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.

No comments:

Post a Comment