Update!

Hey everyone.  Hope all is well in everyone’s lives.  I'm constantly looking forward to checking my mail (once or twice a month) for letters and I'm constantly let down. Shame on you.  Just kidding, I know you’re all busy, but seriously, in comparison you can write a letter and get to a post office 50x before I have the opportunity to do it once…

Enough of that guilt trip (but seriously, how am I supposed to know what’s going on without the ability to creep on FB?)…

I got finished in Kpalimé for the first annual Women’s Conference at the end of May.  After leaving there and being back in village for two days, I can confidently say that it was one of the most powerful experiences of my life.  It ranks right up there with Belize. 

Camp Espoir

Today, I just got back from Pagala.  What’s Pagala? There’s a center that is run by Peace Corps in this village in the middle of the country.  It’s where we have trainings, but also host camps for kids.  I did a 3.5 day training for Camp Espoir.  Camp Espoir, c’est quoi ca? (Camp Hope, what’s that?) It is a week long summer camp for children infected or affected by HIV/AIDS.  There are 4 camps that happen in total. I’m involved in the one for the regions of Plateaux and Centrale.  I will be staying in the bâtiment (building) with a Togolese woman who is my work partner and 6 or 7 of the older girls (12-15ish).  I am also responsible for some games during the carnival, leading sessions of being a good role model (for little kids and big kids) and just generally being a camp counselor.  The camp is July 4-8!

Camp UNITE

Camp UNITE is another weeklong camp that happens 4 times during the grand vacance (long/summer vacation) The weeks are separated by 1) girl apprentices 2) boy apprentices 3) girl students 4) boy students.  The campers/participants are all nominated by volunteers or our NGO/association partners.  I have training for this July 13-16 and the camp for me (Girls Students) is the last week of July.  During this camp we teach life skills: being a good role model, gender equity, health, sanitation, hygiene, income generating activities, etc. etc.  I’ll have more to say about this (and Camp Espoir) after the actual camp takes place.

I’d like to say about these camps- these budgets are huge and volunteers (and their families) struggle for funding.  I'm stuck on a line of hoping that the Togolese will start to give more financially to aide their own country (read: create sustainability), but as with any development work (and in life!)… money- you know.

Camp Scientifille

This is the first week of August.  So I’ll be in Pagala for 2 weeks straight.  Long story short, girls don’t get to be interested in things like science.  It’s hard and it’s for boys. When kids start high school, they get to choose a “series”: language, science and 2 others that I can’t think of right now.  Almost no girls choose science because they’re made to think they’re not smart enough and that it’s men’s work- when actually a lot of them wish to be sage femmes (mid-wives).  This week-long camp is for Peace Corps Volunteers with one teacher from their village and 3 girls to participate in science experiments, learn the scientific method and gain the tools to start science clubs in their respective villages.

Nominations for Camp Joie

Camp Joie is happening the first time this summer in August.  It’s a camp for children with physical handicaps.  I'm not participating but I've been working with an awesome, motivated and super smiley handicapped man in village to be chosen as a trainer for this. In my village, he helped create a handicapped association and is constantly discouraged by lack of mobilization of people fighting the same problem.  I hope this work will give him encouragement and tools to share with our village.

Vacation Enterprise

I wrote about how I'm giving money to five different girls to do small business activities during the summer.  This week is our training.  Here’s our schedule:

L’entreprise de la grande vacance

CEG Kpategan 2011

Lundi, 20 juin

08h00: Arrivée et chanter «Bonjour les amis»

08h30: Brise glace: «si tu m’aime…»

08h45: Ecrire un résume de son projet

09h15: Partager les résumes des projets

09h45: Choisir les buts du projet

10h15: Discuter le contrat

11h00: Ecrire une liste des matériaux avec les prix approximatives et discuter «le grocery list» 

11h15: Donner les reçus exemplaires et commencer la pratique de caisse exemplaire

11h50: Questions

12h00: Le départ pour manger et reposer

14h30: Une séance sur la confiance en soi

Mardi, 21 juin

08h00: Arrivée et chanter

08h30: Brise glace: Dapaong, Atakpamé, Lomé

08h45: Poser les questions d’hier

9h00: Faire la pratique des caisses exemplaires

9h30: Faire l’étude de faisabilité avec l’exemple du savon liquide

10h15: Faire l’étude de faisabilité avec son projet même

11h00: Comment protéger l’argent contre les voleurs (au marché et à la maison)

