feeding myself is a problem

I miss take out.  I really do.  Take yesterday for example.  My daily feeding schedule was highly planned out—mango and oatmeal in the morning.  Popcorn for lunch.  My last 100 francs of bread with something for dinner. Or something like that.  

Instead. . . a quarter of my mango was funky.  It was a small one anyway.  Then I broke out a new box of oatmeal.  I’d just added peanut butter and hot water when I realized there was a mass exodus of little bugs from my bowl.  So much for my new box of oatmeal. I went ahead and started to eat what I’d made, bugs and all.  But it tasted funky. My cats are happy though.  So I had to have bread for breakfast.  I got really hungry later, so for lunch I went and got sardines and ate them with bread and this horseradish sauce I brought from the States last year.  And I made popcorn.  All was well until about 1930 when I realized I was getting hungry again.  I wasn’t motivated enough to make fake macaroni and cheese with spaghetti.  I seriously considered just taking 2 Benedryl and passing out till this morning, but I knew I would be biking into Kouka.  So I settled on couscous with horseradish sauce.  It seriously sounded really good.  Then I went over to hang out at Kodjo’s house for a bit for I ate.  His sister moved in with them after having family problems and sells booze from a basket outside her door.  Like a little bar.  A lot of my friends go there every evening to hang out, which suits Kodjo just fine since he’s one of the most extroverted people I’ve ever met.  Anyway, I went over, had a flacon of Pastis, made fun of my friend who was talking about how cold it was, smoked one of my last cigars, played with the puppies, contemplated feeding myself, etc.  Then Kodjo was like “so Mama Joseph made pate, want some?”  He calls his wife Mama - the name of her latest son. I knew that he’d just butchered a pig a couple days ago to sell, and so that the pate would include pork sauce, but I was so hungry, and buzzed from Pastis, that I didn’t care. The sauce was really good.  Then I went home and Adha gave me some pineapple—that I’d bought them in the marche on Sunday—and some peanuts.  Food crisis averted for the day.

Speaking of food, a lady selling apples just stopped by Bry’s house.  They are like bad granny smith apples, but beggars cant be choosers. 

Every morning I bike to Kouka now, I see classes of school kids out planting corn under their teachers’ supervision.  Not all teachers are on a government salary—many schools around here only have one government teacher.  All the others are “volunteer.” Which means they live on fees from the pupils’ families and they get their students to plant their fields so that they can feed themselves.  

Since it finally started raining regularly, people here are farming in earnest.  Ghanians came over with their tractors and 3-disc harrows to plow fields.  This is kind of funny to watch, at least for a farm kid like myself, from a distance.  The tractor guys get paid by the field, so they go as fast as they can.  They rev their tractors like race cars and pound through fields with their spotters hanging on for dear life.  Petite was a zombie on Sunday cause he was up all night supervising the plowing of his fields.  It saves a lot of time because it tears out the shrubby weeds that sprout early in the growing season, and it makes building corn rows easier.  I just try to stay out of the way. 

When Togolese butcher an animal, like a pig or a cow, they go all out.  There is no such thing as a "cut" of meat here.  They get knives, machetes, and axes and chop the whole thing, bones, entrails, head, into roughly equally sized pieces that they sell for 50 francs a piece. The trick to buying meat is to dig in the pile for chunks that have characteristics that you like-- like amount of skin/fat/gristle/bone, etc.  Or you can buy a hunk of stomach for your sauce and not have to worry about it. 

a post of lasts

Last marché day in Bassar.  Last meat sandwich from the brouchette guy in Bassar.  Last Mexican Night at D’s house.  Last ‘normal’ week in Togo.  

I got up this morning to bike in to Kouka and discovered my back tire was flat. Someone had borrowed it over the weekend and brought it back with a piece of wire stuck in the tire.  Oh joy.  I kicked something then went and dug out my tire patch kit that I havent touched in 3 years.  Luckily, I have seen so many moto tires being patched that I could do it in my sleep.  So, I patched my tire, took a shower, got my stuff together, and got my bike to leave. And realized the tire was going soft again.  Merde. I had to take the whole thing off and dunk the inner tube to find the other holes.  It took 2 patches.  Then I ran into a herd of sheep on my way to Kouka. 

