat. In village, snakes, bush rats, moles and all sorts of rodents found in the field, and even cats and dogs, are considered delicious fair. I know of several volunteers who, upon returning from a vacation out of country to their village, find that their beloved cat or dog, which they had entrusted to the care of a neighbor, has in their absence become that family’s dinner (attachment to pets is not something very well understood in Togolese culture). Meat is a fairly rare item on the menu, and so generally speaking, any meat is good meat.
Interestingly enough, despite this generally open attitude towards a whole plethora of meats that we in the west would generally consider inedible (or at least gross), some Ewe do have very strict food taboos. Though there is no overarching cultural taboo, various clans, villages, and families observe certain dietary restrictions, and if you inquire deeply enough, you’ll normally find an interesting story concerning why this particular group of people refuses to eat a certain animal. One example that our French instructor back in pre-service training gave, was a certain groups taboo against eating bats. Long ago, this group was fleeing from an enemy tribe, and came across a cave along the road. Though they knew that their pursuers would likely scour every inch of land and inspect every available hiding spot, the group was desperate and exhausted, and so decided to take up in a cave along the road. As their pursuers came to the cave, their leader called for a halt, and it was clear that he intended to search the cave. Hope seemed lost for the fleers as their pursuers approached. At the last moment, a flurry of bats spewed out from the mouth of the cave, terrifying the pursuers and forcing their retreat. They assumed that no one could hide in such a cave so infested with swarming bats, and so continued on down the road. Because the bats rescued them, they considered bats to be a friend of the people, and so descendants from this group are forbidden to eat them.
Still, despite the partial truth concerning the dangers of eating pigs, I generally consider my Ewe friend’s aversion to pork to be misguided hyperbole. It also seems like an excuse to point out how gross other groups of people are who do eat pork. Though no one raises pigs down south, up north, they are as common as household guard dogs. I can’t imagine the folks up north would continue the costly practice of pork husbandry if every time they went to eat one, they died (as those with whom I speak in village would have it).
When I tell my objectors how often I enjoy a ham sandwich, or a cut of pork chop back in the states, they roll their eyes saying, “Of course in America you can eat them, but not here. Ici en Afrique, c’est comme ca.” Just look how they will eat anything here, they will add, it’s gross (when I note to them how goats, the local favorite in mammalian fair have exactly the same dietary habits, they are un-phased in their opinion).
This response is the bane of any inquisitive foreigner’s existence. It is the catch-all term to extinguish any further discussion. The interviewed party walks always feeling that it has fully satisfied the curiosity of the inquirer, while the inquirer walks away with no further information gained, only that which, had he not noticed before beginning his inquiry, he likely would have never thought the inquiry necessary in the first place. What is most irritating about this phrase, I suppose, is that though often it used to demonstrate that a foreigner can’t possibly understand the way things work here in Africa, eg. “Perhaps in America AIDS has no cure, but AIDS here in Africa can be cured with the use of traditional medicine, ici en Afrique, c’est comme ca,” just as often it actually is the best response to a given question eg. “Why does it take four hours just to make a withdrawl from the bank?” “Ici en Afrique, c’est comme ca”.
But I digress. Though I seriously doubt the considered option of my comrades in village, I refrain from eating pork due to some combination of: it being hard to find in the south, meat in generally being hard to prepare and store in Africa, fear of the off chance that perhaps “ici en Afrique” it actually is “comme ca”. So no bacon and eggs this morning, although I did have some delicious leftover local beans with taco mix from the states (thank you very much Mom and Dad for the generous care-package).
In general, I don’t buy too much meat for many of the reasons listed above. It is hard to find, hard to store, and expensive. At the market, it is hard to tell the quality of the meat. The only way to be sure that the meat is fresh, is to buy the animal and kill it yourself. Then you no only have to kill the animal, but skin it, prepare it, and find a use for all the little bits. When choosing to by “in detail” instead, getting the meat home without spilling meat juice all over your bag and everything else you bought at market that day is another chore. Many of the recipes I know of call for chicken breast, in order to obtain a chicken breast; you must buy an entire chicken. Chicken in particular are considerably smaller than our corn fed birds back home, so no matter what portion you buy, you’ll not get much meat, and since all animals here are free range, the meat is thinner and chewier than what we are used to back home. Finally, the local recipes which, unlike my American ones, are actually catered to the meat available in West Africa, aren’t terribly appealing. The standard recipe involves taking all edible parts, boiling them in water, and then adding them to whatever sauce will go with you fufu or pâte (the staple foods described in a previous entry). In general, I find meat here to be more trouble than its worth (considering your mostly buying bones anyway, which is not always a bad investment considering how few other sources of calcium are available), and too expensive (the 1000 F CFA that will get you a whole chicken could just as easily have fed you for a week on a diet of rice, beans, pâte and peanut sauce). So in general, the bulk of my protein intake comes from sources other than meat.
So tomorrow I’m going to Camp Espoir. Speaking of comestibles, a trip to the Peace Corps training center is always a treat because of the abundance of food there. The Peace Corps chefs, who are well versed in both European and African cuisine, work around the clock to ensure that all staying at the center are kept full and satisfied. Each trip I’ve made to the center, I and my fellow volunteers have done the pre and post stay weigh in at the scale which (I believe in jest) is found in the mess hall. The only time I have failed to gain a considerable amount was my week with Camp UNITE where I dined with adolescent boys (apparently it is a cross-cultural trait of boys 13-20 that they can eat), who actually ate enough to leave the kitchen staff wondering where their usually abundant supply of leftovers and second courses went, while the boys themselves clamoured for more. On this particular week, I actually managed to shed a few pounds at camp. I’m hoping that this week with Espoir, which caters to a generally smaller age group, will prove more plentiful for us counselors.
Weeks at the training center are one of the rare opportunities to find good, well prepared meat. However, given the centers location in the central region of the country, where there is a substantial Fulani population, it is often better to maintain more vegetarian habits to enjoy the African delicacy wagash. The Fulani are a migratory group of cattle keeps originally from Nigera. Wagash is their cheese, which is most similar though not entirely like mozzarella cheese. Often it is deep fried, but prepared anyway it is always delicious. The only thing rarer than a good serving of meat down in the south is one of cheese, and so often I am won over by the vegetarian options up at camp, the protein in which is normally the locally abundant wagash.
Food aside, I am truly looking forward to camp, although I believe I have described the camp itself in some detail in my last entry. It will be interesting to see how it measures up to the academic and very goal oriented Camp UNITE. I’m told this camp is generally more fun for the campers, but since we counselors deal with a much younger age group, it can also be more work for the counselors. Whereas at UNITE it sufficed to tell your campers to meet at the cafeteria at dinner time (as if those boys would miss a meal), at Espoir counselors often have to adopt the primary school method of head counts, and lining up signal file to march to the mess hall together. The potentially more juvenile concerns also include bed wettings and homesickness. Nonetheless it should be an interesting camp. At least this time, instead of the sensitive topic of sexual health and reproduction, I was charged with the more neutral topic of hygene and health. Far fewer would object to instructing children on proper hand washing techniques than they would proper uses of contraceptives. I would love to go on, but as always, my battery-life will not permit. Ici en Afrique, c’est comme ca.
Sundays are quickly becoming my favorite day for writing blog entries. Everyone is at church, and so I have the entire morning to myself to do as I please. In this regard they feel a little bit like Sundays at home, albeit without the big bacon and eggs Sunday breakfast. Occasionally I have made eggs, though they are a hard find, as they are not available in village (despite my best efforts to promote chicken raising), and transporting eggs, by bicycle, over the five miles of bumpy dirt road from my market to village, can be a tricky task. Still, eggs without the greasy goodness of bacon seem incomplete, and bacon is simply non-existent in this country. The last time I’ve eaten pig of any kind in this country, it was from a bag of picnic bacon sent by a caring and devoted well wisher from the states. To her I am sincerely indebted, and she is all the more dear to me, thanks to the generous and hearty gift.
Fresh bacon, however, is hard to come by in these parts. The people of the south tend not to raise pigs, and though I’ve found no one with a specific food taboo against eating pigs (with the notable exception of course of the entire Muslim community), southerners seem to generally have an aversion to big not shared by their counterparts up north. When I mention how much I enjoy pork, and the various products to be made there from, friends in village look disgusted, and starkly exclaim “Pork is gross, if you eat it, you’ll die”.
While I know that pork is a meat with the potential to make its consumers very sick, and for this reason it has historically been a food tabooed by many cultures, I was very surprised to hear this from a people who will, generally speaking, eat almost any kind of meat. In village, snakes, bush rats, moles and all sorts of rodents found in the field, and even cats and dogs, are considered delicious fair. I know of several volunteers who, upon returning from a vacation out of country to their village, find that their beloved cat or dog, which they had entrusted to the care of a neighbor, has in their absence become that family’s dinner (attachment to pets is not something very well understood in Togolese culture). Meat is a fairly rare item on the menu, and so generally speaking, any meat is good meat.
Interestingly enough, despite this generally open attitude towards a whole plethora of meats that we in the west would generally consider inedible (or at least gross), some Ewe do have very strict food taboos. Though there is no overarching cultural taboo, various clans, villages, and families observe certain dietary restrictions, and if you inquire deeply enough, you’ll normally find an interesting story concerning why this particular group of people refuses to eat a certain animal. One example that our French instructor back in pre-service training gave, was a certain groups taboo against eating bats. Long ago, this group was fleeing from an enemy tribe, and came across a cave along the road. Though they knew that their pursuers would likely scour every inch of land and inspect every available hiding spot, the group was desperate and exhausted, and so decided to take up in a cave along the road. As their pursuers came to the cave, their leader called for a halt, and it was clear that he intended to search the cave. Hope seemed lost for the fleers as their pursuers approached. At the last moment, a flurry of bats spewed out from the mouth of the cave, terrifying the pursuers and forcing their retreat. They assumed that no one could hide in such a cave so infested with swarming bats, and so continued on down the road. Because the bats rescued them, they considered bats to be a friend of the people, and so descendants from this group are forbidden to eat them.
Still, despite the partial truth concerning the dangers of eating pigs, I generally consider my Ewe friend’s aversion to pork to be misguided hyperbole. It also seems like an excuse to point out how gross other groups of people are who do eat pork. Though no one raises pigs down south, up north, they are as common as household guard dogs. I can’t imagine the folks up north would continue the costly practice of pork husbandry if every time they went to eat one, they died (as those with whom I speak in village would have it).
When I tell my objectors how often I enjoy a ham sandwich, or a cut of pork chop back in the states, they roll their eyes saying, “Of course in America you can eat them, but not here. Ici en Afrique, c’est comme ca.” Just look how they will eat anything here, they will add, it’s gross (when I note to them how goats, the local favorite in mammalian fair have exactly the same dietary habits, they are un-phased in their opinion).
This response is the bane of any inquisitive foreigner’s existence. It is the catch-all term to extinguish any further discussion. The interviewed party walks always feeling that it has fully satisfied the curiosity of the inquirer, while the inquirer walks away with no further information gained, only that which, had he not noticed before beginning his inquiry, he likely would have never thought the inquiry necessary in the first place. What is most irritating about this phrase, I suppose, is that though often it used to demonstrate that a foreigner can’t possibly understand the way things work here in Africa, eg. “Perhaps in America AIDS has no cure, but AIDS here in Africa can be cured with the use of traditional medicine, ici en Afrique, c’est comme ca,” just as often it actually is the best response to a given question eg. “Why does it take four hours just to make a withdrawl from the bank?” “Ici en Afrique, c’est comme ca”.
