Bonjour mes amis,
After a pretty grueling 7 hour journey from Sokodé back to Agou, we finally made it home from post-visit week last night. I had a GREAT post-visit week and although I do have a “meeeeeeeee” moment to vent about in a bit, I am super excited about Sotouboua and my work there. So let’s go back to last-to-last Saturday…
Waking up nice & early (5AM) to get ready and load into our vans for our trips to various parts of the country, we finally left the prefecture of Agou around 7:30. It was strange to be travelling to lands unknown as Lomé and Agou were pretty much all most of us knew about Togo. As we ventured on the road from Kpalimé to Atakpamé (btw, if you want to get an idea of the places I am talking about, I HIGHLY recommend checking out any basic map of Togo) it was incredible to see how green the land was. Although the road was pretty shitty with tons of potholes, the view from the van was gorgeous. Just north of Kpalimé the sun came out and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and we had these awesome unobstructed views of Mt. Agou in the distance. Although it’s a strange mountain, rising from the ground without a “mountain” range in sight, it struck me as quite majestic. We made it to Atakpamé without much trouble and after a brief restroom break we finally joined the Route National heading north to la Region Centrale. Just quickly, the Route National is the main “highway” connecting Lomé in the south to Cinkasse in the north. It’s paved the entire way and pretty much free of potholes. Oh and it’s a 2 lane road, but lanes don’t really mean anything here in Togo. After a few more hours we finally made it to the Sotouboua prefecture where my van (with me, Marcus, Heather & our homologues) detoured from the rest of our caravan of cars to drop Marcus & I off (Heather is headed to Tchamba, so she had another 2 hour drive north east).
We dropped Marcus off first with all his stuff before heading to Joelle’s house where I was greeted by Joelle and two other volunteers from the Centrale region, Korie & Jillian. Korie is in my cluster and is the closest volunteer to me besides Marcus. She’s about 7 km away in Dereboua en brusse (in the bush) and is an NRM (new resource management…basically agriculture/environmental education) volunteer. Jillian is a GEE (girls education & empowerment) volunteer near Sokodé and was just visiting. Apart from Marcus, I have two other volunteers in my cluster (a volunteer cluster is a group of volunteers who are posted close to each other with one of the volunteers being the contact volunteer who rounds everyone up in the case of an emergency), Tony & Sam. Sam is an SBD volunteer in Adjengere (and a transfer from Kenya after volunteers were evacuated last January) and Tony is an NRM volunteer in Babade. Both of them are north of me on the Route. Unfortunately, both were away for Camp Espoir so I didn’t get to meet them until the post visit party in Sokodé.
My post visit week was pretty uneventful but informative. Joelle showed me around Sotouboua which is a lot different than I imagined it would be (but more on that later). She took me over to Vie Saine Togo (VST), the HIV/AIDS organization I was assigned to work with for the next two years. The building consists of a 4 four room building about 3km away from my house. The building has an office where one of my homologues, Bello, does his work as Executive Director. Nothing else goes on at the building except during meetings which are once a month on the 2nd Saturday or every month. VST as an organization was founded a few years ago by one of my other homologues, Fortuné, a lab technician at the hospital and also by one of the hospital doctors who is no longer there. Joelle had spent the past two years working with VST, getting them organized and helping them come up with a strategic plan. My main work objective with them is to help them achieve their objectives in the strategic plan as well as hopefully help them expand their services. Right now they do some psycho-social counseling with the Red Cross and have a limited medical drug program, offering discounted prices on medicine to treat opportunistic infections (the ARV situation is very complicated here in Togo and I’m hoping to learn more about the situation after my field trip to Kara in two weeks). Joelle was also trying to start a moringa garden in front of the Vie Saine building as part of a nutritional program. The trees were planted but she was hoping I could show them how to cultivate the leaves and turn them into a powder which can be used as a nutritional supplement in most foods. Finally with VST, there used to be a kids club for the children infected or affected by AIDS but due to funding issues, the program was cut; hopefully I can get it re-started with the help of the kids who went to Camp Espoir (the PC funded summer camp for children infected/affected by AIDS).
Apart from VST work, Joelle and Bello showed me around to the different ONGs in Sotouboua that deal with health and development work. I met with PLAN (one of the business organizations that Marcus was assigned to as well as they also do some health work ALL over Togo), RADAR, ESD and a ton of other small ONGs (sorry ONG is the French acronym for NGOs…more on NGOs later) in town. I have some opportunities to work with the schools here but as all the children are on summer break, I didn’t get to meet the directors of any of the schools. Joelle used to do some English clubs and some Anti-SIDA clubs (I know, that sounds horrible but that’s just what they call them) so I’m hoping to do some similar work once school starts again.
