Nyana Danaj (pronounced “Nyá-nah Dáh-nah”),
Alafia we? Tumiye yo? Amerika mba yo? Payam se Nikhil ne menge Corps de la Paix soolim tumiye ladu.
I hope that all of your answers to the first few questions were “Yaa alafia” because that would mean that your health, your work and the people of America are all well as I hope they are. In case you were wondering, no that is not French I am speaking above (with the exception of the “Corps de la Paix” bit) but Kabyé (or Kabiyé), pronounced “Kah-bee-yay”, one of the two main languages spoken here in Togo. The other main language is Ewe, pronounced “Eh-vay”, but since that is mainly spoken in the southern part of the country it won’t do me much good at my post. Oh and before Togolese people and some of my fellow PC volunteers get mad at me, yes, Ewe and Kabyé are the two predominant local languages of Togo; however, Togo is home to many more local languages such as Ife, in the southeast; Kotokoli and Tchamba in the middle; and Bassar, Konkomba, Lhosso, Nawdum and Mina in the north. And even that doesn’t encompass all the languages spoken in Togo.
Btw, a basic translation of what I wrote above translates out to: Good evening. Are you well? How’s your work? How are the people of America? My name is Nikhil and I am a Peace Corps volunteer worker.
So yea, as we get ready to head to our post tomorrow for our mid-stâge post visit week, our language “formateurs” (French for trainers) decided to give us brief local language lessons so that we can “salue” (or greet) the people in our post communities. Since Sotouboua is mainly Kabyé ethnically, I’ve spent the past week reviewing very basic Kabyé with Marcus (my site mate) and Reid. Although I am enjoying learning a local language as it was one of the things I was most looking forward to doing in the Peace Corps, it’s been a little frustrating to jump into Kabyé classes when I still don’t feel my French is strong enough to visit post and a little more frustrating that the formateurs are teaching me Kabyé in French! I mean what can I do but go with it right? Luckily I only had to suffer about 2 hours of local language before returning back to French classes.
Okay enough whining, let’s get back to updating you all, my oh so faithful readers, about my life the past two weeks since I last posted.
4th of July
Last time I posted on here I was in Kpalimé buying supplies for our 4th of July fête in Agou-Nyogbo. Luckily we were able to find all the supplies we needed for a good dinner including hot dogs and potatoes. The celebration ended up being a lot of fun and even though it wasn’t exactly like the 4th of July parties we are used to in the US, it was definitely the closest approximation to what we will have here in Togo. For our feast we made what came to basically be our versions of french fries, chili dogs, mango salsa (this was one of my contributions to the party and it turned out AMAZING), guacamole, fried soy (bought from the petit marché) and beignets with chocolate icing (the beignets from my host mom was my other contribution…btw beignets, pineapple jam and chocolate icing “mélange-d” (mixed) tastes pretty much like a toaster strudel, yum!). After devouring our meal both groups from Koumawou and Nyogbo just sat around and chilled; we were supposed to try and organize a SED vs. CHAP Ultimate Frisbee and Capture the Flag competitions but most of us were so satiated into food comas that we didn’t have the energy to run around. After the Koumawou kids left, the CHAPers somehow got into very serious conversations about life and other stuff when it started to pour heavily outside our tech house. In order to cheer all of us up from our somewhat subdued states, I dragged everyone out into the rain to dance. It was one of those spur of the moment, “why not?” things that ended up being a lot of fun. We danced for a few songs, got completely drenched and then we all had fun getting home to our host-families. Overall, a successful 4th of July party.
