bonjour sotouboua...

*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”)

the end of the beginning, and the beginning of the next...

What’s up everyone!

I am officially a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer! I did it. I really did it. The swear-in ceremony is over, I have spent five glorious days shopping, and eating and drinking in Lomé and as of 7:30AM tomorrow, I will finally be on my way to post. It’s ridiculous to think that just a few months ago I was working a 9-5 job [an amazing one at that though…hi everyone at Childspring :)] and living a very comfortable life with my family and friends in Atlanta. And here I am now, about to move to post where I can finally live out my dream of saving the world, or at least begin to live it out as saving the world takes more than a day lol.

The past few days here in Lomé have been amazing; the perfect way to transition between the structured life of training and the great unknown of moving to post. I didn’t get to do much exploring of Lomé last time I was here as we had just gotten to country and technically we weren’t allowed to explore (our schedules were so packed with PC stuff that there wasn’t much time anyways). However after spending a few days here, Lomé is definitely an interesting city. It’s not quite the metropolitan city it aspires to be, but it’s much more “developed” than the rest of the country. There is no McDonalds or Wal-mart here but it still felt like being back in the “western” world. And Lomé sits on the coast with some pretty beautiful views of the “other side” of the Atlantic Ocean.

After packing up and saying one last goodbye to our incredible host families and our beloved training sites, we drove 2 hours south to Lomé to officially swear-in as volunteers, shop for post and enjoy some “comforts” from home. We arrived at Mamy’s again and spent the rest of the day going over PC policy, banking and relaxing. Alicia came by with a few of the older volunteers and we went out to the beach bar to grab a beer and chill. The bar, a few blocks from Mamy’s, is a beautiful covered bar on the actual beach with a spectacular view of the ocean. Although the beach is not the cleanest, at first glance it’s pretty beautiful. At sunset Krissy and I tried to take some pictures on the beach but the light wasn’t the best and my pictures didn’t turn out the best. It was still a pretty awesome sunset though. For dinner that night, I went out with Mikey, Taylor, Lou & Ilona for Chinese food and it was AMAZING! Okay so I’m sure that I’ve had slightly better Chinese food elsewhere but after not having eaten any sort of Asian food in over 3 months, my stomach could not have been happier. I never knew I missed spring rolls and lo-mein noodles so much! After dinner it was off to cheap bar for a few drinks before heading off to bed.

Although we officially swore-in on Wednesday at the bureau, our actual swear-in ceremony was on Thursday at Brownie Lee’s (the PC Togo Country Director) house. She has a beautiful house that very much reminds me of our house in Bangalore, yet slightly more tropical. The ceremony took place in her huge front yard and in front of our host moms, the formateurs (language and technical), people from the US Embassy, Marines, volunteers and some other random people in Togo. It’s an unwritten tradition that all the trainees are supposed to dress in traditional garb so we arrived all decked out in pagne and ready to party. After brief speeches by Blandine (our training coordinator) and the presentation of certificates of service to some COS-ing volunteers, it was finally time for me to give my speech (btw I’ve posted scripts of my speeches at the end of this post). I was super nervous but luckily everything went well. All my friends cheered loudly for me and I was so relieved when I made it to the end (the fact that Raymond came up to me after and said that my French was perfect was probably the biggest compliment I received!). After my speech, the rest of the trainees did short speeches in our local languages. Kristina and Rose gave awesome “formal” speeches, Kristina in Kabyé and Rose in Ewe. I even gave a second, much much shorter speech in Kabyé. All the trainees finished with the speeches and we closed off the ceremony with speeches by Brownie and also by the interim US Ambassador to Togo (the previous ambassador was headed to his next country of service and the new ambassador had not yet arrived in country). After speeches, we took our “official” oaths of service and then it was PARTY TIME! We mingled for a bit at Brownie’s house with drinks and snack food but after 15 minutes all the food and drinks were gone so a bunch of us headed out to grab street food. Another unspoken tradition of swear-in is to hang out at Reagents (the bar that we went to for our welcome to Togo party) after the ceremony so we all headed there to grab drinks and celebrate. It was nice to just chill with the volunteers and hang out. We drank, danced and had a really good time hanging out all together for the last time.