One last thing that was really cool: Joelle took Marcus and I to the hospital to go and see the lab that Fortuné works in. It’s pretty shitty compared to what you might find even in a high school biology lab in the US but it was nice for Togo. When we got there, Fortuné showed us all the work he did and even let us use his microscope to see some slides. He showed us malaria falciparum and even a schistosomiasis egg. Since Marcus and I both enjoy biology he told us that we were more than welcome to stop by anytime and help out in the lab if we wanted which is AWESOME! So yea, Bello (who came to the homologue conference in Kpalimé) and Fortuné are incredible counterparts and I really look forward to working with them. They seem super motivated and I know we will accomplish GREAT things together.
Chez Moi
As I said in one of my previous posts, I have a gorgeous house! All the volunteers who I talked to kept repeating “oh, you’re replacing Joelle? She has a beautiful house.” And they weren’t kidding. When you pull up in front of my compound, it looks like the African version of a “castle”. There is a huge yellowish wall surrounding my compound. In front of the wall, several short palm trees stand. In order to enter the compound, one has to cross a “moat” (a deep concrete gutter) and then open two metal gates (“my drawbridge” lol). My compound consists of an L-shaped house divided into 3 sections. My neighbour is Marc and he lives in the part of the L that is furthest away from the metal doors and is the short part of the “L”. He works for the prefecture and we both share utilities (I pay the electric bill and he pays the water bill). I live on the long part of the “L” and that part is essentially two houses. I live in the bigger one and my landlord who actually works a few hours away lives in the smaller one. He’s essentially never there but whenever he does come it’s only for a day or two to collect rent. So back to my house: My section of the house consists of 5 rooms and a long covered patio. Oh and a shared garden with grass and some moringa trees as well as a spigot where I get most of my water from for cooking. When you enter my patio it’s approximately 20 ft long by 5 ft; on one side is some patio furniture and the other side is a place to store my bike next to a lit-picot (a folding mesh & metal bed) for when I want to sleep outside during hot season. There are two doors to enter my house, one opening up into my main room and the other opening up into my kitchen. My main room serves as both my living room and my dining room (most of the furniture, including the refrigerator, is provided by my landlord which is very unusual). From my main room a door leads to a small salon that serves as my bathroom with a sink and two small rooms connected to it in the back which are for my shower (with a detachable shower head) and for my toilet (flushing, even accepting toilet paper…so there are three types of toilets in Togo: pit latrines, bucket flush toilets and flushing toilets. I had a pit latrine during training and now I’m upgraded to a flushing toilet. Flushing toilets which flush toilet paper are pretty rare). On both sides of the bathroom salon are two bedrooms. My bedroom is on the left side and the other room serves as a guest bedroom and I hope to build a desk and turn it into my study room as well.
As I mentioned before, my house is pretty much fully furnished by my landlord. Joelle made some additions like a few bookshelves and a bed for the guest bedroom and she’s leaving everything for me. I’m pretty lucky too because apart from the furniture, she’s also leaving me with her gas stove and two gas tanks along with whatever non-perishable food she doesn’t finish (such as her spices); this basically means that I have very little shopping to do in Lomé. I don’t think a volunteer could ask for a nicer house (okay so hot water would be nice but that would be kind of pushing it as already the house is bigger and nicer than many places back in the States).
Oh and icing on the cake: I live across the street from a buvette! Nothing too fancy but it’s a close place to grab a beer and people-watch during “repos” (the French/Togolese version of siesta). Apparently the guy who runs the place also works for the Togolese Ministry of Health so he might end up being an invaluable resource when it comes to my health work in the prefecture.
Sotouboua
Sotouboua is a prefectural capital meaning that Sotouboua is the largest city in the prefecture, kinda like a county, and everyone has to come in to bank, to do major grocery shopping and to see the prefet (like the mayor). After seeing Kpalimé and Lomé I figured that a prefectural capital would at least have lots of paved roads and maybe a hotel and some restaurants; or at least some 2-story buildings. Boy was I wrong!
Although Sotouboua is “big” it’s more like one of those one-street-towns where the one street in this case happens to be the Route Nationale. The Route is the one paved road in town and all the auxiliary roads are dirt roads, including the road to my house. There is a gas station, the post office, my UTB bank and several convenience type stores on the main road. There is also a petit marché where I do most of my day to day grocery shopping (vegetables and spices). The grand marché is back towards my house and takes place every Friday. I unfortunately left Sotouboua for Sokodé on Friday so I didn’t get to check out my grand marché but I’ll have plenty of time over the next 2 years. It’s nice to have all my every day needs in one place. Joelle said that unless I need “special” vegetables (green peppers, pineapples, etc.) or “special” yovo type items (like yogurt, milk in a box or hot dogs), I don’t really need to leave Sotouboua. The other great thing about Sotouboua being the prefectural capital is the fact that there are loads of ONGs here to work with along with the prefectural hospital of course (as I mentioned above).