Cultural Exchange
As many people are unaware, the US Peace Corps has 3 goals, two of which are completely unrelated to the first goal of “development” (although this first goal is hotly contested among the PC community, I shall reserve my judgment for a later time). The second goal involves teaching the Togolese people about American culture in hopes of creating a better understanding of America on the part of the Togolese; the third involves teaching Americans about Togolese culture in hopes of creating a better understanding of Togo on the part of the Americans. Since this blog sort of serves the purpose of detailing Togolese culture to my friends and family back home I am excited that you, my readers, are getting to partake in the Peace Corps experience via this third goal. Last Friday, all of us stagieres along with our host families participated in a large cultural exchange as we demonstrated a little bit of American culture for them and they returned the favor through a big fête (in case you haven’t realized it, give Togolese a reason to party and they will party). The first part of the cultural exchange involved presenting a skit: the Togolese host mom’s came up with a skit to portray a particular aspect of Togolese life and we came up with one to portray an aspect of American life. Now I have to say that we didn’t really know what we were getting ourselves into as our skit ended up pretty lame compared to the Togolese skit. Our host mom’s decided to portray a marriage proposal & ceremony and they had this intricate storyline of deceit and power hierarchy complete with a fight and lots of singing and dancing totaling approximately 20 minutes. It was all in French and it was really funny and interesting to watch, if for no other reason than to watch some of our host mothers act and come out of their shells. We definitely saw a different side to them than what we see in our houses. Even my host brother ended up taking part in their skit. The American skit ended up being about “typical” things you might see in a coffee shop. Not really sure how we ended up with this idea but we were able to come up with some pretty funny scenarios that were extremely humorous to us, even if the scene didn’t translate extremely well for the Togolese. We had scenes involving ordering coffee at Starbucks, a group of friends discussing sports & why football isn’t big in the US, a business meeting (which I took part in), and even a hilarious break up scene between a couple. In my scene Allison and I were trying to portray how in the US there are many women in business who are in higher positions of power than many men. So Allison was my boss and I was her assistant and she was basically bossing me around and ordering me to do a bunch of things for her or else I would be fired. The big really funny scene that I want to mention quickly was the break up as it turned out WAY better than I could have imagined. Whitney and Rayan played an “inter-racial” couple being all lovey-dovey in the coffee shop. After a few seconds, Trisha walked by their table and Rayan checks her out. When Whitney saw this, she decided to slap him in the face, throw her coffee at him and storm off. What Rayan didn’t realize was that Whitney has some water in the coffee cup so when she “threw the coffee” at him, he wasn’t expecting anything to actually hit him. Also they had originally staged a fake “slap” in the face but when Whitney went for the slap, something happened and she ended up really slapping him pretty hard in the face. The two mishaps together had our Togolese families falling out of their chairs laughing, even if they didn’t quite understand what was going on. Our Togolese mom’s definitely showed us up but apparently the Togolese skit is ALWAYS better than the American skit so we weren’t too disappointed.
The second part of the cultural exchange involved a fashion show: American and Togolese fashion. First they had us talk about American fashion and what we might wear in various occasions in the US. Rayan & Rose emceed our show and talked about the 8 different categories of clothing we came up with: school attire, date attire, beach attire, casual attire, work attire, tourist attire, outdoorsy attire and workout attire. It ended up being pretty funny with the way many of us decided to dress up. Kristina & I got selected to show off casual attire, as in what we might wear as we “lounge” around our homes. Down the runway I wore my Georgia Tech t-shirt and some track pants and Kristina wore a shirt and some PJ bottoms. I tried to get some good pictures of the show but many came out blurry so when I post pics, you can see what I was able get from the skits & the fashion show. After we portrayed American fashion, our host mom’s fitted us in pagne complets to demonstrate Togolese fashion. It was really funny to see some of the clothes they had us wear. My host mom fitted me in a lime green mawua (bubu & pants) that had some pretty intricate embroidery. I tried to post a picture of it on facebook so check it out. It’s funny because the mawua looks pretty much like an Indian kurta pajama but with lots of colour so I felt somewhat at home in them. All the girls had many different styles that you can see when I post pics. The guys however were evenly divided between the pagne complet mawua, pagne complet suit and the village chief garb complete with heavily draped fabric, beaded necklaces and a traditional hat. After all of us rocked our Togolese clothes down the runway at the Nyogbo techhouse, we even had our formateurs walk down the runway in other versions of Togolese clothes, particularly those clothes more commonly found up north. To end the fête, no Togolese party is complete without dancing so we all boogied into the night. All in all it was a great day as we all partook in an interesting cross-cultural sharing experience.
