What it means to be a PCV in Togo

Dear incoming 'stage' of Peace Corps trainees to Togo,

As Peace Corps volunteers in Togo, we will inevitably be compared to the other international volunteers who pass through the country. We have a unique mandate and training that create a specific kind of daily life. As business development extension agents, we do not come in with loans, grants, or even ready-made trainings. We analyze the actual needs of the community and create change through engaging and empowering local partners.
It’s slow work and based more on individual relationships than on obvious changes in revenues and profits. Take the time to do participatory needs analysis (PACA) in your community and focus on learning before doing.
Peace Corps volunteers have been in Togo since 1962, filling the roles of development workers in many different domains. Of the four main programs in Togo (Natural Resource Management, Girls Education and Empowerment, Community Health, and Small Enterprise Development), SED is the youngest. SED grew out of an expanding awareness of the agricultural industry. As agriculture volunteers improved farming techniques, they discovered that no matter how well the crops were growing, if the farmer did not have a good business sense, they would not succeed. Over the years, SED has grown to include NGO management, artisans, and computer technology work, but it’s very important to remember its origins in agriculture. Everyone in Togo has a field. PCVs who take the time to learn about planting and harvest seasons can discover the rhythms of their community and be more effective – both in preparing training and in cultural exchange.
Being a PCV is also unique in the development world because we place a huge emphasis on cultural exchange. PCVs are representatives of the United States in their host countries. As individuals leaving their home to live inside another community, PCVs have a special opportunity to learn new customs and embrace new traditions that they can then bring home to share. Facilitating this cultural exchange is an essential part of being a PCV.
There is no other job quite like being a Peace Corps volunteer. The freedom to set one’s own schedule and objectives is as liberating as it is frustrating. Goals should be set early, but must be modest in ambition and generous in timeframe. It is important to recognize as well that the involvement of work partners, from local counterparts to the program APCD, will depend on the motivation and communication of the PCV. Develop the skill of ‘managing up’ and learn how to best make use of the resources that your supervisors and counterparts can provide.
Above all, PCVs have to be humble and able to laugh at themselves. Leave behind your grand ambitions to discover what the community really needs. Stumble your way through local language in order to really communicate with women and other marginalized groups. Try ‘weird’ foods and wear local styles. Enjoy yourself!
Bonne chance.

Trash Talk

The woman scowled at me, the multitude of wrinkles furrowing into deep ridges on her forehead as she queried, “What are you going to do with those? Are you going to sell those?”

I choked back a laugh as I glanced down into the bag full of smelly muck I held in my hand and answered her solemnly, “No madame, I’m going to bring this to the trash heap.” I paused, then continued thoughtfully, “ If you would like to take it to sell, you can do that.”

She squinted at me, peered into the bag, and then looked at the woman on my right, a young female volunteer from the local clean-up association. And luckily my companion got the hint and started explaining what we were doing in Ife, the local language.

Trying to explain why we were out in the middle of the city picking up garbage (and worse) was an unexpectedly amusing challenge. It was a perfect way to spread the word about the work of the Peace Corps-->

About 60 Peace Corps volunteers and 15 Peace Corps staff participated in regional urban clean-up days between March 19^th and April 4^th. But even more importantly, about 150 Togolese volunteers led the way: identifying key urban areas that would most benefit from the clean-up, accompanying PCVs to approach local authorities and mobilizing friends, relatives, and associations to wake up early and pick up trash.

The regional clean-up days of course had their own frustrations as well as joys as PCVs navigated the personalities of local authorities or ran out of gloves and found that some ‘volunteers’ drifted away when they realized they weren’t going to receive a cadeau. But this single day of trash pick-up sparked new collaborations between volunteers and their regional capitals as PCVs encountered city authorities, developed radio station contacts, met regional representatives of the ministry for the protection of the environment, and found local associations already doing clean-up work.

Suggestions to volunteers on how to keep the momentum going:

The Ministry for the Environment and its regional directors were particularly enthusiastic about promoting this type of work and would love to collaborate with volunteers hoping to pursue waste management projects. Speak to APCD Paul or PCVL Rose to get the names and phone numbers of the prefectoral directors.

Associations like Jeunes Voluntaires pour l’Environnement (JVE) and/or small non-profits who work for the environment exist in most cities, although they may need some new energy.

Speak to your village chief about organizing a Journée de Village Propre. You may be surprised to find out that they already have regular clean-up days.