Post Visit Party & Sokodé
To end up my week, Joelle, Korie and I headed up to Sokodé to meet up with the other Centrale volunteers and celebrate the end of post visit week at our regional transit house. Each region (except for Lomé/Maritime) has a transit house in the regional capital for the volunteers to stay at if they need to spend the night in the city for work/banking/shopping purposes. Unfortunately PC Admin feels that the houses are seen more as “party” houses so they are considering closing all the transit houses except for the ones they deem necessary for PC purposes. Since Centrale has only 15ish volunteers who use our maison, I’m pretty sure our house will be one of the houses that are closed which sucks because our house is awesome. We keep it nice and clean and it’s a great place to just “get away” when you want to escape from village life. There are beds, a TV and a full kitchen so many volunteers come by the house to catch up on reading or chill and watch movies. Oh well, might as well enjoy the house while we still have it (for another 6 months that is). So yea, came up to the house on Friday to chill and check out Sokodé and we had our party on Saturday.
Sokodé, unlike Sotouboua, has a real “city” feel. Apparently it’s the 2nd biggest city in Togo and it’s really nice. A little more city-feel than Kpalimé, but more Togolese-feel than Lomé. I won’t go into too much detail about Sokodé, since in terms of amenities it’s not toooo different from Sotouboua, just bigger. The one difference is that although Sokodé has a grand marché day (every Thursday), the marché is still open all week long making it really easy to pick up flour and cucumbers and peanut butter (which unfortunately is not found in Sotouboua for some reason) and a huge selection of pagne.
Okay, so there are 14 volunteers in Centrale (at least the ones who use Sokodé as their regional capital…there are 5 volunteers in the Pagala cluster but they go to Atakpamé for their regional capital as it’s closer and cheaper to go there than to come up to Sokodé). Oh and there’s Amy in Bassar (who Taressa is replacing) who is technically in the Kara region but come to Sokodé too as it’s closer for her than her regional capital. Marcus, Korie, Sam, Tony and I (and Joelle) make up the Sotouboua cluster; Rachel (GEE), Rebecca (ICT) and Jillian (GEE) make up the Sokodé cluster and then Heather (CHAP my stage), Tami (GEE), Chris (NRM), Golda (NRM), Silas (SBD), and Angela (SBD) make up the Tchamba cluster. I really like the vibe of the volunteers in my region. The other regions joke that we are the “retirement home” region which I both agree and disagree. We are all super chill and easy to get along with but way more fun than a retirement home though. Joelle, Tami, Rachel, Chris and Silas are COS-ing (finishing their service and heading back to the US) soon so they are leaving our region but will be replaced with new volunteers from the next stage (Joelle and Silas are being replaced by me and Heather obviously) and I heard we might be getting one “new” post in the next stâge. Hope they are as cool as we are :)
As for the actual post visit party, it was cool and chill like the volunteers. On Saturday the current volunteers cooked us dinner and it was AMAZING! Having pretty much eaten only Togolese food (which although it’s really good, it gets a bit monotonous after a while), it was a nice change of pace to eat chili dogs (we found real hot dogs here in Sokodé and then the volunteers made a Togolese version of chili thanks to spice packets from home). The volunteers also made real French fries, guacamole and beer-battered wagash. Can’t remember if I already mentioned it or not but wagash is the Togolese version of cheese made by members of the Fulani tribe (a nomadic West African tribe). It actually tastes pretty much like Indian paneer and it’s delicious when fried. It’s not found everywhere in Togo so it was a special treat to eat. The beer-battered wagash was AMAZING! And to top it off, we added guacamole onto it with some sriracha (sp?) sauce and it was an explosion of taste in my mouth. SOO GOOD! We devoured the entire meal. Oh yea, forgot to mention that some of the Kara volunteers decided to crash our party so in addition to Amy and Larissa (Kara volunteer), we also had Krissy, Taressa, Will and Mark from my stage join us for our party so that was cool to see them and hear about their post visit weeks.
But all good things must come to an end I guess and after waking up in the morning, my stâge-mates who were posted in the Kara region came down and picked us up and we all travelled back to Agou in a cramped 15-placer bush taxi for a very LONG and very UNCOMFORTABLE ride back south. I wasn’t feeling too hot so I took two Benadryl’s and was pretty much knocked out for the rest of the car ride back which was good, although my butt hurt like no other (*note to self*: must remember to ask mom to send me a butt cushion for travelling in the next care package).
