The past two weeks have been interesting so I apologize for the random jumping from topic to topic…
Seasons of change
I think that I talked about the weather in Togo a while ago but as the Harmattan season transitions into hot season, I would like to re-visit the topic. The weather in Togo varies as one travels from the south to the north. Since I only got to experience the height of rainy season in the southern part of Togo, I will focus my observations on the weather at my post. Typically, the Centrale region experiences two distinct seasons: wet season and dry season. Wet season, lasting from May until about November, is precisely as the name suggests: wet. Within wet season, you have “heavy” wet season which starts at the beginning of wet season and that transitions to “light” wet season which started a little after my arrival at post. Dry season starts around November and as you guessed it, lasts till around May and it’s characterized by very little rain. This is not to say that it doesn’t rain at all, which it can do for weeks at a time (there was zero rain from about mid December to the end of January!), but that rain is much much more infrequent. Dry season also can be divided into two separate sub-seasons: Harmattan and Hot season. Harmattan occurs basically from December to January/February and consists of a large quantities of sand and dust from the Sahara that make their way to Togo via clouds and wind and basically fill up the sky (and cover my patio along with everything else in my house) with dust. Due to the dust in the air, Harmattan can get downright chilly (okay so chilly here in anything less than 85 but I think it can get as low as 65 – 70 F) particularly in the morning. Hot season which runs from February to May is exactly as the name says: hot! Usually a rainstorm comes in at the end of January and washes all the dust from the air which allows the sun to wreck havoc in full force with nothing to stop it. Unlike the heat from rainy season, which tends to be more humid, hot season is the sun in all its heat and glory. Now the reason why I am talking about weather is because as Harmattan transitions to hot season, I would like to point out how strange Harmattan has been this past year…
Maybe it’s due to climate change? Maybe it’s due to “Le Garçon / La Fille”, the African version of El Niño / La Niña, the weather phenomenon we experience in the US? Maybe my presence causes subtle meteorological changes in Togo? Whatever it is, the weather has been definitely been strange since arriving in country. The most dramatic difference has been a lack of a proper Harmattan season like I said. Now of course I was not in Togo last Harmattan to compare what I am experiencing; however, based on the stories from several volunteers who did experience Harmattan last year, Harmattan (at least in Centrale this year) was for a lack of better word, “indecisive”. It would switch back and forth between vrai Harmattan weather (dust everywhere and cold mornings) to hot season weather (clear skies and an entire day of sweaty heat). And the only reason I know what real Harmattan weather is like is because when I travelled up to Kande after Christmas, I got the chance to drive on a road with a visibility of about ½ a kilometer due to the heavy amount of dust in the air. On the way back the dust cleared and I had no idea there were such beautiful mountains and valleys on either side of that road. Hmm, well if we have an indecisive Harmattan, maybe we’ll also have an indecisive Hot season and it’ll rain more which is good because hot season is getting HOTTT!!! Temperatures, according to my EagleCreek travel clock and thermostat, are hovering in the high eighties (remember, this is in a place with zero air conditioning) and I’ve heard rumors it gets as hot as 110 F! Eek…Rain, rain, please don’t go away, please don’t come again another day…please come now!
PDM/IST
From February 2nd through the 7th, I spent the week at the Peace Corps training center in Pagala for PDM/IST. Project Design Management (or PDM) and IST (In-Service Training) are two workshops volunteers are required to attend as part of year-round volunteer training. Typically PDM is supposed to take place three months after arriving at post and IST is supposed to take place a few months after; however, due to budget cuts (Peace Corps’ excuse for everything these days) the two workshops were combined into one long week of sessions.
PDM’s purpose is to train volunteers and their counterparts on how to do a funded project. I came into PDM with the idea that we would learn how to use the various sources of funding available to us to fund projects whether it be from PLAN, the Ambassador Self-Help Fund or even a Peace Corps Partnership (I would like to do a PCP project at some point in my service so when I do one, I’ll go into more detail then since I learned nothing about it during PDM). Unfortunately, perhaps because of the lack of external funding options due to the weakening economy, or because I badly misjudged the purpose of the workshop, we basically spent two days talking about the process of how to complete a project, starting with how to create an action plan to writing a budget and keeping an accounting book. I was a little disappointed since I already know how to do these things having done projects back in the US; however it wasn’t a complete waste of time as my homologue got a lot out of the sessions (the concept of good business skills seems to have evaded the Togolese education system and most Togolese have very little understanding of planning projects) and found the workshop very informative.
