a hot shower . . .

so Alisha and I are in Lome for the week working on the new issue of Farm to Market. We are half of the 4 person editorial board. Farm to Market is a joint NRM/SED publication that goes out to west Africa. maybe I can find a link to it someplace. Anyway, its hard, but its fun. I enjoy editing and putting stuff together.

We're staying at this hotel called the Phonecia. It has hot water. I have not had a hot shower since I left the US. It is kind of mind blowing.

I biked over to Atalote on saturday, as opposed to taking a moto. This will save me 9 mille total. I am almost sure it is worth it. We guess-timate that its about 40k total. I had a bunch of crap on my bike because I am going to be gone for awhile. The paths around the river are (more) washed out--I felt like I was biking on the beach. The river was up to my diaphragm. Luckily my big backpack is somewhat water resistant. I about face-planted when I got to the other bank, but other than that it was fine.
The rest of the trip sucked. I wasn't feeling it. I felt like I was going to die. I wound up getting sick the next day so maybe that's what was wrong. Anyway, I made it ok.

I hate swarming poultry lice.

Who reads this thing? you should leave comments.

I helped my host family plant corn last week. It was intense. It took probably 15 people most of the day to prepare and plant 1.25 hectacres of corn. I helped until my blisters hurt too bad. I will post pictures of it later. i hope

quick hits

I woke up the other morning, walked out of my house, and watched a duck eat a mouse

more like gumming it to death, but same thing

this week's google assignment-- Tumbu Flies! more specifically, their larva

next week I will be in Lome, so I will be posting prolifically. I hope

today is July 4th. i think. i celebrated it in the Lome Limo today, listening to fellow PCVs singing american songs. for like 15 minutes until we got too car sick to do it anymore

Of Biking and Football

my football team! the guy on the end in the white is one of my best friends in village

So last Sunday was the big girls’ football (soccer) tournament. There were 8 teams competing—Namon, Manga, Nawari, Bourku, Nampoch, Nandota, and 2 teams from Guerin-Kouka. My Volunteer neighbors came with their respective teams—Manga, Bourku, Namon, and Kouka. We played at the Kouka football field. The weeds weren’t cut down, but they hung nets on goals, set up the pavilion, and marked out the boundaries. Aside from a random herd of sheep that kept wandering on one end, the field was pretty nice. Since the field is right across from the big Kouka Sunday marché, there was a big crowd there for most of the day.

There were 7 60-minute matches total throughout the day—first round, semi-finals, and the final. Karen, who did most of the organizing, set up two pools, and then we drew for our opening matchups.

Nampoch didn’t win.

We played the 4^th opening match, which started at like 1200. We drew Kouka B. I figured that we were in trouble when I noticed that all the girls on the Kouka team had shoes, if not actual cleats, stockings, and full uniforms. The Nampoch girls had matching jerseys and played barefoot. Kouka B has been playing for a while. It was the Nampoch team’s first competitive match. We lost 2-0 and our match had the distinction of being the first match that wasn’t decided on penalty kicks after ending 0-0. After I got done being disappointed, I was/am really proud of the Nampoch girls. They played really well against the team that would eventually win the tournament, and that had the edge in age, experience, and equipment. Afterwards, my friend Jen, whose Manga team also lost early, and I planned a scrimmage so that we could encourage our teams to keep playing since our villages don’t really have a culture of girl’s football yet.

The Friday before the match, Alisha biked out to Nampoch from Ataloté. I met her about halfway in Helotè. The total distance is somewhere between 35-40k. It’s hard to tell for sure because part of the route consists of paths through the Kara River valley. I did manage to carry our bikes across the river without falling. I was proud of myself. We got back to Nampoch about noon.

Anyway, the bike trip was a lot of fun, although we had to spend the next day recovering. Alisha helped out at the tournament, she’s much better at motivational speeches in French than I am, and we spent a couple of days hanging around in Nampoch. It was really nice having her around. People in Nampoch love her. They like it when their Volunteer brings his wife around.

Alisha left this morning actually. I biked back with her to Helotè again. The way there was fine, but I had a problem on my return trip. It rained pretty heavily last night, but the river was still only up to my mid-thigh at 8 this morning. When I got back there at about 10, the river had risen about a foot; it was up to my navel and a lot faster. It was kind of sketchy, but I made it across just fine.

It’s actually a really interesting bike ride. About a quarter of the ride is on little roads or just half-meter wide dirt paths around the river. If I am going to Ataloté, I can saluaté people in Konkumba up to the river. Konkumba still works on the far bank, usually, but about 2k down the road, Lamba starts taking over. Nandodja, the first sizable town after the river, is definitely Lamba. By the time I get to Heloté, no one speaks Konkumba and they all drink tchouk instead of tchakpa even though its maybe 15k from Konkumba-land.

