*note* Before I begin this post, I just wanted to say that now that I’ve had some time to go back and edit some of my blog postings from the past few weeks, today I finally posted a few blogs that I’ve saved on my computer but not had the time or the appropriate access to the internet to post them. So if you are wondering why my blog appears twice as long as when you last checked it, it’s because I’ve finally back-blogged since the beginning of July. Hope you go back and read about my “exciting” life the past 8 weeks...
Not quite sure how I did it but I managed to survive successfully (well okay, that’s up for debate) for one week at post. One down, approximately one hundred more to go. Just kidding. I am not trying to live my life one week at a time (although I am trying to live more in the moment) and I am not trying to base my time here in Togo upon some countdown, no matter how real the sand falling in the hourglass that is my time here in Togo. Adjusting to life here in Togo is going okay. Automatic processing hasn’t quite kicked in so I do spend enormous amounts of energy just doing daily tasks like cooking and sweeping my patio, doing dishes and washing my clothes. I think after a few weeks these things will become second nature to me but right now I actually have to put a conscious effort to these routine tasks. I’ve spent the past week cleaning up my house. As I already said Joelle and my landlord basically left me with a fully stocked house, so now I’m just trying to make the house into a home. So far, Togo is not quite home. During stage I decided that right now I feel like I’m on a really long study abroad program where I decide to stay an extra day each day. Dunno when it’ll feel like home; maybe after I go away on a long vacation and come back it’ll finally feel like home. No sense in rushing it though right?
Apart from routing activities like cleaning and cooking I’ve been biking a lot. I can’t remember if I mentioned or not but the Peace Corps supplied all the volunteers with these awesome 21-speed TREK mountain bikes that are pretty sweet. I’ve biked north and south on the Route and there is this beautiful dirt road leading to Korie’s village that Marcus and I biked this past Thursday. It goes on for a while past her village so hopefully I’ll try and bike it further and see where it takes me. I’ve found that I really enjoy biking. Unlike other workouts like running or doing weights where I do it but don’t really enjoy myself, I actually find myself looking forward to going out for my morning bike ride. I feel really at peace when I’m biking and for some reason it sort of accentuates the African/Peace Corps experience. I usually do at least 10km every day and it’s a great way to pass the time while exploring my community. I’m also biking in preparation for AIDS Ride (a week of bike riding in the bush to deliver AIDS sensibilizations to rural communities) at the end of October.
As for the work, well I haven’t been able to do anything major yet. Vie Saine doesn’t have its monthly meeting for a few weeks so I can’t really do anything with them until I’ve attended a meeting. I’ve gone to the hospital a few times to see if there’s any work but nothing big. I have had two interesting house visitors. My first evening in Sotouboua, I was visited by one of the local traditional healers who invited me to the prefectural healer association. Apparently they were trying to host a conference for all the healers in the Sotouboua prefecture and they wanted me to do a causerie on something for the conference. I didn’t really feel comfortable with my French yet so I told them I just didn’t feel ready but would love to attend and would definitely do something the next time round. My other visitor was from a local ONG called A.V.D.D. that is involved in various development projects in Sotouboua. They wanted to start some type of girl’s scholarship program for the local lycée students. Although girl’s education is a bit outside my area of “expertise” I told them I would consult with some of the other GEE volunteers. Hopefully my work in VST will pick up soon. Although it’s nice to be on my own schedule and sleep in till whenever I want (not that I sleep past 6:30am most days with the bleating goats outside my compound and my neighbour Marc’s chickens cock-a-doodling every morning), I am looking forward to being productive.
Cooking…so I know it’s weird but I’ve been cooking a lot of Indian food recently, or at least my own version at approximating Indian food. It’s weird because I never had any inclination to cook Indian food when I was back in the US (well except for that one time I made tandoori chicken in Atlanta that came out “ehh”). And why should I have tried to cook Indian food when Zyka was a 15 minute drive away or better yet, the best Indian food in the world (duh mom, that’s your food!...although Poornima Aunty’s chicken-anything is a close second) was 30 minutes away. Anyways, Joelle left me TONS of spices as she loved to cook and I picked up tons of spices as well when I was down in Lomé so it’s been pretty easy to experiment when you have a fully-stocked kitchen. I tried to make a rasam and rice the other day and then yesterday, I found these things called haricots beignets which are beignets made from beans. Believe it or not, they taste incredibly like vadaas; so I made a sambar of sorts and poured it over the beignets and voila! Vadaas & sambar!
