Red Birds and Nutritional Crutches

Bonjouuur. Another good week spent in the village of Farendé.

Thursday of last week, I asked the younger co-wife the big question: what do girls here do when they're on their periods? I haven't seen pads or tampons in the village markets. She responded, "People use pads, but you have to travel to the nearest city to get them. Many aren't able to do this, so what they do is use bits of torn-up pagnes. These are then washed and re-used." Yum.

To move on to more normal things... On Sunday, I got up at 5 AM (rather than going back to sleep as usual) to attempt to exercise for the first time since arriving in Togo. After running for a few minutes, my legs got supremely itchy, which is what they tend to do when I haven't run in a while, so I stopped, my exercise then taking the form of liesurely walking. Then, however, a colony of 5 flies was able to circle around my head. In choosing between running-itching and walking-flytolerating, I chose the latter and went on what wound up being an hour-long promenade. I must have walked about 2 miles before turning around. Beside the flies, who really wanted to eat my brain for some reason, it was excellent. Temperature was perfect, scenery was beautiful, and there were these awesome birds out and about. They were a physics-defyingly bright shade of red.

Later on in the day, some of the cowives' children and grandchildren arrived from Lomé. People are migrating back up to the villages to view the upcoming ceremony of Waa, which happens only once every 5 years. Anyway, while I was reading in my room, a few young granddaughters wandered in. They were totally distracting and a little bit creepy. Their French was not good, so they were saying things to me in Kabiye. Seeing that I had no idea what they were talking about, they would say something to each other and then break out in giggles. On top of that, they were messing with objects in my room. I was about to escort them out, until one of them brought all attention to my hot pink neck pillow. She put it on her head so that it looked like a Starwars hairdo. Then she put it around her face so that it looked like virtual reality goggles. Then she made it walk like it was a creature with 2 legs but no other body parts. Then she used the rug in my room like a pagne to carry the neck pillow like a baby on her back. Impressed with the many ways she and the others found to amuse themselves with my pillow, I let them stay in my room; and it was a good time.


This picture is of a super-cool project going on in the village. This project has several objectives. First of all, there are a set of latrines which people will be allowed to use on market day. The waste from the latrines will go to vessels in the back, where algae will be cultivated. This algae can then be used as a supplement for malnourished children. This project will, in an adjacent vessel, raise fish. There's also a garden, whose crops will be used in a restaurant which is in the making. Plant waste goes into a compost bin or into making charcoal. In the picture and next to the garden is a bunch of baby trees, which are being raised to a certain height and will then be planted around the village with the aim of reforestation. John and I spent some time working on this part of the project, clipping leaves off of large baby teak trees so that the smaller saplings would have access to sunlight. The sap of these trees is bloody red, so our hands got pretty gross. A couple of leaves got stuck between the heel of my foot and my sandal, so at the end of the shift, it looked like somebody had stabbed me in the foot. This was pretty exciting.

I'd like to talk a little bit about malnutrition, so I will mention a conversation I had with the younger co-wife. Her son is sick with an intestinal parasite, for which he is taking a medication that will quickly eliminate it. This medication cannot be taken in conjunction with alcohol, which, she said, and much to my horror, is a problem. (The thought in my brain: "HOW IS IT A PROBLEM THAT A 4-YEAR-OLD CANNOT DRINK ALCOHOL?") Turns out that "la boisson" (sorghum beer) is, along with pâte (ground-up corn served in a piping hot clump with a sauce), an essential part of the diet for everybody, including young children. I told the co-wife that I had heard alchohol inhibits young people's development, and she responded, "Yes, but the young people here are 'habitués' (used to it)." We can certainly assume pregnant women partake in la boisson also.

Malnutrition is already a huge problem. Most young children have those potbellies associated with being malnourished. This includes the 4-year-old of my household, upon whom pants don't stay up well because of his belly. I saw a severe case of malnutrition at Farendé's medical center that will forever haunt my dreams. In these severe cases, the belly, hands, and feet are all bloated, and when you poke one of these parts of the body with your finger, the indent remains. The problem of malnutrition here comes from the fact that young children live almost entirely off of pâte, which is pretty devoid of nutrients, and sauce. Pâte is the principal food eaten because corn is the main crop cultivated here. Meat is rarely, rarely eaten. La boisson is used as a (necessary?) nutritional crutch in all age groups. A tricky situation. Malnutrition leading to problems like fetal alcohol syndrome and hindered development. How does one go about tackling this problem chain?