IST’s purpose is to further train volunteers in topics of interest related to their work at site. With a new push towards family planning for the incoming training group of health volunteers, we spent a good majority of IST talking about family planning and how we can incorporate the topic into our work. Family planning is a very sensitive topic here in Togo as people do not openly discuss sex and many people lack basic knowledge about their reproductive systems. Although family planning does exist at the prefectural level through clinics at most hospitals and through pharmacies that supply contraceptives such as condoms and birth control, most family planning is done informally with the help of midwives and nurses during one-on-one consultations. Unfortunately, we didn’t really cover anything new that we hadn’t already covered during stâge. The only real useful sessions we had was when we talked about other volunteer’s experiences regarding family planning projects, and other projects related to the CHAP program. Since it was very early in our service, most volunteers hadn’t done any large scale family planning activities apart from the informal discussions with neighbors and working with sage-femmes at the dispensaire or hospital, but it was good to know what to expect as I have yet to do anything on the subject (although I’m supposed to do a mini causerie on the matter in a few weeks at the hospital before baby weighings/vaccinations). Our last volunteer-only session was an informative session however as not only did we learn about the new worldwide volunteer reporting form but also we talked about improvements for the upcoming stage in June. We were supposed to select volunteer trainers but I guess Tchao is going to wait a bit; I really hope he selects me because I really want to be a trainer!
Apart from the sessions, PDM/IST was a good week overall. It was a chance to hang out with volunteers (particularly from the south) who I haven’t seen in forever and catch up. Plus all the meals are prepared by PC cooks so we had great FREE food. And of course it’s not a PC event without some sort of mini-party so to end the week I helped organize a mini fête to thank our homologues for attending the conference with us. We drank; we danced and had a great time.
Goodbye Sokodé Maison
Once again, due to budget cuts and a shift in D.C. policy towards getting rid of transit houses, Peace Corps-Togo has decided to finally close the Sokodé transit house. As of Feb 15th, both the Sokodé and Kara transit houses will be officially gone forcing us volunteers in the Centrale and Kara region to find other places to stay when we come to the regional capitals to do work. Luckily, I don’t have any real need to travel to Sokodé as everything I need for work and living can be found in Sotouboua (my bank, my post office, my grocery shopping, etc.); the one exception being when I want specific hard to find vegetables like potatoes and green peppers year round. I am one of the select few volunteers though in such a lucky position. My friend Golda on the other hand has to travel to Sokodé for pretty much everything from using the internet to banking to buying supplies for work; in addition, she lives about 70km away en brousse so it’s impossible for her to travel to and from Sokodé in one day. So that sucks…
*I had originally written a short little rant against recent Peace Corps – Togo administration policy; however, this is most definitely NOT the place to vent so I’ll return my frustrations to my internal dialogue…*
Anyways, deal with our situation we did. If there was one good thing to come out of the maison closing it was that it brought everyone in our region into Sokodé for the first time ever since I arrived in country (all 11 of us!). With everyone around, this made for one spectacular blowout fête. After doing some clean-up work for Peace Corps (PC takes away our maison and we still clean it for them? Talk about an unhealthy relationship…) we made one final meal (tex-mex) and partied. Hanging out with the other volunteers made me remember that it’s the volunteers in your country that make your experience in country. We are each other’s support system: we turn to each other for advice and we turn to each other to rant and rave. Because I get along with the volunteers in my region, I am having a much more fulfilling service than if I was in a country where I did not like the other volunteers. They (along with the people of Sotouboua of course) are making my service what it is. After a great night with lots of scandalous photos and much ridiculosity (dancing on tables, line dancing and even a walk off…hmm, maybe a transit house IS the “safest” place for volunteers to be ridiculous in country), we packed up our stuff, said one last goodbye to the maison and then Marcus, Korie and I headed back to Sotouboua.
Hmm, hope this post wasn’t too monstrous to digest. In case you didn’t notice, I’m making a concerted effort to write shorter posts focusing on one or two topics but every now and then, I have to write a lot when I have a lot to say. So bear with me…
pilaba,
-Nikhil
P.S. Once again, many thanks Kim for the package(s)! For some reason, even if someone sends me two packages together, I tend to get them a week apart. So when I returned from PDM/IST I received the two other packages of magazines (The Economist, Newsweek & Entertainment) that you sent me and I have spent the past few days hungrily devouring them. It’s so great to know the details of what else is going on in the world from business and politics and even pop culture :)
P.P.S. Happy (belated) anniversary Mom & Dad! Congratulations on 26 years of marriage…Happy belated birthday Christina M.