But I digress. Though I seriously doubt the considered option of my comrades in village, I refrain from eating pork due to some combination of: it being hard to find in the south, meat in generally being hard to prepare and store in Africa, fear of the off chance that perhaps “ici en Afrique” it actually is “comme ca”. So no bacon and eggs this morning, although I did have some delicious leftover local beans with taco mix from the states (thank you very much Mom and Dad for the generous care-package).
In general, I don’t buy too much meat for many of the reasons listed above. It is hard to find, hard to store, and expensive. At the market, it is hard to tell the quality of the meat. The only way to be sure that the meat is fresh, is to buy the animal and kill it yourself. Then you no only have to kill the animal, but skin it, prepare it, and find a use for all the little bits. When choosing to by “in detail” instead, getting the meat home without spilling meat juice all over your bag and everything else you bought at market that day is another chore. Many of the recipes I know of call for chicken breast, in order to obtain a chicken breast; you must buy an entire chicken. Chicken in particular are considerably smaller than our corn fed birds back home, so no matter what portion you buy, you’ll not get much meat, and since all animals here are free range, the meat is thinner and chewier than what we are used to back home. Finally, the local recipes which, unlike my American ones, are actually catered to the meat available in West Africa, aren’t terribly appealing. The standard recipe involves taking all edible parts, boiling them in water, and then adding them to whatever sauce will go with you fufu or pâte (the staple foods described in a previous entry). In general, I find meat here to be more trouble than its worth (considering your mostly buying bones anyway, which is not always a bad investment considering how few other sources of calcium are available), and too expensive (the 1000 F CFA that will get you a whole chicken could just as easily have fed you for a week on a diet of rice, beans, pâte and peanut sauce). So in general, the bulk of my protein intake comes from sources other than meat.
So tomorrow I’m going to Camp Espoir. Speaking of comestibles, a trip to the Peace Corps training center is always a treat because of the abundance of food there. The Peace Corps chefs, who are well versed in both European and African cuisine, work around the clock to ensure that all staying at the center are kept full and satisfied. Each trip I’ve made to the center, I and my fellow volunteers have done the pre and post stay weigh in at the scale which (I believe in jest) is found in the mess hall. The only time I have failed to gain a considerable amount was my week with Camp UNITE where I dined with adolescent boys (apparently it is a cross-cultural trait of boys 13-20 that they can eat), who actually ate enough to leave the kitchen staff wondering where their usually abundant supply of leftovers and second courses went, while the boys themselves clamoured for more. On this particular week, I actually managed to shed a few pounds at camp. I’m hoping that this week with Espoir, which caters to a generally smaller age group, will prove more plentiful for us counselors.
Weeks at the training center are one of the rare opportunities to find good, well prepared meat. However, given the centers location in the central region of the country, where there is a substantial Fulani population, it is often better to maintain more vegetarian habits to enjoy the African delicacy wagash. The Fulani are a migratory group of cattle keeps originally from Nigera. Wagash is their cheese, which is most similar though not entirely like mozzarella cheese. Often it is deep fried, but prepared anyway it is always delicious. The only thing rarer than a good serving of meat down in the south is one of cheese, and so often I am won over by the vegetarian options up at camp, the protein in which is normally the locally abundant wagash.
Food aside, I am truly looking forward to camp, although I believe I have described the camp itself in some detail in my last entry. It will be interesting to see how it measures up to the academic and very goal oriented Camp UNITE. I’m told this camp is generally more fun for the campers, but since we counselors deal with a much younger age group, it can also be more work for the counselors. Whereas at UNITE it sufficed to tell your campers to meet at the cafeteria at dinner time (as if those boys would miss a meal), at Espoir counselors often have to adopt the primary school method of head counts, and lining up signal file to march to the mess hall together. The potentially more juvenile concerns also include bed wettings and homesickness. Nonetheless it should be an interesting camp. At least this time, instead of the sensitive topic of sexual health and reproduction, I was charged with the more neutral topic of hygene and health. Far fewer would object to instructing children on proper hand washing techniques than they would proper uses of contraceptives. I would love to go on, but as always, my battery-life will not permit. Ici en Afrique, c’est comme ca.
Summer Camp
It has admittedly been a long time since my last entry. My apologies. These past two months have been without a doubt the busiest of my service to date. When I last left off I had just come back from a VAC (Volunteer Advisory Counsel) meeting, one representative from each region is given a forum to voice concerns, comments, and ideas on behalf of the volunteers in their region to PC Administration. Since then, I have been to two trainings for Peace Corps Summer Camps, one Camp itself, have published a magazine and somehow managed to start several projects in village at the same time. I’ll start with the camps.
The first camp for which I was already a counselor was Camp UNITE. The camp was started several years back by Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) working with the Associated Peace Corp Director (APCD) in charge of the PC: Girls Education and Empowerment (GEE we have many Peace Corps Acronyms (PCAs)). The camp was originally a life-skills camp camp for girls, but has since expanded to include school aged boys and girls who are either enrolled in CEG or Lycee (the french educational systems equivalent to middle and high school) or doing an apprenticeship (which would be analogous to a trade school in the states). For those of you who, like I was when I first arrived in country, are not exactly sure what all is included under the title of “life-skills”, think all those things you learned in school but weren’t aware you were learning, topics range from self-confidence to budgeting to sexual health. Each year, PCVs elect motivated students and apprentices from their communities who they feel would profit from a week of life-skills education. The applicants are then examined by the organizers of the camp, which is a mix of PCVs and host country nationals (HCNs). The result is that the participants are truly a mix of students, from all over the country, with all sorts of different background and experience. Because they are chosen from PCV’s communities, many are village students who have never before left home, while others are more cosmopolitan city dwellers. This approach allows the camp to reach children who normally go unnoticed by similar programs run by non-government organizations (NGOs) based in the big cities. Effectively, the camp works because of PCV’s involvement in the life of their host communities.
Over the course of my service I have come to truly admire this aspect of Peace Corps approach to development. What we lack in funding for project, expertise of personnel, permanence and stability in organization, the list could go on, we absolutely make up for by truly knowing the people with whom we work. We are literally the only organization that “walks among the locals”. In talking with other NGO workers, I am at times astonished to learn that some can’t even great someone in French, nevermind in a local language. Truly this is a something small, though I can’t tell you how many time’s just saying an Ewe greeting has broken through the awkward tension at the beginning of a meeting, and put my on the side of the community in their own eyes. All the same this small example is demonstrative of a larger problem in development work. How can you possible hope to be successful, working amongst a people whom you don’t even begin to understand? As an enthusiastic student of Anthropology, I applaud Peace Corps for this approach (though of course for the anthropologist two years in the field is a bare minimum (something of a rite of passage) to commence scholarly work and claim any sort of cultural understanding).
The camp itself was exhausting. I was a counselor for the apprentice boys. These are boys who, for whatever could not continue their studies in school and instead decided to follow a trade. Common trades in Togo include carpentry, masonry, tailoring, metalwork, and auto-repair. The age of the boys ranged from around 12 to mid-20s. Though it is frequently the case I am always surprised to learn that the people I am teaching (and in the case of UNITE was responsible over) are actually older than I. This is at times difficult because respect and age are very closely linked. While we in America are taught to respect your elders, here in Togo the hierarchy is more extreme. Younger people are often expected to perform services for their elders, such as running into town to fetch goods. More than once I have seen teachers pull a passing adolescent (who may be completely unaffiliated with the school) and tell him to erase the blackboard. More frustrating, from my perspective, is that when your elder says something, he is not to be contradicted by someone younger, even if what he is saying is blatantly wrong. Formations in which I enlist the help of a counterpart can therefore sometimes be frustrating. To cope with this disadvantage caused by my youth, I have learned to make as little mention as possible of my age (leaving Togolese in the dark as to my age normally works to my advantage since generally speaking they are very poor judges of white peoples age, if I keep silent, it is often assumed that I am well into my 40s with several grown children who, they assume, must now be approaching my actual age).
Fortunately for me as well, the rules are much less strict concerning white people. Unfortunately this is not always just a matter of HCNs being lenient for someone whom they know comes from a different culture and was raise with a different set of norms. More accurately, it seems at times that whiteness is a trump card. Though I may only be 23, have never lived or worked in a rural farming village before, and have no expertise in tropical agriculture, I am white, and so, very often people will simply listen to me. Like I said, this often works to my advantage. I often think that if I were constrained to the same rules as a Togolese 23 year old man (who, depending on whether or not he has any children, is often treated like a large adolescent) work would simply be impossible.
Of course, every situation is more nuanced than it first appears, and most stereotypes are based in some truth. Often the people with whom I work simply should listen to me. Frankly, my education and life experience have afforded my skills and knowledge that villagers simply don’t possess. To take an extreme example, I one day set out to disprove to an elderly woman that tuberculosis (TB) was caused by infidelity. She believed what may seem to us like backward superstition, because in lieu of any formal education that distinguished between bacterial infections and other aspects of human life, she drew a conclusion based on commonly held beliefs, likely based on some observed cause and effect relation. Often this seems at first glance like mere foolishness, but it is important to remember that even we Americans, in our high age of medical advancement, have some commonly held beliefs that simply aren’t true. Being in the cold, for example, has nothing to do with catching a cold, and once you’ve caught one, your campbell’s chicken noodle soup will in all likelihood fail to remedy your illness.
In arguing such cases with the Togolese, I’ve often come to the conclusion that your average American can offer no more proof that his view on infectious diseases is valid than a can Togolese person of his. We take at face value our accepted medical knowledge (I’ve personally never seen an airborne bacteria infect a lung), just as a Togolese takes his. Of course, we can always point out that TB is totally (or at least largely) eradicated in the US, while it, and many other totally preventable diseases, still run rampant in places like Togo and all over the developing world. Of course to blame this solely on a poor understand of disease transmission would be a hit below the belt to a people who already have enough going against them as is. The point is, at some point we simply take our medical professionals at their word. The average Togolese forms his opinions about health and medication in much the same process, taking for granted established belief, in much the same manner.
But I digress. Though camp was exhausting, it was also extremely rewarding. As a fellow PCV pointed out to me, Camp UNITE provided some of the most immediately satisfying moments in Peace Corps. Normally, when you are in village, you give a formation, explain things the best you can, give it you’re all, and walk away hoping anything you said stuck. At camp, because you are with the kids all week, you can see them during the formations, witness the momentary confusion afterwards, talk through it in small discussion groups, and actually witness the exact “a-ha” moment when it becomes clear that they actually get it.
All counselors are required to give at least one, but probably two formations during the camp. Lucky me, I was chosen as honorary sex ed teacher, and given the formations on adolescence and sexual health. In my talk I got to cover the gamut of subjects ranging from the biological reproductive system to masturbation (a concept which is very poorly understood out here). Unlike the American education system, which has at least one class a year for students from the time they are 11 until graduation from high school for sexual health, the Togo often have no sexual education whatsoever. This means that I had two one hour fifteen minute sessions to explain as best I could, the highlight reel of sexual health. Mostly, the end goal was to get the participants thinking more about the negative consequences of unprotected sex.
My role as sex ed instructor offered an interesting opportunity to see such a class from the other perspective. Through elementary and high school, I often found myself resentful of the way teachers used scare tactics and exaggerated the dangers of sex. I distinctly remember the efficacy rate of condom usage rising from about a 30% failure rate to prevent disease and unwanted pregnancy in 6th grade, to a 99% success rate by senior year of high school (I highly doubt the medical community made such profound breakthroughs in latex technology is so short a time). However, in looking at the problem from the other side, I totally understand the use of such tactics. I was teaching kids, many of whom were hearing this information for the first time, and only had an hour to drive my points home. Sure, in truth, the rhythm method to prevent pregnancy is actually fairly effective, but would you trust young kids to be able to follow the method, do I have time explain the method correctly, do I want to give them any excuse, given that early sexual experience with many partners is totally standard here, to think unprotected sex is a safe practice. Furthermore, what if through some misunderstanding, I lead a kid into believing he’s practicing safe methods, and he contracts a life threatening STDs. I’m not at all saying that I endorse the “scare tactics” method of sex ed, but after having tried to teach it a bit myself, I do understand why people use it.