The next few days were a blur of touring Lomé w/ Djotang, shopping at Ramco, LiterPrice and the Grand Marché and of course the bi-annual GAD Beach Party where we headed to Coco Beach to raise money for the Gender & Diversity Committee. It was awesome to chill on the beach, play football, swim in a swimming pool and eat awesome food. Okay gotta talk really quickly about shopping b/c it was kind of a surreal experience. Ramco is the biggest and probably the most expensive supermarket in Togo. And when I say supermarket, I mean authentic western-style supermarket with rows and rows of food, cooking utensils, liquor and cleaning supplies. I felt like I was back in Kroger or Wal-mart in the states as I was pushing my real shopping cart and everything (I don’t know if it’s funny or pathetic how excited I can get by something like seeing a shopping cart…). They had tons of western ingredients (cereal, marshmallows, Jell-O, etc.) and even pretty much every Indian ingredient I might ever need from channa daal to coriander seeds! LiterPrice is MUCH smaller than Ramco but also much cheaper. The best part of LiterPrice however is their deli where you can order a real deli sandwich!!! I think over the course of three days I bought like 10 turkey sandwiches, complete with sliced cheese, pickles and all…

This brings me to today where I’ve spent the entire day chilling in the volunteer lounge taking advantage of the Ethernet internet connection to upload photos on Picasa and surf the internet. We head to post tomorrow, bright and early at 7AM, as we say bye for now to our many friends who are now a part of our family here in Togo. It’s the end of the beginning (no more stâge!), but this is also the beginning of the next so I hope you will wish me luck as I board this great journey of service and self-exploration over the next two years. It won’t be an easy one, as these past few months have acutely demonstrated, but then again they never said it would be. What’s that old Peace Corps saying? The hardest job you’ll ever love! Hmm, I guess only time will tell. But here’s to hoping…

Du courage et de fromage,
-Nikhil

P.S. I really hope everyone goes and check out my Picasa website that I linked to this blog ASAP as I FINALLY uploaded a ton of pictures from stâge. I have random pictures taken during class, pictures from my hike up Mt. Agou as well as pictures from post-visit week and field trip week. Although I do have a few more albums of pictures from fête-ing, the last few days in Agou and from swear-in, I ran out of time here in Lomé to organize the pictures and upload them. Since I only get “fast” internet connection here in the Peace Corps lounge, those pictures will have to wait till my next trip to Lomé which unfortunately might not be until December when the new stâge swears-in (or earlier depending on if I get to have a “Lomé medical vacation” or if the new satellite internet in Sotouboua is functioning well).

P.P.S. As promised, here is a copy of both of my speeches. The first one is the “official” French speech I gave at the beginning of the swear-in ceremony; the second one is my Kabyé speech. Although I did include a translation for my Kabyé speech, I didn’t include one for the French speech as the speech is long and it would “waste” space on this blog. But if you want the gist of what I was saying in the French one, send me an e-mail and I’ll happily explain it to you.

Nikhil’s French Swear-In Speech

Excellence M. le représentant du Ministre de la Sante
Excellence M. le représentant du Ministre de l’Economie et des Finances
Excellence M. le représentant d’ambassadeur des Etats-Unis au Togo
Madame la Directrice Nationale du Corps de la Paix
Madame la Directrice de Formation
Honorables invités
Chers collègues nouveaux volontaires
Mesdames
Mesdemoiselles
Messieurs

Je m’appelle Nikhil. C’est un grand plaisir pour moi de prendre la parole ici au nom de tous mes collèges. Nous sommes 30 Américaines dont 14 hommes et 16 femmes. Nous représentons les différentes parties des Etats-Unis comme la Californie á l’ouest, Indiana et Texas au centre, Alabama et Géorgie au sud, New York et Massachusetts á l’est, etcetera. Nous avons des formations différentes allant de la licence au doctorat. C’est ainsi que nous avons parmi nous deux docteurs, une avocate, etcetera. Nos personnalités sont aussi différentes à cause de nos backgrounds différents. Cependant nous avons en commun un but: l’amélioration des conditions de vie et le changement du monde. Et c’est là, notre raison d’être au Togo.

Nous constituons deux groupes : le premier c’est le groupe de développement de petites et moyennes entreprises basé á Kumawou et le second groupe est celui de la santé communautaire et la prévention du VIH/SIDA basé á Nyogbo. Avant de commencer notre travail nous sommes passés par une formation du 11 semaines. A notre arrivée, nous étions très contents d’être au Togo mais à la fois nous étions très dubitatifs en ce qui concerne notre habileté de nous adapter au nouvel environnement et de pouvoir opérer quelque changement que ce soit. Une fois arrivée sur les sites, les différentes communautés et les familles hôtes nous ont accueillis à bras ouverts. La formation a commencé le jour suivant dans le deux programmes. Nous avons suivi des classes de langue, de technique, et d’adaptation culturelle. En technique nous avons couvert la micro finance, le paludisme, le développement de compétences et le VIH/SIDA. En adaptation culturelle nous avons appris entre autres l’importance du protocole au Togo et comment porter un pagne. Nous avons eu l’occasion de visiter nos postes du travail pour prendre goût à la vie de volontaire. Nous avons travaillé dur et nous avons étudié beaucoup aussi. Maintenant nous somme prêt à commencer notre travail de volontaire.