Seasons of change
I think that I talked about the weather in Togo a while ago but as the Harmattan season transitions into hot season, I would like to re-visit the topic. The weather in Togo varies as one travels from the south to the north. Since I only got to experience the height of rainy season in the southern part of Togo, I will focus my observations on the weather at my post. Typically, the Centrale region experiences two distinct seasons: wet season and dry season. Wet season, lasting from May until about November, is precisely as the name suggests: wet. Within wet season, you have “heavy” wet season which starts at the beginning of wet season and that transitions to “light” wet season which started a little after my arrival at post. Dry season starts around November and as you guessed it, lasts till around May and it’s characterized by very little rain. This is not to say that it doesn’t rain at all, which it can do for weeks at a time (there was zero rain from about mid December to the end of January!), but that rain is much much more infrequent. Dry season also can be divided into two separate sub-seasons: Harmattan and Hot season. Harmattan occurs basically from December to January/February and consists of a large quantities of sand and dust from the Sahara that make their way to Togo via clouds and wind and basically fill up the sky (and cover my patio along with everything else in my house) with dust. Due to the dust in the air, Harmattan can get downright chilly (okay so chilly here in anything less than 85 but I think it can get as low as 65 – 70 F) particularly in the morning. Hot season which runs from February to May is exactly as the name says: hot! Usually a rainstorm comes in at the end of January and washes all the dust from the air which allows the sun to wreck havoc in full force with nothing to stop it. Unlike the heat from rainy season, which tends to be more humid, hot season is the sun in all its heat and glory. Now the reason why I am talking about weather is because as Harmattan transitions to hot season, I would like to point out how strange Harmattan has been this past year…
Maybe it’s due to climate change? Maybe it’s due to “Le Garçon / La Fille”, the African version of El Niño / La Niña, the weather phenomenon we experience in the US? Maybe my presence causes subtle meteorological changes in Togo? Whatever it is, the weather has been definitely been strange since arriving in country. The most dramatic difference has been a lack of a proper Harmattan season like I said. Now of course I was not in Togo last Harmattan to compare what I am experiencing; however, based on the stories from several volunteers who did experience Harmattan last year, Harmattan (at least in Centrale this year) was for a lack of better word, “indecisive”. It would switch back and forth between vrai Harmattan weather (dust everywhere and cold mornings) to hot season weather (clear skies and an entire day of sweaty heat). And the only reason I know what real Harmattan weather is like is because when I travelled up to Kande after Christmas, I got the chance to drive on a road with a visibility of about ½ a kilometer due to the heavy amount of dust in the air. On the way back the dust cleared and I had no idea there were such beautiful mountains and valleys on either side of that road. Hmm, well if we have an indecisive Harmattan, maybe we’ll also have an indecisive Hot season and it’ll rain more which is good because hot season is getting HOTTT!!! Temperatures, according to my EagleCreek travel clock and thermostat, are hovering in the high eighties (remember, this is in a place with zero air conditioning) and I’ve heard rumors it gets as hot as 110 F! Eek…Rain, rain, please don’t go away, please don’t come again another day…please come now!
PDM/IST
From February 2nd through the 7th, I spent the week at the Peace Corps training center in Pagala for PDM/IST. Project Design Management (or PDM) and IST (In-Service Training) are two workshops volunteers are required to attend as part of year-round volunteer training. Typically PDM is supposed to take place three months after arriving at post and IST is supposed to take place a few months after; however, due to budget cuts (Peace Corps’ excuse for everything these days) the two workshops were combined into one long week of sessions.
PDM’s purpose is to train volunteers and their counterparts on how to do a funded project. I came into PDM with the idea that we would learn how to use the various sources of funding available to us to fund projects whether it be from PLAN, the Ambassador Self-Help Fund or even a Peace Corps Partnership (I would like to do a PCP project at some point in my service so when I do one, I’ll go into more detail then since I learned nothing about it during PDM). Unfortunately, perhaps because of the lack of external funding options due to the weakening economy, or because I badly misjudged the purpose of the workshop, we basically spent two days talking about the process of how to complete a project, starting with how to create an action plan to writing a budget and keeping an accounting book. I was a little disappointed since I already know how to do these things having done projects back in the US; however it wasn’t a complete waste of time as my homologue got a lot out of the sessions (the concept of good business skills seems to have evaded the Togolese education system and most Togolese have very little understanding of planning projects) and found the workshop very informative.