Moving on to something slightly less depressing: death! I saw my first Kabiye funeral this week. It was an old lady who passed away; when the deceased is old, villagers dance and sing joyously. It was so cool to see this style of funeral; it was like the deceased was still alive. The options are crying over inevitable death (what we do in America) and celebrating a fortunately long life (what Kabiye do), and I think the Kabiye made a wise choice.

Plenty of other things to write about, but this entry is getting pretty long. Thus, catch you all next week. Happy 4th of July!!!! Yeehaw, America.

Wahoo! Pitchas

This is one corner of my homestead. The building on the far left has a room for the homestead's chickens, but what is in the other rooms remains a mystery to me. Next is the latrine: two spaces for bathing and one space with a toilet. We use big pieces of tin as doors. The circular hut is the kitchen (it gets really, really hot in there). The yellow building on the far right contains 3 bedrooms (one of which is mine) and the salon where we eat.


Me on the left and Rose, the senior co-wife, on the right. Rose is making sorghum beer and I'm holding the ladel, pretending to be the one who's making it. Every woman makes beer on a certain day or two each week. Rose, for instance, makes beer each Tuesday. On any given day of the week, you can find at least 5-6 woman who make beer, and on market day, it's as many as 15. It's the only real way Kabiye women make money, which is difficult, because sorghum beer is the first thing people stop buying when they are running low on cash, and people here tend to be running low on cash...


A lady serving us sorghum beer in calabashes. Calabashes are my new favorite vessels from which to drink.


A shot of an initiation ceremony in a nearby village named Tchikawa. There are 2 girls and 4 guys being initiated, and the man in front is one of their uncles. Various uncles stood in front of them and gave talks about how they're adults now, how they can have responsibilities, get married, etc. Each uncle gradually spilled a calabash of beer on the ground during his talk as a sacrifice.

This is a shot of our very beautiful hike up the mountain yesterday. Palm trees on mountains will forever feel like a paradox.

Things About Togo that I'll Miss

I know lists are sort of like cheating, a way to cop out of writing a real entry, but I think this one will be pretty interesting. This is a list of things about Togo and Farendé that I will miss when I'm back in the States.

• Cute little old ladies who bow when they meet you
• The dramatic way in which people say Uh-Huh!
• Not having internet
• Oatmeal as my daily sugar source
• Saturday markets, and the bread and bananas they entail
• Hanging out at Jesper's "office" (which is really just the little shop that his young, attractive friend owns)
• Yam french fries
• Local rice with sésame sauce (which is similar to chili)
• Calabash beer
• Afternoon naps
• Flying pidgeons as an alternative form of air conditioning
• The constant presence of chicks and baby goats (PS: I held a chick yesterday.)
• Cold, refreshing bucket showers
• The 24-hour system (and thus the excuse to say things like 18 o'clock)
• Pagne shopping
• Pagne staring (staring at pagnes is like staring at lava lamps; the more you look at one, the more fascinating its pattern becomes)
• Marriage proposals
• The fact that girls are not obsessed with being skinny
• The fact that all guys are in good shape as a result of the cultivating they do
• The indistinction between indoors and outdoors (there are no sealed-off spaces; all space is connected at least by an open, screenless window)
• Sleeping with my head at the foot of the bed and my feet on the pillows (somehow this arrangement diminishes the heat)
• Never, ever having to rush
• The phrase "Le repas est prêt" ("The meal is ready"), which I delightedly hear 2 times a day
• Going to bed at 8 PM and getting up at 7 AM
• Finding frogs in the latrine
• Seeing chameleons strolling nonchalantly across the path in front of me

Voilà, some of the many things I will miss!

One thing I won't miss too much is the public transit system. To go to Kara, we first take a bus from Farendé to Ketao and then a taxi from Ketao to Kara. When I think about the Farendé-Ketao buses, the phrase "crack-bus" unfailingly comes to mind. The buses are designed to seat 6 or 7 people, but they don't depart until they contain about twice that number. Sometimes there's a goat or 2 squished in the trunk as well. If we compare the vehicle to a cow, we can say that the driver milks it to every last drop. If the windshield is broken, you think nothing of it. (In fact, it's a bit of luxury to find a bus or taxi with a windshield that's not broken.) About one bus we took, John (fellow student) hypothesized that it had the engine of a lawn mower. Slowwww slow slow. On top of that, the driver only used the engine when we were going uphill. The smell of exhaust was overwhelming, and all of the windows (not just the windshield) were broken and sewn up like footballs. Pretty different from public transit in the USA.

