the adventures of swarley, and other stuff that happened today...

So I don’t know how he does it but I swear if he escapes one more time I’m going to have to change his name to Houdini. Last week, after Marc helped me find a nice sturdy chain that Swarlz can’t bite through and a child’s belt that we fashioned into a dog collar, the stupid (or maybe really intelligent) dog somehow found a way to chew through his collar (it was made of leather so I guess that’s made it somewhat easy to tear through) and escape. However today was really a magic trick; since he tore through the dog collar, I have been forced to create a collar using the chain. I know it’s not very comfortable but so far metal seems to be the only substance that he can’t break through, or so I thought! This morning before leaving for Kaniamboua for the preliminary girl’s club meeting I fixed the chain around his neck (making sure he had enough room to breathe don’t worry!) and left. When I returned around noon, he had somehow managed to wrangle his way through the chain and now the chain was taut around his midsection. I’m really not sure how he did it but to make sure it didn’t happen again, I checked the chain and tied it around his neck once again. After returning from Sam’s peer educator training in Adjengre, I came home to find Swarley loose in the front yard with the chain all tangled up around the tree! I’m pretty sure he has not developed opposable thumbs in the past week so this leaves me with the only conclusion: my dog has magical powers, one of those powers apparently being the ability to apparate! I guess this means building a doggy fence is a futile idea…

Apart from my dog’s silly escapades, the girl’s club meeting went well this morning. I was really nervous about having to change the whole program around at the last second, without any warning to my homologues but there really wasn’t any other choice unless I wanted to change my name to “Yovo, the money-donating fool of Sotouboua”. After performing a brief opening ceremony with the girls, the village chief, the director of the school and some other “important” people in the Kaniamboua community, I pulled my counterparts aside to tell them what I had decided regarding my decision to withdraw some donations (per diem for the repos time, start-up money for the loan I had previously agreed to, etc.) for the club. Although I am sure they weren’t too happy to be told this at the last minute, there really wasn’t anyway around the situation. Aside from that, everything else went somewhat smoothly. We had a much greater turnout then expected and we ended up having to turn some girls away since we only had space to work with 20 girls. After going over some rules and expectations of the club and playing “train wreck” (an ice breaker), I got into the lesson part of the club, discussing the bridge model from the life skills book and how the model applied to the structure of the club (the bridge model is used to show how the various lessons in the life skills book such as decision-making skills and future planning skills can serve as the building blocks for a bridge towards positive behaviour change). Working with the girls was a very different experience than what I’m used to since the girls were really shy and it took a lot of energy to coax information out of them but thanks to the help of my counterparts who served as a translator from my “American” French to “Togolese” French, I was able to get through the lesson.

After a quick lunch, I headed up to Adjengre to watch Sam conduct the last part of his peer educator training and funny enough I arrived just in time to observe the part of the formation that was relevant to me. To finish off the training, Sam had invited Beatrice and Djeri, members of Espoir Vie Togo (E.V.T., an association of pris en charge located in Sokodé) to come and talk about HIV/AIDS associations. Beatrice is not only a psycho-social counselor for E.V.T. but she is also an openly infected member of EVT. Djeri, who lost his father to AIDS, was a member of the EVT OEV club (children infected with or affected by HIV). After talking to them briefly at the end of the training, they invited me up to Sokodé next weekend to check out the OEV club and the members meeting to see what I could bring back to help VST in Sotouboua. I’m excited to hopefully get some ideas on how to start an OEV club at Vie Saine with the potential help of the members of the health club at Intelligentsia.

Till next time,
-Nikhil

P.S. Props to Kim Rieck for sending me several copies of The Economist magazine. You are freaking amazing!

