tlaad's Journal

Another New Adventure
Well, I made it safely to Cambridge. I'm sure I'll be seeing all of you Northern Californians again soon. Take Care!

Hey, does anyone know someone who's selling a $1000 car? I'm looking for something that will run for about a year without (hopefully) serious repairs. I'm an inexperienced driver, so this car would be mostly for practice. Perhaps after a year I'll move and get a more permanent car. Any leads you guys have would be appreciated. Thanks!

Made it!
Hello! I promised to post and let people know that I made it back to California safely. I did--I'm home. Thanks so much for reading this journal over the past year and a half. And thanks to everyone for all the support you've given me during my two years in Togo. To Ayeke: see you soon! To everyone else: if you'd like to see me or contact me, let me know. Take care.

Last Entry?
I'm posting from Lomé today--I've actually been here since Tuesday, but have failed to post as promised until now. I have a ticket! And all my paperwork is finished, seemingly miraculously. And I'm feeling pretty good (although quite tired) about my whole Peace Corps service. So here's the last entry, from Togo at least.

I'm staying in this hostel run by this little old Vietnamese-French woman named Mammy. It has a reputation for being dirty, although every time I stay there it seems cleaner. Mammy herself is kinda odd. She's kind of a packrat, and she runs a boarding house. Peace Corps volunteers like to refer to it as a brothel, although I doubt it's any more of a brothel than any other hotel in Lomé. I've never bought sex in Togo, although I imagine it's pretty easy. Right now Mammy's Place is full of schoolchildren from Niger. They're all little, but quite well-behaved. And they arrived in a big bus. Apparently their school takes them on a big tour of West Africa every year (this has got to be a private school).

I also went to the swearing-in ceremony for the new volunteers last night. They gave me a certificate! Whee! And I got to be interviewed for the radio. All of the new volunteers gave a speech in local language (the speeches were short, but for the most part intelligible). My replacement gave his in Moba. Everyone was dressed in their African Best. I wore my Bonne Année dress and got to shake hands with the Agricultural Minister's representative.

Other than that, I've just been shopping and eating lots of Lebanese food (thanks to Lomé's sizable population of Lebanese people--some of whom run restaurants). I got to see some of my training-mates, although most of them are already back. Tonight I go out for palm wine. And I get to leave for home tomorrow! See you folks soon!

And--for those whom I won't see--have a great Burning Man!

Wow. Vats of Tchakpah were bought and consumed (and I made popcorn, and was delighted when some old guy in my village who'd never seen popcorn before tried it and liked it). I packed up all my stuff. My host father gave me a cock (no, not that kind). I said good-bye to Grandmother, and cried even though I thought I wouldn't. I dropped all my furniture off at the new volunteer's house and said goodbye to his village. Now I'm in Dapaong. No more village for me. My immediate future holds fried chicken, bush taxis, and paperwork. Yay me. I also get to go tell a nurse I've been exposed to leperosy. I'll post next from Lomé. See you soon.

I realize that I haven't been posting very much recently. This is partly because I've been busy, and a little because I don't know what to write about just now. Of course, I have news--Peace Corps has bought my ticket home. I have about a week left in the Savannes and a week in Lomé, and then I come home. I'm excited. I also feel a little unreal, sort of like the walking dead. I'm pretty much done with all my work (except the paperwork. Peace Corps doesn't really insist on that much, but I'd like to leave as much good documentation as I can), and working on saying good-byes to everyone. I'm buying four vats of Tchakpah on Thursday as kind of a "Thank-you for putting up with me even though I didn't buy you a hospital like you wanted" gesture. Four vats! There will be much drunkedness in my compound on Thursday. I'm also making popcorn, which people here really like. On Friday I'm leaving village for the last time, and travelling to Lomé by Tuesday. Then I get poked, prodded, interviewed, and packed on a plane home. Whee! I'm not done livejournaling yet (and I doubt I'll keep livejournalling when I get home--we'll see), since the intention was to just have a journal about Togo. I regret not making more entries, since people really seemed to appreciate this journal. That's all for now!

