Tuesday, October 12, 2010

One Year Down

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.