All in all, camp was a great experience, and I am now looking forward to my next camp, Camp Espoir, happening the last week in July. Camp Espoir is entirely different from Camp UNITE. While UNITE is a life skills camp from students, which focuses almost entirely on education, Camp Espoir is designed to give children who have been affected by HIV/AIDS (some participants actually have the disease, others have sick family members, or have been left orphaned because of it, they are known in French as orphelin et enfant vulnerable or OET), an opportunity to have a fun week, almost as though they were attending a summer camp in the states. While there are still educational formations at this camp, the focus is much less on education and much more on the camp song, games, and just generally having a fun week. It should be a fun week.
Though battery life is forcing me to cut this entry short, I will say that for those of you interesting in what you can do from the states to support these camps and the efforts of the Peace Corps in general, a bunch of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) have recently formed the UNITE Foundation. The Foundation is a non-profit aimed at raising money to fund Camp UNITE (available funding for these camps is always in question and hopefully the fund will soon provide a much more stable source of money). If I had internet I would find contact information, but since internet likely much more available for you guys back home, I would encourage you to try a google search for the UNITE Foundation. Anyway that’s all I’ve got for now. More updates to come soon.
The first camp for which I was already a counselor was Camp UNITE. The camp was started several years back by Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) working with the Associated Peace Corp Director (APCD) in charge of the PC: Girls Education and Empowerment (GEE we have many Peace Corps Acronyms (PCAs)). The camp was originally a life-skills camp camp for girls, but has since expanded to include school aged boys and girls who are either enrolled in CEG or Lycee (the french educational systems equivalent to middle and high school) or doing an apprenticeship (which would be analogous to a trade school in the states). For those of you who, like I was when I first arrived in country, are not exactly sure what all is included under the title of “life-skills”, think all those things you learned in school but weren’t aware you were learning, topics range from self-confidence to budgeting to sexual health. Each year, PCVs elect motivated students and apprentices from their communities who they feel would profit from a week of life-skills education. The applicants are then examined by the organizers of the camp, which is a mix of PCVs and host country nationals (HCNs). The result is that the participants are truly a mix of students, from all over the country, with all sorts of different background and experience. Because they are chosen from PCV’s communities, many are village students who have never before left home, while others are more cosmopolitan city dwellers. This approach allows the camp to reach children who normally go unnoticed by similar programs run by non-government organizations (NGOs) based in the big cities. Effectively, the camp works because of PCV’s involvement in the life of their host communities.
Over the course of my service I have come to truly admire this aspect of Peace Corps approach to development. What we lack in funding for project, expertise of personnel, permanence and stability in organization, the list could go on, we absolutely make up for by truly knowing the people with whom we work. We are literally the only organization that “walks among the locals”. In talking with other NGO workers, I am at times astonished to learn that some can’t even great someone in French, nevermind in a local language. Truly this is a something small, though I can’t tell you how many time’s just saying an Ewe greeting has broken through the awkward tension at the beginning of a meeting, and put my on the side of the community in their own eyes. All the same this small example is demonstrative of a larger problem in development work. How can you possible hope to be successful, working amongst a people whom you don’t even begin to understand? As an enthusiastic student of Anthropology, I applaud Peace Corps for this approach (though of course for the anthropologist two years in the field is a bare minimum (something of a rite of passage) to commence scholarly work and claim any sort of cultural understanding).
The camp itself was exhausting. I was a counselor for the apprentice boys. These are boys who, for whatever could not continue their studies in school and instead decided to follow a trade. Common trades in Togo include carpentry, masonry, tailoring, metalwork, and auto-repair. The age of the boys ranged from around 12 to mid-20s. Though it is frequently the case I am always surprised to learn that the people I am teaching (and in the case of UNITE was responsible over) are actually older than I. This is at times difficult because respect and age are very closely linked. While we in America are taught to respect your elders, here in Togo the hierarchy is more extreme. Younger people are often expected to perform services for their elders, such as running into town to fetch goods. More than once I have seen teachers pull a passing adolescent (who may be completely unaffiliated with the school) and tell him to erase the blackboard. More frustrating, from my perspective, is that when your elder says something, he is not to be contradicted by someone younger, even if what he is saying is blatantly wrong. Formations in which I enlist the help of a counterpart can therefore sometimes be frustrating. To cope with this disadvantage caused by my youth, I have learned to make as little mention as possible of my age (leaving Togolese in the dark as to my age normally works to my advantage since generally speaking they are very poor judges of white peoples age, if I keep silent, it is often assumed that I am well into my 40s with several grown children who, they assume, must now be approaching my actual age).
Fortunately for me as well, the rules are much less strict concerning white people. Unfortunately this is not always just a matter of HCNs being lenient for someone whom they know comes from a different culture and was raise with a different set of norms. More accurately, it seems at times that whiteness is a trump card. Though I may only be 23, have never lived or worked in a rural farming village before, and have no expertise in tropical agriculture, I am white, and so, very often people will simply listen to me. Like I said, this often works to my advantage. I often think that if I were constrained to the same rules as a Togolese 23 year old man (who, depending on whether or not he has any children, is often treated like a large adolescent) work would simply be impossible.
Of course, every situation is more nuanced than it first appears, and most stereotypes are based in some truth. Often the people with whom I work simply should listen to me. Frankly, my education and life experience have afforded my skills and knowledge that villagers simply don’t possess. To take an extreme example, I one day set out to disprove to an elderly woman that tuberculosis (TB) was caused by infidelity. She believed what may seem to us like backward superstition, because in lieu of any formal education that distinguished between bacterial infections and other aspects of human life, she drew a conclusion based on commonly held beliefs, likely based on some observed cause and effect relation. Often this seems at first glance like mere foolishness, but it is important to remember that even we Americans, in our high age of medical advancement, have some commonly held beliefs that simply aren’t true. Being in the cold, for example, has nothing to do with catching a cold, and once you’ve caught one, your campbell’s chicken noodle soup will in all likelihood fail to remedy your illness.
In arguing such cases with the Togolese, I’ve often come to the conclusion that your average American can offer no more proof that his view on infectious diseases is valid than a can Togolese person of his. We take at face value our accepted medical knowledge (I’ve personally never seen an airborne bacteria infect a lung), just as a Togolese takes his. Of course, we can always point out that TB is totally (or at least largely) eradicated in the US, while it, and many other totally preventable diseases, still run rampant in places like Togo and all over the developing world. Of course to blame this solely on a poor understand of disease transmission would be a hit below the belt to a people who already have enough going against them as is. The point is, at some point we simply take our medical professionals at their word. The average Togolese forms his opinions about health and medication in much the same process, taking for granted established belief, in much the same manner.
But I digress. Though camp was exhausting, it was also extremely rewarding. As a fellow PCV pointed out to me, Camp UNITE provided some of the most immediately satisfying moments in Peace Corps. Normally, when you are in village, you give a formation, explain things the best you can, give it you’re all, and walk away hoping anything you said stuck. At camp, because you are with the kids all week, you can see them during the formations, witness the momentary confusion afterwards, talk through it in small discussion groups, and actually witness the exact “a-ha” moment when it becomes clear that they actually get it.
All counselors are required to give at least one, but probably two formations during the camp. Lucky me, I was chosen as honorary sex ed teacher, and given the formations on adolescence and sexual health. In my talk I got to cover the gamut of subjects ranging from the biological reproductive system to masturbation (a concept which is very poorly understood out here). Unlike the American education system, which has at least one class a year for students from the time they are 11 until graduation from high school for sexual health, the Togo often have no sexual education whatsoever. This means that I had two one hour fifteen minute sessions to explain as best I could, the highlight reel of sexual health. Mostly, the end goal was to get the participants thinking more about the negative consequences of unprotected sex.
My role as sex ed instructor offered an interesting opportunity to see such a class from the other perspective. Through elementary and high school, I often found myself resentful of the way teachers used scare tactics and exaggerated the dangers of sex. I distinctly remember the efficacy rate of condom usage rising from about a 30% failure rate to prevent disease and unwanted pregnancy in 6th grade, to a 99% success rate by senior year of high school (I highly doubt the medical community made such profound breakthroughs in latex technology is so short a time). However, in looking at the problem from the other side, I totally understand the use of such tactics. I was teaching kids, many of whom were hearing this information for the first time, and only had an hour to drive my points home. Sure, in truth, the rhythm method to prevent pregnancy is actually fairly effective, but would you trust young kids to be able to follow the method, do I have time explain the method correctly, do I want to give them any excuse, given that early sexual experience with many partners is totally standard here, to think unprotected sex is a safe practice. Furthermore, what if through some misunderstanding, I lead a kid into believing he’s practicing safe methods, and he contracts a life threatening STDs. I’m not at all saying that I endorse the “scare tactics” method of sex ed, but after having tried to teach it a bit myself, I do understand why people use it.
All in all, camp was a great experience, and I am now looking forward to my next camp, Camp Espoir, happening the last week in July. Camp Espoir is entirely different from Camp UNITE. While UNITE is a life skills camp from students, which focuses almost entirely on education, Camp Espoir is designed to give children who have been affected by HIV/AIDS (some participants actually have the disease, others have sick family members, or have been left orphaned because of it, they are known in French as orphelin et enfant vulnerable or OET), an opportunity to have a fun week, almost as though they were attending a summer camp in the states. While there are still educational formations at this camp, the focus is much less on education and much more on the camp song, games, and just generally having a fun week. It should be a fun week.
Though battery life is forcing me to cut this entry short, I will say that for those of you interesting in what you can do from the states to support these camps and the efforts of the Peace Corps in general, a bunch of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) have recently formed the UNITE Foundation. The Foundation is a non-profit aimed at raising money to fund Camp UNITE (available funding for these camps is always in question and hopefully the fund will soon provide a much more stable source of money). If I had internet I would find contact information, but since internet likely much more available for you guys back home, I would encourage you to try a google search for the UNITE Foundation. Anyway that’s all I’ve got for now. More updates to come soon.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Sandwiches, Evangelism, and Drought
It is now just under two weeks since my return to Togo from my short, but pleasant, interlude in the states. What stood out to me most from my time spend back home was just how much of everything there was, especially food. We really don’t want for anything.
What also surprised me was how quickly one can adapt to that lifestyle. As it was my vacation, and likely my last chance to savor all the good things American cuisine has to offer, I did not hold back. Much to my surprise, what had been a feeling of fullness to the point of constant discomfort, in my first few days back, rather quickly gave way to a ravenous appetite. In a mere 11 full days in America, I proudly returned to Africa 10 pounds heavier than when I left (I blame at least the last three pounds to KF(G??)C’s satire of a “sandwich”, the “double-down”.
For those not familiar with this monstrosity, KFC undertaken the daunting task of taken excess in the American diet to new heights by introducing a bold new bacon sandwich that employs fried chicken in the place where more modest sandwich’s would have settled for bread. I have my true and trusted friends Will and Pete, who I’m sure had the best of intention in mind when buying me this bag-o-heart disease, to blame for my exposure to this new low in American fast-food. They showed up at my door minutes before my departure from Long Valley, KFC bag in hand, which was already completely translucent and dripping, so chock-full of grease were these sandwiches. Of there discretion in giving me this “most American of sandwiches”, as I said, I’m sure my friends had the best of intentions.