Seven Weeks Left and Counting
I've been back up north for over a week now. It's weird to come back and start trying to wrap things up at the same time. I'm especially excited about my replacement, though. I'm not going to be replaced in my village (which is good, since people in my village aren't that interested in working with a volunteer), so instead my replacement is going to the village where I do most of my work. It's called Sanfatoute, and it's right up by the Burkina Faso border. I get to go back and forth watching people fix up the house for the volunteer, and it's exciting. My counterparts in Sanfatoute are also very excited to meet the new volunteer, as is the chief (who tracks me down for news every time I visit). I, of course, am looking forward to showing off all of my friends and all of our work to this guy, who visits in about three weeks for the "post visit week" part of training.

Yesterday I went to the village of Bombouaka for another soy demonstration. This is part of the agricultural institute's campaign to teach all their agents how to use soybeans. Hopefully, the agents can then introduce the techniques in village and encourage people to cultivate soybeans. I get to travel around--in a rushed sort of way--to all of the prefectural capitals in my region before leaving. So far we've done half of them (Dapaong and Bombouaka), leaving Mandouri and Mango. It's fun to do, and this activity is one of those rare "I feel like I'm making a difference" activities. We also got the best end result on our soy cheese (this is tofu) than I've ever had in one of these demos. So it was fun, even if I spent the entire day exhausted (I was feeling under the weather). I also love hanging out with agricultural extension agents.

Today I return to village (finally, since I've been in Dapaong for several days) and go to see if any of the chicken raisers I work with are home. I don't think they will be, since it's the growing season, but you never know. I'm in the rather long process of visiting every single person I work with and asking them what their work plans are in my absence. Luckily, most people I live and work with know that I'm leaving by now.

Another volunteer
Hey, I'd like to offer a plug for my friend Ayeke's livejournal. She just got one a month or so ago, and she has a very different take on life in Togo from mine. She also lives in a different area (about as far from my village as you can get and remain in Togo). So if you want to learn more about Peace Corps volunteers in Togo, check her out! her login is

mavie_8.

edit: I fixed the link.

Back to the grind--for two more months
I dropped my friends off at the Ghanaian border this morning, which was kinda sad. We all had a good time, and it won't be long before I see them again anyway. In a way I wish they could have stayed longer to really understand what life here is like, although I know that that takes more than two years. Besides, it's good to get back to work. I've neglected most of my job for the past month and a half (although I knew I'd be doing this ahead of time, so I'd gotten a good start on wrapping things up). Now I have two months to really wrap things up, including arranging for my Togolese counterparts to take over my work and getting things ready for my replacement volunteer in Sanfatoute.

This reminds me--my friends actually got to meet my friends in Sanfatoute! They actually got to meet Grandmother, and also my friends in Dapaong! It's so weird, and so cool. They liked my Togolese friends, too, which was nice.

I enjoyed walking back from the border to Peace Corps today. The border's right on the beach road. All the other times I've walked this path I've been worried about crossing a border, but today I just got to walk along and look around. It's pretty in a postcard sort of way--there's sand and blue water and palm trees, and there's men dragging nets full of fish onto the shore. The prettiness is superficial, but I did enjoy it. I just walked along looking at the beach and people's colored pagnes and ignoring the moto guys and money changers. It reminded me of the feeling I got when I first came back from Ghana two weeks ago. A lot of things suck about Togo (especially if you're travelling or crossing its borders), but once we were in Lome, I found it comforting to know where I was and what was going on around me. I speak better African French than I do African English (at least, the language spoken in the streets), which helps. It felt like coming home, in a very weird sort of way.

I'm going to a slightly more home-like place on Saturday, and then really home in two months. My friends are going home tomorrow night (Ghana time). I honestly think they had a good time. I certainly did. And I know they developped a taste for African cuisine (even pate, even after all the bad press I've given it). Yay wonderful visitors!