11h15: Une séance de l’harcèlement sexuel

12h00: Le départ

14h30: La séance de Camilla/Aidi avec son homologue

Mercredi, 22 juin

07h00: Arrivée et chanter

07h30: Manger les biscuits et boire le jus d’Amérique

07h45: Expliquer les buts du projet

08h15: Lire le contrat et poser des questions

09h15: Discuter comment soutenir nos filles

09h45: Créer une liste des choses qu’on achète souvent mais qui ne sont pas nécessaires

10h00: Choisir 2 ou 3 jours pendant juillet/août pour réunir et échanger les réussites et les échecs

10h15: Facultatif: Faire l’étude de faisabilité pour le crème de citronnelle et créer le crème

I bet you want to see that in English, eh?

Enterprise for summer vacation

Junior High of Kpategan 2011

Monday, June 20

8am- arrive and sing a song called “welcome my friends”

8:30am- we’re going do an icebreaker called “if you love me”.  We stand in a circle and I’ll start by going up to someone and saying “if you love me, you must smile” and I’ll try to do things to get them to smile/laugh.  If they do, they enter the middle and try on someone else; if they don’t, I have to try again with someone else.  My objective of this is to teach the girls that it’s important that even during work/school, laughing and having fun is important (nobody really stresses anything but cooking/washing clothes and dishes to girls)

8:45am- they’re going to write a summary of what they hope their individual projects will include (they had to write a letter of interest to me already and then further explain in detail during interviews before I chose them)

9:15am- the girls will share their goals in the big group

9:45am- we will define the goals of the project (examples: make money, see that girls are strong, learn how to manage money, ultimately use all the profits to pay for school)

10:15am- we will discuss the contract I created that says things like the money made must be used to pay for school, what happens if they don’t pay me back the money I lent them, etc.

11:00am- we’re going to make lists of all the materials they each need to buy and estimated prices.  I'm also going to explain the idea of creating a grocery list before going to the market in order to avoid wasting money on things we don’t need.

11:15am- I’m going to give them copies of blank receipts they use here and also practice how to keep track in a notebook (it’s essentially a spreadsheet) of their costs and profits.

11:50am- questions

Noon- they will go home to eat and rest (this time is typically always noon to 2:30pm)

2:30- a meeting about self confidence

Tuesday, June 21

8am- arrive and sing

8:30am- icebreaker about how to listen to instructions (they line up horizontally and I will draw 3 horizontal lines in the sand. Each is called a certain village; the top is a village up north, the middle is in the middle and the bottom is the capital in the south.  When I say Dapaong they have to jump to the northern line.  When I say Atakpamé it is the middle and Lomé is the southern line.  It starts off slow and gets faster and faster and if they jump to the wrong line, they’re eliminated.

8:45am- here is a chance for them to ask questions from things they didn’t understand from yesterday.

9:00am- I'm going to give scenarios and examples of expenses and profits and have them practice using their handmade spreadsheet to keep track of their money.

9:30am- I’m going to teach them about feasibility studies using the example of making liquid soap and selling it in the market (it costs 2,500 francs for the materials, 1,000 francs to travel and get the materials and 500 francs to buy the bottles to put it in… which equals 4,000.  This typically sells for 500 francs per bottle and makes 10 bottles which means we’ll make 5,000 francs.  Let’s subtract the cost of 4,000… we only make 1,000 francs for a whole lot of work.  Feasible aka worth a ton of work?  Vous voyez? (You see?)  This is a difficult concept for lots of people here to grasp because not many people plan like this.  In reality, according to my observations, a lot of women actually lose money in their markets because they don’t understand the concept of keeping track of things or that traveling to “the city” to buy materials is expensive and we should keep track of that too.

10:15am- they’re each going to a feasibility study for their own projects.

11:00am- they’re going to talk about how to keep their money safe from robbers (in the market and at their houses)

11:00am- I'm going to take advantage of having girls who are listening to me to talk about sexual harassment, explaining zero tolerance and how to speak up for themselves and not have to sleep with men who ask them (girls here generally can’t refuse someone like a teacher because they’re taught to obey and respect… and also don’t want to be given bad grades in revenge)

Noon- break for lunch and rest

2:30pm- another volunteer (Camilla) is going to come and do a session with her counterpart. I'm so excited for this, I love when volunteers do work together because I get so many new ideas from them and it makes everything so much easier (problem-solving, finding words in French, everything!)