One thing I will miss about Togo is the sound of silence.  I was biking home the other evening when I stopped to water the road.  I walked back to my bike and stopped for a minute.  The only thing I could hear was the wind.  No hum of distant traffic, no people, no roar of a soaring jet, nothing.  Just the wind swooping over the landscape sounding like its sounded for a millennia.  For a moment I was eternal. 

You know how there are specific names for groups of animals? Like a murder of crows? Instead of a herd, there should be an idiocy of sheep

Ntido is now officially an apprentice hairstylist.  This means I have accomplished something here

After 3 years here, I have been trying to get a grasp of the Konkumba psyche.  I love my community, but sometimes doing development work is like trying to dance ballet in quicksand.  A Volunteer once said that “you don’t know Togo until you know Dankpen” because of the difficulty of working here.  People from outside of Dankpen who live and work here, like school teachers, like to complain about how the Konkumba are unmotivated and ignorant.  I can understand that perspective, although I don’t really agree with it.  The Kabyé and Tchokossi have their own problems.  On to my anecdote.  I was motoing back to Kouka from Bassar a couple weeks ago.  We were outside of Kouka and racing with another zed who had 2 passengers because neither driver wanted to eat the other’s dust.  We came up on one of the new bridges that had just been completed.  My driver, we were in front, took the detour around the bridge because he didn’t know how smooth the new road was.  The zed behind us went over the bridge.  Which wasn’t all that smooth.  He about flipped his passengers off his moto.  My driver, who is Bassari, laughed, waved the other zed on, and was like “Ha, the Konkumba, they don’t like being passed.”  He’s right.  I pass people on my bike and find myself in a race.  Anyway, last weekend I was talking to Kader about the differences between the Bassar and the Konkumba in regards to our pump project.  He was like “yeah, the Konkumba were tricked a lot by the colonizers, so they didn’t trust strangers.  Now, the old people have passed that down to their children.”  If you look at the history of the Konkumba in the late 18^th early 19^th centuries, you’ll see a massacre/revolt, and a series of other revolts against the Germans.  The Tchokossi, an ethnic group from just north of us, incidentally, were used to rescue a German column that was besieged in a town near here by the Konkumba after they, the Germans, shot up a marché.  The Konkumba are renowned for being heavily decentralized and for not really liking authority, even that of their own chiefs.  That was probably why the Germans, who liked dealing with tribes more centralized power structures, tended to subdue them rather than deal with them. So, it is not that the Konkumba are unmotivated, it is just that they have a deep-seated, historical distrust of outsiders telling them what to do.  

I am all in favor of churches in the US sending their African brothers and sisters in the faith care packages.  I just wish they would think a little about what they send.  Last night a friend of mine, Namo, one of the resident fervent Pentecostals, tracked me down.  He had a sachet with a couple of cans in it.  Namo is one of the most progressive people I know in Nampoch.  He was the first person in my neighborhood to dig a latrine, and he’s really into women’s rights and health.  Anyway, he explained to me that his church had just gotten this package from the States.  He was like “we got bonbons, and tennis balls, and all kinds of stuff.  And these.  We have no idea what these are.”  He pulled the cans and I started laughing.  I couldn’t help it.  Namo was holding 2 cans of Playdough.  He was like “it says here that these contain flour, so we thought that maybe they were food, but it tastes like crap.  Then we thought that maybe they were some kind of medicine, but I don’t think so. Since they came from America, I came to ask you.”  I had to explain to him that Playdough is a toy for kids.  He was like “Oh. . .”  Playdough is about the most pointless thing to send to kids Africa.  The only kids who get actual toys are the ones from better-off families in cities.  Want to make the day, or month, of a bunch of kids in a village in Africa? Send them soccer balls. 