This parody of itself aside, in my opinion, the chief strength of food in America is that Americans feel no allegiance to any one kind of cuisine but rather they proudly integrate and mix cuisine from other places and cultures, thus making the variety virtually endless. I only truly felt this variety when comparing such variety with Togolese cuisine, in which your choices consist primarily of pâte (essentially corn flour dough) or fufu (pounded yams) and a slight variety in accompanying sauces. Contrary to the American spirit of adventure and variety in dietary pursuits, many Togolese hold the firm conviction that three days without fufu would literally be the death of them. To everyone’s favorite question (or rather demand) “You will take me to America,” my new favorite response is something along the lines of “You know, there don’t have fufu in America”, to which many have responded “I’ll just have to bring my own” (betraying a complete ignorance of the Airlines’ ever strictening baggage policy), but none have every responded “If that’s the way it is, I’ll sacrifice my fufu for an opportunity to make my way in the world’s most economically powerful nation”, hence why its my new favorite response.
In polite company here in the states, no one would dare mention that, in the two weeks since our last meeting you’ve put on weight at a nearly miraculous rate. Not so here in village. Of everyone I’ve talked to in the past weeks, no one has failed to mention how I’ve come back from America in much “better form” (rounder) than when I left. To this they also comment how much handsomer (paler) my skin has become in the less harsh northern sun. It is funny looking at how different cultural conceptions of beauty can be. It is also sad that in Africa, where 100% of the natives have black skin, light skin is seen as beautiful. I have heard other volunteers argue that it is simply a fact that you always want what you don’t have. Whatever is common among people is deemed less value that physical traits that are rare. This may have some truth, but I can’t help but think that five hundred years of culture hegemony by Europeans, in which those which lighter skin were richer, more powerful, more successful, and freer (less enslaved) than those with darker skin, has something to do with present African conceptions of beauty. This trend continues, and is perpetuated today. Minister’s, successful businessmen, and generally any man with money and power inevitably has a light skinned African woman on his arm as well, and there are no shortage of soaps, washes, creams, and traditional herbal remedies promising lighter skin (one can only imagine the harmful damage done to skin cells in order for one of these treatments to actually work). Though not nearly as common as the question “Take me to America,” I have on occasion been asked if I was born with white skin. To which the follow up inevitably is “How can I make my skin like yours?”
In other news, the reason I am taking this opportunity to write to this blog is that it affords me a reasonable excuse to remain in my compound and avoid church services. These past couple days have been the weekend of “Evanglisation au village”. A native of Lonvo, who has since moved out to Lomé a made a success of himself in the vague domain of “business” (this is the response of nearly all Togolese (peasant farmers aside) when you ask them their profession), has apparently decided that the best way he can give back to his community of birth is to fund a huge event in order to spread the word of Christ. Aside from the fact that their efforts evangelize have included blaring African church music full blast in the school yard not fifty yards for what is approaching 72 hours straight, I have mixed feelings about evangelization in Africa, my feelings about the blaring music being singularly negative. There is just something about evangelism in African that just seems so unwholesome. Telling the poor destitute people of the world not to worry about the miseries of this life and to look forward to the afterlife seems like a hell of risky gamble to be pushing. What about trying to make this life better? I can’t help but think that maybe the money put towards this weekend of proselytizing would have been better spend funding public middle school, which is desperately lacking here in village. On the other hand, perhaps I’m underestimating the real comfort people find in religion, the real solace that helps people carry on with their every day life, simply because I personally find no comfort therein.
However, I attended the opening ceremonies, Friday night. As much because it was a rare opportunity to see the whole community engaged in one activity, (singing, dancing, and praying) as because I was curious to see just what these evangelists were up to (plus here in village, you take any sort of “night on the town” you can get). One member of the evangelist group was kind enough to offer a translation free of charge. The content of the sermons (given by various preachers) was not at all related to biblical teachings. Rather it was merely a repeated call to “walk with Jesus” with the assurance that your life with instantly be the better (in what seemed like a very real, material sense) for it. It reminded me of the gospel of success televangelism of the states.
Evangelism of this nature is, in the states, big business, so I was naturally inclined to look for the profit to be had by evangelizing here in village. Alas there is none to be found, at least none that I, from my limited perspective of irreligious outsider, can find. These people have come in, bringing with them a stage, advanced P/A system, generators, lights, and a whole mirade of preachers, upon the whim of a benevolent benefactor, who is himself an active member of the church, at no cost to the village. I’d have to think that if profit were their main motive, they’d look for an audience a little higher-up the economic scale than an impoverished village of less than 1000 inhabitants.
What’s more, in casually talking to both the financer of this event, and the various participants throughout the weekend (preachers, musicians, electricians, friendly supporters come in from Lomé) they all seems to be genuinely into it, and exceedingly nice people on top of that.
Given the nature of this evangelization, which seems to consist in music, day and night, with sermon’s only in the evenings (which are themselves interspaced with frequent musical interludes, including dancing), I sometimes think that the benevolent village native’s main goal was just to give the inhabitants of his native town a big party. That sentiment I can relate to a little more easily. Perhaps this money could have been directed towards funding a school, but everyone in the international development community knows that dumping money on a development problem is the least effective way to fix it. Sure he could build a school, but how involved in this project could he really be? After building the school, who will maintain it? Who will teach in it? Who will make sure each student is adequately supplied? Who will ensure that villagers have adequate funding to pay for school fees (still an issue even in public schools)? There is much more involved in building a school than meets the eye.
On the other hand, these people deserve a party. Life is fairly monotonous here. Music is seldom heard, and large social gatherings are few and far between (unless someone has died, funerals are all around a high price to pay for a social life). The rains are already two months late in coming; people are beginning to worry about crop failure. There is, in the south, two rainy seasons a year in which to grow food. The first, larger one has already almost completely passed by with no rain. In many ways a weekend to sing, dance, rejoice in the mysteries of life neither they, nor anyone understands, and generally forget about the day to day worries, might be just what they need (short of two months of constant rainfall). And so, while wholly convinced of the benevolence of those who have organized this weekend, my jury is still out on the final judgment of evangelism in Africa.
To touch lightly again on the lack of rain, a subject of such grave importance to those among whom I’m living that I feel it deserves slightly more attention in my blog, there is generally a feeling a solemn apprehension in the village. It seems everyone is on edge, and excited to talk about how the rain has not come this year. Unanimous reports from various villagers forecast famine if the rains refuse to come much longer. I don’t know if this is hyperbole or not, but it seems to me that food shortages will be a serious problem if this growing season goes to waste. People generally only save what they need to eat. What grain does get stored generally goes to financing agricultural inputs for the next growing season, fertilizers, pesticides, etc., or getting families through the already long periods of the year in which they are not harvesting anything. The rains do seem to have come to other regions of Togo, and so it is not as if there will be no food to be found anywhere. But in a subsistence agricultural economy, I doubt that most families can afford to pay for the majority of their food. Currently most of what they eat is grown themselves, save the occasional fish or tomato paste added to sauce. Each day, I hope the rain will come, nearly every day it looks as if it will, but so far the rain clouds have either passed over us, or given us a light sprinkling, “just a taste” as the locals say, not nearly enough to quench the severely parched earth.
I have heard various explanations for why the rain is so late in coming this year. By far the most interesting was an account by a friend of mine at market this week. He explained that a group animists had recently killed a vagrant sleeping in a local church, and used her in their religious ceremony. The perpetrators of this crime, he explained, had since been captured, and was thankfully rotting in the prison several miles to the south, but the authorities had not yet performed the necessary ceremonies to appease the spirits for this atrocity. He wished they would hurry up with this ceremony, scheduled to take place any day now, so that the spirits would cease to be angry and the spirits would come. I have no idea if this story actually happened, and if so if they will actually be performing an appeasement ceremony, but if it will help the rains come I certainly hope they hurry up and get it done. Dying battery forces me to wrap it up here, more to come next time.
What also surprised me was how quickly one can adapt to that lifestyle. As it was my vacation, and likely my last chance to savor all the good things American cuisine has to offer, I did not hold back. Much to my surprise, what had been a feeling of fullness to the point of constant discomfort, in my first few days back, rather quickly gave way to a ravenous appetite. In a mere 11 full days in America, I proudly returned to Africa 10 pounds heavier than when I left (I blame at least the last three pounds to KF(G??)C’s satire of a “sandwich”, the “double-down”.
For those not familiar with this monstrosity, KFC undertaken the daunting task of taken excess in the American diet to new heights by introducing a bold new bacon sandwich that employs fried chicken in the place where more modest sandwich’s would have settled for bread. I have my true and trusted friends Will and Pete, who I’m sure had the best of intention in mind when buying me this bag-o-heart disease, to blame for my exposure to this new low in American fast-food. They showed up at my door minutes before my departure from Long Valley, KFC bag in hand, which was already completely translucent and dripping, so chock-full of grease were these sandwiches. Of there discretion in giving me this “most American of sandwiches”, as I said, I’m sure my friends had the best of intentions.
This parody of itself aside, in my opinion, the chief strength of food in America is that Americans feel no allegiance to any one kind of cuisine but rather they proudly integrate and mix cuisine from other places and cultures, thus making the variety virtually endless. I only truly felt this variety when comparing such variety with Togolese cuisine, in which your choices consist primarily of pâte (essentially corn flour dough) or fufu (pounded yams) and a slight variety in accompanying sauces. Contrary to the American spirit of adventure and variety in dietary pursuits, many Togolese hold the firm conviction that three days without fufu would literally be the death of them. To everyone’s favorite question (or rather demand) “You will take me to America,” my new favorite response is something along the lines of “You know, there don’t have fufu in America”, to which many have responded “I’ll just have to bring my own” (betraying a complete ignorance of the Airlines’ ever strictening baggage policy), but none have every responded “If that’s the way it is, I’ll sacrifice my fufu for an opportunity to make my way in the world’s most economically powerful nation”, hence why its my new favorite response.
In polite company here in the states, no one would dare mention that, in the two weeks since our last meeting you’ve put on weight at a nearly miraculous rate. Not so here in village. Of everyone I’ve talked to in the past weeks, no one has failed to mention how I’ve come back from America in much “better form” (rounder) than when I left. To this they also comment how much handsomer (paler) my skin has become in the less harsh northern sun. It is funny looking at how different cultural conceptions of beauty can be. It is also sad that in Africa, where 100% of the natives have black skin, light skin is seen as beautiful. I have heard other volunteers argue that it is simply a fact that you always want what you don’t have. Whatever is common among people is deemed less value that physical traits that are rare. This may have some truth, but I can’t help but think that five hundred years of culture hegemony by Europeans, in which those which lighter skin were richer, more powerful, more successful, and freer (less enslaved) than those with darker skin, has something to do with present African conceptions of beauty. This trend continues, and is perpetuated today. Minister’s, successful businessmen, and generally any man with money and power inevitably has a light skinned African woman on his arm as well, and there are no shortage of soaps, washes, creams, and traditional herbal remedies promising lighter skin (one can only imagine the harmful damage done to skin cells in order for one of these treatments to actually work). Though not nearly as common as the question “Take me to America,” I have on occasion been asked if I was born with white skin. To which the follow up inevitably is “How can I make my skin like yours?”