Get involved with the local group of women who clean the market; it can be a great way to intervene and encourage them not to dump waste into local streams.Good luck and don’t forget to wash your hands after picking up all that muck!

Togo = Developed

I have just uploaded this from my brand-new at-home internet connection.

This is a completely bizarre feeling. It’s not terribly cheap, and certainly not unlimited, but it’s amazing to have it at my fingertips. Especially after last week.

I restored my computer to factory settings last week. I’m not sure whether it was viruses, bumping over terrible potholes on a moto, or what, but my computer had been fully Togo-ed.
By which I mean it was completely out of commission. The large majority of my files are backed up, I may have lost a few days’ worth of work, but by that time my computer was moving so slowly that that work is negligible.

In any case, my newly virgin computer was quite exciting. As I reinstalled Microsoft Office and iTunes, etc. I enjoyed the speed of the process and the chance/obligation to re-organize from square one.

After the reboot, I went to a local internet café and I started up my Outlook, only to be crippled by the years worth of emails trickling in 1MB every 90 seconds. Literally. I realized that I needed to seriously address my information possibilities. As I head into a serious career search, not to mention location search, I’m going to need a lot more information. Hence the USB key modem.

This is really exciting.

But at the same time that I revel in my newfound information access, I am reading a Bloomberg Businessweek Technology article discussing Kinect. A piece of hardware/software that I’d never heard of before picking up this 4 month old magazine.

I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

Happy 50th Birthday to the United States Peace Corps.

…Yet democracy is impossible without a great deal of altruism and idealism. One a strictly realistic basis, it would be hard to avoid starkly Machiavellian conclusions, accepting democracy in the same role as communism before it, that of an ideological smoke screen of crass calculating egotism. There is certainly enough of that all around, and perhaps has always been. The Founding Fathers knew it well: the elaborate system of checks and balances they built into the American Constitution attests as much. They were, though, willing to hope that humans are also capable of responding to ideal motives, of finding self-fulfillment in self-transcendence. Not the brash young graduates making their first million as advisers to post-Communist governments but the young women and men serving in the Peace Corps are the bearers of the democratic ideal.

From an article entitled “The Faces of Democracy - Looking to the Twenty-First Century” by Erazim Kohák in Kettering Review, Fall 2005.

Happy 50^th Birthday to the United States Peace Corps.

I joined the 50^th anniversary committee for Togo, which may help to explain my absence from this blog. I thank all my loyal (2) followers for cajoling me into contributing more frequently. I decided to share with you our plans for our celebrations. And invite you to check out other ways to celebrate, so there will be plenty of links in this entry. As the most software-savvy member of the committee, I’ve been putting together the announcements to volunteers and staff in our monthly newsletter, so I’ll just expand on that:

Togo celebrates the

50th Anniversary of Peace Corps

26 February 2011

Interview with Peace Corps on TVT

We’ve already begun celebrations, starting with an interview with Country Director Carolina Cardona and the Program Director for Girls’ Education and Empowerment, Rose Kpomblekou on national television on the 26^th of February. My fellow PCVL, L, was featured as well, taking the reporter and camera crew to her village. She only received notice the evening before the visit, but admirably mobilized her community to welcome the crew and show off her counterparts and their shared accomplishments.

1 March 2011

Anniversary of President Kennedy’s Executive Order

to establish the United States Peace Corps

As I keep reminding myself with looming deadlines - oh wait, I already missed the 1^st of March?! - it’s okay. Just because Kennedy signed the order, doesn’t mean Peace Corps is born. There still isn’t any money. And let’s face it - congressional appropriations are the lifeblood of government programs. So keep a look out for 22 September, when the US Congress signs up for the Peace Corps. Of course, I’ll be back in the states by then. Party in DC!

18-25 March 2011

Week of Service: Togo Propre

PCVs will work with the local trash collection association in their regional capitals to pick up trash. Wearing bright stage and formation t-shirts, PCVs and their counterparts will attract a lot of attention. Take advantage of the chance to challenge stereotypes about volunteers, answer some questions about Peace Corps, and mobilize local associations to keep up (or restart) their trash-collecting work.

Contact your regional coordinator for more information!

I’m pretty proud of this one. The first meeting I attended of the 50^th anniversary committee was in early January. Committee members told me of their plans to host a soccer match between Peace Corps and the US Embassy. They must have realized my confusion when I tilted my head sharply to the side, raised my eyebrows and asked, “What exactly is our objective with these celebrations?” They hadn’t found a venue yet for the game, or even contacted the Embassy, but, in my eyes, the key ingredient that was missing was a purpose. It sounded like a lot of fun, but how would this event help Peace Corps to highlight its achievements and reach a broader audience of Togolese?

