Finally, new post!

It’s really been a long time since I wrote a blog entry. I’m inclined to blame my lack of new entries on a technological breakdown. Shortly after my last entry, I went to plug my computer into the wall socket, and sparks flew. Power is not well regulated here and surges and fluctuations are common. Fortunately, the other end of my power cord was not plugged into the computer at the time and so I only fried the wire. My parents sent me out a new power cord, but after only charging it once, this new plug appeared not to work either. Frustrated, I resigned myself to the possibility that the second half of my service might be devoid of regular computer access. Fortunately, I gave the plug another try about a month later, and magic, it worked! (In addition to transmitting surges, plugs in Togo often simply don’t work).
Truthfully, however, this excuse for not writing really only brings me up to early January, and we are now approaching March. I confess, after my technological breakdown, the real reason for my delay in writing has been television. After a year of entertaining myself through purely pre-electronic era means, I finally cracked and took some videos from the impressive pool of digital media circulating the hard drives of us volunteers (unlike myself some volunteers actually have power (at least some times) in their homes, and thus such impressive collections make sense). So, whenever I could get a little bit of battery life, I have squandered it catching up on missed season of Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia, or watching BBC’s Life (which is awesome btw). But now, I’ve finally pulled myself away from the warm alluring glow of TV to fill you readers back home on what’s been happening in my life these past six months.
Where to begin…? Perhaps with the biggest news, when I last left off, I believe I was preparing to meet Emily at the airport in Accra, after which she would begin her Fulbright work here in Togo. She has now been in country nearly five months, seems to have integrated very rapidly (compared to the new NRM/GEE volunteers, who came around the same time she seems incredibly well integrated, I think knowing French beforehand, and having studied in Africa before, have helped).
Originally, she lived in Lomé, worked for an environmental NGO there, and lived with a homestay family. Visiting her homestay family was a always an interesting experience. They were something like the (almost) non-existent Togolese middle class. The father worked on computers, and only took one wife. They only had two children (as opposed to the usual, as many as the woman can pop out before she goes sterile), the kids (two boys age 7 and 3) both spoke French (in my village, children can’t conversationally speak French until well into CEG, which is the rough equivalent of middle school, and even then some kids have difficulty), and every night the whole family would gather round that alluring, glowing television to watch dubbed over soap operas (either Spanish or Indian, and both of which have certain charms).
What struck me as most strange about Emily’s Lomé life was how western capitalist it all seemed, in a weird uncynical 1950s way. Advertisements on television were simple, and straightforward, (the typical commercial hit upon two main points: this product is good, buy this product) to the point were they would come across as naïvely ineffective in America (really it was like watching an old dishwashing soap commercial from the early days of television), not that our ads really say anything more than there’s, ours just dance around the issue more and make the pitch seem less direct. Family life seemed like the typical American nuclear family, with of course strange African twists, like the distant relatives who would show up and stay for weeks with absolutely no explanation offered to Emily, or the family down the street who temporarily moved in (likewise without any explanation).
Even outside the family the life of the “Togolese middleclass” struck me as interesting, while Em was in Lomé she attended a “International Fair”, which seemed like much scaled down and more consumer oriented version of the World’s Fair. Basically it was a chance to show off new products that seemed, in general, completely inapplicable to an African context. Em’s personal favorite was the automatic fufu pounder. As I believe I’ve described in earlier entries, fufu is a favorite Togolese dish make from pounded yams. Normally the pounded is done with a good old fashion mortar and pestle, but this contraption (tantamount to an industrial strength blender) pounded the fufu automatically. People gather round, staring, faces pressed upon the glass of the display window. “There’s no way it taste like real fufu”, they said, generally voices their distrust of the new product. While watching to Togolese disbelief was certainly a highlight, the fufu masher 5000 ran around 300,000 F CFA, which is around the same price as a brand new moto, or a ticket to France… needless to say, your average Togolese doesn’t have that kind of money to be investing in specialized blenders, and I think we are still a long way off from seeing the fall of the mortar and pestle as a mainstay in any Togolese kitchen.
Emily being in Lomé was great, since Lomé is where I go to do any business that requires even the smallest degree of technology. I’m generally down there at least once a month, and with Farm to Market (a PC publication of which I am co-editor), I occasionally come down for extended periods of time. Furthermore, from Lomé it is fairly easy to get to my village, just a 2-4 hour taxi ride up the route national (depending of your luck that day) followed by a short moto ride on the dirt road/riverbed (depending on the season) that leads to chez moi.