Wednesday, June 22

7am- arrive and sing with the parents/guardians that each girl will bring this day

7:30am- eat cookies and drink juice that I'm going to make with some drink packets my mom sent me

8:00am- I’m going to have the girls explain the overall goals of this project to their parents.  This gives them an opportunity to practice speaking in public and I can also verify that they really understand.

8:15am- I'm scared for this because it’s really complicated… we’re going to ready the contracts together and they can ask all their questions

9:15am- we will have a discussion about how to support girls (essentially we’re going to talk about treating girls like they treat boys)

9:45am- we’re going to create a list of things they buy often when they go to the market but it’s not necessary (alcohol, etc.) in order to learn to save money and all that good stuff… like spending it on education instead!

10:00am- we’re going to choose 2 or 3 days during July and August that we’re all free to come together and discuss our successes and failures and brainstorm/troubleshoot together

10:15am- its optional if the parents want to learn how to do a feasibility study and citronella lotion and also learn how to make it.  It is a lotion that is made with boiled leaves from a certain tree that keeps mosquitoes away.  All you do is grate a bar of soap, add a liter of oil, a liter of water and a spoonful of the citronella liquid. So easy and it’s cheap to make and sells well… big profit here but not one person in my village knows it.

Other work:

1) Peer Support Network & Diversity Committee: Applied for these.  Will find out if I got them.  One is to be a phone contact and peer supporter for volunteers with problems/struggles.  Diversity Committee does trainings for Peace Corps staff, trainees and volunteers about diversity issues here.

2) Rewriting GEE Objectives: I was in Lomé to help form new objectives for trainings and for my program.  It’s kind of esoteric so I’ll leave this at that.

3) Workstation/House manager: We have a transit house/workstation in our regional capital that requires management of funds, facilities, etc. The 2 volunteers in charge are leaving so I'm taking charge with another newer volunteer.

This is long and I'm tired…  I hope I explained things well and that it wasn’t too boring… even though I doubt anyone actually read all my blabbering. Ok, I'm shutting up now.

Ou bien?

Once again, I’m at a roadblock to try to explain this country and my life to those of you without a mental picture…

I’ll start by saying that I’m super happy. The people here are awesome and super nice as are the other volunteers who I get to see every so often.

I’m about to undertake a project called “Vacation Enterprise” to help girls make money during their summer vacation.  I chose to share this because the problem pretty much describes the Girls’ Education and Empowerment program.

PROBLEM: Lack of gender-equity

SUB-PROBLEM: Girls’ don’t get to go to school because of the lack of money (boys are given preference)

ATTEMPT AT SOLUTION #1:  Girls try to start up small businesses and either 1) lose money or 2) work so hard they have no time to study which leads to à drop-out

ATTEMPT AT SOLUTION #2: Find a man to help pay which leads to à pregnancy which leads to drop-out

MY SOLUTION TO BE ATTEMPTED: I will loan 5 girls a nice chunk of change to start businesses over the summer. I’ll teach a money-management class once a week and collect all their profits so at the end we can pay it directly to the school.

Ça va aller. Ou bien? (It will go, or?)

I’ll let you know how it goes.  In the meantime, check out my friend Brandon Jones’s photo albums.  He’s a great photographer and he just opened his Togo albums up for “friends of friends”

Also, here’s a blog post of another PCV that I enjoy: http://alishawilliams.com/uncategorized/2011/03/14/reflections/    

Her whole blog www.alishawilliams.com is actually great.

Lastly, I'm about to try to upload some videos to Facebook :)  

Enjoy!

[insert clever title here]

Let’s be honest- updating this blog is more of an assignment than I’d thought it’d be.  I really thought that I’d like having a public journal, but I just don’t.  I also find it incredibly difficult to really encompass what’s going on here.

Nonetheless, I will still post. Hopefully more about projects I’m starting and work-related stuff, but also with funny little stories or explanations if I can keep myself from rambling/being incoherent.

So yeah, it’s been a while.  I talked to my bio-mom today (Volunteers refer to their real/American family as their “bio-fam” because we also talk about our “family” here) and for the first time, I had a lot to talk about my work.  I decided it’d be worth it to bust out my netbook and drain my battery this way instead of watching 30 Rock (someone had all the episodes on his external hard drive and for some reason I feel compelled to watch them all).