In other news, the reason I am taking this opportunity to write to this blog is that it affords me a reasonable excuse to remain in my compound and avoid church services. These past couple days have been the weekend of “Evanglisation au village”. A native of Lonvo, who has since moved out to Lomé a made a success of himself in the vague domain of “business” (this is the response of nearly all Togolese (peasant farmers aside) when you ask them their profession), has apparently decided that the best way he can give back to his community of birth is to fund a huge event in order to spread the word of Christ. Aside from the fact that their efforts evangelize have included blaring African church music full blast in the school yard not fifty yards for what is approaching 72 hours straight, I have mixed feelings about evangelization in Africa, my feelings about the blaring music being singularly negative. There is just something about evangelism in African that just seems so unwholesome. Telling the poor destitute people of the world not to worry about the miseries of this life and to look forward to the afterlife seems like a hell of risky gamble to be pushing. What about trying to make this life better? I can’t help but think that maybe the money put towards this weekend of proselytizing would have been better spend funding public middle school, which is desperately lacking here in village. On the other hand, perhaps I’m underestimating the real comfort people find in religion, the real solace that helps people carry on with their every day life, simply because I personally find no comfort therein.
However, I attended the opening ceremonies, Friday night. As much because it was a rare opportunity to see the whole community engaged in one activity, (singing, dancing, and praying) as because I was curious to see just what these evangelists were up to (plus here in village, you take any sort of “night on the town” you can get). One member of the evangelist group was kind enough to offer a translation free of charge. The content of the sermons (given by various preachers) was not at all related to biblical teachings. Rather it was merely a repeated call to “walk with Jesus” with the assurance that your life with instantly be the better (in what seemed like a very real, material sense) for it. It reminded me of the gospel of success televangelism of the states.
Evangelism of this nature is, in the states, big business, so I was naturally inclined to look for the profit to be had by evangelizing here in village. Alas there is none to be found, at least none that I, from my limited perspective of irreligious outsider, can find. These people have come in, bringing with them a stage, advanced P/A system, generators, lights, and a whole mirade of preachers, upon the whim of a benevolent benefactor, who is himself an active member of the church, at no cost to the village. I’d have to think that if profit were their main motive, they’d look for an audience a little higher-up the economic scale than an impoverished village of less than 1000 inhabitants.
What’s more, in casually talking to both the financer of this event, and the various participants throughout the weekend (preachers, musicians, electricians, friendly supporters come in from Lomé) they all seems to be genuinely into it, and exceedingly nice people on top of that.
Given the nature of this evangelization, which seems to consist in music, day and night, with sermon’s only in the evenings (which are themselves interspaced with frequent musical interludes, including dancing), I sometimes think that the benevolent village native’s main goal was just to give the inhabitants of his native town a big party. That sentiment I can relate to a little more easily. Perhaps this money could have been directed towards funding a school, but everyone in the international development community knows that dumping money on a development problem is the least effective way to fix it. Sure he could build a school, but how involved in this project could he really be? After building the school, who will maintain it? Who will teach in it? Who will make sure each student is adequately supplied? Who will ensure that villagers have adequate funding to pay for school fees (still an issue even in public schools)? There is much more involved in building a school than meets the eye.
On the other hand, these people deserve a party. Life is fairly monotonous here. Music is seldom heard, and large social gatherings are few and far between (unless someone has died, funerals are all around a high price to pay for a social life). The rains are already two months late in coming; people are beginning to worry about crop failure. There is, in the south, two rainy seasons a year in which to grow food. The first, larger one has already almost completely passed by with no rain. In many ways a weekend to sing, dance, rejoice in the mysteries of life neither they, nor anyone understands, and generally forget about the day to day worries, might be just what they need (short of two months of constant rainfall). And so, while wholly convinced of the benevolence of those who have organized this weekend, my jury is still out on the final judgment of evangelism in Africa.
To touch lightly again on the lack of rain, a subject of such grave importance to those among whom I’m living that I feel it deserves slightly more attention in my blog, there is generally a feeling a solemn apprehension in the village. It seems everyone is on edge, and excited to talk about how the rain has not come this year. Unanimous reports from various villagers forecast famine if the rains refuse to come much longer. I don’t know if this is hyperbole or not, but it seems to me that food shortages will be a serious problem if this growing season goes to waste. People generally only save what they need to eat. What grain does get stored generally goes to financing agricultural inputs for the next growing season, fertilizers, pesticides, etc., or getting families through the already long periods of the year in which they are not harvesting anything. The rains do seem to have come to other regions of Togo, and so it is not as if there will be no food to be found anywhere. But in a subsistence agricultural economy, I doubt that most families can afford to pay for the majority of their food. Currently most of what they eat is grown themselves, save the occasional fish or tomato paste added to sauce. Each day, I hope the rain will come, nearly every day it looks as if it will, but so far the rain clouds have either passed over us, or given us a light sprinkling, “just a taste” as the locals say, not nearly enough to quench the severely parched earth.
I have heard various explanations for why the rain is so late in coming this year. By far the most interesting was an account by a friend of mine at market this week. He explained that a group animists had recently killed a vagrant sleeping in a local church, and used her in their religious ceremony. The perpetrators of this crime, he explained, had since been captured, and was thankfully rotting in the prison several miles to the south, but the authorities had not yet performed the necessary ceremonies to appease the spirits for this atrocity. He wished they would hurry up with this ceremony, scheduled to take place any day now, so that the spirits would cease to be angry and the spirits would come. I have no idea if this story actually happened, and if so if they will actually be performing an appeasement ceremony, but if it will help the rains come I certainly hope they hurry up and get it done. Dying battery forces me to wrap it up here, more to come next time.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Celebration au Village
This weekend is the induction ceremony for the local chief of my village. Therefore, everyone is busy preparing for the festivities. Last Tuesday we spent the morning constructing a roofing to house all the guests the day of the ceremony. Whereas in the states, if you are having a large function, you would rent a party tent, here in Africa, you simply build one. This is done by finding small trees/shoot of bamboo, placing them securely into freshly dug holes in the ground, and then laying other branches across them from one to the other to provide a frame for the roof. Then the frame is covered with palm branches to provide shade for everyone below. This may seem like a lot of work, but this is done for literally every social event, and since I’ve been here, I’ve not seen a weekend pass without a social event of some kind (unfortunately the vast majority of these have been funerals, death seems to be a very common fact of life among villagers). Furthermore, these coverings are absolutely necessary, as the heat of the African sun would entirely prevent large social gatherings otherwise.
This is especially true because of the Togolese love for dressing up. The Togolese take extreme pride in the way they dress, and how one dresses here speaks way more about a person than it would in the states. Of course, in the United States, one here’s adages such as “dress for the job you want, not the job you have” and college career centers spend inordinate amounts of time just trying to convey the importance of looking good for a job interview, but such meticulous attention to appearance in largely confined to professional realm and gaining admittance to fancy restaurants. Here in Togo, dressing well is a sign of respect for whatever it is that you are attending, and so wherever you go, people must try to look their best. Furthermore, how you dress is corresponds more directly to how you can afford to dress. Whereas our egalitarian ethic in the US tends to discourage showy dress (and truthfully most people couldn’t tell the difference between a $40 pair of slack and one costing $300), here in Togo, if you can afford to wear it, you do, as an outward symbol of your status within a community. As such people in my village dress themselves up in their Sunday best to go to market. Not only is this the equivalent of getting dressed up to go to Walmart (of course there is that, now famous, woman who wrote into her local newspaper that her favorite part about shopping at the dollar store was that she didn’t have to get all fancied up like she was shopping at Walmart… but I think we can safely discount her as the except to the rule in America) but many people walk the 7k to market, carrying their goods to sell on their head. All this is to say, at a social event you need a covering to prevent people from piting out their party clothes (unless of course your me, in which case you pit out everything you wear, no matter what your doing, simply by virtue of the fact that it is constantly hot as hell).
Fortunately, African dress tends not only to be much more accommodating to the heat than western formal wear, it is also much more fun to wear. Formal Togolese dress (I believe this holds true for most of West Africa as well) centers around a fabric called pangya (I have no idea if that’s spelled correctly), which is a colorful cotton fabric interlayed with bright designs and patterns. From this tailors make both mens and womens cloths. Pangya is sold sets of three sheets, for women this is used to make a top a skirt and and the third goes to either a head-wrap, can be left as an accessory to wrap around themselves (in case it gets cold??), or can be used (as it normally is) as a means to carry their baby upon their back. Because women must both do manual work, and take care of their children, this is the standard way to carry small children. You simply put the baby on your back, piggyback style, then wrap the sheet around the baby and yourself, and tie it off in the front. The baby fits snugly to you back, normally it will just go to sleep, and you can continue your work as though completely unhindered.
For men, the three sheets become either shorts or pants (long shorts seem to be an acceptable form of formal dress), and a loose fitting shirt that can either be buttoned up in a more western style, or slid into overhead in a more traditional African style. Sometimes men will make little hats with the third piece, or just forgo that piece altogether. Suffice it to say this weekend everyone in village and I will “nous mettons sur notre 31”, a French saying meaning literally I will wear my 31, but which is analogous to saying in English (and makes about as much as saying) “dress to the nines” (if anyone understands the origin of either of these phrases please feel free to enlighten me, I get the feeling they have to do with evening dresses and the end of the month, but that’s about it).
Anyway, in my last post I left off at about 8 oclock in my daily routine. Perhaps this is in part because from here my day becomes much less routine. If there are meetings with various farmers groups, I will attend them. At these meetings I offer what little advice I can when I see fit, although normally I find the usefulness of attending these meetings is much more to help me untangle exactly how peasant farming, cooperative agricultural endevours, and village life generally operates. Eventually, I think I will understand my village well enough to take a more active role, but as generations of Peace Corps Volunteers before me have advised, in a new village (that is a village that has never before hosted a volunteer) the first few months are just about learning about the place and letting them learn about you. Thus the majority of my day is taken up with various different activities, that range from just sitting around with the ladies who sell food by the street, to wandering around the village until I find someone working on something (rethatching their roof, chopping firewood, building a clay cookstove etc) and trying to help them, or just taking impromptu trips to the fields surrounding the village. While I can’t say that I have a set routine for the middle of the day, as the village is fairly small (only a few hundred people) there is a fairly common cast of characters whom I meet everyday.
First there is the old lady who lives behind my house. Every morning when I go to fetch water she stops me to greet me, and every time when I get the greeting right (and even when I don’t) she becomes consumed in laughter. She then questions me in Ewe until I’ve guessed the right responses or someone comes along and tells me the right things to say. Next there are the small children, who will often gather outside my door in between class at the local elementary school. After much conditioning, I’ve finally managed to stop them from singing the “Yovo Song”. The “Yovo Song” is a little ditty known by literally every man woman and child in Togo (I have no idea how they all know exactly the same lines). It is annoying enough to fill even the most patient, child-loving, white person’s heart with contempt. All the same Togolese parents seem to encourage their children to sing it (I think they think its cute), and as such when the children actually see a Yovo, they will follow him for hours on end chanting the ditty: “Yovo Yovo bon soir (this regardless of what time of day it is), ca va bien, merci!” over and over again. As I’ve described before the word Yovo although racial in nature, has no specifically derogatory significance and the Togolese, who are much less sensitive to sweepingly general labels than Americans (who, due in large part to our checkered racial history, are at time all too sensitive to such things), will use the terms simply as a way of addressing a white person. Yet all the same, to the ever sensitive American ear, it tends to be received as offensive (or at least unfair, as whether it is intended or not there are certain assumptions that come along with the title: the person is rich/should buy things for people/doesn’t know the right price of an item and so is easy to rip off etc). That coupled with the song following you around day in and day out is enough to drive you crazy.