Meeeeeeeeeeeee
As I mentioned earlier, I am about to have a “meeeee” moment as Jess would say. Let me preface this with the fact that I am super excited about my post and even though it’s my fault I am in this situation, I can’t help the way I feel, no matter how illogical or irrational it may be. If you don’t want to hear me whine & complain, I suggest you skip this part.
Expectations suck. You don’t want to have them, but you do anyways. Then sooner or later you realize the inevitable, that what you expected is NOT what you got. I tried to come to Togo with no expectations other than 2 years of service. But with me I also brought an image. The typical Peace Corps experience: mud hut, tin roof, no running water or electricity, and middle of nowhere Africa, cut off from the entire world except the tight-knit community you live in. Yes, it was an image somewhat fueled by romanticism (blame Dr. Farmer or The Poisonwood Bible or even every Peace Corps ad you ever see). An image also somewhat fueled by this desire to prove to myself that I could live less materialistically (blame my Dad). But mainly it was an image fueled by the fact that I would like to think of myself as a badass. I wanted to be a badass. Who spent the last two years in the middle of the hot African jungle where he didn’t have air conditioning, had to do laundry by hand and the nearest post office with his mail was 60km away? Oh that’s right: me, the badass!
But what do I get: running water from a spigot 3 feet outside my front door, a detachable showerhead, reliable electricity, a big town with all the essentials, a gas stove, a site mate to keep me company and of course, the coup de grace – a flushing toilet. Not a stinky pit latrine or even a flush-it-yourself bucket-flush toilet but a full on, push-a-button-and-watch-it-flush American style toilet. Hello Posh Corps! Ready for duty. I can’t believe that I am actually complaining about having all the amenities I mentioned above but part of me didn’t want any of those things, even if I did bring my laptop, digital camera and iPod with me from the US. Like I said, this is how I feel and it’s funny because I don’t think I knew what I wanted in a post assignment until I saw my actual post and realized it’s not what I truly wanted.
So just some advice for all you potential Peace Corps volunteers out there: as much as you think about what you are willing to live without for the next two years, also think about what you are willing to live with…
There isn’t really anything I can do about this situation since our post assignments are final, at least for the first year. I’ve tried talking to other volunteers about my situation and although they do sort of understand where I’m coming from, they keep telling me that all that “peace corps experience” stuff isn’t the hard stuff. Volunteers get used to going to bed when the sun goes down, they get used to spending 2 hours over a charcoal stove just to cook breakfast. The quote-unquote “hard stuff” is the work. The apathy. The language gap. The total lack of punctuality (mind you, I’m not saying that in a negative sense…us Americans might do well to learn that a little tardiness is good for the soul). But even though the “peace corps experience” isn’t the hard stuff, it still goes back to my expectations and the image I had in my head. Not what I expected and not what I wanted. Especially when there were people in my training group who only wanted electricity or really wanted running water. I feel like I jipped them out of something they could have had.
I’ve tried to contemplate why do I feel this way? Who on earth in their right mind would actually WANT to live that way? Not to say the “village” life is undesirable in any way, but why would an American or even a westerner who is so used to “modern” and convenient technology WANT to live like this. And honestly, I don’t really know. I guess I could say it’s because I saw Peace Corps with a certain image and they even “promised” me that image when I signed up. They mentioned it in the interview: what are you willing to live without for the next two years? Health volunteers are mainly placed in small, remote villages. Do you think you can do it? Of course I can. This is the schema I have in my head. It’s what I’m prepared for and in a way, it’s what I secretly want. And then they have to go and break this image by placing me in a “city”. It’s funny because Peace Corps talks about putting the volunteers in the same living conditions of people in the community and here I find myself in not just one of the nicest houses in Sotouboua but probably one of the nicest houses in my region. I’m sure if PC really wanted to find a house with a pit latrine and an outdoor shower in Sotouboua they wouldn’t have a very hard time. It’s also funny because out of the 15 available posts in Togo for health volunteers, only 4 of them could really qualify as being “en brusse” villages. So much for CHAP volunteers being in “small, remote villages”…
So finally my “meeee” moment, my internal monologue, concludes on a certain fact: that my so-called image of the “peace corps experience” isn’t just an image. It’s life. Real life. For billions of people. The so-called “peace corps experience” might be “roughing it” for me but it’s the everyday-to day life for my fellow Togolese. They aren’t in those conditions for an “experience”. They didn’t choose to live that way. The live the only way they know how. The only way their economic status will allow them. And so they live… and I guess I’ll just have to stop pitying myself and appreciate what I have when so many others don’t…
ciao for now,