just say no

In case you haven’t noticed, I have a hard time saying no. Usually this is not a big problem and it’s just the way I am. Guilt goes a long way with me lol. I let things affect me and although I am learning to get better at saying the two-letter word “no” (or three letter word in French “non”), I am still a long way from recovery. Unfortunately these past few weeks, my “disease” has made a subtle return…Take my latest work assignment: the C.E.G. Kaniamboua Girl’s Club Pilot Project. It was one of the first projects that came to me when I arrived at post last August and it has been one of the only projects to have lasted till now. When all my other work opportunities did not seem promising, such as work at the hospital and work with Vie Saine, the girls club project was the only project that kept me excited and made me feel like I do have actual work to do here in Sotouboua. By setting high expectations and pressure on the project, I think in the process I became too attached to it. In my mind, if this project failed, I would have no other work to keep me here in Togo. Even though my work situation has considerably improved over the past 2 months, my lingering attachment to the girl’s club has made me make some terribly stupid decisions based on emotional logic. Although it has taken me about 6 weeks to realize why I have acted the way that I have (in addition to talking about the project with some other volunteers: shout outs to Golda and Rebecca), I feel that it is time for me to set some boundaries with my counterparts and to rectify some of those decisions I made regarding the funding of the project. It started off small (“I don’t mind paying for the supplies such as photocopies for the sessions”) and slowly got bigger (“the girls need to eat something during the break so I will give them a small per diem to buy some water and some snacks for the repos”) to the ridiculously huge and stupid (“it’s ridiculous that there is no Peace Corps purse to help fund small projects like this so I don’t mind donating 60 mille (about $100) for the start-up loans for the girls income generating activities”). Every step of the way, I tried to rationalize my decision-making process but if there is one thing the heart is not and that is rational. Thankfully, after some deep contemplation I’ve realized that I need a new approach to this project and the first step to recovery is admitting that I have an emotional attachment problem. So here goes. Hi, my name is Nikhil and I have a problem saying “no” to people…

What does this mean for the project? Well even though my preliminary meeting of the girl’s club is in less than 24 hours and my counterpart is unavailable, I am going to have to make some major last minute changes to the program. I know this is incredibly unfair but it’s either change the plan, or dish out close to 100 mille (about $200) over the month of February. Hmm, I’m thinking I’ll just change the plan and deal with the consequences. Worse comes to worse, I drop the girl’s club project and focus on my other projects that are looking hopeful…

P.S. This has been a crazy busy week, probably one of the busiest weeks I’ve had here in Togo. Apart from running around to finish some last minute chores for the girls club, I helped out with the polio campaign at the dispensaire, gave my first official causerie on breastfeeding at the hospital vaccination day, had tutoring lessons with Kpango, did some major house cleaning, went to Sokodé to hang out with Golda and pick up some supplies and attended my first meeting to observe the drama and health club at Intelligentsia (a local private middle/high school).

liberation day

Here in Togo, the 13th of January is Liberation Day, or Journée de la Liberation. Unlike what you think though, the “liberation” celebrated by Togolese has nothing to do with proper liberation but rather to celebrate the attempted assassination on who I recall as either the current President, or his father. Ironically, most Togolese don’t really understand the history behind the day and look at the holiday the same way an elementary school child views Labour Day: an excuse to take the day off. Regardless of the history surrounding the day, Liberation Day has become a celebration in honour of the Army and the local gendarmerie (a mix between military and police officials) since apparently it is the day that the President gives everyone in the military their annual bonus. The marking feature of this holiday is centered around a march, in honour of the military and President Faure, which occurs in most large towns and cities. Starting around 8 or 9 in the morning, a pathway is roped off on both sides and several groups from the gendarmerie to school children to the union of fish sellers march in formation along the path as they are cheered on by spectators. Marcus and I walked down to the Route to observe the demonstration where we were selected by a Togolese woman who dragged us to sit under the tent reserved for the Chief of the Prefecture and other “notables” of Sotouboua. It was a little reminiscent of Pre-World War II Germany to see “educated” children, from kindergarten to high school marching in formation in honour of the president, but the use of the U.S. Marine Corps song on a repeating loop as the marching music just added to the ridiculousness of the event. In true Togolese fashion, there was a lot of singing and dancing which added to the festiveness of the parade and I took several videos that I hope to post on this blog soon. One of the cool parts of the march however were exhibitions by some of the local school clubs and groupements (associations) during the parade such as the martial arts club (yes, kung fu has made it all the way to central Togo), the gymnastics club, the groupement for tchouk mamas and the motorcycle-taxi syndicate (where several drivers attempted pop-a-wheelies).

how do you solve a problem like blogging?

There are two inherent problems with keeping a blog: writing and posting

1) writing: when I want to write, I don’t have my computer in front of me; when I have my computer in front of me, I don’t want to write. Most of my observations happen when I am actually outside, experiencing Africa and all that “being-in-the-moment” crap. It’s hard to do that when you are stuck in front of a computer. An existential dilemma. How can you experience life and write about it at the same time? Sometimes I feel like it would be easier for me to write if I could attach electrodes to my brain that would send signals to my blog so it would record what I’m thinking and seeing and feeling and I can compose on-the-go without having to be tied down to a table, chair, computer and outlet. For example, most of what I am writing here was actually composed in my head earlier today as I was walking down a back road to the Sokodé marché; it just took me some time to actually finish my shopping and get to a computer on time to compile this.