Training
So I know that is seems like all us Peace Corps volunteers do is party (and from my pictures it might seem that’s all I do too) but I promise that I/we DO do some actual work. Training is pretty intense and social time is our way to distress from the 24/7 sensory overload of information. As I mentioned in the previous post, training involves lots of exposure to not just theory but practical applications of projects we can implement within our communities. The CHAP program in Togo is categorized by meeting the needs of Togolese people within 4 specific domains: HIV/AIDS, malaria, family planning and nutrition. In addition to these four domains, many of the health volunteers work on hygiene/sanitation projects such as latrine construction and organization development such as NGO capacity building. Based on the 4 main domains, our training has been divided up to focus on one domain each week.
Our first week consisted of learning about nutrition and the state of nutrition in Togo. We learned that Togolese are taught a very different “food pyramid” than the one we use in the US based on the availability of certain items in Togo. The three main food groups in Togo are construction foods, energy foods and growth foods. As part of our week on nutrition we learned how to make enriched bouille (basically fortified porridge) and we participated in a local C.P.C (Controle et Promotion de la Croissance), or baby-weighing activity. Baby weighing, which was a lot of fun and something I hope to take part in at my post, is a standard part of infant growth monitoring, a UNICEF tool to monitor the health of a baby based on its weight. After weighing the babies and checking to see if they fall within a safe range based on weight and age, we performed nutritional consultations with the mother to make sure the baby is not only getting enough to eat but also enough of the right types of foods. Something I mentioned in my previous post was how CHAP volunteers get to work on gardening projects and that is due to our involvement in nutrition work as growing the right foods in certain parts of the country is essential to improving the nutritional state of that area. Additionally, leaves from the Moringa tree are highly nutritious and can be added as a nutritional supplement to any meal.
Our second week covered the topic of HIV/AIDS and its effect on the Togolese population. Contrary to what I had mentioned a few months ago about Togo having a very low HIV/AIDS prevalence rate, I came to find out that the low rate is due to under-reportage and lack of testing. Basically, the statistics are based on the number of people who have been tested and due to heavy stigmatization and discrimination, many people who might be infected refuse to get tested bringing the prevalence rate lower than it most likely is. Even with forecasting and extrapolation, it is extremely difficult to determine the exact number of infected people in Togo as polling and census data are inefficient and very incomplete. One of our technical sessions was a presentation by an amazing Togolese man by the name of Augustín who is HIV+ and one of the few people in the entire country who has VERY publically displayed his sero-positive results. He is also one of the few infected Togolese who is receiving ARV treatment. Although he tried to talk about the Global Fund and the ARV mess that is going on in Togo, the whole situation is very confusing and I hope that we will gain clarification on many issues at a later point. The second part of the presentation was by Jon (one of the only 3 male CHAP volunteers already in country and about to COS shortly), a volunteer in Kanté who has been working on creating a satellite at his post of AED (Association Espoir pour Demain), a HIV/AIDS association of “pris en charge” in Kara. Jon’s presentation was very enlightening as I will be doing similar work with VST, my HIV/AIDS association in Sotouboua.
This brings me to this past two weeks where our topics of discussion have been about malaria and hygiene/sanitation (the two are highly correlated). We haven’t done anything extremely exciting with these topics apart from doing home visits to understand barriers to mosquito net compliance and listening to a speaker from a health and sanitation department on different types of latrines and how to go about working on various water projects in our communities. When we get back from post in two weeks, we’ll begin our discussion on family planning and then apparently I’ll be going for a week to Kara for my field trip to study organizational development and NGO capacity building. Although training is getting to be a bit tedious and draining, I am grateful for the review of information and it’s nice to see what kinds of projects we can implement in our site.