And so, fortunately the children in my village, by and large, no longer sing the “Yovo Song”. Instead they demand high-fives, an American greeting which I attempted to teach them, but on which I think I missed the mark, now whenever they see me the goal is to collect as many high-fives from the Yovo as possible. They will also run around shouting “tortilla”, as I once made a batch of tortilla’s and brought them out to share with people outside my house, and apparently they were a big hit amongst 5-10 age bracket.
Possibly my favorite character whom I see on a daily basis is the little girl who will run all the way home every time she sees me. It has been almost every day going on three months now, this little girl, probably around 4 years old, will be going about her business, walking to the food vendors, playing in the sand, carrying water, etc. The minute she sees me, she drops everything and runs all the way home, no matter how far away home happens to be. I’ve watched her run at a dead sprint hundreds of yards through windy village paths. Now it is not at all uncommon for children to be afraid of the white man. In many cases I’m the first white person they’ve ever seen, and they just don’t understand it, so they get scared. Kids hide, babies cry, I’m used to it, and take no offense. But by now most of the children have warmed up to me, or at least gotten over their fear. Not this girl. I don’t know anything else about this girl, as every time I’m within eyesight of her she runs away, but I do give a heartfelt chuckle every time I see her bolting towards home at full speed, terror in her eyes.
Next I normally run into the old lady who always makes me dance. This lady is the typical, “I’m old enough to do whatever I feel like doing” type. She is outspoken, and given to doing odd things at odd times (like trying to make the Yovo dance in the middle of a meething). Fortunately for her, the elderly are highly respected and it seems that her eccentric character is not only tolerated but looked kindly upon. I for one think she is hilarious. The dancing thing started when I made the mistake of trying to dance like a Togolese at one of the funeral ceremonies. The whole village cracked up, and now I get invited to events just to be seen dancing. I have no idea if they laugh because they think its funny seeing a white person doing their traditional dances, or if its because I’m just so awful at their dance that they can’t contain themselves (I suspect the latter), but either way, the villagers love to see me dance.
This old woman in particular will try to make me dance every time she sees me. The first time she tried it I, feeling no particular urge to cause a Yovo dancing scene in the middle of village, told her that I couldn’t dance because there was no music. She shook her head, looking slightly defeated for a moment. Then an idea came into her head. She started singing “dancer, dancerdancer, dancer!” and dancing. At this point, I figured if she was this determined, there was probably no getting out of it, and so I started dancing with her. From then on every time I see her, she pulls me over and starts dancing.
I’ve noticed that there are a lot of children and a lot of old people in village. Children are everywhere, yet their presence is easy to explain, people in village have a lot of children. There is limited access to birth control, and in general, children are viewed as much as an asset as they are a cost. In developed countries, children mean another mouth to feed (and one who legally can’t even begin to contribute to the families income for the first 16 years of his/her life), school fees, toys, activities. In contrast, in the developing world, children are another pair of hands to fetch water, do farm labor, look after the other children, etc. In addition a high infant mortality rate means that if you want to have three children, you should plan on having six babies. Furthermore, since children are viewed more as a potential source of labor than a largely useless cost (or at least a very long term investment), the world of children is much less distinctly separate from the adult world. Children do similar work to adults, they eat from the same bowls etc.
The presence of so many elderly was at first slightly more puzzling to me. Part of it is surely, as I’ve touched upon, the fact that the elderly tend to take a much more active role in society here than in the States. There is certainly enough commentary in the States that critique how, through institutions like nursing homes, we separate out our elderly, keeping them out of sight and out of mind. Still, one would think that with the lower life expectancies found in the developing world that you would see less old people. However, I’m beginning to think that this actually works in reverse. The life expectancy rate is so slow because so many people in the developing world die in their youth or in their prime. As I think I’ve said it prior posts, I’ve been to more funerals here in two months than I have in my whole life before coming. Often the deceased are sick, or else they die suddenly from undisclosed causes. Largely they are middle aged. In such an environment selection pressures would seem to pick out those less fit to resist disease, and the hazards of everyday life. Thus those who do make it to their old age, are really really good at living. I’ve noticed that it is not terribly uncommon for village elderly to reach 100 years. Furthermore, although the nursing home culture in the states often unjustly works to keep the elderly out of sight out of mind, often the elderly in the States are no longer able to take care of themselves. This does not appear to be so here in
Togo, even those approaching 100 go out to the fields, carry water on their heads, and at least seem as fit as a 25 year old. So proportionately, the elderly are as numerous as the middle aged, since it is largely from the young and middle aged populations that people are taken. Then due in part to their sheer talent for living, and perhaps as well from their active lifestyle (not active in the western sense of running 5 miles every morning, but active in the peasant farmer sense of working from dawn till dusk every day trying to eek out a living from the land), they age incredibly well, and so are very active even until their final days.
Of course this is a completely pseudoscientific theory, lacking any statistical or even scientifically sound evidence to support it. It’s simply a guess based on my observations here in village.
Anyway its getting to be that time when my battery life is once again dwindling, and so until next time, perhaps I can actually finish describing a day in the life of a peace corps volunteer.
This is especially true because of the Togolese love for dressing up. The Togolese take extreme pride in the way they dress, and how one dresses here speaks way more about a person than it would in the states. Of course, in the United States, one here’s adages such as “dress for the job you want, not the job you have” and college career centers spend inordinate amounts of time just trying to convey the importance of looking good for a job interview, but such meticulous attention to appearance in largely confined to professional realm and gaining admittance to fancy restaurants. Here in Togo, dressing well is a sign of respect for whatever it is that you are attending, and so wherever you go, people must try to look their best. Furthermore, how you dress is corresponds more directly to how you can afford to dress. Whereas our egalitarian ethic in the US tends to discourage showy dress (and truthfully most people couldn’t tell the difference between a $40 pair of slack and one costing $300), here in Togo, if you can afford to wear it, you do, as an outward symbol of your status within a community. As such people in my village dress themselves up in their Sunday best to go to market. Not only is this the equivalent of getting dressed up to go to Walmart (of course there is that, now famous, woman who wrote into her local newspaper that her favorite part about shopping at the dollar store was that she didn’t have to get all fancied up like she was shopping at Walmart… but I think we can safely discount her as the except to the rule in America) but many people walk the 7k to market, carrying their goods to sell on their head. All this is to say, at a social event you need a covering to prevent people from piting out their party clothes (unless of course your me, in which case you pit out everything you wear, no matter what your doing, simply by virtue of the fact that it is constantly hot as hell).
Fortunately, African dress tends not only to be much more accommodating to the heat than western formal wear, it is also much more fun to wear. Formal Togolese dress (I believe this holds true for most of West Africa as well) centers around a fabric called pangya (I have no idea if that’s spelled correctly), which is a colorful cotton fabric interlayed with bright designs and patterns. From this tailors make both mens and womens cloths. Pangya is sold sets of three sheets, for women this is used to make a top a skirt and and the third goes to either a head-wrap, can be left as an accessory to wrap around themselves (in case it gets cold??), or can be used (as it normally is) as a means to carry their baby upon their back. Because women must both do manual work, and take care of their children, this is the standard way to carry small children. You simply put the baby on your back, piggyback style, then wrap the sheet around the baby and yourself, and tie it off in the front. The baby fits snugly to you back, normally it will just go to sleep, and you can continue your work as though completely unhindered.
For men, the three sheets become either shorts or pants (long shorts seem to be an acceptable form of formal dress), and a loose fitting shirt that can either be buttoned up in a more western style, or slid into overhead in a more traditional African style. Sometimes men will make little hats with the third piece, or just forgo that piece altogether. Suffice it to say this weekend everyone in village and I will “nous mettons sur notre 31”, a French saying meaning literally I will wear my 31, but which is analogous to saying in English (and makes about as much as saying) “dress to the nines” (if anyone understands the origin of either of these phrases please feel free to enlighten me, I get the feeling they have to do with evening dresses and the end of the month, but that’s about it).
Anyway, in my last post I left off at about 8 oclock in my daily routine. Perhaps this is in part because from here my day becomes much less routine. If there are meetings with various farmers groups, I will attend them. At these meetings I offer what little advice I can when I see fit, although normally I find the usefulness of attending these meetings is much more to help me untangle exactly how peasant farming, cooperative agricultural endevours, and village life generally operates. Eventually, I think I will understand my village well enough to take a more active role, but as generations of Peace Corps Volunteers before me have advised, in a new village (that is a village that has never before hosted a volunteer) the first few months are just about learning about the place and letting them learn about you. Thus the majority of my day is taken up with various different activities, that range from just sitting around with the ladies who sell food by the street, to wandering around the village until I find someone working on something (rethatching their roof, chopping firewood, building a clay cookstove etc) and trying to help them, or just taking impromptu trips to the fields surrounding the village. While I can’t say that I have a set routine for the middle of the day, as the village is fairly small (only a few hundred people) there is a fairly common cast of characters whom I meet everyday.
First there is the old lady who lives behind my house. Every morning when I go to fetch water she stops me to greet me, and every time when I get the greeting right (and even when I don’t) she becomes consumed in laughter. She then questions me in Ewe until I’ve guessed the right responses or someone comes along and tells me the right things to say. Next there are the small children, who will often gather outside my door in between class at the local elementary school. After much conditioning, I’ve finally managed to stop them from singing the “Yovo Song”. The “Yovo Song” is a little ditty known by literally every man woman and child in Togo (I have no idea how they all know exactly the same lines). It is annoying enough to fill even the most patient, child-loving, white person’s heart with contempt. All the same Togolese parents seem to encourage their children to sing it (I think they think its cute), and as such when the children actually see a Yovo, they will follow him for hours on end chanting the ditty: “Yovo Yovo bon soir (this regardless of what time of day it is), ca va bien, merci!” over and over again. As I’ve described before the word Yovo although racial in nature, has no specifically derogatory significance and the Togolese, who are much less sensitive to sweepingly general labels than Americans (who, due in large part to our checkered racial history, are at time all too sensitive to such things), will use the terms simply as a way of addressing a white person. Yet all the same, to the ever sensitive American ear, it tends to be received as offensive (or at least unfair, as whether it is intended or not there are certain assumptions that come along with the title: the person is rich/should buy things for people/doesn’t know the right price of an item and so is easy to rip off etc). That coupled with the song following you around day in and day out is enough to drive you crazy.
And so, fortunately the children in my village, by and large, no longer sing the “Yovo Song”. Instead they demand high-fives, an American greeting which I attempted to teach them, but on which I think I missed the mark, now whenever they see me the goal is to collect as many high-fives from the Yovo as possible. They will also run around shouting “tortilla”, as I once made a batch of tortilla’s and brought them out to share with people outside my house, and apparently they were a big hit amongst 5-10 age bracket.
Possibly my favorite character whom I see on a daily basis is the little girl who will run all the way home every time she sees me. It has been almost every day going on three months now, this little girl, probably around 4 years old, will be going about her business, walking to the food vendors, playing in the sand, carrying water, etc. The minute she sees me, she drops everything and runs all the way home, no matter how far away home happens to be. I’ve watched her run at a dead sprint hundreds of yards through windy village paths. Now it is not at all uncommon for children to be afraid of the white man. In many cases I’m the first white person they’ve ever seen, and they just don’t understand it, so they get scared. Kids hide, babies cry, I’m used to it, and take no offense. But by now most of the children have warmed up to me, or at least gotten over their fear. Not this girl. I don’t know anything else about this girl, as every time I’m within eyesight of her she runs away, but I do give a heartfelt chuckle every time I see her bolting towards home at full speed, terror in her eyes.