Le Corps de la Paix vient de célébrer ses 45 ans au Togo en décembre dernier et nous sommes heureux de porter le flambeau que nos prédécesseurs nous ont passé pour continuer le legs du service. Nous allons à nos postes maintenant avec toute notre motivation et notre passion de travailler aux côtés de nos homologues Togolaises pour les deux ans ou plus pourquoi pas ? Nous demanderions au Togolais d’être patients et tolérants envers nous, de nous aider à les aider.

Avant de finir, je voudrais remercier tous ceux qui ont contribué à la réussite de notre stage. D’abord, merci a nos vaillantes familles hôtes de Kumawou et Nyogbo pour leur patience et la nourriture délicieuse. Elles nous ont gavés. Ensuite, merci à Blandine et à tous les formateurs de technique pour nous avoir donné les informations nécessaires pour faire notre travail avec succès. À tous les formateurs de langues qui nous ont aidés malgré nos fautes en français et langue locales, merci beaucoup. Aux volontaires sur le terrain, merci pour vos encouragements et pour vos conseils. Personnellement, je voudrais remercier mes collègues nouveaux volontaires pour leur support moral. Vous étiez plutôt ma famille au Togo qu’un groupe de soutien pour les « yovos » que nous sommes. Je suis très content de passer les deux ans qui suivent avec vous.

Pour conclure, je voudrais dire quelque chose que ma mère hôte m’a dit la première semaine, « peu à peu… ». Bien que cette expression ait été une source de beaucoup de frustrations, elle a été aussi une source d’encouragement. Que cette expression nous soit un rappel pendant les 3 mois au poste et même durant le reste de notre service au Togo. Je cite : « le changement prend du temps. » Fin de citation le changement se passe lentement et il arrive en fin de compte. Il ne faut pas se presser parce que deux ans c’est un long temps. Petit à petit. Doucement. Ça va aller, un peu de courage et voilà, du fromage !

Bon Appétit, Bonsoir et Bonne fête !

Nikhil’s Kabyé Speech

Mina danaj! Payam se Nikhil. Melina Atlanta. Menge Corps de la Paix soolim tumiye ladu. Mowoki Sotouboua tonuda alafia tumiye labu. Pilabi tasi.

English Translation: Good evening! My name is Nikhil. I come from Atlanta. I am a Peace Corps volunteer. I am going to Sotouboua to do health work. See you later!

mail & packages

Hey!

Two posts in one day! Ridiculous you say? I agree. Well this is a very specific post regarding mail and care packages so forgive me. I already thanked Katie Roan, Jamie Rabb, Megan Kelly & Christina Morton for their amazing-ness at writing to me in Africa. If you want to be amazing, you should write to me as well! E-mails are great; postcards are better; but letters are the best! And if you send a care package…well in 2 years from now, you will receive a very special present :) what may that be you ask? Well you’ll just have to send me something to find out lol! Just kidding, I really don’t need care packages, letters really are all I want. BUT if you honestly feel that you positively NEED to send me a care package, here are some ideas for what to send me…

- Pictures (of you and me, of you and other people, etc.)
- Music (the latest music, popular and underground; you know what kind of music I like); burn onto a CD so I can upload to my iTunes and iPod
- Peppermints
- Books
- Magazines (Time, Newsweek, People, GQ, Maxim, etc.)
- Newspaper articles; Technique articles
- AAA Batteries
- DVDs (a little pricey but if you want to send me DVDs of good new movies that I might not have seen; basically anything after April 2008 I probably didn't have time to see)
- Recordings of all Georgia Tech Football/Basketball games, particularly GT vs. UGA and GT vs. any ACC team
- Calendars with pretty pictures
- Interesting public health related research papers (I know it's lame but if you find anything that might be of interest to me based on my work here, it would be super helpful)
- Seasoning packets like chili mix, taco seasoning, etc.
- Soup mix, pasta mix, Mac & cheese, etc.
- Tea Packets
- Bandanas (REI has them for $1-$3 I think?)
- CHEESE! (packaged, in a can, string, etc. Anything would be amazing since real cheese is hard to come by!)
- Nuts from Trader Joes
- Special K Protein Bars (anything w/ chocolate)
- Ziploc Bags (large)
- Arts & crafts supplies
- Jigsaw puzzles
- Sriracha (sp?) sauce (that’s red chili Asian sauce with a rooster on the front?)