-Nikhil
After a pretty grueling 7 hour journey from Sokodé back to Agou, we finally made it home from post-visit week last night. I had a GREAT post-visit week and although I do have a “meeeeeeeee” moment to vent about in a bit, I am super excited about Sotouboua and my work there. So let’s go back to last-to-last Saturday…
Waking up nice & early (5AM) to get ready and load into our vans for our trips to various parts of the country, we finally left the prefecture of Agou around 7:30. It was strange to be travelling to lands unknown as Lomé and Agou were pretty much all most of us knew about Togo. As we ventured on the road from Kpalimé to Atakpamé (btw, if you want to get an idea of the places I am talking about, I HIGHLY recommend checking out any basic map of Togo) it was incredible to see how green the land was. Although the road was pretty shitty with tons of potholes, the view from the van was gorgeous. Just north of Kpalimé the sun came out and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and we had these awesome unobstructed views of Mt. Agou in the distance. Although it’s a strange mountain, rising from the ground without a “mountain” range in sight, it struck me as quite majestic. We made it to Atakpamé without much trouble and after a brief restroom break we finally joined the Route National heading north to la Region Centrale. Just quickly, the Route National is the main “highway” connecting Lomé in the south to Cinkasse in the north. It’s paved the entire way and pretty much free of potholes. Oh and it’s a 2 lane road, but lanes don’t really mean anything here in Togo. After a few more hours we finally made it to the Sotouboua prefecture where my van (with me, Marcus, Heather & our homologues) detoured from the rest of our caravan of cars to drop Marcus & I off (Heather is headed to Tchamba, so she had another 2 hour drive north east).
We dropped Marcus off first with all his stuff before heading to Joelle’s house where I was greeted by Joelle and two other volunteers from the Centrale region, Korie & Jillian. Korie is in my cluster and is the closest volunteer to me besides Marcus. She’s about 7 km away in Dereboua en brusse (in the bush) and is an NRM (new resource management…basically agriculture/environmental education) volunteer. Jillian is a GEE (girls education & empowerment) volunteer near Sokodé and was just visiting. Apart from Marcus, I have two other volunteers in my cluster (a volunteer cluster is a group of volunteers who are posted close to each other with one of the volunteers being the contact volunteer who rounds everyone up in the case of an emergency), Tony & Sam. Sam is an SBD volunteer in Adjengere (and a transfer from Kenya after volunteers were evacuated last January) and Tony is an NRM volunteer in Babade. Both of them are north of me on the Route. Unfortunately, both were away for Camp Espoir so I didn’t get to meet them until the post visit party in Sokodé.
My post visit week was pretty uneventful but informative. Joelle showed me around Sotouboua which is a lot different than I imagined it would be (but more on that later). She took me over to Vie Saine Togo (VST), the HIV/AIDS organization I was assigned to work with for the next two years. The building consists of a 4 four room building about 3km away from my house. The building has an office where one of my homologues, Bello, does his work as Executive Director. Nothing else goes on at the building except during meetings which are once a month on the 2nd Saturday or every month. VST as an organization was founded a few years ago by one of my other homologues, Fortuné, a lab technician at the hospital and also by one of the hospital doctors who is no longer there. Joelle had spent the past two years working with VST, getting them organized and helping them come up with a strategic plan. My main work objective with them is to help them achieve their objectives in the strategic plan as well as hopefully help them expand their services. Right now they do some psycho-social counseling with the Red Cross and have a limited medical drug program, offering discounted prices on medicine to treat opportunistic infections (the ARV situation is very complicated here in Togo and I’m hoping to learn more about the situation after my field trip to Kara in two weeks). Joelle was also trying to start a moringa garden in front of the Vie Saine building as part of a nutritional program. The trees were planted but she was hoping I could show them how to cultivate the leaves and turn them into a powder which can be used as a nutritional supplement in most foods. Finally with VST, there used to be a kids club for the children infected or affected by AIDS but due to funding issues, the program was cut; hopefully I can get it re-started with the help of the kids who went to Camp Espoir (the PC funded summer camp for children infected/affected by AIDS).
Apart from VST work, Joelle and Bello showed me around to the different ONGs in Sotouboua that deal with health and development work. I met with PLAN (one of the business organizations that Marcus was assigned to as well as they also do some health work ALL over Togo), RADAR, ESD and a ton of other small ONGs (sorry ONG is the French acronym for NGOs…more on NGOs later) in town. I have some opportunities to work with the schools here but as all the children are on summer break, I didn’t get to meet the directors of any of the schools. Joelle used to do some English clubs and some Anti-SIDA clubs (I know, that sounds horrible but that’s just what they call them) so I’m hoping to do some similar work once school starts again.