Next I normally run into the old lady who always makes me dance. This lady is the typical, “I’m old enough to do whatever I feel like doing” type. She is outspoken, and given to doing odd things at odd times (like trying to make the Yovo dance in the middle of a meething). Fortunately for her, the elderly are highly respected and it seems that her eccentric character is not only tolerated but looked kindly upon. I for one think she is hilarious. The dancing thing started when I made the mistake of trying to dance like a Togolese at one of the funeral ceremonies. The whole village cracked up, and now I get invited to events just to be seen dancing. I have no idea if they laugh because they think its funny seeing a white person doing their traditional dances, or if its because I’m just so awful at their dance that they can’t contain themselves (I suspect the latter), but either way, the villagers love to see me dance.
This old woman in particular will try to make me dance every time she sees me. The first time she tried it I, feeling no particular urge to cause a Yovo dancing scene in the middle of village, told her that I couldn’t dance because there was no music. She shook her head, looking slightly defeated for a moment. Then an idea came into her head. She started singing “dancer, dancerdancer, dancer!” and dancing. At this point, I figured if she was this determined, there was probably no getting out of it, and so I started dancing with her. From then on every time I see her, she pulls me over and starts dancing.
I’ve noticed that there are a lot of children and a lot of old people in village. Children are everywhere, yet their presence is easy to explain, people in village have a lot of children. There is limited access to birth control, and in general, children are viewed as much as an asset as they are a cost. In developed countries, children mean another mouth to feed (and one who legally can’t even begin to contribute to the families income for the first 16 years of his/her life), school fees, toys, activities. In contrast, in the developing world, children are another pair of hands to fetch water, do farm labor, look after the other children, etc. In addition a high infant mortality rate means that if you want to have three children, you should plan on having six babies. Furthermore, since children are viewed more as a potential source of labor than a largely useless cost (or at least a very long term investment), the world of children is much less distinctly separate from the adult world. Children do similar work to adults, they eat from the same bowls etc.
The presence of so many elderly was at first slightly more puzzling to me. Part of it is surely, as I’ve touched upon, the fact that the elderly tend to take a much more active role in society here than in the States. There is certainly enough commentary in the States that critique how, through institutions like nursing homes, we separate out our elderly, keeping them out of sight and out of mind. Still, one would think that with the lower life expectancies found in the developing world that you would see less old people. However, I’m beginning to think that this actually works in reverse. The life expectancy rate is so slow because so many people in the developing world die in their youth or in their prime. As I think I’ve said it prior posts, I’ve been to more funerals here in two months than I have in my whole life before coming. Often the deceased are sick, or else they die suddenly from undisclosed causes. Largely they are middle aged. In such an environment selection pressures would seem to pick out those less fit to resist disease, and the hazards of everyday life. Thus those who do make it to their old age, are really really good at living. I’ve noticed that it is not terribly uncommon for village elderly to reach 100 years. Furthermore, although the nursing home culture in the states often unjustly works to keep the elderly out of sight out of mind, often the elderly in the States are no longer able to take care of themselves. This does not appear to be so here in
Togo, even those approaching 100 go out to the fields, carry water on their heads, and at least seem as fit as a 25 year old. So proportionately, the elderly are as numerous as the middle aged, since it is largely from the young and middle aged populations that people are taken. Then due in part to their sheer talent for living, and perhaps as well from their active lifestyle (not active in the western sense of running 5 miles every morning, but active in the peasant farmer sense of working from dawn till dusk every day trying to eek out a living from the land), they age incredibly well, and so are very active even until their final days.
Of course this is a completely pseudoscientific theory, lacking any statistical or even scientifically sound evidence to support it. It’s simply a guess based on my observations here in village.
Anyway its getting to be that time when my battery life is once again dwindling, and so until next time, perhaps I can actually finish describing a day in the life of a peace corps volunteer.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Daily Life
Now that I’ve been in village for over a month life here is beginning to take on some sort of normalcy. Every morning I wake up around 6. I’ve been trying for about a month to wake up at 5 to get that early morning run in, not so much to get it in before the heat of the day sets in but more to get it over with before there are a bunch of people outside, and I’m obliged to stop and greet everyone along the road, effectively cancelling out the benefit of the workout. I have yet to meet with success on my endeavors for the 5 o’clock get up, and I’m beginning to think I should just take the full eight hours of sleep a night, and be proud that I manage to routinely wake up at 6.
After getting up, I begin the day by watering my garden. If there is water left over from the night before, this is a fairly easy task, but normally this consist of walking the 200 or so yards to my pump with two 25 liter plastic cans originally meant as restaurant sized cooking oil containers. The water pump is analogous to the water-cooler in American offices, except that with the exception of me, it is almost exclusively the domain of women and children. This would be a very social part of the morning except that women and children are people in my village least likely to know any French. I take the opportunity to practice my greetings in Ewe. Greeting in Ewe culture is extremely important. As my Ewe language teacher put it during stage, if you are walking down a path and fail to greet someone, even a total stranger, coming the other way, then further down the road you are attacked by bandits, the stranger will remember your rudeness, and look the other way as the bandits rob you. If conversely you greet them they will come running to your aid no matter much personal danger it puts them in. In my own experience, I’ve not found any example so extreme, but I have realized the importance of formal greetings. Before you can have any serious conversation, you must the person you are talking to. Going back to the bandit example, you could never run up to someone on the path and just scream, “Please help me I’ve just been attacked by bandits”, you would first need to greet them, and then continue your panic stricken plea for help.
The greeting varies considerably given the situation, but a general greeting goes as follows:
“Good morning sir”
“Good morning, how is the family?
“The family is fine”
“How are the kids”
“The kids are fine” (this you say regardless of whether or not you have any kids, presumably they are referring to potential children, on the assumption that one day you will have kids and at that point you will have appreciated being ask how they were)
Then follows a line that has no direct translation into English (or French for that matter), but is essentially referring to the last time you saw someone. Thus if it is the morning, you would:
“I saw you yesterday”
“Yes I saw you yesterday”
If it is afternoon and you saw them that morning, you would change yesterday to this morning etc. This sounds kind of silly, but like I said that isn’t really a direct translation, I’ve also heard it translated, “Did you finish the work I saw you doing yesterday/this morning/the other day”. Regardless it’s a greeting that makes sense within the Ewe cultural context, but not so much in English. Essentially it is just a way of showing that your taking an interest in the other person’s life.
While this extended greeting may raise Romantic notions of a slower paced culture, in which people still have the time for each other, and are willing to stop and talk to people in a meaningful way, I’ve found that much like our greetings in America, greetings here are superficial formalities. Regardless of how your kids are (or whether or not you even have kids) you respond that they are fine; regardless of whether or not you finished yesterdays work you say you have. If you want to complain about your work or your kids, you wait till after the greeting, in which you’ve said they are fine in order to expound on exactly why they aren’t fine. Furthermore, people breeze over the greetings. Much to my dismay a normal greeting as described above only takes about 3 seconds, this is an impossible short time for me, as I stumble just to make the syllables come out of my mouth with any semblance of how they are supposed to sound. I suppose its nice that the culture at least nods to the importance of an in depth interest in the lives of others (even total strangers) before embarking on a conversation, but much as you would automatically say “well” when someone says “how’s it going” these greetings are just as formulaic as ours.
Taking the full cans of water back, I’ve found, is a good work out in lieu of my hypothetical 5 o’clock runs. The garden is coming along very well much to my relief. The plot of land I took was more gravel and sand than anything resembling soil, which made me nervous that my person garden would be a total failure, causing the villagers to lose confidence in my ability to help them embark on new agricultural endeavors, which directly affect their livelihood. Thankfully it’s apparently true what they say, with the right soil preparation you can turn a parking lot into a blooming bountiful vegetable garden.
After watering the garden, I normally go outside where the ladies by the road sell food. In the morning they sell boule for 25CFA a bowl (or 5 cents USD), which is essentially porridge. Boule can be made from a variety of cereals, but the kind sold by the road is either corn boule, or sorghum boule. Personally I prefer the sorghum boule. It has a certain spice to it that just vaguely registers as a burning in the back of your throat. It’s this red and goes down smooth. Corn boule is also good, but for some reason it’s lumpy, it is blander flavored than the sorghum variety, and since there isn’t sufficient protein in corn alone, in order to get a nutritious meal, you’ve got to buy some peanuts to throw in there as well (which will cost you another 5 cents). Hanging around the vendors is another chance for early morning socialization. Villagers stop buy to grab some breakfast and kill some time before heading off to work in the field, school has not started yet, so all the students hang around waiting for the morning bell (which is actually not a bell at all but rather an elaborate drum beat played on native animal skin drums, it’s way coolers, but it upsets me to think that that sweet sound must give some students the instinctive recoil of disappointment that the morning bell used to give me in high school).
I’ve struck up a friendship with one of the ladies who sell food (she normally sells little “gateaus” as she calls them, as well as bowls of beans sprinkled with cassava flour and pepper. The mixure is addictingly delicious. She is the one vendor who speaks French, and so she always helps me communicate with the other vendors. Furthermore, she loves to talk about the village and has helped me to get an understanding of who to talk to for certain things, as well as more simply just how village life works. She also offers a unique perspective, since she is not a native to the village, she can look at it with slightly more unbiased eyes. She actually comes from Burkina Faso, but moved hear with her husband.
On top of all that, she is often generous with gifts of free food. This started, I believe, when she asked me to bring her back some bread one day from market. I didn’t know then that everyone asks you this when your going to market (especially if you are perceived as a rich Yovo), if fact any time you go anywhere upon your return someone (anyone really) is bound to ask you “Where’s my gift”. I’ve found the best response is to joke back “Its where you left my gift from the other day when you went to town” or something along those lines. Anyway, I wasn’t feeling necessarily obliged to buy her bread, but I also did not yet know that this was a common semi-joke of a request that should probably be ignored, unless you want to personally provide a constant supply of bread for the entire village, and so I brought her back some bread. She was dumbfounded. “You know that was a joke, right?” was her first response. Nonetheless she gratefully accepted, and ever since they has been general about the occasional free bowl, which is nice, considering its sometime hard to find change so small, especially considering the bank will often issue withdrawls in 10,000 CFA notes. Short of large purchases like a stove or a bed, this denomination is about as useful in village (and even in the marchés) as monopoly money. Nothing is that expensive, and no one has the change.
At first I was weary of accepting gifts from people here, as its painfully obvious that, if anything, I’m the one in the position to give gifts. The 50 CFA a bowl of beans will bring her is a significant percentage of total profit for a food vendor, to me, it is 10 cents. However, I then remembered a book I read in one of my Anthropology classes. It was an ethnography of the Kabye people (who live just north of the Ewe people among whom I live here in Togo). In Kabye culture, the more gifts you give to someone the more power you have over them, as they must then at least marginally be in your service until they have repaid you with a bigger and better gift. If I remember correctly the author actually gives the example of the food vendor lady who has barely any money whatsoever, but because she gives food gifts to the chief (the richest and most powerful man in her village) can coerces (for lack of a less forceful word) him into doing her favours, he is in her power. In the importance people place on gifts here, it would seem attitudes of the Ewe are remarkably similar (what’s more this vendor is not an Ewe, and comes from up north). Though I was at first slightly reluctant to become entangled in this system of indebtedness, I suppose it’s inevitable, and so in exchange for the occasional bowl of beans, every now an then I make sure to bring her back some fruit, or bread or something from the marché. Most lately, I’ve built her an improved cook stove, which through better conservation of heat, cooks more quickly and uses less wood. Since she is cooking beans all day, I hope it will be a huge relief on her need to search for firewood.