As I said before, you REALLY DON’T need to send me a care package or if you do, you don’t need to send me anything expensive. But if you do send me something, let me know so I know to look for it. Packages go missing every now and then so make sure you follow the mailing rules I posted in my communications post. Thanks!

happy mailing,
-Nikhil

goodbye agou-nyogbo

Today is our last official day as Peace Corps trainees in Agou-Nyogbo. My bags are packed and loaded into the luggage truck and starting at 7AM tomorrow morning, I will officially be saying “A bientôt Nyogbo. Bonjour Lomé, encore”. Weird. To think that a few weeks ago I was praying for this day to come and now that it’s finally here, I want it to last just a little bit longer. I am torn between wanting to be done with training and between sadness at saying goodbye to a place that is so familiar to me it was almost beginning to feel like home. I am torn between looking forward to missing my friends (as Heather would say) and actually already missing my many new friends whom over the past few weeks have transformed from strangers, to friends, to what amounts to my “family” here in Togo. But most of all, I am torn between the freedom that being an official volunteer will bring to me and the safety of being a trainee where life was dictated by schedules and I never had to wonder where my next meal is coming from. Don’t get me wrong, I am very excited about bringing a little more control into my life; but the issue is that I am going from a stage in my life where I had little control over what I did to a stage in my life where I have too much control and no idea what to do with it, all within the span of a few days. Although I have no way of pressing pause on the remote control of my life, all I can do is take a deep breath, pause for a moment and remember the fact that countless volunteers before me survived so there is no reason that I won’t either. Or at least, here’s hoping to that…

Hmm, so I was originally planning on updating you on what I’ve been up to the past week and half but I’m not really in the mood to write a really long post so I’ll try and keep this short (short post! Can I even write a short post?)…After coming back from Kara, our days have pretty much been spent reviewing all the health themes from the past three months. We’ve been doing a few more French classes and this past Saturday we took our final language test. Although I was nervous, I knew that I had practiced as much as I could. Luckily my interviewer was my favorite formateur, Ismael, who is really easy to talk too. He made me talk about Atlanta and somehow I ended up talking about the Westin hotel and seeing the new baby panda at the zoo. I must have done okay because they told me that I scored an intermediate high yesterday and I must say I’m pretty pleased. I don’t think I’m REALLY at that level but it’s pretty subjective and at least it’s a passing grade to head to post. I know that I have a LOT more French to learn because I don’t feel anywhere fluent, but it is good to see that my French has improved a considerable amount in 11 short weeks (if you remember, I came in around novice-mid at the beginning of stâge and tested a few weeks ago at intermediate-mid “weak”). Other than doing our final presentations on the 4 domains which went pretty well, the week was pretty uneventful. We did get to learn though about making “foyer amelioré” or an improved cook stove which meant playing in the mud and this past Friday we had “Free University” which is where all the trainees are supposed to teach the rest of us something in French (to practice speaking French). We had everything from teaching how to juggle and clogging lessons to how to play Sudoku and how to kill a chicken! I ended up doing a presentation on “how to speak like a volunteer” that everyone seemed to enjoy a lot (explanation: here in Togo there is an unusual accent most volunteers pick up that I’ve only really heard from volunteers; it’s a strange accent with alternating increasing/decreasing cadences…it’s a bit hard to describe in words so just ask me to demonstrate next time). The best free university lesson however came from Whitney as she taught us CHAP-ers some Togolese dance moves she made up. As you know, in the US there are some “white man” dance moves that are based on routine actions like “starting the lawnmower” and “reeling in a fish”; Whitney created her own moves based on routine Togolese actions, with my favorites being “pounding fufu”, “drawing water from a well”, “washing clothes” and “swinging the coupe-coupe”. All in all, a very funny class. Oh and I’ve also been biking a lot. There is this BEAUTIFUL 15km dirt road between Nyogbo and Kpalimé that’s tough but so worth it just for the view. I’ve done it a few times and it allows for some pretty spectacular views of Mt. Agou. Check out pictures when I post them.

I’ve spent the past few days writing and practicing my speech for swear-in. For the ceremony, all the trainees are supposed to give a speech in their local language. In addition to a speech in my local language, the formateurs asked me to give the formal “graduation” speech in French. I’m not sure why they asked me, but it’s apparently a huge honour to give the speech. My French was NOT at all at a level where I could fluently write a complete speech in French so I ended up doing a mélange-d speech and Cyrille helped me translate the rest of my speech to French as well as fixing all my grammatical mistakes. It’s been a bit nerve-wracking working on the speech as apparently not only am I giving the speech to all the people who attend the ceremony in Lomé but they are also supposed to broadcast all the speeches throughout Togo. Eek! So I’ve been practicing my speech like crazy so I don’t look or sound like a jackass when I get up to speak on Thursday.