Since the last entry, I've talked with some more local medicine men. One was with the White Cross Church, and another was an animist. Both of them, and most healers in general, see their practice as almost completely dependent on the spiritual realm. Sicknesses can be caused by the physical world (such as if we eat a contaminated food) or by the spiritual world (somebody who is jealous of you uses sorcery to bewitch you with an ailment). Prayer (either to a Christian god or an ancestral spirit) is a vital component to discovering what should accompany the standard herbal ingredient (which is fixed and does not require any supernatural inquiry) in a medicinal cocktail. The healers have been very open to giving us information about what the standard ingredients are, and we've been studying to what extent the medicines of different healers match (this would indicate that the medicines are effective).

Also, John, Jesper, and I went on a hike to see some road-work that's being done and to see how villagers can be mobilized to work on community projects. Every 5 years, there's a male initiation ceremony called Waa which occurs on this particular mountain. We, the students of this year, are lucky to have come during the year of this ceremony, which we will see in July. The mountain roads are being fixed up so that cars can drive to the site of the ceremony.

A Photo! And Other Things

There's an exciting picture of some of my host family and me eating. Albertine, the younger co-wife, is the person in the front of the picture. Hopefully y'all know which person I am. If not, I'm the one in a green and yellow pagne.

Life continues to be good here in Farendé. I feel very at home with my host family, I take cold and refreshing bucket showers each day, my digestive tract is functioning properly, and many other positive things.

In the last week, I started following the World Cup through hearsay and radio, bought a cool pair of sandals for $1.20, taught 2 successful English classes, met with a traditional healer who heavily integrates Christian prayer into his practice, learned about Farendé's Center for Social Affairs, and sat in on several walk-in consultations at the local medical center. Another eventful week.

I'm inclined to say that I'm staying busy, but, in fact, that's not true. People here take a customary afternoon nap from noon to 3, and everything stops after 6:30 or 7:00, when the sun goes down. That being the case, there's a lot of free time and not a lot of internet to kill it with. To kill downtime, therefore, I do a ton of reading, listening to my mp3 player, and thinking.. Yes, it can get a bit boring.

One last note: yesterday, I ate a particularly delicious food called corico. Corico is the same thing as french fries, except made out of yams. They are salted up exactly like American french fries but aren't as gooey on the inside. I was a happy camper.

A la prochaine!

First Week in Homestead

Family: I have a great family. The 2 co-wives are as sweet as can be. They are doing everything in their power to make me comfortable and happy.

There are 4 kids in the homestead, 3 boys and 1 girl. All of them love teaching me Kabiye. I have tons of phrases scribbled in my notebook but am still struggling with mastering the greetings, which depend on the time of day.

The girl, who is probably 12 or 13, is always working, whether it's cooking, doing laundry, planting seeds, drawing water from the well, or cleaning dishes. When I was her age, all I did that required any effort at all was homework.

All of the kids in my homestead consider themselves to have two mothers. Both the biological mom and the other co-wife receive the title "Maman" from any given child. The older co-wife is higher in the hierarchy, so I am to keep this in mind when, for instance, I reimburse them for my food: the money is always to be handed to the older co-wife.

Food: All food has been tasting fine and quite often delicious. Last night, I ate freshly killed chicken with spaghetti.

However, I just recently had my first little delicious taste of traveler's diarrhea, I think thanks to an okra sauce. Since then, I've been eating lightly and taking anti-diarrheal medication. Much of my plate of delicious spaghetti was rerouted to another mouth.

As for drinks, I'm living on my huge stash of bottled water and on sorghum beer, for which I am developing quite a taste. Most women brew it in their homesteads 2 times a week to sell at market. It tastes a lot like fruit juice. It's one of the few things you can find here that are remotely sweet.

Sugar is hardly ever consumed, or at least not in the villages. The only sugar I have each day is 2 sugar cubes in the morning in oatmeal and whatever sugar is found in sorghum beer. Everything else is grain-, meat-, and vegetable-based. A drastic change from my diet at home, where my mom makes sure to always have cake or brownies sitting out.

Challenges: It. Is. Hot. I dream about sticking my head in a freezer. I take bucket showers 2-3 times a day because that's the one way to cool down, and at night, it's necessary to enlever tous (remove all articles of clothing) in order to sleep. The advantage of having my own room!