I am a chaotic writer. I write how I think, which is disjointed and all-over-the-place. I write one sentence, write another sentence, go back and write something in between, write the final sentence before going back and re-writing the second sentence. I can’t help it because it’s the way I’ve always written. If I were to try and write the way my 8th grade English teacher wanted me to (intro, body 1, body 2, body 3, conclusion) I would have the writing style of a 5th grader. And trust me, I’ve tried to write consecutively but all it does is put me in a box and that’s not the way my mind works thereby reducing my ability to write well by several factors. I know it’s stupid but I really am an “organic” writer, whatever that really means. Witty and sophisticated “perfect” sentences occur spontaneously in my head and if I don’t write them down immediately, I am forever haunted by what I could have said. As I desperately try to remember how the perfect sentence sounded, I end up with something sub-standard but what will have to do since that perfect sentence is gone and never to return again. The product you are reading right now has undergone many changes (over the course of several days to several weeks) and sounds nowhere near as perfect as it should have sounded had I been able to write this posting at the moment of it’s conception.

2) posting: when I want to post, I don’t have access to the internet; when I have access to the internet, I don’t have my USB drive with all my blogs on it to post. It’s impossible to sit in a cyber café and write my blogs for 2 main reasons. First of all, it’s not economical to write up a blog at a cyber café as you have to pay to use the computers and the internet. Secondly, I only really get good access to the internet about once a week (until recently, but I’m getting ahead of myself…) so that means that if I wrote my blogs at the CIB, I would have to wait to write blogs affecting the quality of writing due to a distortion of memory that occurs. That’s just not practical; thus I am restricted to writing at home on my laptop and transferring my postings via USB keys which leads to the aforementioned problem of not having access to the internet at the precise moment that I want to use it.

This is no where close to saying that this is the end of my blog though. I plan to keep this blog my entire two years, and even some time afterwards (I mean it’s good to reflect back on what I experienced after I’m back in America). I’m just trying to explain/justify why my blog is the way it is and why it has taken me several months to post blogs from September and onwards. Why I feel the need to explain myself to you, my readers? I have no idea. Is there anything you can do to help me maintain my blogging momentum? Unfortunately, no. I will say though since now that I have free access to internet (albeit slow and sporadic access) at PLAN, who opened up a new informatique center, about 1km away from my house 5 days a week, I have less of an excuse to not blog in a timely manner. Hmm, I smell another New Year’s resolution…

Till the next time I write (and post and have access to the internet and happen to have my USB key with me), ciao!

-Nikhil

P.S. Thanks Jess for the amazing letter, article and CD of music. You rock! Shout outs also go to Christina, Katie (sorry your letter got lost, silly Togo postal service!), Anu, and Patrick who have responded to my e-mails over the past few weeks. Oh and thanks Megan for the picture of us in Philly!

days of [my] lives

My life is sometimes like a soap opera, or at least a badly French-dubbed telenovela from Brasil. On today’s segment we find the main character, moi, in a dilemma. I woke up this morning with the intent of packing up a few things in preparation for a quick overnight trip to Sokodé to see Korie off and to welcome Heather back in country. The morning started off pretty normal with the call to prayer waking me up around 5:30am. I lay in bed trying to go back to sleep but to no avail so I went about on my morning business. After getting ready, I started gathering things together, clothes, my computer, etc. I walk into the kitchen, reheat leftovers from the previous night for a quick breakfast before opening my front door where I am greeted by feathers.

Lots of grey and white chicken feathers.

Lying on my front lawn is Swarley with his I-know-I-did-something-bad puppy face next to a dead hen. One of Marc’s fully grown chicken hens. I’ve told you about how Swarley has developed a taste for chicken, evident by the fact that he tore apart and ate all 12 of the baby chicks that Marc’s two hens had worked very hard to produce. It seems that now that he was done with the baby chicks he wanted to move onto bigger and better chickens so-to-speak. Now I don’t know if Marc noticed this or not which is funny because the hen was lying in the grass in front of our houses and he would have had to pass over the dead carcass on the way out the compound door and that in turns means that if he did indeed see the dead hen, he would have woken me up to discuss the issue. Now I have told him time and time again, particularly when the first of the baby chicks started showing up dead that he needed to build a chicken coop. I reasoned that Swarley is a dog and he needs his space to run around and be a dog and we have already tried the whole “let’s tie him up” but it doesn’t work since he just chews through the leash or breaks the chain (yes, for a puppy he is incredibly strong!). So taking the approach that Marc has yet to see the dead hen since he did not wake me up this morning to “talk”, I did the only logical thing: hide the evidence! Using a black sachet as a glove, I grabbed the body by the head and proceeded to throw it outside the compound wall. My plan was to make it look like the hen got out of the compound because someone left the door open (this has happened a few times and I have had to chase the chickens back into the compound) and that one of the neighborhood stray dogs killed the hen for food. And since I don’t have a chain to keep Swarley from attacking the final hen, I locked him in my bathroom with some food and water to give him an alibi. I hope this doesn’t make me an accomplice…