I just finished reading three stories that Moe wrote for her thesis and it made me realize even more how much I miss home.  My mom told me on the phone that I’m different.  I asked her how and she said “you don’t have electricity!”  But I know I’m different in other ways too.  I would be, regardless of Africa.  Hey, I’m 23 now J. But it is depressing to think about how I don’t know what’s going on in anyone’s lives.  I got on Facebook when I was in Atakpamé and couldn’t even figure out how to creep on people (I’ve been gone too long to have a reference to what’s going on & Facebook changed again)

Anyway, as I write this today (18 March 2011), I’m celebrating being in Togo for exactly 6 months, a half year! Crazy.  I’ve been at post in Kpategan for 4 months and this month I’m starting to find my place in the community more and more.

mars = March in French.  Which is important.  Because remember… all of this stuff I’m doing is in French.  But unless it’s with teachers and students, most of it is getting translated into Ewé or Akposso. Which means that if it’d take me an hour to teach something, it’s going to take more than 2 hours to have my words translated and then everyone else’s responses translated back.  What I’m saying is- I’m two or three languages removed: I go from English (sometimes Spanish because there are similarities) to French which goes to Ewé and/or Akposso and then back through the line-up and into my brain.  It took me 5 days to figure out what my entonnoir was in English- funnel. 

Okay, let me ramble about real things now-

1 mars – Peter, the Peace Corps security officer, visited my house.  He told my papa that he needs to finish the fence around my house for privacy, build me a door to the “fence” and put bars on my windows so nobody can easily steal through them.  Then we rode in the Peace Corps Land Cruiser 13k to Gléi (AIR-CONDITIONING!!!!!!) so I could be officially introduced to the gendarme (police officer) there, in case of emergency. The guy loved me, of course.  Now when I walk through Gléi to visit my closest neighbor, he always insists on buying me a bottle of Coke.  I’ll let you all know how that plays out when I finally take him up on the offer. 

The car (with air conditioning still blasting!) dropped me back off in village.  I ate lunch and then had my first official meeting with les pairs éducateurs (peer educators).   The directeur (principal) of the CEG (college/equivalent to grades 7-10 USA) chose 25 students (15 girls and 10 boys).  We discussed the role of a peer educator, their goals, their rules and they voted on the bureau (president, vice, treasurer, secretary, advisors, etc.)  We also played games.  Duh.

2 mars – I ran a club meeting in Gléi for the girls’ club at 14h30 (2:30pm) on gestion du temps (time-management) which continued from my last meeting on good study habits.  Afi (the volunteer there, Jane) started this club in October because they got their first female teacher there.  She’s a SED (Small Enterprise Development) volunteer and doesn’t usually work in schools.  I’m not sure how much I’ll continue with this once she’s gone in August though. 

4 mars – Got another Peace Corps visit… my village was so confused with another Land Rover passing through the bush.  Aurelia, the PCMO (Peace Corps Medical Officer) came to check out the health conditions of my site and discuss my eating habits and how to treat my food and water.  She’s awesome.  She also helps talk about cultural problems we face and challenges in our work.  At 15h00 (3pm), Laura G. (a third year Peace Corps Volunteer Leader-PCVL) came to village and did a sensibilisation on moringa.  Moringa is a tree that is called “the miracle tree” and a bunch of other cheesy shit.  It can be used lots of ways to help with health and also sold for lots of money.  By grinding the leaves and adding them to any Togolese sauce, it is a source of Vitamin A, C, protein, calcium, and all the other stuff that isn’t found in typical foods here.

6 mars – Some volunteers are starting a LQBTQ network for PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) so I attended the first meeting in Atakpamé (the regional capital)  I wish I could describe the trip in details. I take a moto 13k to Gléi in sand and crappy road and pay 800CFA of 1000CFA, depending on how much I feel like bargaining in French that day.  Then I find a car to go to Atakpamé and can wait anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour to leave.  This costs 500 or 600CFA (cars are 1/3 the price of motos) I’ve never taken a moto all the way because PCVs aren’t allowed to ride motorcycles on the main national road.  We stop along the way to Atakpamé and pick up whoever else wants to go.  There’s usually 8 people in the car (2 in the driver seat, 2 in passenger seat and 4 in back) plus all our stuff on our laps, in the trunk or on top of the car… and sometimes a chicken or two or a child or two or ten on our laps.

7 mars – permagardening in Atakpamé.  We have a transit house in Atakpamé for volunteers to do work, use the internet if it is working, take a real shower and sleep.  It is pretty nice.  We recently added activities each month to do some cross-sector collaboration.  Other Peace Corps countries do this officially, but we’re trying to do it on our own for our region of Plateaux.  Two NRM (Natural Resource Management) volunteers taught us how to start a garden, compost our garbage, etc.)