A veritable cyclone of searching ensued as they scratched their heads and tried to come up with the exact goals and objectives for using the funds that we’d received from Peace Corps Washington for our celebrations. A phone call to the regional security officer (presumably because he was the most experienced American staff member in the building), fumbling searches through paperwork and emails, then a lull. In the calm, I suggested we find those objectives and return later to continue the meeting. There is no point in taking action and making plans if they do not match with objectives.

I quickly tracked down objectives in my email and on Peace Corps’ 50^th anniversary website. I prepared a French translation of them and asked the Committee chair, S, to reconvene the meeting. Now we were ready to go:

Utilize the 50th anniversary as a platform to support the agency’s mission and legacy by honoring our past, demonstrating our effectiveness, and inspiring the next generation of volunteers through education and engagement.

Utiliser le cinquantième anniversaire comme une estrade pour soutenir la mission et l’héritage du Corps de la Paix en honorant notre passé, en démontrant notre efficacité, et en inspirant la prochaine génération des volontaires à travers l’éducation et l’engagement.

One of the suggested ways to celebrate was by organizing a day of service, specifically to coincide with Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The deadline was too close for that day, but I presented the idea of having a day of coordinated service across the country. A service project that would not require volunteers to go far from their villages, but would be highly visible and effective: a trash clean-up.

This is a huge problem in Togo, one that various volunteers have tried (with varying success) to address on a village level. From various anecdotes, I knew the publicity value of having a bunch of Americans go out and bend down in the streets to pick up discarded rubbish in front of the community. It would inspire endless questions - a perfect opportunity to engage local community members in a discussion about Peace Corps and its goals.

Furthermore, as I developed the idea with the Program Director for Natural Resource Management, Paul Sinandja, he explained that he would not only help me equip the teams for the clean-up, but would also put each regional group into contact with a local association in charge of rubbish collection. He hoped that through this initial contact, he might be able to cultivate relationships with associations that would facilitate future placement of volunteer into bigger cities to work specifically on the problems of waste management - an area that Peace Corps Togo has yet to address officially.

Well, this has gotten long, so I’ll leave the rest of the activities for next week. Enjoy some youtube video links:

Peace Corps in Togo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI847emEu3U

Camp UNITE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wps9HhkI1LE&feature=player_embedded

Interview with an African-American volunteer who served in Togo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA42OVM51p4

The Many Faces of Peace Corps

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A7WAMzj9Vs

A volunteer’s experience in village

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNJNkGzgLRY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G-R116FNB4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xbS7qV2yCU

1000 Days in Togo

Last Wednesday, the 23rd was my 1000th day since arriving in Togo.

Technically, of course, I haven't BEEN here for 1000 days, what with vacation, etc. but still.

It's a number that the vast majority of Peace Corps volunteers don't hit. It's a third year number.

So I decided to celebrate a little. But first I moved furniture for our regional house all day and got really dehydrated, then the owner of the new boite de nuit (nightclub) in Atakpame invited my friend S to come to his restaurant and thanked him for DJing an American night by topping up our beers with Campari.

Not a nice combination, by the way.

Coupled with the delicious chicken burrito with fresh, right-off-the-tree avocado, the beer was a perfect celebratory meal. The chocolate cake with vanilla icing that J made entirely from scratch raised the border above perfection.

It was a lovely way to spend an evening and I'm glad to have hit this milestone.

Have a fun UNITE song to celebrate with me, sung by Club Unite of Datcha. Interested in supporting Camp UNITE this year? check out the Foundation

The King and His Three Daughters

Le Roi et ses trois filles
Fiaa de kple evia nyonuvi etoawo
The King and his Three Daughters

Traditional story, written down by Yves-Emmanuel Dogbe in “Contes et Legendes du Togo”
Translated and adapted by Rose Lindgren