After this bike ride, and my earlier bike tour, I am all about biking places. Traveling uses up a decent chunk of my monthly living allowance because my area is so remote. Biking is free, lets me see, and experience, a lot more of the countryside, and gives me a lot more exposure to Togolese. For example, this morning, a lady stopped me in the first village on the Konkumba side of the Kara river, said she was my host mom’s little sister, and asked me to saluaté the family for her. That would never happen if I was on a moto. On a bike, I am something tangible, that often speaks garbled local language, on a moto, I am a white apparition passing through.

And on that note I obviously didn't finish writing this post, but I am in Kara, its like 1500, and I need to get home before it gets too dark . . .

a couple random thoughts

i like mayonnaise. this is weird for me. i hate it in the states. but now, one of my favorite things to eat here is a an egg sammie. this consists of 2 fried eggs with peppers, tomatoes, and onions, depending on the place, and put in a long loaf with mayonnaise. so good

Alisha found me a teapot. this, plus the egg carrier that I got from Maggie, will change my life.

you should google 'camel spiders.'

i prefer to call them "*blank*ing, crazy, mutant, alien spiders from hell" but thats just me

This is a post that may or may not make sense . . .

The past week has been exhausting. I’ve been helping out with this pump project a lot. The plus side is that I’ve seen a lot of Dankpen/west Kara and its freaking beautiful. I originally thought it was flat here, but some of the roads come up on these ridges where you can see for kilometers across these broad valleys. There are random green “mountains” everywhere whose relative bulk to the landscape makes them look like fetish homes. You look across the landscape and the distant fields look like lawns that are heavily dotted with trees. Occasionally smoke from charcoal makers smudges the green with touches of gray. Storm cells slog over the horizon in the late afternoon like wandering giants supremely disdain of us mere mortals below.

We put in a new pump in this village that is close to the border so we took a break to swim in the river between Togo and Ghana. The current is pretty fast so no one, probably, got schisto (google it).

On the minus side, I feel like I got hit by a truck. Like I think I said before, its hard installing a pump piece by piece, especially when a lot of the work consists of holding on to many meters of galvanized pipe. Part of the problem is that a lot of the pumps are in these circular enclosures that are about 7-ish meters in diameter and have a shoulder-high (to me) wall around them. Since they are usually in the full sun, and full of villagers watching/helping, it gets really hot in them. One day I got sun-sickness and had to check out for awhile.

Things were going well otherwise with the project until 2 nights ago. Myself, Adam, Matt, Kadar, Adam’s homologue Gbandi, and the mechanic, Mr Daré went to this one village near Kouka in the late afternoon to get it done quickly so we had less to do the next day. It was the evening of marché so everyone was drunk. By the time we were done, we were pretty fed up with the place. The main condition for a new pump is that the village has to come up with 25% of the total cost. All the villages up until then had been good about paying their share. But this village hadn’t collected the money yet. So we went back the next morning, and they still didn’t have it together, so Adam told them that they had until the evening, or we would come take the pump. Evening rolled around, after a frustrating day of more non-payment from other villages, and we went back. No money. So me, Adam, Kadar, and Kadar’s little brother, Ganeou, went and took the pump handle. It really sucked because there were about 10 women and girls standing around watching us as we cut off their water supply.

The way these funded projects work is that the PCVs are responsible for the funds. If villages don’t pay for their share of the labor/materials then the PCVs have to cover the deficit out of pocket. Another village for example, didn’t pay yesterday when we installed the pump in the morning, but we went back that evening and they were out under a tree with a table full of money. One guy explained to me that they’d just had a funeral that they had to pay for. Once villages have the pump, they have no incentive to pay, especially if the chief is less than responsible. The first village actually just brought the rest of the money this morning, so they got their pump handle back. Thankfully though, most villages have been great to work with. One village paid in part with a sack full of 10 and 25 CFA pieces, which showed that everyone in the village had been chipping in to help pay for the pump. People, especially the women, are really thankful to have a new pump, and it is gratifying to help them, but, unfortunately, human nature is not culturally specific.

Today I went au ville here in Kouka to buy some supplies. I bought a new flashlight because I left my other one at Alisha’s. I’ve been amazed since I’ve gotten here about how ubiquitous LED lights are here. This is due, I think in part, to the fact that the only batteries that you can get here are really cheap Chinese ones. I think they actually have a core of charcoal. But yeah, LEDs are bright, last a long time, and put out a nice light. Its weird to look out over a dark landscape and night and see random LED lights off in the bush.