8 mars – International Women’s Day – explained the original to the 450 CEG students and teachers at 6h45 after morning flag raising.  Afterwards, I went around to each class for a discussion on gender equity and to answer questions.  I’ll spare you the details because it’s guaranteed that I’ll ramble too much)

9 mars – liquid soap at 8h00 chez Afi… Jane/Afi taught the apprentices how to make liquid soap and she did a feasibility study to see if they’d make or lose money if they tried to sell it au marché (in the market)  I brought an apprentice from my village to get a little trip with her and her baby (Fabrice, the light-skinned baby in my FB photos).  She once claimed to be 22 but now admitted to being 32 (there’s age limits on certain official Peace Corps camps that happen in the summer nationwide)  In the afternoon we listened to a woman from an ONG (NGO) in Gléi at 15h00.  She talked about advancing girls and women, gender equity, role models, etc.

12 mars – soccer match cancelled; trip to Lomé cancelled- students let down.  Most of them have never seen an airplane, airport, ocean, etc. so the directeur planned a trip there the same day as a big soccer game for them to get to see their country for the first time.  Hopefully the match gets rescheduled so I can go on a Togolese fieldtrip!  Instead I cleaned and organized my house.  It’s feeling much cozier and it’s making me a lot more comfortable overall here.

13 mars – CDM 15h00, CASE-EK 16h00 & Gerbil’s arrival: Club des mères (mother’s club) starts around 3pm on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.   They had attended the moringa sensibilisation and on this day I went to their meeting (it’s focused on illiteracy and they mostly learn basic French or math from a member of the CVD- Community Village Development something) I went with the apprentice (who is called Yawa, like me, because we were born on a Thursday) to share what we listened to and I talked about the origin of International Women’s Day and thanked them for giving birth to all the children J

Gerbil, aka Djibril, aka Andrew came to visit to help do a sensibilisation on VSLs (Village Savings and Loans) He arrived in the middle of the meeting so I left and we went to the CASE-EK (the name of the VSL my village already developed.

14 mars – VSL meeting at 8h00, 14h30 APE, check up on WWEC letters: Andrew shared successes of his VSL (decreased school dropout, early pregnancy, child-trafficking to Nigeria, etc.)  In the afternoon at 2:30, I met with the APE (parents’ association) and listened to what they’re planning… I’ll spare those details too) and I found out the two women I nominated for the region-wide Women’s Conference in May have finished their application letters.

15 mars – mom’s birthday, meeting Meg in Atakpamé at 11h00 which turns out to be 13h00… went out to Atakpamé to meet with Meg to plan our Take Back the Night theme when the women arrive to the conference and to talk about what we’re going to teach on our end of GEE (Girls’ Empowerment and Education) So far I am doing “How to mentor girls” and maybe violence in families… Meg is going to discuss scarification and genital mutilation… and I’ll share these details after the conference happens at the end of May.  (I’m so excited for this because we have 2 national camps for kids and a national program for men called MAP- Men As Partners and some awesome volunteers finally developed something for women… my favorite population to work with)

16 mars – peer educators 15h00-17h00 – got back from Atakpamé for our meeting.  We discussed what values they have as students and children and what skills they think they need to succeed in the future.  Based off of what they said, we developed a calendar of events (crap I’m gonna teach them)… more to come later on this too… hopefully.  They showed lots of interest to talk about family planned, self-confidence and liquid soap.

17 mars – 10h00 sensibilisation de la violence- I did a giant sensibilisation about child abuse.  It seemed very successful.  Once I unwind from it and calm down, I’ll share details on this too.  It is something rarely discussed and drained lots of my energy doing this in lots of different languages. Camilla, the volunteer in Amlamé came for support which was awesome.  I left straight afterwards for Afi’s birthday party in Gléi.  She made cupcakes! HOLY CRAP.  I’d tell someone to mail me stuff to make cupcakes too, but that’s not even something I’d attempted in America, more or less in a Dutch oven here.

18 mars – today. April’s birthday.  I made myself Koliko for lunch (fried yam) and sweated a lot as I wait for it to be a decent hour in America to make an expensive two-minute phone call to April hoping she answers…

Besides that an some 13 year-old getting pregnant for the second time, a 14 year-old trying to get married against her father’s will and some other minute drama… that’s it for now.

I didn’t get a chance to reread what I typed or edit it, so sorry for mistakes!

Le prochain fois…

(The next time…)

Some details

So I typed this out a few weeks ago.  A lot of good things have happened since then so look for some updates in the next couple... months. Ha.  I'm happier and happier every day here.