One last thing that was really cool: Joelle took Marcus and I to the hospital to go and see the lab that Fortuné works in. It’s pretty shitty compared to what you might find even in a high school biology lab in the US but it was nice for Togo. When we got there, Fortuné showed us all the work he did and even let us use his microscope to see some slides. He showed us malaria falciparum and even a schistosomiasis egg. Since Marcus and I both enjoy biology he told us that we were more than welcome to stop by anytime and help out in the lab if we wanted which is AWESOME! So yea, Bello (who came to the homologue conference in Kpalimé) and Fortuné are incredible counterparts and I really look forward to working with them. They seem super motivated and I know we will accomplish GREAT things together.
Chez Moi
As I said in one of my previous posts, I have a gorgeous house! All the volunteers who I talked to kept repeating “oh, you’re replacing Joelle? She has a beautiful house.” And they weren’t kidding. When you pull up in front of my compound, it looks like the African version of a “castle”. There is a huge yellowish wall surrounding my compound. In front of the wall, several short palm trees stand. In order to enter the compound, one has to cross a “moat” (a deep concrete gutter) and then open two metal gates (“my drawbridge” lol). My compound consists of an L-shaped house divided into 3 sections. My neighbour is Marc and he lives in the part of the L that is furthest away from the metal doors and is the short part of the “L”. He works for the prefecture and we both share utilities (I pay the electric bill and he pays the water bill). I live on the long part of the “L” and that part is essentially two houses. I live in the bigger one and my landlord who actually works a few hours away lives in the smaller one. He’s essentially never there but whenever he does come it’s only for a day or two to collect rent. So back to my house: My section of the house consists of 5 rooms and a long covered patio. Oh and a shared garden with grass and some moringa trees as well as a spigot where I get most of my water from for cooking. When you enter my patio it’s approximately 20 ft long by 5 ft; on one side is some patio furniture and the other side is a place to store my bike next to a lit-picot (a folding mesh & metal bed) for when I want to sleep outside during hot season. There are two doors to enter my house, one opening up into my main room and the other opening up into my kitchen. My main room serves as both my living room and my dining room (most of the furniture, including the refrigerator, is provided by my landlord which is very unusual). From my main room a door leads to a small salon that serves as my bathroom with a sink and two small rooms connected to it in the back which are for my shower (with a detachable shower head) and for my toilet (flushing, even accepting toilet paper…so there are three types of toilets in Togo: pit latrines, bucket flush toilets and flushing toilets. I had a pit latrine during training and now I’m upgraded to a flushing toilet. Flushing toilets which flush toilet paper are pretty rare). On both sides of the bathroom salon are two bedrooms. My bedroom is on the left side and the other room serves as a guest bedroom and I hope to build a desk and turn it into my study room as well.
As I mentioned before, my house is pretty much fully furnished by my landlord. Joelle made some additions like a few bookshelves and a bed for the guest bedroom and she’s leaving everything for me. I’m pretty lucky too because apart from the furniture, she’s also leaving me with her gas stove and two gas tanks along with whatever non-perishable food she doesn’t finish (such as her spices); this basically means that I have very little shopping to do in Lomé. I don’t think a volunteer could ask for a nicer house (okay so hot water would be nice but that would be kind of pushing it as already the house is bigger and nicer than many places back in the States).
Oh and icing on the cake: I live across the street from a buvette! Nothing too fancy but it’s a close place to grab a beer and people-watch during “repos” (the French/Togolese version of siesta). Apparently the guy who runs the place also works for the Togolese Ministry of Health so he might end up being an invaluable resource when it comes to my health work in the prefecture.
Sotouboua
Sotouboua is a prefectural capital meaning that Sotouboua is the largest city in the prefecture, kinda like a county, and everyone has to come in to bank, to do major grocery shopping and to see the prefet (like the mayor). After seeing Kpalimé and Lomé I figured that a prefectural capital would at least have lots of paved roads and maybe a hotel and some restaurants; or at least some 2-story buildings. Boy was I wrong!
Although Sotouboua is “big” it’s more like one of those one-street-towns where the one street in this case happens to be the Route Nationale. The Route is the one paved road in town and all the auxiliary roads are dirt roads, including the road to my house. There is a gas station, the post office, my UTB bank and several convenience type stores on the main road. There is also a petit marché where I do most of my day to day grocery shopping (vegetables and spices). The grand marché is back towards my house and takes place every Friday. I unfortunately left Sotouboua for Sokodé on Friday so I didn’t get to check out my grand marché but I’ll have plenty of time over the next 2 years. It’s nice to have all my every day needs in one place. Joelle said that unless I need “special” vegetables (green peppers, pineapples, etc.) or “special” yovo type items (like yogurt, milk in a box or hot dogs), I don’t really need to leave Sotouboua. The other great thing about Sotouboua being the prefectural capital is the fact that there are loads of ONGs here to work with along with the prefectural hospital of course (as I mentioned above).