Language
Okay, so I already talked a little bit about language but I did want to highlight two more things quickly: our mid-service language test and cocktail français. First of all, in preparation for our post-visit, the formateurs tested all us stagieres to see how much our French level had improved from the beginning of training and to see whether we were making adequate progress towards reaching the mandatory level to go to post. Although I felt more comfortable with my French than when I first arrived in country, I didn’t feel as nearly prepared as I would have liked to before post-visit. The oral test was slightly nerve-wracking but I made it through and somehow ended up with a “low” intermediate mid. Considering I came in “high” novice-mid/ “low” novice-high, this was quite an improvement, although I am dubious as to what standards the formateurs were using when they decided to place me at my level. Regardless, I only need an intermediate-mid level of French to be approved for post so that takes off a lot of pressure. I know that with adequate exposure to new vocabulary and new grammatical rules, I’ll feel a lot more comfortable before actually moving to post in a few weeks.
One of my favorite language activities so far has been cocktail français. I wanted to highlight this activity because I feel that this activity contributed greatly to my increased ease of speaking French. Unlike the classroom setting where we focus on vocabulary and grammar, cocktail français was an opportunity for us to speak freely and converse about general topics of interest to us such as literature, art, travel, politics, etc; the catch is that we are only allowed to speak in French. Additionally, we ended up having class at Afrikiko, one of the main local bars, so that we could order beers (American invitation, not Togolese) and chill with snacks prepared by the formateurs (aka. Yummy popcorn!). This is up for debate, but I am a huge advocate (based on evidence from my study abroad experience in South America) for the use of alcohol in foreign language situations. I am not saying one needs to drink copious amounts of liquor and be hammered, but even a single beer has the ability to lower one’s inhibitions enough to speak freely without the consequences of analyzing every word that is about to come out of one’s mouth. I noticed that my French came out more smoothly as I didn’t have to think about each sentence before I uttered it. Although I stumbled here and there, it was nice to be in an unintimidating atmosphere where I could control the direction of a conversation and speak about things I knew how to talk about, not just “how to buy things at a grocery store” or “how to ask for directions” as we would often do in class. Anyways, it was a great activity and it was the first time where I was able to see the progress I was making with my French based on my ability to hold a conversation about a random topic for at least a few minutes. I really hope we get to do this activity again…
Homologue Conference
So I guess this all brings me to today, our homologue conference. For the first time, we met face to face with all of our homologues, or counterparts, with whom we will be working side-by-side at our posts. My homologue is Bello, one of the founding members of Vie Saine Togo (VST), the HIV/AIDS association that I will be working with in Sotouboua. He seems really nice so far and he also seems really motivated to work hard so I hope we will be able to accomplish a lot. So the homologue conference was held near Kpalimé and all 30 of us volunteers and all 30 of our homologues met up to reinforce the expectations and responsibilities of the volunteers and homologues in each of our communities. The homologues had already had a full day of sessions yesterday so when we arrived today, our main goal was to introduce ourselves to our homologues, introduce our program (CHAP & SED) and make sure that both groups are on the same page when it comes to what each of us is bringing to the table. Although the conference was a bit repetitive information-wise as we had already been drilled on what many of our homologues, particularly the new homologues in new posts, would want from us: money, it was good to hear what else they expected from us and to see how excited some of the newer homologues were to work with Peace Corps. After the conference, all the volunteers were given rides to the Kpalimé marché to buy last minute items for our post visit week. Since I didn’t need to buy pretty much anything as Joelle told me she pretty much had anything I could need for the post visit week, I ended up going out for “pizza” with Krissy, Marcus, Reid, Heather & Whitney before running over to the internet café to check my e-mail.
As I mentioned earlier, we head to post tomorrow to check out our new assignments, meet the people of our new communities, and basically get an idea of what life as a volunteer is going to be like. Although I am excited to finally see what Sotouboua is like and to meet Joelle, I am sad to be leaving many of my close friends from stâge. It’s weird because even though we’ve only known each other for a few weeks, we’ve created incredibly close bonds among our two groups so it’s strange to see some of those bonds tested. Although it sucks I guess it just prepares us for the next two years of our lives.