Enjoy my rambling-

Hello friends. I’m sitting here with my laptop charging in the regional capital and I’m going through internet withdrawal but figured I should pre-type my blog post before I pay for internet minutes.  I’m unnerved about who will read/access these mundane details of my Togolese life but I miss people back home a lot and here’s the best/easiest/cheapest way to communicate.

I’m changing my address due to some difficulties. If you sent me something to Lomé or Amlamé I will get it eventually, no worries.  Today I got some cards from my mom and a letter from Moe and a card/letter from Mary K. Thanks peoples.

Jes Scheinpflug

Corps de la Paix

B.P. 3194

Lomé, Togo

West Africa

What else? If you get a call from a strange number, answer it- it’s me.

So yeah, I swore in on 18 Nov 2010. Our whole training class of 29 swore in! 14 from my program (Girls Education & Empowerment) and 15 from NRM (Natural Resource Management).  The other 2 programs that train June-August of every year right before GEE/NRM are SED & CHAP (Small Enterprise Development and Community Health and Prevention)  I live in between a SED Volunteer and a CHAP Volunteer so I see some possible cross-collaboration work in the future. I’m actually going to start working at the infirmary next week helping the mid-wife weigh babies and do some health education… maybe. Plans change.

I’m living in my own house now. It’s tiny in comparison to the large houses I’ve seen of other PCVs but it’s comparable to the other houses in my village.  It’s 2 rooms.  One has my bed and one stores all my stuff and will be for cooking and everything.  Kpategan is about 14k off the national route and is small- maybe 1500 people (somehow all related to my Papa).  On that road 14k away is Glei where there’s the SED Volunteer, Jane, who has lived in Chicago for 17 years. Awesome. Hmm… Kpategan- we have the dispensary, “College” (7^th-10^th grade), Catholic Primary School, Public Primary School, some boutiques, tchuck (locally brewed alcohol) and a tiny market.

I LOVE my family. My Papa is so nice. He’s 60. He is a “retired” farmer even though he works a lot still. He has 10 kids, 3 are dead. The oldest is 42 and the youngest is 21. Mama, who I call Mama Sodabi because she drinks so much sodabi (African moonshine) has 6 kids.  The youngest two, Abla (11) and Kodjo (8), live on the compound. Also Mama’s 21 year-old (Degnibo) and Papa’s 21 year-old (Koffi/Edi) and then a college teacher. And can’t forget little Erik- Papa’s grandson who is either 3 or 5… so cute but such a little shit.  I’m going to post some photos to FB and if someone develops them and mails me them I’ll be indebted to you forever J  My family really wants copies and they took photos of me on like a 1985 camera and got the film developed for me.  I’ll take pics of the pics and try to post to Facebook also.

Travel is something to talk about.  To get to village which should be like MAYBE 2 hours took 8 hours the first time in October and 24+ hours this time because of break downs, fights and drama.  I’ll spare you the details for now. I should’ve known when the door fell off in Lome that it was gonna be a rough ride.

My hair’s looking cute.  JK. I’m growing a tiny little rat tail.  I’m going to shave it again after our in-service training the first week of February. So excited to see everyone again for the first time in a few months.

I’m going through my journal trying to find things to share.  I spend a lot of time alone/as the only English speaker and have thought about shit I thought I forgot about a long time ago.  For Thanksgiving I went to Kat’s house (my neighbor in the opposite direction of Jane) and she made awesome food including guacamole. I stayed in village for Christmas and New Years to integrate with my community and family which was a good decision.  I have the only community donated house in my training and not only do I not pay rent, but they feed me all day long for free. It’s nuts.  My female homologue named Malé washed all my laundry for me for a while but now I found 2 girls in school who do it and I pay their school fees in return.  Good deal for us both.

I go to church a bunch of times.  Papa is the pastor of the Evangelical church and a ton of people go to the Catholic Church.  I dance with all the mamas and blend in oh-so-well.  Religion is an interesting thing.  A lot of people know that the white man brought Christianity here.  Malé has some ideas that the bible says you can’t show your knee or women can’t shave their head, etc… even though every single girl shaves her head.

