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