As the Kabyé say…
“Eso fezi” or “May God wake us up tomorrow”
ciao,
-Nikhil
Alafia we? Tumiye yo? Amerika mba yo? Payam se Nikhil ne menge Corps de la Paix soolim tumiye ladu.
I hope that all of your answers to the first few questions were “Yaa alafia” because that would mean that your health, your work and the people of America are all well as I hope they are. In case you were wondering, no that is not French I am speaking above (with the exception of the “Corps de la Paix” bit) but Kabyé (or Kabiyé), pronounced “Kah-bee-yay”, one of the two main languages spoken here in Togo. The other main language is Ewe, pronounced “Eh-vay”, but since that is mainly spoken in the southern part of the country it won’t do me much good at my post. Oh and before Togolese people and some of my fellow PC volunteers get mad at me, yes, Ewe and Kabyé are the two predominant local languages of Togo; however, Togo is home to many more local languages such as Ife, in the southeast; Kotokoli and Tchamba in the middle; and Bassar, Konkomba, Lhosso, Nawdum and Mina in the north. And even that doesn’t encompass all the languages spoken in Togo.
Btw, a basic translation of what I wrote above translates out to: Good evening. Are you well? How’s your work? How are the people of America? My name is Nikhil and I am a Peace Corps volunteer worker.
So yea, as we get ready to head to our post tomorrow for our mid-stâge post visit week, our language “formateurs” (French for trainers) decided to give us brief local language lessons so that we can “salue” (or greet) the people in our post communities. Since Sotouboua is mainly Kabyé ethnically, I’ve spent the past week reviewing very basic Kabyé with Marcus (my site mate) and Reid. Although I am enjoying learning a local language as it was one of the things I was most looking forward to doing in the Peace Corps, it’s been a little frustrating to jump into Kabyé classes when I still don’t feel my French is strong enough to visit post and a little more frustrating that the formateurs are teaching me Kabyé in French! I mean what can I do but go with it right? Luckily I only had to suffer about 2 hours of local language before returning back to French classes.
Okay enough whining, let’s get back to updating you all, my oh so faithful readers, about my life the past two weeks since I last posted.
4th of July
Last time I posted on here I was in Kpalimé buying supplies for our 4th of July fête in Agou-Nyogbo. Luckily we were able to find all the supplies we needed for a good dinner including hot dogs and potatoes. The celebration ended up being a lot of fun and even though it wasn’t exactly like the 4th of July parties we are used to in the US, it was definitely the closest approximation to what we will have here in Togo. For our feast we made what came to basically be our versions of french fries, chili dogs, mango salsa (this was one of my contributions to the party and it turned out AMAZING), guacamole, fried soy (bought from the petit marché) and beignets with chocolate icing (the beignets from my host mom was my other contribution…btw beignets, pineapple jam and chocolate icing “mélange-d” (mixed) tastes pretty much like a toaster strudel, yum!). After devouring our meal both groups from Koumawou and Nyogbo just sat around and chilled; we were supposed to try and organize a SED vs. CHAP Ultimate Frisbee and Capture the Flag competitions but most of us were so satiated into food comas that we didn’t have the energy to run around. After the Koumawou kids left, the CHAPers somehow got into very serious conversations about life and other stuff when it started to pour heavily outside our tech house. In order to cheer all of us up from our somewhat subdued states, I dragged everyone out into the rain to dance. It was one of those spur of the moment, “why not?” things that ended up being a lot of fun. We danced for a few songs, got completely drenched and then we all had fun getting home to our host-families. Overall, a successful 4th of July party.
