A month au village

10 septembre 2011

Salut, tues la?

Greetings from a Togolese melting pot. I’ve met people in Badou from Nigeria, Ghana, Niger, and from all over Togo itself. Marche days bring in marche mommas across the Ghanan border and I find myself speaking broken English as I buy my tomatoes and onions. 

Music springs from the barbershops that occupy every inch of town. The other day, I got a bit nostalgic as I heard Daddy Yankee blaring out from one of these deafening speakers – Gasolina seems to haunt me however far I travel.

Religious sounds carry through all of Badou-meme. From my porch, I can hear a couple calls of prayer – I can clearly see one mosque from where I sit but the voice of another reaches me. The two calls do not play simultaneously, making it sound as though one is responding to the other. And, most thrilling for me (I can assure you) is the church service that takes place next to my house. It really gets going when my bedroom light turns off and I climb under my mosquito net.  The drums and the faithful chanting battle my IPOD as I close my eyes to restless sleep. But religion in Togois not something you grudgingly concede to on Sunday mornings. Christianity and Islam exhibit new qualities – colored by their African environment. As the SED APCD (Assistant Peace Corps Director) said, Togo is 50% Christian and 50% Muslim but 100% Animist. During Ramadan, the faces of Muslim women were done up elegantly – their eyes appearing the more astonishing with heavy black liner. The children were dressed in the liveliest medleys ofpagna patterns. In the marche I saw a group of matching siblings – all four children were wearing the same purple green pagna, personalized only by their chosen accessories .  I’ve attended one service in my three months in Togo. I went with my host family in Tsevie who belonged to a Pentecostal assembly. Of the three hours I sat on the pew, I can confidently say that about 2 of them consisted solely ofsinging, dancing, and drums.  As for me, this is a part of Togo that I am appreciating more as an observer than as a participant.

This past month my mind has moved past sensory overload and has begun to comfortably settle down, although it still receives a jolt every once in a while. I have now added a couch, chair, rug, and bookshelf to my living room – whoop for having a place to sit! The girls next door, Chimen and Gabriella (13 and 18 respectively) come over occasionally. I was painting the other day and Chimen just sort of joined me in my living room. We had a nice conversation about the beginning of the school year. She’s 13 and has just started the Togolese equivalent to middle school.

My walk to town involves very robust greetings from a handful of little ones.  The calls of Yovo are now, thankfully, interspersed with Yawa (my name au village) and Tanti (a term of endearment for a woman here). “Vanessa” comes out more like Eessa or Vaneesa. There are two really little ones who live in a compound about half way down that run up to me (still screaming Yovo), and wrap their tiny arms around my legs. On cloudier days, this has been smile producing.

I’ve been slowly getting into work. This past week was exciting for me – with little things, yes, but they make life seem more normal. Kat invited me to work with Club de Mere (Mothers Club) organized by the Red Cross. She’s done work with them before; this past spring they organized an event in celebration of International Women’s Day. Together, we are going to help the club start a “Village Savings and Loans Association.” As the title implies, this functions as a group in which the women can save money as well as take out small loans from. The money is all their own thus the members themselves finance their own loans. Along with the Loan fund, there is a small Social Fund in which the women deposit a small amount each week and is used for emergencies arising in the group. The money from the Social Fund can be given as a grant or as a loan. I got to run the informational meeting this past week. And while I stumbled through some of it, it helped push me out of the proverbial PC nest and get the wings flapping.It’s heartening to see how growth can come from the simple step of a community’s self-awareness.

I’ve recently become involved with animal raising…and I can’t say I know much about it although I have now become acquainted with the town’s goats, chickens, and turkeys. Animal husbandry in Badou is picking up, especially as those ambitious few have noticed that there is very little meat sold in the market although there is demand. A member of MUREC and a friend took me to see their own animals. They raise turkeys, goats, and chickens. We decided that it would be good to have a technical session for those interested in starting their own farms and also to teach some financial literacy. Later that night, he stops by my house to tell me that there are other people interested in our session and I tell him to invite them along. They all want me to visit their farms. And so over the course of a week I visited a hand full of goat and chicken farms in neighboring villages. I had little to do half the time besides smile to myself, as very few understood French well, I didn’t have a good translator, and I had no technical advice to offer them.  I guess I will be reading up on goat elevage. Maybe I can also learn how best to keep my friendly goat visitors off my porch (and put an end to the gifts of pellet poop I open my door to each morning).

Notwithstanding my misgivings about motorcyclists in this country, the moto rides were surprisingly enjoyable. Once you leave town you can see the depth of farming in themilieu – monoculture has yet to reduce the area to plainness. Cacao, maize, coffee, plaintain, cassava, mango, rice, and so many others reach my eyes from the road.  Most awesome of all, my hosts gave me fruit and I have since been enjoying some lovely guayaba with my oatmeal J