Flies. There are bajillions of flies, who happen to have the same taste as humans in food and beer. There's no way to escape them; even if you go inside, they enter through doors and windows, which must remain open because of the heat.

My flashlight died. Thus, I maneuver like a blind person at night in order to find my toothbrush and other objects. This isn't too difficult. The real inconvenience to not having a flashlight is not being able to go to the toilet at night. Thus, whatever indigestion I might have must be tolerated until the morning... and that does not make for a very pleasurable experience.

Luckily these have been the only challenges! Even though this place is the white man's death and even though I have suffered these various obstacles, the quality of life is quite good.

What I've Been Doing/What I Will Be Doing: I've spent the first week in Farendé learning about life, culture, and institutions here. We (John, the other student in Farendé; Jesper, our guide; and me) have visited the middle school, the microfinance NGO's office, the evangelical church, the market, some small boutiques, and the medical center. Except for the primary school, we have literally seen all of Farendé.

I will be spending time working with middle schoolers; the plan is to form an English-club, which will be divided into two levels. I'm starting this later today. Should be interesting.

Other than that, we'll also be learning about traditional medicines mostly via interviews. Each homestead has its own medicine tree, which is said to cure a certain ailment. Traditional medicines are a free alternative to western medical practices for the people of Farendé. The younger co-wife of my household uses a traditional medicine to treat hemorrhoids, and on Sunday, we are going to chat with the man who prescribed it to her.

Etc: The boys here all have scars. The scars might be on the face, the arms, the feet, or elsewhere, and they are given to male infants at around the age of 3 months. The purpose of these is to mark what family a boy belongs to. That way, if he is lost, people can direct him back to where he belongs.

The middle school has fields. Students spend part of the day tending the fields so that the crops can be sold to raise money for items like books and chalk. Students have finished their final exams but will continue working the school's fields for the next month.

An extreme hindrance to Farendé's development is the absence of electricity. I talked with one of the women of my homestead about why Farendé isn't yet electrified, even though some other nearby villages are. She said it's because there's a lack of politicians representing the village. This is due, she added, to the fear of jealousy. A jealous person might, via sorcery, place some sort of curse on someone who has succeeded in life by going into politics.

These are some of the observations I've made and some of the thoughts I've been having. Dépaysant is turning out to be a very appropriate title.

More will be posted à la prochaine.

Kara and Beyond

After the brief orientation in Lomé, we headed north on Wednesday. After a long journey (futher lengthened by setbacks including a flat tire, a defunct water pump, and the 10 hours required to get the defunct water pump fixed - on a bien appris qu'il faut la patience en Afrique), we made it to Kara. Since then, we have seen bits of Kara and of surrounding villages, including Farendé and Kuwdé.

Kara is a relatively well-developed city. There's electricity, running water, and an internet café. It's cleaner than Lomé and, overall, seems much more well kept-up. This city received resources because it and the surrounding areas are the homelands of the former ruler Eyadema's ethnic group, the Kabiye. This is the same ethnic group with whom three other students and I will be living.

Farendé. Farendé, a valley-city surrounded by mountains, is a one-hour drive from the big city of Kara. No electricity, running water, or paved roads in Farendé. One other student and I will be living in this village. My homestead consists of 2 cowives (the husband passed away a few years ago, unfortunately), several children, and possibly others; just today I met the two cowives, and they both are very nice. On top of that, they speak good French, which makes them easy to understand. Also on the homestead are plenty of animals, including pigeons, chickens, ducks, pigs, sheep, and goats. My room is lovely; yellow walls, a large bed, a desk, floor space, and a window with some beautiful red flowers just outside. I'm really happy about living here!

If you hike up the mountain just next to Farendé, you will find yourself in Kuwdé, where one student will be staying. Kuwdé is really, really small and is the least developed. Farming is done in terraces which are supported by rocks (Kabiye, the name of the ethnic group, means "pilers of rocks," in fact). The scenery is absolutely beautiful, and it's strange to see palm trees growing in the mountains. We all spent the night in Kuwdé last night after a dinner of rice, beans, pasta, and sorghum beer. Non-fermented sorghum beer tastes exactly like juice. We woke up at 6 AM to the otherworldly funeral song of a tree spirit, whose body, the tree, recently fell. Oatmeal for breakfast, some peanut-deshelling, and a brief bucket bath before the hike back down the mountain to Farendé.

Tout va très bien! People here have done so much to make us feel welcome. A la prochaine.