Post Visit Party & Sokodé
To end up my week, Joelle, Korie and I headed up to Sokodé to meet up with the other Centrale volunteers and celebrate the end of post visit week at our regional transit house. Each region (except for Lomé/Maritime) has a transit house in the regional capital for the volunteers to stay at if they need to spend the night in the city for work/banking/shopping purposes. Unfortunately PC Admin feels that the houses are seen more as “party” houses so they are considering closing all the transit houses except for the ones they deem necessary for PC purposes. Since Centrale has only 15ish volunteers who use our maison, I’m pretty sure our house will be one of the houses that are closed which sucks because our house is awesome. We keep it nice and clean and it’s a great place to just “get away” when you want to escape from village life. There are beds, a TV and a full kitchen so many volunteers come by the house to catch up on reading or chill and watch movies. Oh well, might as well enjoy the house while we still have it (for another 6 months that is). So yea, came up to the house on Friday to chill and check out Sokodé and we had our party on Saturday.
Sokodé, unlike Sotouboua, has a real “city” feel. Apparently it’s the 2nd biggest city in Togo and it’s really nice. A little more city-feel than Kpalimé, but more Togolese-feel than Lomé. I won’t go into too much detail about Sokodé, since in terms of amenities it’s not toooo different from Sotouboua, just bigger. The one difference is that although Sokodé has a grand marché day (every Thursday), the marché is still open all week long making it really easy to pick up flour and cucumbers and peanut butter (which unfortunately is not found in Sotouboua for some reason) and a huge selection of pagne.
Okay, so there are 14 volunteers in Centrale (at least the ones who use Sokodé as their regional capital…there are 5 volunteers in the Pagala cluster but they go to Atakpamé for their regional capital as it’s closer and cheaper to go there than to come up to Sokodé). Oh and there’s Amy in Bassar (who Taressa is replacing) who is technically in the Kara region but come to Sokodé too as it’s closer for her than her regional capital. Marcus, Korie, Sam, Tony and I (and Joelle) make up the Sotouboua cluster; Rachel (GEE), Rebecca (ICT) and Jillian (GEE) make up the Sokodé cluster and then Heather (CHAP my stage), Tami (GEE), Chris (NRM), Golda (NRM), Silas (SBD), and Angela (SBD) make up the Tchamba cluster. I really like the vibe of the volunteers in my region. The other regions joke that we are the “retirement home” region which I both agree and disagree. We are all super chill and easy to get along with but way more fun than a retirement home though. Joelle, Tami, Rachel, Chris and Silas are COS-ing (finishing their service and heading back to the US) soon so they are leaving our region but will be replaced with new volunteers from the next stage (Joelle and Silas are being replaced by me and Heather obviously) and I heard we might be getting one “new” post in the next stâge. Hope they are as cool as we are :)
As for the actual post visit party, it was cool and chill like the volunteers. On Saturday the current volunteers cooked us dinner and it was AMAZING! Having pretty much eaten only Togolese food (which although it’s really good, it gets a bit monotonous after a while), it was a nice change of pace to eat chili dogs (we found real hot dogs here in Sokodé and then the volunteers made a Togolese version of chili thanks to spice packets from home). The volunteers also made real French fries, guacamole and beer-battered wagash. Can’t remember if I already mentioned it or not but wagash is the Togolese version of cheese made by members of the Fulani tribe (a nomadic West African tribe). It actually tastes pretty much like Indian paneer and it’s delicious when fried. It’s not found everywhere in Togo so it was a special treat to eat. The beer-battered wagash was AMAZING! And to top it off, we added guacamole onto it with some sriracha (sp?) sauce and it was an explosion of taste in my mouth. SOO GOOD! We devoured the entire meal. Oh yea, forgot to mention that some of the Kara volunteers decided to crash our party so in addition to Amy and Larissa (Kara volunteer), we also had Krissy, Taressa, Will and Mark from my stage join us for our party so that was cool to see them and hear about their post visit weeks.
But all good things must come to an end I guess and after waking up in the morning, my stâge-mates who were posted in the Kara region came down and picked us up and we all travelled back to Agou in a cramped 15-placer bush taxi for a very LONG and very UNCOMFORTABLE ride back south. I wasn’t feeling too hot so I took two Benadryl’s and was pretty much knocked out for the rest of the car ride back which was good, although my butt hurt like no other (*note to self*: must remember to ask mom to send me a butt cushion for travelling in the next care package).