Okay so week’s over and now I get to survive another one. So far so good, I think I’ll extend my stay here in Africa another day…
peace out,
-Nikhil (a.k.a. “Somiabalo,” my Kabyé name; pronounced “So-me-ah-bah-low”)
Not quite sure how I did it but I managed to survive successfully (well okay, that’s up for debate) for one week at post. One down, approximately one hundred more to go. Just kidding. I am not trying to live my life one week at a time (although I am trying to live more in the moment) and I am not trying to base my time here in Togo upon some countdown, no matter how real the sand falling in the hourglass that is my time here in Togo. Adjusting to life here in Togo is going okay. Automatic processing hasn’t quite kicked in so I do spend enormous amounts of energy just doing daily tasks like cooking and sweeping my patio, doing dishes and washing my clothes. I think after a few weeks these things will become second nature to me but right now I actually have to put a conscious effort to these routine tasks. I’ve spent the past week cleaning up my house. As I already said Joelle and my landlord basically left me with a fully stocked house, so now I’m just trying to make the house into a home. So far, Togo is not quite home. During stage I decided that right now I feel like I’m on a really long study abroad program where I decide to stay an extra day each day. Dunno when it’ll feel like home; maybe after I go away on a long vacation and come back it’ll finally feel like home. No sense in rushing it though right?
Apart from routing activities like cleaning and cooking I’ve been biking a lot. I can’t remember if I mentioned or not but the Peace Corps supplied all the volunteers with these awesome 21-speed TREK mountain bikes that are pretty sweet. I’ve biked north and south on the Route and there is this beautiful dirt road leading to Korie’s village that Marcus and I biked this past Thursday. It goes on for a while past her village so hopefully I’ll try and bike it further and see where it takes me. I’ve found that I really enjoy biking. Unlike other workouts like running or doing weights where I do it but don’t really enjoy myself, I actually find myself looking forward to going out for my morning bike ride. I feel really at peace when I’m biking and for some reason it sort of accentuates the African/Peace Corps experience. I usually do at least 10km every day and it’s a great way to pass the time while exploring my community. I’m also biking in preparation for AIDS Ride (a week of bike riding in the bush to deliver AIDS sensibilizations to rural communities) at the end of October.
As for the work, well I haven’t been able to do anything major yet. Vie Saine doesn’t have its monthly meeting for a few weeks so I can’t really do anything with them until I’ve attended a meeting. I’ve gone to the hospital a few times to see if there’s any work but nothing big. I have had two interesting house visitors. My first evening in Sotouboua, I was visited by one of the local traditional healers who invited me to the prefectural healer association. Apparently they were trying to host a conference for all the healers in the Sotouboua prefecture and they wanted me to do a causerie on something for the conference. I didn’t really feel comfortable with my French yet so I told them I just didn’t feel ready but would love to attend and would definitely do something the next time round. My other visitor was from a local ONG called A.V.D.D. that is involved in various development projects in Sotouboua. They wanted to start some type of girl’s scholarship program for the local lycée students. Although girl’s education is a bit outside my area of “expertise” I told them I would consult with some of the other GEE volunteers. Hopefully my work in VST will pick up soon. Although it’s nice to be on my own schedule and sleep in till whenever I want (not that I sleep past 6:30am most days with the bleating goats outside my compound and my neighbour Marc’s chickens cock-a-doodling every morning), I am looking forward to being productive.
Cooking…so I know it’s weird but I’ve been cooking a lot of Indian food recently, or at least my own version at approximating Indian food. It’s weird because I never had any inclination to cook Indian food when I was back in the US (well except for that one time I made tandoori chicken in Atlanta that came out “ehh”). And why should I have tried to cook Indian food when Zyka was a 15 minute drive away or better yet, the best Indian food in the world (duh mom, that’s your food!...although Poornima Aunty’s chicken-anything is a close second) was 30 minutes away. Anyways, Joelle left me TONS of spices as she loved to cook and I picked up tons of spices as well when I was down in Lomé so it’s been pretty easy to experiment when you have a fully-stocked kitchen. I tried to make a rasam and rice the other day and then yesterday, I found these things called haricots beignets which are beignets made from beans. Believe it or not, they taste incredibly like vadaas; so I made a sambar of sorts and poured it over the beignets and voila! Vadaas & sambar!
Okay so week’s over and now I get to survive another one. So far so good, I think I’ll extend my stay here in Africa another day…
peace out,
-Nikhil (a.k.a. “Somiabalo,” my Kabyé name; pronounced “So-me-ah-bah-low”)
1 comment:
Hey there- I'm still a go for May (keeping fingers crossed! So Kelly is trying to get the visa stuff all figured out. Turns out that Togo has very little information and it's been difficult to find. I'm hoping things get organized soon because I'm ready for a West African Adventure! :-) I'll email you when I know more!
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