Tender Togolese Christmas...

Merry Belated Christmas Everybody! I tried to post something before, but really for most of you it's only been 7 hours since Christmas ended. I spent my Christmas in Vogan with 9 other volunteers and 3 friends of Ashley (volunteer who lives in Notse and most awesome human ever) visiting for the holiday. 13 of us total. Lucky little number 13. We ate a big meal of bean loaf (for the vegetarians), chicken (killed right outside the window where I was sleeping the morning of Christmas Eve...somehow I slept through it all), cucumber and tomato salad, whole wheat bread (made by me and my fabo Dutch Oven), mashed taters (garlicee goodness), garlic cream sauce, and for dessert-apple pie and cookies. We ate this meal Christmas Eve, so for Christmas Day we ate a big breakfast of pancakes, hashed browns and scrambled eggs with Swiss cheese. We then opened our Secret Santa gifts. I got some glorious gifts. A very small stretch black tank top with a Titanic film poster awkwardly placed on the front (it doesn't really fit over my belly), a Twix bar, a Snickers bar, and a personally colored My Little Pony picture. I left in a rush for Vogan (by way of Lome), so I forgot several things: butter (lesson learned, never make a pie with margarine, I made 2 apple pies, one with butter, one with margarine and there was a large diff), underwear (lesson learned, um...I like to wear underwear) and my camera (no memory-maker). My Christmas was surreal this year. Being that I was hot and had what I think are allergies due to Harmattan (dust storm coming from the north, desert), it was not quite the Christmas' of yore. Also, Christmas Eve night starting at dinner time and ending around 2 a.m. there was a church revival happening right across the street from us with singing and drums so loud that we could not hear ourselves talking at the table. It actually sounded like they were going insane and about to enter into an orgy, but alas, it was just the "spirit" for the lord. The singing was off-key and it seemed as though they were just allowing people off the street to belt out a tune on the mic that didn't necessarily need to correspond with the drum beat or rhythm in general. Ear plugs would have only turned the volume down to a 10 (b/c 11 is even higher). And the only Christmas music we had to listen to was by Amy Grant. I did find a MP3 CD of Celine Dion (has 104 songs, well 103 b/c they must have miscounted somewhere) at the local boutique, no Christmas music but it did have that song that goes like this (dedicated to her son, Renee!):

"...hush now, I see the light in the sky, oh, it's almost blinding me. I can't believe I've been touched by an angel with luh woo wah ooh uhv. Let the rain come down and wash away my tears..."

Love it. It also has her famous song, "Je t'aime! Je t'aime....something sung in French. Je t'aime..." Intense.

Alexia, do you think you can cover some Celine with any one of your 4 bands? I might be able to sell the CD's here and make some cash. A moto driver told me his aunt lives near me in the states. Whenk I asked him where, he told me it was the same place as where Celine Dion is from...No m'am. Celine Dion and I do not and will never share location. Spreading cultural exchange and good cheer everywhere.

I saw my first funeral this past weekend in my village. 4 day event. Loud speakers. Music. Dancing. The night before the burial, they stayed up and sang and danced all night. That was an ear plug night and I slept like a little baby. But, then the next morning after the burial, the people in my village had a drum circle and danced. I have video and pictures from that and I will post it next time I can. It was really beautiful and almost like a wedding because it was treated more like a fete. A celebration of life, if you will. And my village doubled in size because family and friends from Lome and even Ghana came in and stayed during the whole event (actually next door to me). When I go back I will hopefully have my front porch back and can burn some trash (yeyas!) and wash some clothes. Happy New Year everybody! I'm still not sure what I will be doing for that, but I'm sure it will be a story. Can someone please e-mail me a plot summary of the most current events occurring on General Hospital (and by someone, I mean, Maren...). Also, Lee thank you thank you again for taking my cats. Please send me an e-mail or something with your address, so I can write you a letter and also get an update on the critters. Miss you all so much! It hurts.

So now for some words.

So this is Natasha, a.k.a "Natcho". Isn't her dress lovely? I am wearing a boubou. This photo was taken on the front porch of the director's home for Thanksgiving. I wore this boubou because I knew I was going to need some space. I ate a wonderful meal of corn pudding, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, mac and cheese, green beans, salad, stuffing, rolls, pumpkin pie, apple pie, cool whip, and mashed sweet potatoes. I was really uncomfortable afterwards, so we took a walk around the director's block and had to take several pauses. But it was amazing and I hope everyone elses' Thanksgiving was awesome, too. Have I explained to everyone what fufu is? Or pate? No? I will try...

1. Fufu is a staple in Togo and is made from either cassava or manioc, yams, cocoyams or plaintains. The root vegetable is first chopped into large chunks and then boiled until soft. The chunks are then pounded using a very large wooden mortar and pestle. Pounding the fufu is very laborious but the end result is very delicious, for some. I think it tastes like pastey mashed potatoes. You eat it with your hands and dip it into a usually boiling tomato based sauce.