I’ve had some shocks.  Before I realized how much my Mama drank, we went to this woman’s house to see her 5-day old twins and they drank some sodabi. She thinks that it’s good for her health when it actually makes you crazy and causes blindness (and tastes like nail polish remover)  But that evening, I had gone on a long bike ride, had just eaten a banana and some bread and drank some tchuck. And then Mama’s son shows up to say Papa needs the key to the house that Mama has and she’s gonna get beat.  I’m sitting there just staring at these 5-day old little babies.  Then their older brother (4 years-old or so) was laying there and mama kept trying to show me his penis because he cut it with a knife accidentally but he was crying and mama was drunk and it was a shit-show.  I took a step back and realized I’m sitting in a clay house with a ton of women and children watching them drink their faces off in this little village and realized how awesome my life is.

I’m learning lots of local language. Enough said about that.  I spend a couple hours a week in “French class” on my veranda with my homologue, Claude. It’s coming along.

Spent some time at the public elementary school (comparable to grades 1-6) at the end of their first trimester to hear the test results.  They take a test each trimester, take the average, and find out of the student will pass to the next grade.  Out of like 500 kids, maybe like 50 passed… I think 5 or 6 girls. Yep. There is some work to do.

One day I will post some videos of village because it’s so hard to explain. All-in-all, I’m super happy. I miss people at home a lot more than I thought I would.  Hopefully Facebook would load and I can communicate directly.  Write me letters though- it’s an awesome moral boost.  Du Courage.

People say “du courage” for everything… if you hurt yourself, they hurt you, you slept a lot, you didn’t sleep, you did well, someone died… whatever. Du Courage.



Pigeon & Cock

Ok, I wrote a long post out on my netbook and forgot to save it to my external when I traveled.  Oops.

Everything is so great. Work has began. The holidays were fun. I'm learning a lot. I love my family here.

A little story:
One Sunday morning I went to the Evangelical church where my Papa is the pastor.  After the 3-4 hour mass in the local language I don't speak with minimal translations into a local language I barely understand and some French, we went back to our compound to drink some tchuck (a type of beer my family makes) that took Mama 5 days to make gallons of it.  This old lady who doesn't understand that I don't understand her language is going on and on.  As she's about to leave with some tchuck in a container, I offer to carry it for her since she can barely walk down the crappy road.  I'm walking and my 11 year-old sister, Abla, accompanies me.  This man starts to follow me.  He takes the container and carries it and starts asking for marriage and money and all the typical stuff.  Then he starts whipping juju beads (what? Buddhism in West Africa?) around and screaming like he's possessed.  I sit at the old lady's house with her family and do all my formal introductions and say "hello, how are you? and your family? and your work? etc..." to about 10 people, I get up to leave because this guy is still sitting there and giving me the creeps.

I'm trying to get Abla to tell me if she knows him on 5 minute walk back at a fast speed without the old lady and she starts to run. So I run. So he runs. He's officially chasing us.  We're on my porch and he's screaming and rolling around outside my house in a language I've never heard before. I look to see where Papa is and why he or one of my older brothers isn't coming to my aid.  Turns out Papa has his own issue with a cock. And Koffi and Degnibo (my 21 year-old brothers) are tending to some pigeons.

A community leader found a cock on his property and decided it was his even though Papa cut off it's baby toe and claimed it.  They're both screaming "cock" over and over again and Papa says he is a holy man and refuses to fight, so he can take it but god will punish him.  At the same time, the brothers are killing and boiling the 2 pigeons that I was given to eat for dinner as a New Years present from the president of a development association in my village.

Bon appetit. Right?

(it was actually delicious)

Typed a whole post and it's not on my external anymore.

My address has changed!!!!!!!!!!

Write me and I'll write back all the details of life.

Jes Scheinpflug, PCV
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 3194
Lome, Togo
West Africa

oh yeah...

 it's almost impossible to read private messages on FB.  If you've sent me something, I'm dying to read it but I can't.  Sometimes I can see my wall and sometimes I can check my e-mail.  and by sometimes, I mean maybe once a month.  And that's gonna change now that I'm really in bufu.  So just send me mail :)

I am official

I swore in with the minister of education, all of PC staff, all our host families, our trainers, the US ambassador in Togo (a woman!) and all that stuff.  It was on the news in some big towns that get electricity for the most part.

So where do I start? It’s 6AM, everyone’s been up and going for a couple hours now.  The roosters haven’t shut up for what seems like days.  My days go from like 6:30 when I finally get out of bed until usually 20:00 or so when I climb back in (8PM).  Yes, they use military time here.

So yeah, training is over. I got to Tsévié on September 22 and this week has just been wrapping up stuff.  I tested intermediate mid on my French test and did pretty alright on all my presentations and technical exams.  The most frustrating part (besides the constant heat) is not being able to have conversations with most of the Togolese I interact with on a daily basis.  I’ve been able to have more conversations with my mama as her patience for my French grew, but still.  I lived here for less than 2 months and nobody really got to know me. I’ve also been learning Ikposso, the local language of my village and very little Ewe (Ev-ay), the language spoke around most of the South here.