I don’t know if my plan will work but in any case I won’t have to deal with the situation for at least a day until I return. So here’s till tomorrow. *duh duh duh*…

…and such is the days of [my] lives…

-Nikhil

sociology

Social norms are a funny thing. They vary so much, not just between different people in different countries but even between different populations within the same country, so does it make sense to call it a norm if they can be so different? As part of our pre-service training, we were instructed on Togolese social norms such as the importance of protocol when making decisions (if you are going to plan an event that involves a reasonable amount of people such as a sensibilization on AIDS, you are required to invite everyone from the directors of the local schools to the chief of the prefecture in some cases), acceptable vs. unacceptable forms of public behaviour (it’s common to find two men or two women holding hands in public but it’s unacceptable for two people of the opposite sex who are unmarried to hold hands) and how it is perfectly normal to refer to someone as “the fat one” or “the cripple”. As Americans trying to integrate into our new communities, we are advised on how to act and behave so as to better “fit in”, gain acceptance, and survive.

Going back to something I mentioned in my new year’s post about “integration”, I’ve come to the conclusion that it might be pretty much physically (or any other kind of “-ally”) impossible to fully integrate into a culture. You can learn their language, you can wear their clothing, you can date their women, you can eat their food, but can someone from outside Togo ever be Togolese (case in point: PCV Chris Thompson)? The fact that we are yovos will never go away; the children of Sotouboua may stop calling me yovo (or ansai or anasara…you pick the local language) but the moment I step out of Sotouboua, I will once again be perceived as just another yovo in Togo. Psychologically speaking, humans are conditioned to make their first judgments about people based on appearance and all people in Togo are conditioned to always view non-Togolese as yovos (yovo meaning “white skin” and applies to all foreigners, regardless of race). So what do we do as volunteers? We are supposed to integrate into our communities in order to better do our work but if integration is pretty much impossible, where do we go from here? Do we fully integrate or just integrate enough to survive?

And then what do we do when we return to America? Most volunteers don’t plan on spending the rest of their lives in their country of service so that means holding onto a part of our “American-ness”, in this case our social norms, till we return. But if doing so hinders our ability to integrate, what do we do? Do we try to give up all pre-learned American social etiquette in order to have a more fulfilling and integrated experience in Togo only to have to re-learn the forgotten American norms in 2 years when we return? Or do you forever live in your country of assignment constantly surrounded by a wall (of whatever thickness depending on how many norms you are willing to let go off and how many you need to hold on to) that separates you from your community? Do we integrate or do we just try to “fit-in”?

Perhaps that’s where “fitting-in” comes into play. Perhaps this means co-existence, enough integration to do work but not enough integration to become a part of the culture and society, being more than a tourist but less than a habitant.

This is my attempt at being philosophical. Open to comments…

- Nikhil

P.S. this is what happens when you lie on your bed and stare at your ceiling for about 2 hours every day for a week. You ponder about everything from our own existence to the history of the necktie (no joke, Marcus and I had an hour long discussion regarding the uses and possible history of the tie the other day over a dinner of pâte and peanut sauce. Our musings were later confirmed by Wikipedia. Thanks wiki!).

bonne année

Happy 2009 everyone!

Another year has come and gone and once again I find myself in a new adventure. My last New Year’s day had me celebrating in Manhattan with my family and friends as I transitioned between graduating from Georgia Tech and entering the real world. This year I find myself in Togo in transition between surviving and actually living in a foreign country. I make this distinction between surviving and living because it has taken me about 6 months to feel like I am finally living here in Togo. This is not to say that I feel completely integrated (although I think it’s hard for most volunteers to feel completely integrated…there is always some American barrier that prevents this), but I am farther along on the path than I was about 2 months ago. Since I did my reflections on my time so far here in Togo a while ago, I won’t bother to do so again here owing to the fact that not much has changed (apart from a few good developments at work that I’ll talk about in a bit). Sooo, let me tell you about my New Year’s experience…

Here in Togo, the actual midnight striking of the clock is irrelevant to all but a few “westernized” Togolese people. The proper bonne année celebration of the new year is instead focused on the actual first day of the new year: January 1st. Now I originally wanted to stay up until midnight on the 31st to ring in the New Year (by myself unfortunately) but since I spent the whole day sick with food poisoning, I ended up punching out around 10:30pm. Bummer. After waking up the next day and not really feeling that different (I think the fact that I wasn’t around my family and friends like I normally am had something to do with the dampened and lackluster mood I was in) I went about my day as usual. I finished some chores and then decided to go out for a little walk to greet all my friends and neighbours. After visiting M. Kpango, my French teacher, and Bello to wish them a happy New Year I came back to my house to find several kids from the neighbourhood in my front yard that had come to accompany me to the Camus dance like I had asked them to.