Cultural Exchange
As many people are unaware, the US Peace Corps has 3 goals, two of which are completely unrelated to the first goal of “development” (although this first goal is hotly contested among the PC community, I shall reserve my judgment for a later time). The second goal involves teaching the Togolese people about American culture in hopes of creating a better understanding of America on the part of the Togolese; the third involves teaching Americans about Togolese culture in hopes of creating a better understanding of Togo on the part of the Americans. Since this blog sort of serves the purpose of detailing Togolese culture to my friends and family back home I am excited that you, my readers, are getting to partake in the Peace Corps experience via this third goal. Last Friday, all of us stagieres along with our host families participated in a large cultural exchange as we demonstrated a little bit of American culture for them and they returned the favor through a big fête (in case you haven’t realized it, give Togolese a reason to party and they will party). The first part of the cultural exchange involved presenting a skit: the Togolese host mom’s came up with a skit to portray a particular aspect of Togolese life and we came up with one to portray an aspect of American life. Now I have to say that we didn’t really know what we were getting ourselves into as our skit ended up pretty lame compared to the Togolese skit. Our host mom’s decided to portray a marriage proposal & ceremony and they had this intricate storyline of deceit and power hierarchy complete with a fight and lots of singing and dancing totaling approximately 20 minutes. It was all in French and it was really funny and interesting to watch, if for no other reason than to watch some of our host mothers act and come out of their shells. We definitely saw a different side to them than what we see in our houses. Even my host brother ended up taking part in their skit. The American skit ended up being about “typical” things you might see in a coffee shop. Not really sure how we ended up with this idea but we were able to come up with some pretty funny scenarios that were extremely humorous to us, even if the scene didn’t translate extremely well for the Togolese. We had scenes involving ordering coffee at Starbucks, a group of friends discussing sports & why football isn’t big in the US, a business meeting (which I took part in), and even a hilarious break up scene between a couple. In my scene Allison and I were trying to portray how in the US there are many women in business who are in higher positions of power than many men. So Allison was my boss and I was her assistant and she was basically bossing me around and ordering me to do a bunch of things for her or else I would be fired. The big really funny scene that I want to mention quickly was the break up as it turned out WAY better than I could have imagined. Whitney and Rayan played an “inter-racial” couple being all lovey-dovey in the coffee shop. After a few seconds, Trisha walked by their table and Rayan checks her out. When Whitney saw this, she decided to slap him in the face, throw her coffee at him and storm off. What Rayan didn’t realize was that Whitney has some water in the coffee cup so when she “threw the coffee” at him, he wasn’t expecting anything to actually hit him. Also they had originally staged a fake “slap” in the face but when Whitney went for the slap, something happened and she ended up really slapping him pretty hard in the face. The two mishaps together had our Togolese families falling out of their chairs laughing, even if they didn’t quite understand what was going on. Our Togolese mom’s definitely showed us up but apparently the Togolese skit is ALWAYS better than the American skit so we weren’t too disappointed.
The second part of the cultural exchange involved a fashion show: American and Togolese fashion. First they had us talk about American fashion and what we might wear in various occasions in the US. Rayan & Rose emceed our show and talked about the 8 different categories of clothing we came up with: school attire, date attire, beach attire, casual attire, work attire, tourist attire, outdoorsy attire and workout attire. It ended up being pretty funny with the way many of us decided to dress up. Kristina & I got selected to show off casual attire, as in what we might wear as we “lounge” around our homes. Down the runway I wore my Georgia Tech t-shirt and some track pants and Kristina wore a shirt and some PJ bottoms. I tried to get some good pictures of the show but many came out blurry so when I post pics, you can see what I was able get from the skits & the fashion show. After we portrayed American fashion, our host mom’s fitted us in pagne complets to demonstrate Togolese fashion. It was really funny to see some of the clothes they had us wear. My host mom fitted me in a lime green mawua (bubu & pants) that had some pretty intricate embroidery. I tried to post a picture of it on facebook so check it out. It’s funny because the mawua looks pretty much like an Indian kurta pajama but with lots of colour so I felt somewhat at home in them. All the girls had many different styles that you can see when I post pics. The guys however were evenly divided between the pagne complet mawua, pagne complet suit and the village chief garb complete with heavily draped fabric, beaded necklaces and a traditional hat. After all of us rocked our Togolese clothes down the runway at the Nyogbo techhouse, we even had our formateurs walk down the runway in other versions of Togolese clothes, particularly those clothes more commonly found up north. To end the fête, no Togolese party is complete without dancing so we all boogied into the night. All in all it was a great day as we all partook in an interesting cross-cultural sharing experience.