2. Pate is made from cornmeal and water that they stir together with a magic wooden wand until it forms into a paste that they place into a bowl to keep its form. Like a jello mold. I don't like it very much and I have never made it. It's also eaten with your hands and with a boiling sauce that always burns the tips of my digits. And then there is beans and gari and I love it and eat it every day with a spoon.

I don't really know if I can explain how I am feeling. Some days I feel good and excited to be here. The next minute though I am ready to go back home and work at Magpies and forget this rollercoaster. It would be so easy to leave. But, I still feel like something really special is going to reveal itself to me. A buried treasure. A strength I didn't know I had. I want to cry just writing this because I miss everyone so much. I looked at the Magpies website today and showed everyone the bakery I keep talking about. I also saw an old picture of myself icing a cake (a sheet cake which actually didn't look too bad considering my history with building those bitches). I looked pretty and healthy even though I ate a pound of cake tops a day. I know being here is going to change me and maybe I need to just let it happen. My 3 months of integrating and accustoming myself to village life is over. It's time to start working. I feel useless and uninspired. It's hot. I'm a whiney baby and I want to help, but I still am not quite sure of what my role is here. I'm treated differently and with more respect that I don't see given to all. It's going to be weird to come back home and just be me again and not the yovo living in the big house that makes a specactle of herself when she pounds fufu with the kids. I miss home, but it will pass. It will come back again. And so will I in 2 years. I'm sending out lots of love to all of you. Please forgive me for not keeping up with e-mails. But, letters are so much better because I can read them over and over again at home. I read Alexia's letter to me about 10 times the day I got it. And I've read Mama's and Peggy's and Andrea's letters weeks after I first got them. Peace out y'all. Hi Niko and Chelsea you sweet little morsels...Bye byee-lo (this is bye in Ewe, Ghanaian influence?)...

And more...

My first bike accident during AIDS ride. I had 2. Came away with just one really long scratch.
Me at the bee-ach in Lome.

Ahh...the kids are pretty tender here. But I have no idea who they are. They saw some yovo action and they came running.

These are my favorite kids in village. Akbedje and MaFille in the front. Marie and Edouard behind them. Cousin and Benjamin behind them. Morsels. Akbedje helps me pound fufu. Okay I've only done it twice and she pretty much did it for me after I tried to do it for only5 minutes and got tired. It's no wonder that the women here have amazing arms and bodies. She also carries water for me and makes fun of me when I stand around awkwardly at the well waiting for my turn to throw the bucket down the well and hoist it back up.

Finally more pictures...

Taken night before I left for D.C. and jumped on the crazy train

Right before I became a volunteer. That's my homologue at the far left, my program director in the white shirt and me at my brand new house. That's my front yard!

Which one looks chunkier? I got a crazy bug bite that made my ankle into a cankle.

The view from my front porch right before a big storm.

AIDS ride sensibilisation. This one is about abstinence. "No, I don't want your fancy phone in exchange for sex. I'm busy studying pictures of men brushing their teeth, aight?".

Pedalon pour la prevention!

Hey y'all. I'm in Lome with faster than scheisse internet again! Yes. I just finished doing the AIDS bike ride for the Maritime region. Considering this had been the third time I had been on a bike, it was not too shabby. We biked 157 km in 5 days and did HIV/AIDS sensibilisations in about 10 or so villages. I fell off my bike twice with very little injuries. I was in an abstinence skit (the ABCD's of prevention: Abstinence, Bonne Fidelite (ie monogamy), Condom and Depistage (HIV test)) and also the stigmatisation skit where we asked people in the village if HIV was transmitted by sitting close to someon or eating fufu out of the same bowl with them...No! Anyhoo, the first day I wanted to ET (early termination y'all, I use this a lot) once again, but after that I had a great time. We spent the night in a dispensaire (walk-in clinic) one night where a woman was giving birth and where another woman was giving birth and crying in extra pain because she had been stung by a scorpion. Needless to say, I didn't sleep that much during the whole trip. We spent another night sleeping outside of a dispensaire on straw mats (pretty to wake up in the middle of the night to a clear sky of stars) as kids were staring at us on top of the wall surrounding the compound. I ate on this trip about 5 coconuts, 30+ bananas, 25 oranges and the mother load of street food which was rice and beans with gari (toasted and powdered manioc) and some hot ass piment sauce (my favorite food here so far, can eat it every day and i do). It was a great thing to do for me because it helped me actually see a sensibilsation done in French and Ewe and I also am now inspired to ride my bike more and possibly do more bike tours. It was also nice to be outside of my village and see other villages in the Maritime region. We started the tour in Assahoun and ended in Anecho. Our last sensibilsation was a big to do at the CEG (middle school) and the assistant to the U.S. Ambassador in Togo attended with his wife. This time I got to act in the condom skit. We used a large wooden penis to demonstrate how to properly put on a condom. It always got a pretty nice laugh. We also played a game where we tried to explain how HIV attacks the immune system using a lion and elephant metaphor. Baby elephant (the human body) is protected by it's elephant family (immune system) and HIV creates holes in the immune system that allows the lions (that represent other illnesses such as tuberculosis, diarrhea, etc) to attack the body. Pretty creative I thought and the crowd always loved it when we, the lions, came roaring out of the crowd to attack the volunteer from the crowd who was acting as the baby elephant.