Safe Arrival in Togo
I just thought I'd let you folks know that I successfully brought three Americans into Togo. We're now in Dapaong, and they're finally getting to see how I live here. It's exciting. Later!

Ghana, Part II
We're still here! We hung out in Kumasi for a few days, visiting a monkey park and the Kumasi cultural center. I had a lot of fun being a tourist in tourist places--it's hard being mistaken for a tourist in villages where people are trying to get on with their lives (and you're trying to get on with your work), so to be on vacation in a cultural museum was rather nice. We also actually saw monkeys at the monkey park, although only like one or two, and from pretty far away. The park was very lovely, though, and I took some photos of the scenery. Then we travelled down to Cape Coast, and we're leaving for Accra again tomorrow. We visited Cape Coast Castle, which was the largest slave-trading castle in West Africa. Visiting it was indeed chilling, and we had a very good tour guide. I'm not sure what else I want to say about that in a medium such as livejournal, but since it's an important part of our history, I recommend that everyone who has the chance visit this castle. Today, we just got back from Kakum National Forest, which is a conservation/education type place with rope bridges running through the canopy of this rainforest. Way cool. It was fun to see the forest from both sides--and we saw lots of mushrooms! And other cool creatures. All in all, I'm enjoying Cape Coast a lot. If I had this trip to do over again, I'd spend more time here and enjoy this lovely town.

In less than a week, I'll get to bring my friends to Togo! Whee!

Ghana, Part I
We made it to Ghana! At least, so far three quarters of us have made it--the fourth one arrives next week. My border crossing was tiring but relatively painless. I hung out in Accra for a few days with a nice American woman who I met in Romania. She took me all around, and even drove me to my GRE appointment. The test came and went, and my friends arrived intact. Their luggage didn't for three days, but eventually we got it. Now my friends have Lufthansa-related angst.

We've been having fun so far. We went to the beach and swam in the ocean. We saw more of Accra than we'd planned (because of luggage), but that wasn't all that bad. We made it (with little time to spare) to catch the Lake Volta ferry upcountry. This was a fun ride--Lake Volta is beautiful. We got second-class tickets, so we ended up fighting for benches to sleep on during the overnight part of the trip, but it was definitely worth it. Now we're in Kumasi, which is the center of Ashanti culture. We got to visit a museum and wander around the ginormous Kumasi market. People here are pretty laid back compared to folks in big cities in Togo.

No one's sick yet, knock on wood. Unless you count the cold that I caught, which went away quickly and did not result in much inconvenience. Everyone is having a good time. Net in this particular cafe in Kumasi sucks more than in Dapaong, which is why I sound curt. We all say hi, and hope life is going along fine in the Bay Area.

PS: Paul Twohey rocks.

Going to Ghana Tomorrow
I safely got back from my meeting in Togoville. It was a nice meeting--we had it at this fancy (by my village standards, at least) hotel, and we discussed important things like reverse culture shock, nasty Peace Corps paperwork, and how to find a job in America. I've been hanging out in Lome for the past couple of days trying to get a start on said paperwork. I'm all excited (and a bit nervous) to head over to Ghana tomorrow morning. I understand that you can literally walk to the border from the Peace Corps office, so I guess that's how I'll do it, since I travel pretty light.

We had a big rainstorm this morning, which was cool, since the sky got all these pretty clouds covering it. I hope some of this rain is getting up to my village, since it looks like it'll be a dry year this year.

And I see my friends in just over three days!

Nothing to see here!
I made it to Lome in one piece. And, nervous though I was to travel, there's really nothing going on anywhere. Thought I'd let you know.

Hey...Thanks to everyone for their lovely comments. I just thought I'd pop in on livejournal. I don't have much to say, since I spent the past few days down with the flu and didn't do anything else. I'm looking forward to a big soy cheese demonstration with my area's agricultural extension agents this week. Communication is finally getting better--between shutdowns (because of all the stuff that's been going on) and recent rainstorms, it's been hard to get on the internet, but weather permitting I think we're coming out of that. At the end of the week I go to my close of service conference, which should be interesting, and then off to Ghana! Whee!