Enough for frustrations because I’m so excited. I'm in Lomé. We’re official. We're buying some mattresses or lipico or whatever the best bed I can get with my money is.  I haven’t made any big decisions at this point.  

Ok… so my house! I’m living in Kpategan.  (Paht-ay-gan) It’s in the Plateaux Region south of Atakpame, the regional capital.  It’s very tiny.  My homologue is awesome as is the director of the CEG (principal of the school equivalent to our 7^th-10^th grade) They told me I’m the first white person most of them have ever met and that I’m the first white person to ever spend one night in their village, more or less live there for 2+ years.  When I arrived on my 8 hour intense Togolese bush taxi ride that should’ve taken less than 2 hours, I was covered in sand, thirsty and exhausted.  As I stepped out of the car, hundreds of people were singing and dancing to welcome me.  They dressed me in traditional clothing from head to toe and with tons of jewelry (holy hot) and we had a big welcoming ceremony.  The same happened the next morning as I walked back from church.

So there are lots of churches and they’re also building a mosque. I think it’s awesome.  I’m going to hit up all of them in the beginning and search for people to work with and meet everyone.  That’s basically what I’m supposed to do the first 3 months- just meet people.  I might start some projects.  I could list all of the projects I want to start but it’ll be so much better when I can write about them when they’re real.  Something that is real right now though is the Men As Partners (MAP) training.  I told you the director of the CEG is awesome… he went to a big MAP training that two other PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) held the week before I visited my post.  In Kpategan, there’s a monthly meeting where a group of directors get together.  He petitioned for 30-40 minutes each month to do a MAP activity and wants me to collaborate with him.  Luckily, there was a meeting the week I was there and I got to meet all those directors (who yes, are all men) I get to go to my own MAP training in early December (hopefully! Because the girl in charge just got malaria) so I can be officially trained.  I’ve done a couple activities that were totally social work-y.  I also got worked up.  We played 4 corners (agree, disagree, strongly agree, strongly disagree) and some of the statements were “if a woman carries a condom in her purse, she’s easy” and “sex is more important for men than women” and just watching some people’s responses really blew my mind.  Working with Togolese will be interesting.

What else about Kpategan? So they wanted a PCV so bad that this retired man built a house especially for me and is letting me live there for free.  Its 2 rooms with teal walls.  One is for sleeping and the other is for everything else.   I have a slab of concrete behind my house to wash off with my bucket and behind that is a sheltered hole in the ground for doing my business.  It’s actually really nice.  I won’t have electricity but if I ever seriously need anything, I’ll be able to motorcycle, bike or ride to some neighboring volunteer in no time.

Man, there’s so much to say and I haven’t even really explained my view on Togo.  As a GEE (Girls Education and Empowerment) Volunteer or in French L’education et promotion de la fille… I have my work cut out for me.  Women and girls are treated so unfairly it’s hard to actually believe its real life sometimes.  Girls sleep with their teachers because it’s just the way it is.  They either don’t know they can say no or they need 200CFA (that can’t even buy a drink) or a good grade or whatever.  And this is accepted by a lot of people and teachers don’t see anything wrong with it.  Therefore, it is difficult to combat if, as an outsider, I’m questioning norms.  Along those lines, homosexuality doesn’t exist.   Which is super ironic because men hold hands and kiss like it’s nothing.  But people really think it’s some myth and it doesn’t exist.  And lastly, sexual harassment. Mostly every PCV I’ve talked to has been sexually harassed in one way or another (verbally or maybe a minimal amount of touching).  There’s not really rape statistics for PCVs in Togo but we all know how that works. 

Let me stop there and say this: I feel completely safe.  The PC staff here is indescribable.  They’re the most progressive, protective, educated and inspiring people ever.  They’ve set me up in a great place and my homologue, Claude, has set me up in a great position.   We have a safety and security officer and tons of other positions that double and triple check all of our situations (houses, villages, etc.)  If it was perfect, there probably wouldn’t be a need for me to be here.

My computer battery’s gonna die, but let me just say this.   I love fou fou avec sauce d’arachide (fou fou with peanut sauce) My life has changed since I’ve eaten it.  I no longer crave Taco Bell on a daily basis once I found this beige slab of yam pounded to its death.  Yum.