IST’s purpose is to further train volunteers in topics of interest related to their work at site. With a new push towards family planning for the incoming training group of health volunteers, we spent a good majority of IST talking about family planning and how we can incorporate the topic into our work. Family planning is a very sensitive topic here in Togo as people do not openly discuss sex and many people lack basic knowledge about their reproductive systems. Although family planning does exist at the prefectural level through clinics at most hospitals and through pharmacies that supply contraceptives such as condoms and birth control, most family planning is done informally with the help of midwives and nurses during one-on-one consultations. Unfortunately, we didn’t really cover anything new that we hadn’t already covered during stâge. The only real useful sessions we had was when we talked about other volunteer’s experiences regarding family planning projects, and other projects related to the CHAP program. Since it was very early in our service, most volunteers hadn’t done any large scale family planning activities apart from the informal discussions with neighbors and working with sage-femmes at the dispensaire or hospital, but it was good to know what to expect as I have yet to do anything on the subject (although I’m supposed to do a mini causerie on the matter in a few weeks at the hospital before baby weighings/vaccinations). Our last volunteer-only session was an informative session however as not only did we learn about the new worldwide volunteer reporting form but also we talked about improvements for the upcoming stage in June. We were supposed to select volunteer trainers but I guess Tchao is going to wait a bit; I really hope he selects me because I really want to be a trainer!
Apart from the sessions, PDM/IST was a good week overall. It was a chance to hang out with volunteers (particularly from the south) who I haven’t seen in forever and catch up. Plus all the meals are prepared by PC cooks so we had great FREE food. And of course it’s not a PC event without some sort of mini-party so to end the week I helped organize a mini fête to thank our homologues for attending the conference with us. We drank; we danced and had a great time.
Goodbye Sokodé Maison
Once again, due to budget cuts and a shift in D.C. policy towards getting rid of transit houses, Peace Corps-Togo has decided to finally close the Sokodé transit house. As of Feb 15th, both the Sokodé and Kara transit houses will be officially gone forcing us volunteers in the Centrale and Kara region to find other places to stay when we come to the regional capitals to do work. Luckily, I don’t have any real need to travel to Sokodé as everything I need for work and living can be found in Sotouboua (my bank, my post office, my grocery shopping, etc.); the one exception being when I want specific hard to find vegetables like potatoes and green peppers year round. I am one of the select few volunteers though in such a lucky position. My friend Golda on the other hand has to travel to Sokodé for pretty much everything from using the internet to banking to buying supplies for work; in addition, she lives about 70km away en brousse so it’s impossible for her to travel to and from Sokodé in one day. So that sucks…
*I had originally written a short little rant against recent Peace Corps – Togo administration policy; however, this is most definitely NOT the place to vent so I’ll return my frustrations to my internal dialogue…*
Anyways, deal with our situation we did. If there was one good thing to come out of the maison closing it was that it brought everyone in our region into Sokodé for the first time ever since I arrived in country (all 11 of us!). With everyone around, this made for one spectacular blowout fête. After doing some clean-up work for Peace Corps (PC takes away our maison and we still clean it for them? Talk about an unhealthy relationship…) we made one final meal (tex-mex) and partied. Hanging out with the other volunteers made me remember that it’s the volunteers in your country that make your experience in country. We are each other’s support system: we turn to each other for advice and we turn to each other to rant and rave. Because I get along with the volunteers in my region, I am having a much more fulfilling service than if I was in a country where I did not like the other volunteers. They (along with the people of Sotouboua of course) are making my service what it is. After a great night with lots of scandalous photos and much ridiculosity (dancing on tables, line dancing and even a walk off…hmm, maybe a transit house IS the “safest” place for volunteers to be ridiculous in country), we packed up our stuff, said one last goodbye to the maison and then Marcus, Korie and I headed back to Sotouboua.
Hmm, hope this post wasn’t too monstrous to digest. In case you didn’t notice, I’m making a concerted effort to write shorter posts focusing on one or two topics but every now and then, I have to write a lot when I have a lot to say. So bear with me…
pilaba,
-Nikhil
P.S. Once again, many thanks Kim for the package(s)! For some reason, even if someone sends me two packages together, I tend to get them a week apart. So when I returned from PDM/IST I received the two other packages of magazines (The Economist, Newsweek & Entertainment) that you sent me and I have spent the past few days hungrily devouring them. It’s so great to know the details of what else is going on in the world from business and politics and even pop culture :)
P.P.S. Happy (belated) anniversary Mom & Dad! Congratulations on 26 years of marriage…Happy belated birthday Christina M.
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