Once upon a time, there was a king who had three daughters. The daughters were very beautiful but very mysterious. No one in the entire kingdom knew their names. As soon as the daughters grew old enough to be married, offers of betrothal flowed in from every corner of the country from rich men. But the king rejected all of them.
One day, he had all his subjects gather together, both men and animals. “I want to give my daughters in marriage,” he declared to them, “to someone worthy. He who returns in three days time and can tell me the names of my daughters will become my son, husband of my daughters.”
Three days later, men, women, children, animals, all gathered in the courtyard of the royal palace. Beats of the tam-tam and chords of the balafons, the great African music, the true music of our ancestors, filled the air. The king sat down upon his throne, surrounded by his ministers and dignitaries. The three young girls were seated at the feet of their father.
The streets swarmed with crowds, it seemed that every person who had ever heard of the princesses had made the journey to the palace that day. The crowd kept flowing into the courtyard in a never-ending stream.
Once the sun rose to the top of the baobab tree on the horizon, a horn sounded, announcing the opening of the competition. Not even a fly buzzed. Every creature present had searched for three days for the names of the princesses. But no one had been successful. In their failure, they wanted to at least hear the winner reveal the names. Hopeful suitors waited impatiently to the right and to the left of the king, and began to pass in front of him to offer the names they had found or guessed. Each stole glances at the beautiful girls at the king’s feet, hearts bursting with hope of success. But all of the menl failed.
The chance was then given to the animals to try. But Lion, Elephant, Buffalo, Panther, all failed.
Then Hare approached the throne, his large feet padding soundlessly on the packed dirt. The crowd began to throw insults:
“All the respectable men and animals passed through without success,” they cried,”what can we possibly expect of a skinny little hare?”
Everyone murmured, expressing their indignation, ignorant of how sharp a mind the hare had.
And in truth, well before the eve of the trials, Hare had reached an understanding with Turtledove. This bird went and hid herself in a guava tree in the heart of the royal garden where the three sisters loved to play and tease one another, pulling each other’s clothes and long shiny tresses.
The Turtledove perched on a branch directly above them and shook her beak to let a kola nut fall in the middle of the girls. (The princesses were very fond of kola nuts, but they found them only very rarely or not at all.) The girls began to fight and bicker, calling one another by their names. Again Turtledove released a nut, then a third.
The oldest daughter, Lali, had gathered them. She took one for herself, then called over Meyi, the youngest, and gave her one, then called Batsi, the middle child, and gave her the last. The Turtledove noted the three names in the meantime and flew off to confide them to the Hare, who left her the rest of the pile of kola nuts he had gathered. Well, he left her what remained after he had munched on them while he waited, of course.
In front of the king, taking the ministers and dignitaries as witnesses, the Hare revealed the mysterious names. The king tried vainly to hide his despair that he had to take Hare as his son-in-law. But true to his word, he gave his three daughters in marriage to Hare that same day. But the blow to his pride troubled him so severely that he went mad and hung himself only a few days after giving up the throne to Hare and his wives.
The Council of Humans was also very disturbed by the situation. They could not submit to being ruled over by a beast. So they decided to assassinate Hare.
Drunk with the wine of kings and the joy of the marriage bed, Hare was oblivious to the machinations around him. And so, the daughters of the king began to disappear one by one from the household of the Hare who, in turn, was found dead one morning under the talking tree.

Flitting about the country

I have been running around all over West Africa visiting volunteers and learning and sharing my own experiences. Being a volunteer leader is exhausted and exhilarating at the same time. After two plus years here I really do feel capable of being the ‘wise’ volunteer that can share experiences and enhance a new volunteer’s service.

I went to Senegal for a regional conference of Peace Corps volunteers. Senegal is beautiful, and Dakar is surprisingly well-developed. Dakar is the regional epicenter for all American mission projects. This means that if we need to be medically evacuated for issues that can’t be dealt with in country (anything from broken limbs to root canals) we are often sent to Dakar. It has paved roads! And beautiful expensive restaurants. And, probably most important from the US mission perspective, it has a large airport and excellent medical care facilities.

Luckily for me, I wasn’t there for medical reasons, so I got to explore the fun aspects of the city: taking a ferry out to Goree Island, a heritage site dedicated to remembering the atrocities of the slave trade. An old ‘way station’ where African were kept and breeded before being sent on the perilous journey across the Atlantic, has become a museum.

This picture is of the door on the ocean side of the building, it was known as the ‘point of no return.’ Slaves who crossed this threshold were loaded directly onto boats and either died on the journey or arrived in the New World, never to return to their home.

Many of the locals earn their living from tourism, leading visitors around the island to see the various historical points of interest. Because of its historically sad position, Goree Island was also chosen as a site for a statue that shows the positive moves forward since the days of the slave trade.