As much fun as its been hanging out/working with other Volunteers for the past couple of weeks, I am looking forward to getting back to village and sleeping for a couple of days.

I just read in my newest Volunteer newsletter that PC-Togo has a special relationship with Togolese customs; so, if you send me anything, you should put Corps de la Paix in the address somewhere. (hint hint).

I just realized how out of touch I am with the rest of the world right now. I have no idea whats going on, especially in the US. Is the latest good movie that important to know about? I don’t know.

I’ve been gone so much lately that Nigarmi is developing separation anxiety. Every time I do something with my backpack he attacks it.

One of the beauties of PC service is that you do things you never thought you would do. Like, I never thought that I would be becoming a semi-expert on hand pumps. Yet, here I am.

Soft drinks taste better here. A. I don’t get a lot of sugar. B. they are made with actual sugar and not high fructose corn syrup. I say this because this post is fueled by exhaustion, lingering frustration, and the cold-ish Fanta that I just drank.

One parting thought that I have not been able to get out of my head recently is this. The US spends billions of dollars a year on new warships, fighter jets, tanks, etc. What if a couple of these were canceled and the money used to build new wells/pumps across sub-Saharan Africa? That would do more to promote US security than 100 new fighter jets would.

Bikes and Pumps

I am sitting in Karen’s house watching Emily make taco salad. My mouth is watering. Emily’s friend came to visit from the US last week. He brought us tortilla chips. I treat my ipod with less respect.

Last week, my friend Adam organized a bike tour of west Kara in support of his and Emily’s pump project. It was the first annual Dusty Fried Wagash bike tour. Karen and I loaded up our bikes on a car in Kouka and went down to Kabou on Wednesday. We met up with Jen and Kadar, who is the main homologue for the pump project. Karen and Kadar went on down to Bassar on Kadar’s moto while Jen and I waited in Kabou for a car to take our bikes. Three hours later, we left.

Outside of Bassar we met up with Karen, Kadar, Adam, Brandon, Ben Conway, and Adam’s homologue, Gbandi. We left Bassar on our bikes for Dmirori, Brandon’s post. Kadar and Gbandi followed us on motos. We stopped off in Adam’s village, then took a back way to Dmirori. The path was pretty bad, but it was fun. Southwest Kara is hilly and pretty now that its started to rain.

28k later, we made it to Dmirori right in front of a thunderstorm. We celebrated Kadar’s birthday party at Brandon’s house. Then slept. Thursday, we left at like 6am for Kabou. The First leg of the trip was really nice. It was overcast and cool, the clouds hugged the green hills. The road was a red gash rolling over hills and through the trees. We rolled through these picturesque hill-top villages. The villagers definitely weren’t expecting to see a horde of sweaty, panting white people. It was funny.

We hit the main road from Ghana to Kabou about 3k from the border. The next two legs wound up being the worst part of the trip. First off we had this really low, winding hill to climb. We all eventually had to walk I think. At the top of the hill, we stopped off in this town and hung out at a bar for a couple of hours under we could stand up safely. We got in to Kabou about 1 pm or so after another series of long up-hills and short-down hills. It wound up being about 55k. We met up with Matt and Jacqui, who biked in from Bassar, then spent the rest of the day hanging out at Matt’s house.

The next morning I thought that my quads were going to fall off, but we biked up to Kouka. We stopped off at Jen’s house in Manga for awhile, and we visited a couple of pump sites as well. The bar outside of Kouka was really inviting by the time we made it about 40k later. Matt had a amoebas so he rode on Gbandi’s moto. We hung out in Kouka the rest of the day at Karen’s house.

Saturday, Karen, Emily, and I had a trash collection project meeting in Kouka. After that I biked out to Nampoch with Jacqui, Adam, Brandon, Jen, and Ben. Adam and I moto’d out to another pump site in the brush outside of Nampoch with Kadar and Gbandi. We made it right before it started raining. We waited out the storm, but on the way back, Gbandi put our moto over in the mud because the path was a river. We were ok though.

We wound up biking about 145k in 4 days. It was a lot of fun.

Yesterday, we started work on Emily and Adam’s pump project. They are replacing 29 worn out pumps in Dankpen and Bassar prefectures. Emily’s half of the project is funded so she’s getting it started before she COS’s in August. We replaced two pumps yesterday. It basically consists of lowering 30-40 meters of 2 inch galvanized pipe down a well. You have to attach one section at a time. If you drop the pipe down the well—its not really fun to think about.