Training
So I know that is seems like all us Peace Corps volunteers do is party (and from my pictures it might seem that’s all I do too) but I promise that I/we DO do some actual work. Training is pretty intense and social time is our way to distress from the 24/7 sensory overload of information. As I mentioned in the previous post, training involves lots of exposure to not just theory but practical applications of projects we can implement within our communities. The CHAP program in Togo is categorized by meeting the needs of Togolese people within 4 specific domains: HIV/AIDS, malaria, family planning and nutrition. In addition to these four domains, many of the health volunteers work on hygiene/sanitation projects such as latrine construction and organization development such as NGO capacity building. Based on the 4 main domains, our training has been divided up to focus on one domain each week.
Our first week consisted of learning about nutrition and the state of nutrition in Togo. We learned that Togolese are taught a very different “food pyramid” than the one we use in the US based on the availability of certain items in Togo. The three main food groups in Togo are construction foods, energy foods and growth foods. As part of our week on nutrition we learned how to make enriched bouille (basically fortified porridge) and we participated in a local C.P.C (Controle et Promotion de la Croissance), or baby-weighing activity. Baby weighing, which was a lot of fun and something I hope to take part in at my post, is a standard part of infant growth monitoring, a UNICEF tool to monitor the health of a baby based on its weight. After weighing the babies and checking to see if they fall within a safe range based on weight and age, we performed nutritional consultations with the mother to make sure the baby is not only getting enough to eat but also enough of the right types of foods. Something I mentioned in my previous post was how CHAP volunteers get to work on gardening projects and that is due to our involvement in nutrition work as growing the right foods in certain parts of the country is essential to improving the nutritional state of that area. Additionally, leaves from the Moringa tree are highly nutritious and can be added as a nutritional supplement to any meal.
Our second week covered the topic of HIV/AIDS and its effect on the Togolese population. Contrary to what I had mentioned a few months ago about Togo having a very low HIV/AIDS prevalence rate, I came to find out that the low rate is due to under-reportage and lack of testing. Basically, the statistics are based on the number of people who have been tested and due to heavy stigmatization and discrimination, many people who might be infected refuse to get tested bringing the prevalence rate lower than it most likely is. Even with forecasting and extrapolation, it is extremely difficult to determine the exact number of infected people in Togo as polling and census data are inefficient and very incomplete. One of our technical sessions was a presentation by an amazing Togolese man by the name of Augustín who is HIV+ and one of the few people in the entire country who has VERY publically displayed his sero-positive results. He is also one of the few infected Togolese who is receiving ARV treatment. Although he tried to talk about the Global Fund and the ARV mess that is going on in Togo, the whole situation is very confusing and I hope that we will gain clarification on many issues at a later point. The second part of the presentation was by Jon (one of the only 3 male CHAP volunteers already in country and about to COS shortly), a volunteer in Kanté who has been working on creating a satellite at his post of AED (Association Espoir pour Demain), a HIV/AIDS association of “pris en charge” in Kara. Jon’s presentation was very enlightening as I will be doing similar work with VST, my HIV/AIDS association in Sotouboua.
This brings me to this past two weeks where our topics of discussion have been about malaria and hygiene/sanitation (the two are highly correlated). We haven’t done anything extremely exciting with these topics apart from doing home visits to understand barriers to mosquito net compliance and listening to a speaker from a health and sanitation department on different types of latrines and how to go about working on various water projects in our communities. When we get back from post in two weeks, we’ll begin our discussion on family planning and then apparently I’ll be going for a week to Kara for my field trip to study organizational development and NGO capacity building. Although training is getting to be a bit tedious and draining, I am grateful for the review of information and it’s nice to see what kinds of projects we can implement in our site.