Standfast Lifted! No Excitement Here!
Today I got news that Peace Corps' standfast was lifted, and I'm (reasonably) free to move around again. I'm not in town for long today, so this entry won't be long. Hopefully, I'll get back to Dapaong tomorrow afternoon. There has been no excitement in my area (happily), although I've been nervously listening to the radio, and hearing a lot of the same stuff you guys are probably hearing. I'm still looking forward to traveling south, both for my close of service conference and my trip to Ghana. As things stand now, my friends are still coming to visit. For me, the most frustrating thing about the past couple of weeks has been limited communication. That's about all--maybe you'll hear more tomorrow.

In-Service Training
I spent last week at my in-service training, which was actually a lot of fun. I got to travel down south to Pagala with a counterpart (who was way into the training) and hang out with other Natural Resource Management volunteers. We learned about some agroforestry trees, erosion control, HIV/AIDS, and beekeeping (my favorite session; I even got stung). I got to drink tchouk, which is like tchakpah only not. And it rained! Woo!

In the bush taxi south, I sat in front of the sweetest little old woman with a cute puppy. She treated the puppy exactly as she would a human baby, which just cracked me up. She even strapped it on her back and fed it lemonade from a plastic bag. The whole situation was really adorable. It was really funny because Togolese people eat dogs. Makes me wonder how she treats her chickens. I wouldn't cuddle dinner.

Now I'm back up north, where it's too hot. It will eventually rain, and I'm looking forward to it. It almost rained last night, but instead it just got hotter. While I was gone, it did rain, and the roof blew off of my kitchen. Luckily, nothing I own was damaged, and I moved everything from my kitchen into my house. We're going to re-roof the kitchen this week.

Oh--and I'm so excited because some friends from America are coming to visit me in my village in June! Bouncy Primrose. They can meet grandmother, and see the market, and drink tchakpah. W00T!

By the way: after Saturday, I should be pretty incommunicado for a few weeks. Don't be worried; I'll be back! But if you want to communicate with me, send me an email or lj comment or whatever before Sunday. Peace out.

Hey, folks--it's been a while since I've posted to livejournal, although to be honest, I don't have that much worth posting to say these days. After coming back from Burkina, I went to an all-volunteer meeting in central Togo, which was fun but hectic. Then I came back and now I'm just puttering around village. I go south again in two weeks for some technical sessions with a woman from Sanfatoute (the village north of me). That's about it. Hopefully, my next post will be less boring. I'm planning a big series of soy cheese demonstrations with the ICAT agents in my region, which will be exciting if it actually happens. And I'm happy because the clinic in my village wants to do reforestation, so we're planting a tree nursery together. That's fun.

I'm planning a vacation to Ghana at the end of May. I know that most of my friends have neither loads of free time nor loads of money sitting around gathering dust, but I thought I'd throw this out anyway: would anyone be interested in joining me? I've got about two and a half weeks of vacation--including the three days Peace Corps is giving me to take the GRE in Accra. I've never been to Ghana, but it has one advantage of being not Togo, if you'd like to visit me but worry about visiting Togo these days. This will be my last vacation before I come home in August (come home in August! wow!)

Also, due to hot season returning (gah! can't sleep! can't think! too hot!), my fungus came back. I don't know if I mentioned the fungus on my livejournal last year, but it seems appropriate. I got a case of Tinea versicolor, a skin fungus that gives me itchy patches of red bumps. At least, that's what the Peace Corps nurse said it was. Cool, huh? Aren't you glad that the one person you know who went to Africa and contracted a fungal skin disease was Primrose? I sure am!