Alas, this arrangement did not last. Understandably, Emily quickly grew tired of the expenses, the crowded roads, the dirt, the weird emerging capitalist society, the non-stop hassling from moto drivers and general passersby who look upon the only white person they’ve seen that day as their surefire ticket to America, Europe or at least a new car, and won’t desist until you have absolutely disillusion them of this notion and crushed their indomitable spirit by informing them that you have no interest whatsoever in their sacred offering of friendship. So, she found a way to work with her NGO out in the field, in a small village north of Kpalime, in plateau region. She has only lived their about a month, and so I have yet to go visit her, but I’m told that her region is probably the most beautiful of all of Togo. She seems very happy their, and though her village is certainly more developed than my own (it seems that many notable men of business and politics come from her village, which inevitably leads to investment and development), I think she is getting a taste of a more typical Togolese lifestyle, with long afternoon repos, cancelled meetings, poor communication skills, and lazy afternoons spend at the tsuke stand or sodabe still (which I recently learned is referred to here as the “cabaret”, an appellation I find misleading, considering it is normally a group of all men, either lazily hanging around a homemade still, sipping sodabe, and napping, or hard at work chopping wood, collecting palm wine from felled trees, and tending the fire… but in no way resembling a cabaret). Fortunately for here, there also seems to be a concentration of PCVs in the area surrounding her village, and so she has no shortage of America friends. In general other volunteers have taken to Emily, and have more or less adopted her as one of our own.
Though geographically, I believe her new village is closer to mine than Lomé, it is much harder to get between the two. Since there is no paved road, travel is done on dirt roads, taxis generally only run on market days, so unless travelling on certain days, one must take a moto on long uncomfortable rides (that run much more expensive than a bush taxi). I think, for the most part we’ve decided that it actually makes more sense to just go down to Lomé, and then back up the national road to get to my place, but such is life in Togo.
As for myself, I am doing very well. Life in village continues to be interesting and full of surprises. Work is good but moves slowly. My village is much to small to host any aid organizations, and so any work that is to be done tends to come from the people themselves, and since they are poor, and busy with their own farms and cares, both the financing of projects and organization comes very slowly. Still, I have managed to help a local farming coop start a mushroom cultivation project that promises to be a lasting source of supplemental income (which really requires very little work once established), I’ve continued work with other coops doing bio-intensive vegetable gardening during the dry season, to supplement both diet and income. At the request of local students I’ve started an “English club” in which I try to teach them “American” English. I enjoy the club, but find that the hardest part is keeping my English at their level. Since I speak either French or very limited Ewe when working here, I have next to no experience working with Togolese in language I in which I am naturally fluent. I find my tendency is to try to speak their version of English, which leads me to use a bunch of awkward phrases that hardly even make sense to me. Conversely, when I try to simply speak natural English, I often find the temptation to better explain myself, even though I know my speak will no be understood by my audience, too hard to resist. Still, I enjoy trying to teach English.
Since my two week trip to America, and my few days over in Ghana, I have hardly used any of my 48 out of country vacation days allotted me by the Peace Corps. The coming summer will be filled with PC summer camps, and after that, the end of my service rapidly approaches, and so this spring (in American terms, here of course the weather is nothing at all like spring. The first half our spring season here is the end of the dry season, which means intolerably hot weather, followed by the start of the rainy season, which means a slight break from the heat followed by a return of the heat but this time with all the humidity of the last rain) seems to be my season of travel. Next week, Emily and I head up to Burkina Faso, where, strangely enough, her best friend from high school is currently serving as a PCV. We will spend a few days in the capital Ouagadougou, followed by a few days in her village, which as luck would having is holding their big annual festival right as we arrive. Upon our return we will probably spend a few days in the Savannes region of Togo. I have many PC friends up there, but since it is so far away (about a 12 hour drive over some really crappy roads), and I’ve never really had any excuse for heading up, this is my first time seeing the place.
Next, we leave on our big trip in May to Morocco. Just today I saw that there were demonstrations in Casablanca, and so we are holding our breath that Morocco holds out and doesn’t go the way of nearly ever other country in North Africa. But assuming that all goes well, we will be spending 18 days exploring the Moroccan cities and countryside, eating some bomb couscous, riding on camelback through the Sahara, and haggling over imitation rugs in the market (as though we’ve not had enough practice at that here).
I certainly plan on keeping up more regular communication now that my computer problems have been solved and my initially overpowering urge to get caught up on American television culture has subsided. But just in case, now you all know what I have coming up in the next couple months. I wish I could write more about the last five months, there is certainly a lot more that has happened, but unfortunately, my battery life dwindles, and so it will all just have to wait until next time. Thanks as always for your continued readership and your patience in awaiting my sporadic updates. Au revoir!