Before I forget, I do have to mention about the infamous night of the moustache. So I made a deal with myself at the beginning of training that I wasn’t going to cut my hair or shave my face for the entirety of training. Part of it was laziness and part of it was curiosity as I’d never grown my hair and facial hair out like this before. Well I actually did it (and I’ve decided never to do it again…my facial hair comes out weird) and since this past weekend was our last weekend before Lomé and I wanted to “clean up” before swear-in, with the help of Kristina I got probably one of the best haircuts I’ve ever had, so much that even I thought it was perfect (and Andrew, you know that I’ve never been completely happy after everyone of my haircuts back in Atlanta). I also shaved but decided, thanks to Taylor’s request, to leave a moustache for one night only. That Sunday also happened to be the night we decided to do our Nyogbo Buvette Crawl so as a treat for my fellow CHAP-ers, I left my moustache on specifically for them. The night turned out to be a blast as we all hung out one last time as a CHAP stâge, visited all 3 buvettes in Nyogbo and took loads of incriminating photos of me and my sketch-stache lol! Look out for pictures online at some point soon…

As for our last day here, I pretty much spent it just walking around Agou-Nyogbo and taking in the beauty of this village. I really will miss everything here from my host family and their beautiful house to our tech house, Afrikiko and of course the incredibly gracious people of Nyogbo. Taylor and I went on a picture tour of Nyogbo and we took tons of pictures to remember our amazing training village. Okay, my host mom is calling me to dinner so I’ll leave you with that. Hmm, so much for a short post lol… When I next post, I will be an official volunteer! Till then…

ciao,
-Nikhil

P.S. okay before I forget, I just wanted to do one quick thing: I would like to give a huge shout out to four amazing people who sent me letters during the course of training. You are amazing and I will treasure your letters dearly. Thanks to Katie Roan, Jamie Rabb, Megan Kelly & Christina Morton!

field trip - kara

Wow! I didn’t think we were going to make it all in one piece but somehow we managed. It was one hellava ride back from my week-long field trip in Kara-même. What should have been a 7 or 8 hour journey ended up being close to 10 hours. But I’m getting ahead of myself; let’s go back to the beginning of the week…

So last week as you hopefully deduced from the title of this post, Peace Corps sent us on our mid-training field trip. The purpose of the field trip is to not only break up the “monotony” of training but to mainly let trainees see volunteers at work in their domain in other parts of the country. Unlike the business group, our health group was divided into two groups: half of us got a week-long field trip to Kara and the other half of us got only 3 days in Kara. The reason for the split was so that the first half of the health trainees who would be working with HIV/AIDS associations at post would have the opportunity to visit a real association to learn how to work with them as we did not have that opportunity in Agou. Tchao, our APCD, sent us to Kara so we could observe and learn about ONG development and management from AED-Kara, or Association Espoir pour Demain – Kara. Since my main work in Sotouboua deals with working with an AIDS association, I was one of the lucky few to go for the whole week…

AED-Kara

Founded by PC Volunteers a few years ago, AED-Kara is one of the few associations for PLWHA (people living with HIV/AIDS) being funded by a partner NGO in Boston called Hope through Health (check ‘em out online…they are awesome!). The unique partnership makes AED-Kara very different from most HIV/AIDS associations in Togo. To start off with, I use the term ONG loosely. Unlike the traditional definition of a non-governmental organization, ONGs in Togo are merely grassroots organizations that try to fulfill the needs of their communities where the government is unable to. A great majority of supposed ONGs aren’t even officially registered with the government. I would love to go into more detail about this issue but we were never presented with straight up facts about tax brackets and Togolese laws during training so that is the most that I can tell you for now. Maybe one of the older business volunteers might understand the ONG situation in Togo a little better. But back to AED-Kara, which is a registered ONG in Togo…

AED is an association of “pris en charge” (PEC). I have never been able to get a proper translation or definition of PEC but it basically means “care of people”. Therefore AED is an association that cares for people living with HIV/AIDS. AED was originally founded to solely provide psycho-social support but it has now expanded its services to 6 domains based on Paul Farmer’s (yay!!!) model for integrated care of people living with HIV/AIDS in resource-poor communities: the base composed of home visits (“visite domicille”) with 4 pillars of nutrition programs, access to drugs (against opportunistic infections), OVC support (orphans & vulnerable children), and a PMTCT program (prevention of mother to child transmission) with the roof representing psycho-social counseling and support. Since AED doesn’t get a lot of support (particularly financial) from the government, it’s partnership with Hope through Health allows it to sustain when other similar associations struggle to survive. We didn’t go into too much detail about the exact nature of the cooperation between the two organizations but it does allow AED to serve as a jaded beacon of hope for other associations. I say jaded as it’s a bit unfortunate to have US funding thanks to the help of Peace Corps volunteers. This leads to problems elsewhere since now other similar associations expect the “same” from other volunteers which will most likely never happen as I said before since AED is in a unique and rare position, a position other volunteers most likely can’t and really shouldn’t put themselves in as it leads to dependence on foreign support.