The Camus dance is kind of like the Togolese version of Mardi Gras, (in appearance only; none of the religious connotations) where open debauchery and revelry are solicited to break social norms. The traditional dancer wears foot long ankle bracelets that jingle when shaken allowing for a moving instrument of sorts along with mini hand cymbals. The clothing consists of shorts with a skirt that resembles a hula skirt made from pagne and shells. The face and the upper body are also covered with pomade, a white powder used to cool the body. The dancer may also wear any number of fetishes (voodoo sacred objects or talismans) from animal bones to hides. However everyone, young or old, Togolese or foreigner, is invited to dance and clothing ranges from the pagne complet to military uniforms. Fashion rules don’t apply as men dress as women as freely as women dress like men, and it’s not uncommon to see someone bare “almost-all-of-it”. For the actual dance, there is no fixed choreography but instead everyone just dances to the music, moving in a circle around the musicians. Booze, either shots of sodabé or calabashes of tchouk, is free flowing and instead of beaded necklaces, dancers are rewarded with small candies or kola nuts which are placed in the mouth by spectators.

After dancing for a few hours with Genevieve and some of her friends, I headed back to rest for a bit and regain my energy before going out to the nightclub. Yes, it’s very ridiculous, but there is an actual nightclub in Sotouboua. It’s called Club Pharos and it’s located on the Route; it consists of an open bar area outside and a small indoor room with a DJ booth, a dance floor, several couches and ceiling high mirrors. Apparently there was a big party on the 31st but since I was too sick to attend, I thought I would check it out with Genevieve and it ended up being an interesting night. It was fun but at the same time surreal to be in a club on par with most clubs in Lomé (as for back in Atlanta, think the dance floor of Peachtree Tavern lol). I only ended up staying about an hour before going to bed. The next day I headed to Dereboua to hang out with Korie and celebrate the new year in her village and check out the Camus dance there. Although it was very similar, one different tradition involved the men drinking special “strength potions” (booze) and running around during the dance with dull machetes where they attempted to cut themselves and each other as a way of showing how invincible they are. They even attempted to “cut” me but luckily I stepped out of the dance circle in time. Whew! Then we went back to Korie’s house, drank tchouk and ate some amazing food. And there you have it, my very interesting New Year’s experience in Togo.

As for the work stuff I mentioned earlier, two nice developments have taken place. First of all, at the monthly Vie Saine meeting, the members actually held a somewhat proper election to fill in the vacant positions. Although no real speeches were to be had as all but one position went uncontested, it was nice to see the members motivated enough to participate and keep the association stable for now. The only “situation” that occurred happened over the position of Executive Director (previously held by Bello). I believe the members tried to vote in Melanie as the new directrice but some sort of heated discussion took place in a mixture of French and Kabiyé that prevented me from understanding what was going on. Hmm, I’ll have to figure it out later on. In addition to Vie Saine, stuff, I made some major headway on my girl’s club project right before Christmas. After talking to some of the other SBD and GEE volunteers who have done vacation enterprise projects, I used some of their ideas as models for my girl’s club. Basically, I’m following the model but in addition to teaching income-generating activities and business skills, I am also trying to include a heavy focus on life skills training. I convinced my counterpart at A.V.D.D. to try a pilot project and see how the girls react to the information; if they seem motivated and do well then perhaps we can seek funding from PLAN or some other external funding source. He suggested a middle school in Kaniamboua, about 8km north of Sotouboua meme so we met with the director who was very happy to work with a PCV again and made an announcement during the morning assembly where we gathered a list of 20 girls (a mixed group from 6eme, 5eme and 4eme students) for the pilot project. I’ve been working on a lesson schedule and I have a meeting tomorrow to go over potential dates for the meetings. So work stuff is picking up and keeping me busy which is good :)

Now it wouldn’t be a New Year’s post if I didn’t have some sort of resolutions for the New Year. However I never seem to do a good job keeping those resolutions so maybe I’ll just skip the resolutions this year and just try and make a more concerted effort to get to know my community better, speak French more often, and save some lives.

bonne heureuse année,
-Nikhil