The island itself is very beautiful and has become a gathering point for many artisans. One of the artists we encountered made paintings with sand. The sand is not artificially colored – it has all been gathered from various places around West Africa. What a beautiful rainbow of colors!


I found some women artisans making necklaces on the Island and I bought several to send back to you to sell (I kept one for myself too!). The rainbow colors mean peace to the Senegalese. I hope that the students love them as much as I do.

After Dakar, I didn’t have any rest before heading straight up to the northernmost region of Togo. Well, that’s not true. I had an extra day to be in Dakar, due to the political violence and civil unrest in Cote d’Ivoire. We were supposed to have a layover in Cote d’Ivoire, but the elections proved to be very contentious and the former president, who has been in office for 10 years (he put off the election for 5 years) is violently trying to retain control of the presidency even though the United Nations supports the other candidate as having gained the majority of votes. In any case, the violence and instability made it impossible for us to keep our original flight plan, so we were rerouted through Mali and arrived in Togo on Monday.

On Tuesday, I headed up to Dapaong, the regional capital of the Savannah region, the driest and poorest region of Togo. It is currently the season of Harmattan, when the wind blows down from the Sahara, carrying along dust clouds that blot out the sun, making it dry and dusty and surprisingly cold, especially at night.

I was in the Savannah region for a couple different reasons. First, we had our quarterly Gender and Development committee meeting and, as a coordinator for the Karren Waid Scholarship Program, I am a member. I had great new for them: I sold all of the bags and aprons that I brought with me to Senegal and the volunteers there want more! The funds we raise from selling these items not only go to the artisans who make them, but also to fund small community projects that have to do with gender. For example, we helped a group of women buy 8 goats, so that they could raise them and breed them so that they could learn how to raise animals, manage money, and save money so they could send their daughters to school whether or not their husband wanted to. In Togo, many girls do not go to school at all, and many others only go to primary school. Once they reach the junior high level, their parents often want them to stay at home to take care of the babies or else help them in the fields or at the market, selling products. It can take a lot of convincing to get a family to continue to send their girls to school. It helps if we can support the mothers to make enough money to pay the school fees.

School fees are not very expensive in dollars – only 7 dollars per year. (3500 FCFA) but this is enough money to feed a family for a week, so it can make a huge dent in the pocket of a family that earns about a dollar a day.

I picked up some gorgeous napkins and tablecloths made by the weaver’s collective in Dapaong and sent some to California. They are all made by hand by a cooperative group, staffed mostly by women, who have been weaving since they were children.

As well as some necklaces and bracelets from a local artisan shop run by a man who goes around to tiny villages and buys the handicrafts made there and brings them into the big city where the handicrafts can find a better audience.

Another reason I was in the Savannah region was to visit the five new volunteers that have just taken up their posts. They had their ‘swearing-in’ ceremony in mid-November, so they had only been in their posts for a few weeks. I was stopping by to see how their community integration, language learning, etc. were going and answer any questions they had.

In visiting the various volunteers, I drank a lot of tchakpa, the local fermented millet drink. It’s like beer, and is a staple drink for everyone who lives in the Savannah region. I liken it to the pilgrims on the Mayflower, who drank beer because they couldn’t trust the water to be free of parasites. The boiling and fermentation process helps to rid the liquid of bacteria, etc.
We drink it out of calabash halves – like a big gourd. They are commonly used as bowls, cups, even spoons (when broken or cut in half).

In one village, I got a real treat! A local ‘Starbucks’.
By which I mean, a guy who puts sweetened condensed milk and dehydrated coffee (Nescafe) into a cup and adds boiling water. It’s delicious. And only 100CFA (less than 25 cents)

The Savannah region is characterized by flat fields (dry and brown in this dry and cold season) punctuated by huge baobab trees.

It is a gorgeous landscape.

The third reason I was in the region was to take advantage of the local historical tourist site: the caves of Nano. These caves were used by the Moba people in their war with the Tchokossi people. They are located about 20 feet from the top of a cliff, making them excellent places from which to survey the land and, using their bows and arrows, take down opponents trying to scale the cliff and reach their mountain-top settlements.
There is a spring that comes straight out of the rock – what a miracle! Women still use this spring to gather drinking water – it is pure and clean from parasites unlike the river water they would otherwise be gathering.

The best thing about the Savannah region is the people. Even though I couldn’t speak any of their local languages (Moba, Tchokossi, Gamgam) I still felt warmly welcomed.