It was exciting to see the villagers react to their new pumps. Suddenly they had lots of water where before they had little or none. One totally new 38 meter pump costs about 1900 dollars. I’ve bought computers for more than that. You don’t really think about the importance of water until you don’t have it. I feel like that, in the US, we take water for granted. Turn faucet. Drink. Here, you have to walk 5-10 minutes to the pump, wait your turn, then hand pump your water, and carry the basin home on your head. Water is labor-intensive and this, in turn, informs how it’s used. If the pump is broken and water is scarce, for example, women can’t bathe their children very often. It’s humbling for me to realize that I’ve blown money on junk that, if spent differently, could make a real difference in someone’s life.

Anyway, after we installed the pumps, Brandon, Adam, Emily, and Matt gave talks on the importance of stuff like hand washing, sanitation, pump maintenance, and sending boys to get water. It was one of the more rewarding days I’ve had since I’ve been here. We are installing more pumps for the rest of the week.

I just realized this—Wagash is a soft white cheese made by a local nomadic, cattle herding tribe that roams across west Africa. We usually eat it deep fried. Its so good. Really good wagash tastes kind of like deep fried cheese curds.

Of Springtime and Fig Newtons

Spring has sprung here. I suppose. Its kind of funny though because “spring” means more rain and less heat than “winter,” i.e. dry season.

But still, the signs are all the same. Brown is becoming green. Birds are happy. Insects make joyful- sounding noises. The landscape is closing up as the vegetation gets going again. People in Nampoch are making new hoe handles, building yam buttes, and tilling fields. This means that people are a lot less interested in projects all of a sudden, but I don’t really blame them.

I woke up Sunday to the gentle patter of rain on my roof. It rained all morning. I went back to sleep.

In case you are wondering what a yam field looks like- imagine a group of gargantuan, symmetrically-inclined moles decided to build a subdivision. No? I will post pictures.

Last night a cricket with a body the size of two of my fingers got in my house. It was the biggest bug I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t be bothered to deal with it, so I got my cat. I am cat-sitting Nigarmi’s brother, Mullet, while his owner, my colleague Jen, is down at camp for the next couple of weeks. They growled at each other awhile before they ate the cricket.

Nigarmi caught his first (that I know of) lizard last week! Technically I think its some species of geko, but whatever. Nigarmi took it inside where its tail promptly broke off. Nigarmi had a hard time deciding between pouncing on then twitching tail or the scurrying geko. A couple of times he tried to do both at the same time. Eventually, he gave up and ate both of them. So much for a breaking tail as a survival mechanism.

I was doing something the other day, I forget what it was, but I became aware of an existential truth about Peace Corps service—its all about how well you can adapt, or, rather, how much you are willing to adapt. Like, for example, I would never wear a pair of jeans more than twice without washing them in the States. Here? If its not obviously dirty, or even if it is, no need to wash it! (my current record is 8 days in the same pair of pants). My point is not that I am dirty, I shower twice a day, usually, but that one has to adjust to one’s circumstances. If all your clothes are washed by hand, and if you carry everything on the back of a moto when you travel, you just can’t have access to clean clothes all the time. When I first got to post, I freaked out about the spiders on my ceiling. Now, I point out the big flat fast ones to Nigarmi because he likes to eat them and tell the spindly ones goodnight.

I catch myself frequently these days being like “damn, I never thought I would ever be doing/not doing this.” Oatmeal cream pies? Never touch them in the States, inhaled them rapturously here. Scrubbing? Never in the States, can’t shower without it here. Checking email/facebook/the news? Hourly in the States, bi-weekly, if I’m lucky, here.

I don’t necessarily view life here as “hard”, although I really really like taking over-head showers in Kara, rather I think that the process of adaptation can be hard. I’d lived abroad before joining Peace Corps, so I was somewhat aware of what life was like outside of the States and my own capacity to adjust to it. That definitely helped me a lot—helped absorb some of the shock.

I am eating smashed Fig Newtons while I figure out what to say next.

I learned how to make spanish rice the other night. This has increased my cooking ability to 2 dishes, aside from spaghetti and egg sandwiches.

I just got an egg carrier from my friend Maggie the other week, so actually getting eggs back to Nampoch to make said sandwiches is now possible. Its life changing. Seriously.

I think that Togo is the first place I have been where it is possible to watch a huge, immense, towering lightning storm and look at a sky full of stars (except for the part where the storm is) at the same time. Its pretty cool until you realize that the fact that you can watch the storm is because its going someplace besides directly at you. Then you go to bed and sweat all night.

My new all-time favorite magazines are, in no particular order, the Economist, Paste, Sports Illustrated, and the New Yorker. National Geographic and Time are my second favorites. Send them to me and I might sacrifice chickens for you.