Anyways, using AED as a “model”, we spent the first 4 days at AED learning about the model of care and meeting with various members of the association. We spent the first day talking about Paul Farmer’s model and learning about how to come up with a strategic plan. On our second day at the association we learned about the various programs and we had the opportunity to shadow several health workers. I went to a session on finances to learn about AED’s financial model hoping it would be useful in helping VST with financial support. I also sat in on a few counseling sessions with infected patients. It was really heartbreaking to hear about people’s situations, although it was motivating to see how passionate all the health workers were about their work and their desire to help the patients. On our third day we spent the morning doing home visits with the “accompagneuters”. During home visits, the health workers basically visited homes of people who did have access to ARVs and made sure the people were taking their drugs properly. It was cool because they modeled their home visit program off the tuberculosis DOTS (directly observed treatment short-course chemotherapy) program, a strategy where health workers make sure patients adhere to a strict regimen of medications over a specific period of time. That afternoon, we sat around discussing the HIV/AIDS & ARV situation in Togo (more on this later). On our fourth day, before the rest of our health stâge came up to Kara, we split up into groups and discussed various strategies we could implement in our communities to develop and manage AIDS associations. Luckily we ended the day on a hopeful note as the various members of AED held a fête in our honour. After singing some songs and eating some food, several members had the courage to tell us their stories of how they became infected and how they were coping with AIDS. It was so inspiring to see members who had nothing but were optimistic enough that they could fight the disease.

HIV/AIDS & ARVs in Togo

The HIV/AIDS situation here is not only frustrating but extremely depressing as well. When I first did research on the AIDS situation last year based on data from the CIA World Fact book, the situation seemed hopeful as unlike many other countries in Africa, Togo’s HIV/AIDS prevalence rate was around 4% (compare this to countries like South Africa and Botswana where prevalence rates are between 15 % - 25 %!). This is not to say that the statistics are wrong but merely that the statistics are not representative. Statistics such as prevalence rates are great when surveys account for the true population; however if there are hundreds or thousands of people unaccounted for in the true population, which is very easy to do in a country like Togo where people live in remote areas, then it’s impossible to find a true prevalence rate. Let me describe it another way: Say there is a population of 1000 people and the prevalence rate within that population is 10%, meaning there are 100 infected people. That 10% rate is only accurate if all 1000 people got tested. If only half the people got tested, then the 10% is an inaccurate rate because there could be many more sera-positive people making the true rate much higher. But now the question is why did only half the population get tested and not the other half? It can’t just be because people live in rural areas otherwise other countries in Africa would have similar problems. The underlying reason is stigmatization against the disease & discrimination against infected people. People don’t want to be tested because they fear being shunned from the community, a valid fear in a collectivist culture. One of the biggest challenges of the PC health program in Togo is not only correcting misinformation surrounding HIV/AIDS (many people in Togo still believe that you can get HIV by sharing razors, through mosquito transmission, and through “gri-gri” or evil sorcery) but also fighting against stigma and discrimination and helping those infected to live peacefully among their Togolese brethren. The disease is largely misunderstood, particularly in the often neglected rural communities.

Now moving on to the ARV situation. As one of the poorest countries in the world, Togo obviously does not have the financial resources to purchase ARVs for all the infected people in country. A few years ago, thanks to a large donation of about $40 million dollars from the Global Fund, Togo was able to purchase ARVs from India & South Africa. Although the original price for the purchased ARVs was around $17 per month, after a carnet system was implemented, the price dropped down to about $2 per month. The carnet system involved entering a lottery for a prescription carnet which would allow you to receive ARVs at the reduced price. However last year, The Global Fund decided to cut the 2nd round of funding for Togo’s ARV program due to corruption issues (not sure where it was occurring but it was either within the Ministry of Health or else within Global Fund Togolese partner: the PNLS program, the national non-governmental program against HIV/AIDS). This now has dire consequences for all infected people in Togo as ARV treatment is a life-long commitment and it’s very dangerous for a patient to not adhere to his/her ARV regiment. The Global Fund agreed to continue donating ARV drugs to people on the carnet until a few months ago but no new people were allowed to enter the lottery for a carnet and the Global Fund would only re-start the ARV program if Togo re-applied in the next round of funding contingent upon Togo cleaning up its act. However until then, the real “losers” are the infected Togolese who now have no hope of receiving any sort of treatment…I could go into a lot more detail but I think that pretty much highlights the important parts.