Fespaco Film Festival, Whee!
I just got back from my tiny vacation to Ouagadougou! Actually, I'm technically still on vacation right now, although since I'm sitting in the internet café in Dapaong, it's kind of a moot point. It was a nice couple of days (if you are wondering where Ouagadougou is, it's the capital of lovely Burkina Faso, Togo's neighbor to the north), although I'm pretty exhausted right now. A group of volunteers and I whirled north (we took a bus! we each got our own seat! it only took five hours!), ate hamburgers at the American cultural center, swam in the cultural center's pool, schmoozed with Burkina volunteers, watched movies (I saw five), ate French food, and buzzed around Ouaga. Burkina's a nice place (what I saw of it). From what I saw of villages, they seem smaller and farther apart than in Togo. This makes sense, since Burkina is drier. Keep in mind, though, that what I saw of villages was that we zoomed by some houses on our bus. I was surprised to see that superficially people's houses looked a lot like the houses in my village. In Togo, village/house layouts are really diverse. Ouaga was an impressive city. I think it's more developed than Lomé, but I didn't really see all that much of it. I'd like to go back, but the trip is long and tiring.

The film festival, however, was pretty darn cool. If you have a week and a chunk of money sitting around collecting dust, I suggest flying on down to Burkina (or Lomé...you can pass through Dapaong and visit me!) and checking it out. I saw Heritage Africa, L'Autre Mal, La Jarre, U-Carmen e Khayelitsha, and One Love. Heritage Africa is a Ghanaian film about the end of colonialism. L'Autre Mal is a short Burkina film about an unfaithful wife (and the most realistic movie I saw at the festival: the others were pretty over the top). La Jarre is a short Moroccan film that went completely over my head. There was a big jar in it, though. U-Carmen e Khayelitsha was probabally my favorite. It's an adaptation of the opera Carmen set in South Africa and sung entirely in local language. One Love is a light, silly romantic comedy filmed in Jamaica. I don't have the time or energy to do film reviews beyond this right now, although if you want to communicate privately with me, I'd be happy to tell you my opinions. All in all, a fun weekend! Perhaps I'll do it again sometime soon!

Someone I know died suddenly this week in village. He wasn't a really close friend, so my heart isn't broken, but this is the first time since I moved here that someone I know personally has died. Grandmother told me--and of course this took some doing, since I hadn't learned the word "to die" yet (this word turns out to be appropriately short and abrupt: "kpe"). She thought I didn't know who she was referring to, but finally imitated a funeral dance and I got it. I wanted to visit his widow, and my host family agreed that that was appropriate. It was difficult, though. Everything I do and every interaction I have is awkward, and I'm always unsure how to behave. And that's fine for the most part--I'm used to it, and so are people who know me. But in this case...people were mourning. And I realized too late that I didn't know what my friend's widow looks like. I went over to her house and greeted all the women who were there--there were perhaps ten. Then I sat there. Luckily, I could explain myself well enough in Gourma (having learned the appropriate word the day before), since people thought I was there to visit my dead friend. Still, I wish I knew how to behave appropriately in a situation like this. I ended up leaving after a little bit, and that was that. I don't know if I'll be invited to his funeral, but if I am I'll go.

Kossi was a nice man, and I used to visit him from time to time to see his garden. He helped me plan some meetings of local gardeners, and he gave me sugar cane, guavas, and little melons when the seasons hit. I'll miss him.

To balance this out, a baby was born last week to the nurse's family. She was cute, pink, and wrinkly. When I commented on her lush head of hair, the nurse thought that in America all babies are born bald, and I had to correct him. And I also got to watch Grandfather do the yearly "health of the family" ceremony, which involves saying words (that I didn't understand) over a hole in the courtyard. He buried some herbs wrapped in a donut shape, a chicken egg, and some chicken blood and feathers in the hole, and that evening we ate the chicken. And now the family will be healthy for a year. It was nice of him to let me watch.

Thanks to everyone who left comments on my last entry hoping for safety and calm. Things are pretty much back to normal now, although I'm still glued to the radio. I hope you're all safe back home, too!

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