In a much more obviously pronounced example of this inaction. I’ve become indebted with gifts from a lady who sells Tsuke at my marché. She actually is Kabye, come down from the north. As Tsuke is the traditional beer of the Kabye, she makes it better than anyone I’ve met down here. Every time I go pay her a visit she gives me a free calabash of Tsuke. Last week, I drank three calabashes, each one costs 50cfa. When I went to pay, she simply said, “Next week, bring me a surprise gift, and we’ll call it even. I figure something in the range of 500cfa or about 1 dollar will keep me out of debt for a while. But what a great system, and she uses it pretty masterfully. According to the author of the book I mentioned, to the Kabye (and it seems to the Ewe among whom I live as well), life is very much defined by the interconnected system of social relations that are reinforced by the obligations bestowed by gift giving. It’s kind of a cool way to think about life. Defining the individual as simply a point in an complex web of interdependence runs counter to the strongly held notion of American independence (the whole self-reliance thing). But I think that the interconnected web model is a much more accurate description of life. Self-reliance is a myth, I’m reminded of an essay by some economist I learned about back in high school, in which the author asserts that no one in the world knows how to make a pencil. He justifies his argument by saying that without the lumber industry, the pencil maker would have no wood, without the graffite mines there would be no lead, without copper mines no metal to connect the eraser, and without chemist making synthetic rubber, no eraser either. Thus, from start to finish (and not even counting the industries of transportation of these raw materials, or the industries that make the machines that bring these materials together in the form of a pencil) it takes many completely unrelated industries to make a pencil and thus no one person in the world can make a pencil. It is precisely the specialization skilled labour which has, if anything, increased our dependence upon other people. I would argue that the monied economy, through commodity fetishism, has created the illusion of self-reliance.
Here, in an economy much less reliant on money, but instead on gift exchange, the web of interconnectedness that binds people together is much more apparent, and I think it’s a very cool way to look at life.
So all these digressions have taken me to the limit of my battery life, though I’ve not managed to talk about the voodoo ceremony I promised from last time, nor about my Christmas, or my New Years celebration in village. On top of all that I’ve only managed to get through breakfast of my daily routine in this post. All the same, battery life dwindles and I should probably go out and see what my village is up to on this Sunday morning. The voodoo, New Years, and the remaining 90% of my daily life will all come next time.
After getting up, I begin the day by watering my garden. If there is water left over from the night before, this is a fairly easy task, but normally this consist of walking the 200 or so yards to my pump with two 25 liter plastic cans originally meant as restaurant sized cooking oil containers. The water pump is analogous to the water-cooler in American offices, except that with the exception of me, it is almost exclusively the domain of women and children. This would be a very social part of the morning except that women and children are people in my village least likely to know any French. I take the opportunity to practice my greetings in Ewe. Greeting in Ewe culture is extremely important. As my Ewe language teacher put it during stage, if you are walking down a path and fail to greet someone, even a total stranger, coming the other way, then further down the road you are attacked by bandits, the stranger will remember your rudeness, and look the other way as the bandits rob you. If conversely you greet them they will come running to your aid no matter much personal danger it puts them in. In my own experience, I’ve not found any example so extreme, but I have realized the importance of formal greetings. Before you can have any serious conversation, you must the person you are talking to. Going back to the bandit example, you could never run up to someone on the path and just scream, “Please help me I’ve just been attacked by bandits”, you would first need to greet them, and then continue your panic stricken plea for help.
The greeting varies considerably given the situation, but a general greeting goes as follows:
“Good morning sir”
“Good morning, how is the family?
“The family is fine”
“How are the kids”
“The kids are fine” (this you say regardless of whether or not you have any kids, presumably they are referring to potential children, on the assumption that one day you will have kids and at that point you will have appreciated being ask how they were)
Then follows a line that has no direct translation into English (or French for that matter), but is essentially referring to the last time you saw someone. Thus if it is the morning, you would:
“I saw you yesterday”
“Yes I saw you yesterday”
If it is afternoon and you saw them that morning, you would change yesterday to this morning etc. This sounds kind of silly, but like I said that isn’t really a direct translation, I’ve also heard it translated, “Did you finish the work I saw you doing yesterday/this morning/the other day”. Regardless it’s a greeting that makes sense within the Ewe cultural context, but not so much in English. Essentially it is just a way of showing that your taking an interest in the other person’s life.
While this extended greeting may raise Romantic notions of a slower paced culture, in which people still have the time for each other, and are willing to stop and talk to people in a meaningful way, I’ve found that much like our greetings in America, greetings here are superficial formalities. Regardless of how your kids are (or whether or not you even have kids) you respond that they are fine; regardless of whether or not you finished yesterdays work you say you have. If you want to complain about your work or your kids, you wait till after the greeting, in which you’ve said they are fine in order to expound on exactly why they aren’t fine. Furthermore, people breeze over the greetings. Much to my dismay a normal greeting as described above only takes about 3 seconds, this is an impossible short time for me, as I stumble just to make the syllables come out of my mouth with any semblance of how they are supposed to sound. I suppose its nice that the culture at least nods to the importance of an in depth interest in the lives of others (even total strangers) before embarking on a conversation, but much as you would automatically say “well” when someone says “how’s it going” these greetings are just as formulaic as ours.
Taking the full cans of water back, I’ve found, is a good work out in lieu of my hypothetical 5 o’clock runs. The garden is coming along very well much to my relief. The plot of land I took was more gravel and sand than anything resembling soil, which made me nervous that my person garden would be a total failure, causing the villagers to lose confidence in my ability to help them embark on new agricultural endeavors, which directly affect their livelihood. Thankfully it’s apparently true what they say, with the right soil preparation you can turn a parking lot into a blooming bountiful vegetable garden.
After watering the garden, I normally go outside where the ladies by the road sell food. In the morning they sell boule for 25CFA a bowl (or 5 cents USD), which is essentially porridge. Boule can be made from a variety of cereals, but the kind sold by the road is either corn boule, or sorghum boule. Personally I prefer the sorghum boule. It has a certain spice to it that just vaguely registers as a burning in the back of your throat. It’s this red and goes down smooth. Corn boule is also good, but for some reason it’s lumpy, it is blander flavored than the sorghum variety, and since there isn’t sufficient protein in corn alone, in order to get a nutritious meal, you’ve got to buy some peanuts to throw in there as well (which will cost you another 5 cents). Hanging around the vendors is another chance for early morning socialization. Villagers stop buy to grab some breakfast and kill some time before heading off to work in the field, school has not started yet, so all the students hang around waiting for the morning bell (which is actually not a bell at all but rather an elaborate drum beat played on native animal skin drums, it’s way coolers, but it upsets me to think that that sweet sound must give some students the instinctive recoil of disappointment that the morning bell used to give me in high school).
I’ve struck up a friendship with one of the ladies who sell food (she normally sells little “gateaus” as she calls them, as well as bowls of beans sprinkled with cassava flour and pepper. The mixure is addictingly delicious. She is the one vendor who speaks French, and so she always helps me communicate with the other vendors. Furthermore, she loves to talk about the village and has helped me to get an understanding of who to talk to for certain things, as well as more simply just how village life works. She also offers a unique perspective, since she is not a native to the village, she can look at it with slightly more unbiased eyes. She actually comes from Burkina Faso, but moved hear with her husband.
On top of all that, she is often generous with gifts of free food. This started, I believe, when she asked me to bring her back some bread one day from market. I didn’t know then that everyone asks you this when your going to market (especially if you are perceived as a rich Yovo), if fact any time you go anywhere upon your return someone (anyone really) is bound to ask you “Where’s my gift”. I’ve found the best response is to joke back “Its where you left my gift from the other day when you went to town” or something along those lines. Anyway, I wasn’t feeling necessarily obliged to buy her bread, but I also did not yet know that this was a common semi-joke of a request that should probably be ignored, unless you want to personally provide a constant supply of bread for the entire village, and so I brought her back some bread. She was dumbfounded. “You know that was a joke, right?” was her first response. Nonetheless she gratefully accepted, and ever since they has been general about the occasional free bowl, which is nice, considering its sometime hard to find change so small, especially considering the bank will often issue withdrawls in 10,000 CFA notes. Short of large purchases like a stove or a bed, this denomination is about as useful in village (and even in the marchés) as monopoly money. Nothing is that expensive, and no one has the change.
At first I was weary of accepting gifts from people here, as its painfully obvious that, if anything, I’m the one in the position to give gifts. The 50 CFA a bowl of beans will bring her is a significant percentage of total profit for a food vendor, to me, it is 10 cents. However, I then remembered a book I read in one of my Anthropology classes. It was an ethnography of the Kabye people (who live just north of the Ewe people among whom I live here in Togo). In Kabye culture, the more gifts you give to someone the more power you have over them, as they must then at least marginally be in your service until they have repaid you with a bigger and better gift. If I remember correctly the author actually gives the example of the food vendor lady who has barely any money whatsoever, but because she gives food gifts to the chief (the richest and most powerful man in her village) can coerces (for lack of a less forceful word) him into doing her favours, he is in her power. In the importance people place on gifts here, it would seem attitudes of the Ewe are remarkably similar (what’s more this vendor is not an Ewe, and comes from up north). Though I was at first slightly reluctant to become entangled in this system of indebtedness, I suppose it’s inevitable, and so in exchange for the occasional bowl of beans, every now an then I make sure to bring her back some fruit, or bread or something from the marché. Most lately, I’ve built her an improved cook stove, which through better conservation of heat, cooks more quickly and uses less wood. Since she is cooking beans all day, I hope it will be a huge relief on her need to search for firewood.
In a much more obviously pronounced example of this inaction. I’ve become indebted with gifts from a lady who sells Tsuke at my marché. She actually is Kabye, come down from the north. As Tsuke is the traditional beer of the Kabye, she makes it better than anyone I’ve met down here. Every time I go pay her a visit she gives me a free calabash of Tsuke. Last week, I drank three calabashes, each one costs 50cfa. When I went to pay, she simply said, “Next week, bring me a surprise gift, and we’ll call it even. I figure something in the range of 500cfa or about 1 dollar will keep me out of debt for a while. But what a great system, and she uses it pretty masterfully. According to the author of the book I mentioned, to the Kabye (and it seems to the Ewe among whom I live as well), life is very much defined by the interconnected system of social relations that are reinforced by the obligations bestowed by gift giving. It’s kind of a cool way to think about life. Defining the individual as simply a point in an complex web of interdependence runs counter to the strongly held notion of American independence (the whole self-reliance thing). But I think that the interconnected web model is a much more accurate description of life. Self-reliance is a myth, I’m reminded of an essay by some economist I learned about back in high school, in which the author asserts that no one in the world knows how to make a pencil. He justifies his argument by saying that without the lumber industry, the pencil maker would have no wood, without the graffite mines there would be no lead, without copper mines no metal to connect the eraser, and without chemist making synthetic rubber, no eraser either. Thus, from start to finish (and not even counting the industries of transportation of these raw materials, or the industries that make the machines that bring these materials together in the form of a pencil) it takes many completely unrelated industries to make a pencil and thus no one person in the world can make a pencil. It is precisely the specialization skilled labour which has, if anything, increased our dependence upon other people. I would argue that the monied economy, through commodity fetishism, has created the illusion of self-reliance.
Here, in an economy much less reliant on money, but instead on gift exchange, the web of interconnectedness that binds people together is much more apparent, and I think it’s a very cool way to look at life.
So all these digressions have taken me to the limit of my battery life, though I’ve not managed to talk about the voodoo ceremony I promised from last time, nor about my Christmas, or my New Years celebration in village. On top of all that I’ve only managed to get through breakfast of my daily routine in this post. All the same, battery life dwindles and I should probably go out and see what my village is up to on this Sunday morning. The voodoo, New Years, and the remaining 90% of my daily life will all come next time.
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