     

One of the most annoying things to come home to is chicken crap on the floor 

Remember about the toddler that died in my neighborhood last week? They did a ceremony for it.  Which means a charlatan (French definition not English) made a sacrifice and asked the child’s spirit if there were any extenuating circumstances to its death (like evil magic) or if there were any problems that the family needed to take care of.  The child said that there was great unhappiness in the family because a sister had been given to another family in exchange for her brother’s wife.  Sister/daughter swapping is an old custom that is dying out.  When Kodjo told me what the child said, I was like “so, basically, the kid’s spirit said that woman swapping is bad.” Kodjo was like “yes! exactly.” I am always encouraged whenever I see a community making positive strides in the arena of women’s rights here.  How these strides are made is sometimes interesting. 

I hope I make it back to the States before my computer finally gives up

the last marche day/Mexican night at D's house included a lot of dancing.  At one point this looked like the 4 of us jumping around D who was singing along to "American Pie" in her broom.  the best part was looking out her door into the wide eyes of a bunch of kids.  It was great fun. there was also the idea that we should burn something.  D and Saye compromised by cutting my hair instead.  Imagine Julius Caesar as a hippie.  That's what i look like now, instead of like a vagabond.

Laughing and crying

The end has begun.  It is the time of lasts.  D came out to Nampoch for the last time.  I went up north for the last time.  Etc.

You know how rainbows are supposed to mean its not going to rain?  I biked home late the other afternoon under a looming thunderstorm. This is not unusual.  Storms come boiling haphazardly over the eastern horizon most afternoons this time of year.  This onrushing storm, however, was crowned by a massive rainbow that scraped underside of its anvil.  Like the inverted grin of a cosmic Cheshire cat leering at me as I frantically pedaled home. 

Kader and I went up to Dapaong the other weekend to see people (him), and to say goodbye to people (me).  We had a really good time.  It was funny though, one morning we were walking from the transit maison to get breakfast and Kader ran into 2 people that he knew on the street.  In Togo, I think there is only maybe 2 degrees of separation between anyone.   

Like I said, D came out to say goodbye to Nampoch last weekend.  Her visit coincided with a revival of sorts that the local Assembly of God church held.  Several of my friends/neighbors are, I found out, fervent Pentecostals.  They had invited a pastor/church group up from Atakpame to help them revive? witness to? preach at? the gentle folk of Nampoch Friday night.  Thus it was that I got to watch one of the preachers evangelizing (a friend of my was translating for him) to a group of people sitting around a tchakpa stand. They, being good Konkumba, listened solemnly to the good news.  Then, once the evangelists moved on to other pastures, started laughing.   

The evangelizing culminated, or continued, with an all-night revival. I had been given to believe that this was going to happen at one of the primary schools.  D and I got home from the marche at about 20h00 to see lights set up outside of my house under the neem tree: “you have got to be f***ing kidding me.”  The drums started shortly thereafter.  Petite was up wandering around:  “Ils sont entren de dérange les gens!” translation “they are really really bothering me”  I felt so bad for him that I gave him a benedryl to help him sleep.  D and I each popped 2. 

The revival itself was kind of funny, except for that it went all night.  The preacher harangued in French, with a translator right behind him doing Konkumba.  Random English phrases would occasionally pop out like “praise the lord!”  The kids would cheer no matter what they said.  