This is a beautiful country and sometimes I would play my iPod as I would ride and it was really nice because then I wouldn't hear the yovo calling from the streets. But, in certain parts it was also nice to greet everyone walking on the street carrying large baskets of whatever from the nearby farms on their heads. Par example:

Me: Bon jour!
Them: Bon jouh! Efwa (are you fine in Ewe)?
Me: (screaming in the distance as I have just passed them) Eh! Mefo! (Yes, I am fine).
Them: (Laughter b/c anytime any volunteer speaks in Ewe it's funny, but I think it makes them very happy when we learn a little of the local language...but are they laughing at us or with us?).

And now I am in Lome taking it easy. I will leave for village tomorrow. Anytime I am in Lome I don't feel like I am in Togo because there is so much more available here. I am off to go to the grande marche (big market) to pick through the "dead yovo" clothes that the vendors spread out on large plastic sacks (dead yovo b/c a yovo would have to be dead to give up these awesome clothes--but they have just left them behind as I plan to do when I leave Togo--, sometimes I can find some pretty okay stuff). I bought some sunglasses yesterday that are Nicole Richie big except they have "gold" designs on the ear pieces that make them extra "coutoure"-ish. The vendor on the street told me they were the real thing. Has anyone ever heard of the brand "Feidi"? Pretty sure it's Fendi, aight?

I wish that there were a Fall here because it's so pretty and it's my favorite season. I saw a picture of Alexia wearing a sweater and a light jacket. I want to be cold. And wear socks. I feel like I have so much more to say, but it's sometimes very overwhelming to try to write about all of my experiences. I miss everyone. I'm doing Thanksgiving in Lome with the Country Director, so I am hoping there will be real Pumpkin Pie. Alrightee, off to go sweat in the hot heat. Peace out.

So the reason for the title below

29 October Monday
So, I was thinking that when the day comes when I am back in the states, I won't be so freakish to everyone. I won't be so fascinating to touch. My hair won't be so soft to other people and no child or adult woman will run their fingers through it. No one will find my armhair pretty. No one will restrict other people from visitng my compound. No one will think I am a big deal as they do in Agou Avedje. I have had 3 dreams where I leave Togo and in each of those dreams I regret leaving. I was evacuated in one because of the elections and I ET'ed (early terminated) in the other 2. So there, it's looking like I just might make the 2 years. I'm off to watch the sunset on the roof of one of the bars here in Atakpame. Happy Halloween everyone. I'm sad that I won't be home to celebrate because it is one of my favorite holidays along with Thanksgiving. Is that weird?

Xpovia Pola Baba! I'm sorry I missed talking to you on your birthday but sometimes the connections on Sundays truly blow. Xpovia Pola yia tin yiorti sou, xpovia pola yia tin yiorti sou...
And Biggie Smalls your birthday is also coming up this Thursday, so in case Togo does it to us again and your call doesn' get through on Wednesday (did you get my text message, I can't receive but i can give...erase those dirty dirty thoughts) at 5,30 pm your time, yes?

Okay, I'm okay and I hope everyone else is. I bought a mortar and pestle last week so I can now officially pound my own fufu. And I have tons more stories to tell, but that sun sets without me. So I will hopefully have more time in the near future to write them out. We have an AIDS bike ride next week, so I might be in Lome and able to use the fqster than scheisse internet. Love to all!

I'm kind of a big deal in my village

27 October 2007 Saturday night

Hello my lovely peeps. It's been a while, yes? So, I've been in village for almost 6 weeks. Definitely going better than when I was first dropped off. Today, I went to my friends village because she was having a birthday/father coming to visit her celebration. We pounded some fufu and since that whole process took 7 hours (including visiting her chief and visiting her dispensaire, which is a clinic for the village and touring her very large village), baby ate some chicken piment sauce because I was so freakin' hungry that not even the prospect of giardia could deter me from eating whatever was placed in front of me. And it was so good and her village was so nice. I did feel a little awkward eating outside while some of the kids looked at us because I knew that they wouldn't necessarily get a meal for dinner and whatever we didn't eat would be given to them later. So, now I'm a little tired, but I will leave you all with some stories. And Peggy if you are reading this... Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday sweet precious love Peggy, Happy Birthday to you!

Storytime:
My neighbor/moto driver/nightly visiter's name is Lolonyo, which means "love is good" in Ewe. He professes his love to me pretty much whenever we are alone and that happens to be when he has me on his moto or comes by to visit me. I was just told by the internet place to speed this thing up but here it is. He killed a scorpion for me which somehow crawled into my house and he also told me that god sent me to him because he wanted an older woman with small breasts. Got to go!