Sooo, to better understand the interplay of the HIV/AIDS situation and the ARV situation, let me recount a story of a lady I met during a home visit session. There was this one lady who had lost her job selling vegetables in the market because a “rival” marché mama had spilled the beans that the lady was infected. Due to the heavy stigmatization of AIDS, people stopped going to her vegetable stand making it hard for her to earn any sort of income. No money meant she was now unable to pay rent or care for herself in any way. Even though she was one of the few women with a carnet, she was now in danger of stopping treatment since she didn’t even have the money to buy the necessary food to eat with her medication. This is the kind of stories that you will hear all over Togo. And here we are pretty much powerless to do anything. If we just donate money to the women, then we run the risk of destabilizing our roles as agents of development and instead become agents of funding; however if we don’t do anything at all, the lady is sure to die. Talk about a catch-22…

Where we as volunteers will go from here, I have no idea. Hopefully the situation will seem less bleak the more I find resources within the Sotouboua community.

Hotel Kara

Since field trip week is supposed to be a sort of mini-vacation from training (or at least that’s what it felt like), Peace Corps treated us by paying for us to stay at the amazing Hotel Kara. My how my standards have changed! In reality, Hotel Kara is probably comparable to a Howard Johnson or Budget Inn back in the US but by Togo standards, we might as well have been put up at the Ritz-Carlton (okay so maybe it was more like a really nice Hilton but you get the point). We had air-conditioned rooms, hot water, flushing toilets, maid service, televisions and A SWIMMING POOL!!! This was my first time being at a swimming pool in over 2 months and it was amazing! The hotel really is quite beautiful (check out pictures online), again by Togolese standards. Taylor, Bree & I spent all of our lunch breaks during the week laying out by the pool and taking it all in because who knew when we would be able to swim in an actual clean swimming pool again for a while! We lucked out with beautiful weather for the first three days so I even got to tan a bit (not that I need to, but like I said, I was relishing the fact that I could!). Luckily when the rest of the stâge came in on Thursday evening, they lucked out with about 2 hours of good swimming time with us. It was great to just hang out by the pool and relax as a stâge, complete with diving contests and chicken fights :) We never did find out how much rooms are but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to “afford” staying there again and even if I could, I don’t think I would want to waste the money when that money could be put to more important stuff (like real cheeseburgers from Chateaux!).

Ketao

When the rest of our health stâge came up at the end of the week we spent that Friday in Ketao, a small village about an hour east of Kara-même. The purpose of our trip was three-fold. In the morning we went directly to a guerisseur-traditional or traditional healer to learn about traditional medicine and its impact on the Togolese health system. It was interesting to hear about traditional healing and how the tradition was passed along from generation to generation. The healer we visited was a Peace Corps certified healer and he showed us a list of ailments he was certified to treat as well as showing us some of the natural medicines he used. He also explained how he understood the gravity of the AIDS situation and how if a healer is legitimate, they know to refer potential AIDS patients to the local hospital as there was no known herbal cure helpful for AIDS patients, regardless of the superstition around it as being a “curse” disease. As I mentioned in the AIDS section, many people still believe “gri-gri” or evil sorcery plays a role in the spread of the disease and many traditional healers play into people’s fear by making false claims of being able to cure AIDS or being able to “give” AIDS to people they disagree with. It’s a terrible situation and only through education (and working with the healer community) can we hope to dispel this myth.

After our informative trip to the traditional healer, Aimee showed us to AED’s satellite association in Ketao. They had recently completed construction on a building and we got to see the final results. The health workers who ran the association explained what they did and the type of services the satellite association offered to its members. After touring AED-Ketao, we headed to the school to watch part of a peer educator training session. Aimee (who’s from Long Island and went to Emory btw!) was currently hosting a friend from Emory who was now in grad school at Columbia. Her friend was studying under a professor who had written a manual on how to incorporate West African traditions into peer educator trainings. Using the manual, Aimee and her friend were training several HIV/AIDS peer educators. The session we observed was a role-playing game. The presented scenario was that half the participants were members of an international AIDS conference that was taking place on a boat off the coast of Lomé. Due to a storm, the boat was sinking and there was only place for one person on the boat to escape safely and report the conference’s results to the rest of the world. The objective of the participants was to convince the jury (the other half of the training participants) of why they should be the ones saved. All the members of the conference represented different people involved in the AIDS crisis such as the Togolese minister of health, a publicly-open infected AIDS activist, a scientist who discovered the virus, etc. Funny enough and much to the chagrin of my fellow volunteers, after the first round of debating, the jury selected a member of a western ONG who was fighting for the rights of AIDS victims. We are pretty sure their decision had to do with the fact that there were about 20 PCVs watching the game. But then the rest of the participants became angry and demanded that the jury rethink it’s decision because they weren’t happy with the outcome which I don’t believe has ever happened before (usually the jury picks the mother with an infected child). The jury re-voted and this time they picked the scientist who was searching for a cure. So that’s was interesting to watch. After watching the role-playing game and eating an amazing meal of rice with peanut sauce and wagash (probably the best wagash I’ve eaten in country) we headed back to Kara to grab cheeseburgers and pizza from Chateaux.