One of the reasons why I love it here is because I can give my Pentecostal friends crap because they kept me up all night and they think its hilarious

I went to the local computer café the other day to print some stuff off.  The woman who worked there was like “it doesn’t work now. the electricity is too weak.” I pointed out that both her computer and printer were on at the moment, so she agreed to try.  And then none of the folders on my USB drive showed up on her computer.  So I biked back to Bry’s cleaned off all the newly installed viruses, and brought it back.  Success!  Document one printed off.  Then she’d just clicked ‘print’ on the second one when the power twigged out and her computer rebooted.  And kept rebooting.  I waited for a half hour or so and watched the computer detect its BIOS about 20 times.  Once Windows even started.  Then I explained to the assistant why her calling me “anesara” was like me calling her “noir.”  This was funny.  Then she wanted me to take her to the States. I told her no because she wasn’t polite, but that I would take her boss because she was.  This was even funnier. Then we talked about my name, both actual and local. This was funny because my local name means “its good.” Then I got tired of waiting and told them I would come back in the afternoon to pick up my stuff if they ever got the computer to stay on.  And the assistant told me that I needed to bring her bread when I came back.  I asked her if she wanted beer and meat too.  She said she did and laughed some more.  It was a funny hour.  

Sometime a couple weeks ago Kader and I went to Concorde bar to while away the hot midday hours with a cold beverage.  The waitresses weren’t very busy so we told ours to get herself a drink and pull up a chair.  Kader told me that she was an English student at the University of Kara.  She couldn’t afford to stay in school so she was working at this bar in Kouka until she can save enough to go back.  She spends her days getting harassed by men twice her age with less than 3^rd of her education in order to go back to college.  Kader was like “how is my country supposed to develop if people like her cannot afford to go to university?”  The best I could do was to tell her that education is the best investment she could make, and tip her well.

Its peanut season again! My thumb is sore but the rest of me is happy.

One thing I will not miss here is incidents like last night.  I was performing my bedtime ablutions when I noticed these little brown bugs everywhere in my house.  They look sort of like miniature cockroaches.  I experienced a fit of pique and broke out my insecticide.  Then I retired to re-watch Battlestar Galactica.  I had the foresight to drop the curtain to my bedroom so I didn’t fumigate myself in the process. I did not, however, have the foresight to foresee that the bug population in my main room would come to the same conclusion.  Chitinous exodus to my bedroom.  Ugh.

I will miss about everything else.  I have been having a tendency to get emotional in odd places. 

N’tido is determined to get out of Nampoch and go start her apprenticeship in Kouka.  She told me yesterday that she’s leaving Sunday whether her father consents or not. I tried to explain to her that, like fathers with daughters everywhere, he is reluctant to actually let her go.  The cost of her 2 year apprenticeship contract is 70 mille.  I pulled it out on my credit card last week and gave it to her. I thought she was going to start crying in my house.  $150 is a small price to help someone improve her lot in life.  The next day N’tido was like “when you leave, I am going to cry a lot.”

I still have these surreal moments here where reality splinters into glistening shards of incongruity.  I had one the other evening.  I had spent most of the day in Kouka where I reconnected with the rest of the world via Facebook etc.  I think I still had visions of all the status updates on my newsfeed dancing in my head when I was walking home from Kodjo’s house with Petite.  He pointed to our neighbor’s house and was like “someone died there yesterday, a child. It was 1 year old.”  I found myself wondering what my Facebook newsfeed would look like if everyone from Nampoch was on it.  17 year old girl-- “My baby was really sick so I took it to the hospital in Kouka.  The doctor said that its blood was bad (from malaria and malnutrition) and sent me to the hospital in Bassar to get a transfusion for it.  By the time we got there, it had died.  My mother and I buried it. Since it was just a baby its grave is unmarked.  Only I will remember its name.”  

Rain in Nampoch

I thought I should finally take/post a picture of a typical bush taxi.  There will be 15-20+ people in that, depending on kids.

on my bike ride home.  those are sheep in the distance

more rain

my favorite tree

This is my last full month in Togo.  Weird.

My foot, after 2 infections, is better.  I think. 

  

Friday morning I came with N’tido and Petite into Kouka to introduce them to N’tido’s future boss, the hairdresser.  She and Petite hit it off—apparently her father worked at the Catholic church in Nampoch.  I would say it’s a small world, but here in Togolese Konkumba-land, there is probably only like 2 degrees of separation between anyone, if that.  It went well, Petite paid for N’tido’s uniform on the spot.  