Language
Okay, so I already talked a little bit about language but I did want to highlight two more things quickly: our mid-service language test and cocktail français. First of all, in preparation for our post-visit, the formateurs tested all us stagieres to see how much our French level had improved from the beginning of training and to see whether we were making adequate progress towards reaching the mandatory level to go to post. Although I felt more comfortable with my French than when I first arrived in country, I didn’t feel as nearly prepared as I would have liked to before post-visit. The oral test was slightly nerve-wracking but I made it through and somehow ended up with a “low” intermediate mid. Considering I came in “high” novice-mid/ “low” novice-high, this was quite an improvement, although I am dubious as to what standards the formateurs were using when they decided to place me at my level. Regardless, I only need an intermediate-mid level of French to be approved for post so that takes off a lot of pressure. I know that with adequate exposure to new vocabulary and new grammatical rules, I’ll feel a lot more comfortable before actually moving to post in a few weeks.
One of my favorite language activities so far has been cocktail français. I wanted to highlight this activity because I feel that this activity contributed greatly to my increased ease of speaking French. Unlike the classroom setting where we focus on vocabulary and grammar, cocktail français was an opportunity for us to speak freely and converse about general topics of interest to us such as literature, art, travel, politics, etc; the catch is that we are only allowed to speak in French. Additionally, we ended up having class at Afrikiko, one of the main local bars, so that we could order beers (American invitation, not Togolese) and chill with snacks prepared by the formateurs (aka. Yummy popcorn!). This is up for debate, but I am a huge advocate (based on evidence from my study abroad experience in South America) for the use of alcohol in foreign language situations. I am not saying one needs to drink copious amounts of liquor and be hammered, but even a single beer has the ability to lower one’s inhibitions enough to speak freely without the consequences of analyzing every word that is about to come out of one’s mouth. I noticed that my French came out more smoothly as I didn’t have to think about each sentence before I uttered it. Although I stumbled here and there, it was nice to be in an unintimidating atmosphere where I could control the direction of a conversation and speak about things I knew how to talk about, not just “how to buy things at a grocery store” or “how to ask for directions” as we would often do in class. Anyways, it was a great activity and it was the first time where I was able to see the progress I was making with my French based on my ability to hold a conversation about a random topic for at least a few minutes. I really hope we get to do this activity again…
Homologue Conference
So I guess this all brings me to today, our homologue conference. For the first time, we met face to face with all of our homologues, or counterparts, with whom we will be working side-by-side at our posts. My homologue is Bello, one of the founding members of Vie Saine Togo (VST), the HIV/AIDS association that I will be working with in Sotouboua. He seems really nice so far and he also seems really motivated to work hard so I hope we will be able to accomplish a lot. So the homologue conference was held near Kpalimé and all 30 of us volunteers and all 30 of our homologues met up to reinforce the expectations and responsibilities of the volunteers and homologues in each of our communities. The homologues had already had a full day of sessions yesterday so when we arrived today, our main goal was to introduce ourselves to our homologues, introduce our program (CHAP & SED) and make sure that both groups are on the same page when it comes to what each of us is bringing to the table. Although the conference was a bit repetitive information-wise as we had already been drilled on what many of our homologues, particularly the new homologues in new posts, would want from us: money, it was good to hear what else they expected from us and to see how excited some of the newer homologues were to work with Peace Corps. After the conference, all the volunteers were given rides to the Kpalimé marché to buy last minute items for our post visit week. Since I didn’t need to buy pretty much anything as Joelle told me she pretty much had anything I could need for the post visit week, I ended up going out for “pizza” with Krissy, Marcus, Reid, Heather & Whitney before running over to the internet café to check my e-mail.
As I mentioned earlier, we head to post tomorrow to check out our new assignments, meet the people of our new communities, and basically get an idea of what life as a volunteer is going to be like. Although I am excited to finally see what Sotouboua is like and to meet Joelle, I am sad to be leaving many of my close friends from stâge. It’s weird because even though we’ve only known each other for a few weeks, we’ve created incredibly close bonds among our two groups so it’s strange to see some of those bonds tested. Although it sucks I guess it just prepares us for the next two years of our lives.
As the Kabyé say…
“Eso fezi” or “May God wake us up tomorrow”
ciao,
-Nikhil
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