Club Espoir

On our final morning before heading back to Agou, we went back to AED for one last activity: Club Espoir. Club Espoir, not to be confused with Camp Espoir, is a once-a-month children’s camp that is run entirely by PCVs. Open to all children who are members of AED, the children spend the morning and afternoon with volunteers playing games, sports, educational activities and arts & crafts. It’s a funded activity so the kids even get a free meal out of the club day. The purpose of the club is for the kids to have an opportunity to just be kids and interact with others in similar situations. We only had a few hours with them but we got to meet all the children who came in during our trip and after singing some songs and doing some dancing we went out to the field and played some games. I’m blanking on his name right now but this adorable kid who couldn’t have been more than 6 or 7 attached on to me and didn’t leave my side all morning. He was really cute and had this goofy smile. He stood by me during the sheep song and then pulled me by my hand to the field. I was heartbroken when I had to tell him I couldn’t stay much longer and had to go back to Agou. I don’t think he understood because he asked me if I would come back to the next Camp in September. I don’t know if I will but it would be awesome to go back and play with the kids.

So I just have to mention this one ridiculous game that we played because it was probably one of the funniest things I had ever seen. The game was called “Adam & Eve” and it was kind of like a mix between Marco Polo and Pin the Tail on the Donkey. To play, everyone needs to get in a big circle. Then two people are selected, a boy and a girl. Both are blindfolded and then spun around until they become dizzy. The object of the game is for the boy and the girl to find each other by yelling “Adam” and “Eve” (the boy yells “Eve” and the girl yells “Adam” obviously). While the boy and the girl try to find each other, the rest of the people need to yell as loud as they can and distract the participants from finding each other. It was one of the most ridiculous games ever but all the kids had a great time playing. I was sad to leave but having participated only got me more excited about starting a kids club at Vie Saine in Sotouboua.

Togo Bridges Falling Down

So back to the beginning where I mentioned how our 7 hour trip turned into a 10 hour trip. Backtracking a bit, training here in Togo for my stâge takes place during rainy season. This year apparently rainy season has been pretty bad, so bad that many bridges across the country, particularly in the southern parts of the country have flooded over or worse broken down. I believe right before we left for field trip, one of the main bridges on the Route Nationale near Notsé collapsed. Since the Route is the main pathway for trucks travelling north to south, this was obviously a HUGE problem. Luckily (or depending how you look at it, unluckily) the part of the Route with the bridge was south of Atakpamé meaning trucks were now being re-routed to go through Atakpamé and west to Kpalimé and then down to Lomé thereby bypassing the Route all the way south of Atakpamé (check out a map of Togo to better visualize what I’m talking about). This however was not the best decision in the world since, as I mentioned in my post-visit week post how bad the road is between Atakpamé and Kpalimé. That road was not meant to handle the kind of traffic of trucks and buses that were now being diverted that way. For all you civil engineers out there, I’m sure you can guess what happens when you add unnecessary stress on a road not built to handle trucks: collapsed roads. Due to additional rain and the increased stress from the increased traffic flow, part of the road between Atakpamé and Kpalimé sunk into a mud hole blocking the one of the only other ways south. Unfortunately, our car HAD to go on that road since our training site is ~15km from Kpalimé meaning we hit a HUGE traffic jam about two hours north of Kpalimé. We were stuck sitting for nearly 2 hours before we finally got the go ahead to pass by the sink hole. It was lucky that they were letting bush taxis through or else we would have been stranded in the “middle” of nowhere Togo. I really hope this situation clears up soon or else it is going to make travelling in the southern part of Togo a real b****! So yea, got back around 9pm and we were so exhausted, most of us skipped dinner and went to bed, getting ready for our last week and a half of training…

Pilabi che (Kabyé also for “good night”),
-Nikhil