After the meeting I took them out to the new restaurant/bar in Kouka. I like this place because it’s the only place in Dankpen and Bassar prefectures, that we’ve found, where you can sit down at a table and have someone bring you food.  So amazing.  Anyway, I really like the spaghetti there so I ordered everyone a plate.  I did not really think this through.  The only time my family will, potentially, use eating utensils, ie spoons, is when they eat rice.  Which is maybe 10 times a year.  I was about 3 bites in when I realized that N’tido and her dad were both watching me carefully, and somewhat quizzically. I had to show them how to eat spaghetti with a fork.  N’tido picked it up pretty quick and polished her plate, despite the fact she was juggling little Alix with one hand.  Petite kind of struggled though. I felt bad. 

Nighan is no longer in heat. Thank God.  But this means she’s probably pregnant. Again.

Speaking of sex, whenever it rains, bugs screw.  Or hatch. Or something.  I couldn’t use my latrine the other night until I smashed like 200 of the fat brown ants that were running around in front of it.  The good news is that insecticide here is really effective.  

Speaking of ants, I have been lately conducting a study, mostly from my chair on my porch, of ants.  I have identified 3 general types.  There are the little black ones that excavate piles of stuff from where ever their hills are.  There are the fat brown ones that run around in circles at night, including up my leg. These have burrowed into probably every house in Nampoch, including mine.  I used to go out at night and spray their holes in my foundation until I stopped caring.  They are dumb.  I woke up one morning in during stage in Gbatopé to find that an entire colony had decamped during the night and moved into my room.  I spent a half hour sweeping thousands of ants off my clothes.  I found their eggs under a shoe. Not horribly bright.  Army ants though, are smart.  They have these huge hills that you do not mess with.  These look like something out of Star Wars, or Starship Troopers.  I once watched Army ants eat a viper.  Togolese pile brush on their hills to burn.  Army ants, when they are doing whatever it is that they do, make these distinct paths for their foot soldiers to travel on.  Like little ant super-highways.  You do not want to step on these, especially at night.  They bite. It hurts. A lot.

There were days when I first came here when I looked at my two-year service stretching away in front of me like some vast formless gray ocean that would roll me up and overwhelm me if I was not careful. Now the far shore is coming up a lot faster than I think I would like. After almost three years I am feeling the cold pinch of time. In something like 10 days the new stage will come, hopefully containing my replacement.  Its like Kodjo told me when I first got here, and still repeats to this day—Volunteers come in thinking that 2 years is such a long time.  In reality its nothing.  

Yesterday I went for a bike ride up the Katchamba road to see my favorite tree.  It is this massive bayobab that is right along the road on top of a ridge.  The main trunk is easily 20-30 feet in circumference, or more, I cannot tell.  If I try to hug it, my arms are straight out.

Like I said, it is one of my favorite spots here. As I stood there and listened to the wind blow I remembered one of the reasons why I love it here.  I looked north and my gaze skipped across the tops of ridges into the hazy distance.  I could count three.  After that, eventually, is the Sahara desert.  It was completely quiet, except for the wind gusting through the trees.  It was easy to imagine that I was alone, even though I knew that the folded landscape concealed people working in their fields, concealed homesteads and villages tucked in amid the trees.  I’ve stood in deserts in the Middle East and in prairies in the States and listened to the silent vastness that the wind sprinkles in your ears there. Here though, the feeling is different. Africa has an old soul.  If you stand in the stillness of the windswept countryside, beside a tree that was probably massive a century ago, you can feel this primeval presence continuously brushing around you, the accumulated weight of the years sliding by across a forever-immense canvas.   There are maybe continents with more history, but none with longer.  Many days, when I sit and listen, I can hear it.    

I do not think the bayobab will survive the new road though

Somewhere that way is the Sahara desert and Egypt.

my favorite tree.  my bike is under it, to the right

the new road coming up from Kouka.  cows not included. notice the bulldozer in the distance? it broke, so they left it and graded around it

N'tido and little Alix