Meeeeeeeeeeeee
As I mentioned earlier, I am about to have a “meeeee” moment as Jess would say. Let me preface this with the fact that I am super excited about my post and even though it’s my fault I am in this situation, I can’t help the way I feel, no matter how illogical or irrational it may be. If you don’t want to hear me whine & complain, I suggest you skip this part.
Expectations suck. You don’t want to have them, but you do anyways. Then sooner or later you realize the inevitable, that what you expected is NOT what you got. I tried to come to Togo with no expectations other than 2 years of service. But with me I also brought an image. The typical Peace Corps experience: mud hut, tin roof, no running water or electricity, and middle of nowhere Africa, cut off from the entire world except the tight-knit community you live in. Yes, it was an image somewhat fueled by romanticism (blame Dr. Farmer or The Poisonwood Bible or even every Peace Corps ad you ever see). An image also somewhat fueled by this desire to prove to myself that I could live less materialistically (blame my Dad). But mainly it was an image fueled by the fact that I would like to think of myself as a badass. I wanted to be a badass. Who spent the last two years in the middle of the hot African jungle where he didn’t have air conditioning, had to do laundry by hand and the nearest post office with his mail was 60km away? Oh that’s right: me, the badass!
But what do I get: running water from a spigot 3 feet outside my front door, a detachable showerhead, reliable electricity, a big town with all the essentials, a gas stove, a site mate to keep me company and of course, the coup de grace – a flushing toilet. Not a stinky pit latrine or even a flush-it-yourself bucket-flush toilet but a full on, push-a-button-and-watch-it-flush American style toilet. Hello Posh Corps! Ready for duty. I can’t believe that I am actually complaining about having all the amenities I mentioned above but part of me didn’t want any of those things, even if I did bring my laptop, digital camera and iPod with me from the US. Like I said, this is how I feel and it’s funny because I don’t think I knew what I wanted in a post assignment until I saw my actual post and realized it’s not what I truly wanted.
So just some advice for all you potential Peace Corps volunteers out there: as much as you think about what you are willing to live without for the next two years, also think about what you are willing to live with…
There isn’t really anything I can do about this situation since our post assignments are final, at least for the first year. I’ve tried talking to other volunteers about my situation and although they do sort of understand where I’m coming from, they keep telling me that all that “peace corps experience” stuff isn’t the hard stuff. Volunteers get used to going to bed when the sun goes down, they get used to spending 2 hours over a charcoal stove just to cook breakfast. The quote-unquote “hard stuff” is the work. The apathy. The language gap. The total lack of punctuality (mind you, I’m not saying that in a negative sense…us Americans might do well to learn that a little tardiness is good for the soul). But even though the “peace corps experience” isn’t the hard stuff, it still goes back to my expectations and the image I had in my head. Not what I expected and not what I wanted. Especially when there were people in my training group who only wanted electricity or really wanted running water. I feel like I jipped them out of something they could have had.
I’ve tried to contemplate why do I feel this way? Who on earth in their right mind would actually WANT to live that way? Not to say the “village” life is undesirable in any way, but why would an American or even a westerner who is so used to “modern” and convenient technology WANT to live like this. And honestly, I don’t really know. I guess I could say it’s because I saw Peace Corps with a certain image and they even “promised” me that image when I signed up. They mentioned it in the interview: what are you willing to live without for the next two years? Health volunteers are mainly placed in small, remote villages. Do you think you can do it? Of course I can. This is the schema I have in my head. It’s what I’m prepared for and in a way, it’s what I secretly want. And then they have to go and break this image by placing me in a “city”. It’s funny because Peace Corps talks about putting the volunteers in the same living conditions of people in the community and here I find myself in not just one of the nicest houses in Sotouboua but probably one of the nicest houses in my region. I’m sure if PC really wanted to find a house with a pit latrine and an outdoor shower in Sotouboua they wouldn’t have a very hard time. It’s also funny because out of the 15 available posts in Togo for health volunteers, only 4 of them could really qualify as being “en brusse” villages. So much for CHAP volunteers being in “small, remote villages”…
So finally my “meeee” moment, my internal monologue, concludes on a certain fact: that my so-called image of the “peace corps experience” isn’t just an image. It’s life. Real life. For billions of people. The so-called “peace corps experience” might be “roughing it” for me but it’s the everyday-to day life for my fellow Togolese. They aren’t in those conditions for an “experience”. They didn’t choose to live that way. The live the only way they know how. The only way their economic status will allow them. And so they live… and I guess I’ll just have to stop pitying myself and appreciate what I have when so many others don’t…
ciao for now,
-Nikhil
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