Wednesday, November 23, 2011

partial post

The sky is a clear blue bowl that you look at through the haze of a smoky dive bar. The wind picked up. Finally. It kicks the heat around and beats it down to size through the compounds and under the shade. A lot of the trees are shedding. Teak leaves crumple and turn into brown sandpaper sheets. Neem leaves cascade into yellow showers that swirl in the gusts. Mango trees say "f*** you" to it all as they get ready to bloom-- their leaves staying a stubborn deep green. Bayobobs suddenly look like naked giants bearing pendulous green fruits. The landscape suddenly develops features close up but devolves into a brown blur in the distance as the grass and undergrowth dies. Vistas open up along the roads where there used to be green and brown tunnels. The dust takes on a life of its own; its this red-brown demon that works its way into the core of your life on the road. When you get home, its the grey gremlin that greets you at the door. Cotton fields vomit white and sorgham stalks bend low. Togolese wake up and wear long sleeves in the mornings. Its harmattan.

At least in the north. I just got back from Lome where I went to the swear-in festivities for the 2011 NRM/GEE stage and said goodbye to a lot of the Volunteers that they are replacing, like Karen. Before that, I went up to Dapaong to attend my stage's 1 year party. Only about half of us made it up there, but it was still a lot of fun. The northern most region of the country is beautiful. It was the first time I'd been up there.

It was a bittersweet week. Seeing people and meeting new Volunteers is always exciting, but its sad to see people leave, especially the ones who have formed an integral part of the first year of service. Chez Karen/Manoba is now chez Bryanna. Suddenly, if I have a question about something, there is no 'older' Volunteer to ask-- instead there are 'younger' Volunteers who might expect me to have all the answers. A paradigm switch in a week.

It was a fun week, but I am glad to be home. I like Lome-- I ate expensive (and delicious) seafood twice, Indian and pizza once each. I got a mint milkshake! And I enjoyed air conditioning at the Peace Bureau. But I hate the humidity and the dirt-- most of the streets are sand, so walking anywhere can be a hassle-- and dealing with expensive taxi drivers, etc. I was really glad to wake up on the bush taxi ride north and see the green of the south turning brown.

I just spent 2 days on motos touring the Bassar prefecture. We are starting a big pump replacement project that will, hopefully, replace 20 or so broken pumps in west Kara. More details to come on that.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

things

the other day i reached a new high, or low depending on your perspective, in my PC service. I didn't have any vash qui ri (a cheese-ish substance) or tabasco sauce-- the combination tastes sort of like how I image chedder cheese-- so i made myself a mayonnaise and chili sauce sandwich. It was edible.

i reached another point yesterday. i was in Dapaong, in northern togo, for a Volunteer get-together. I traveled from there to Kara. The next day from Kara to Bassar, then, yesterday, from Bassar to Lome. Through this i wore the same clothes, because traveling is really dusty this time of year. I could barely make myself touch my shirt long enough this morning to stuff it in the deepest recesses of my backpack.

togo.peacecorps.gov is our new website! actually its been around for awhile but i just found out about the address. you can read the publication that I help edit- Farm to Market, and find out all kinds of other fun stuff about life in Togo on it.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Night in Village

Nighttime in Nampoch is one of my favorite times. Unless I am mad because my laptop battery is dead or that I have to hold a flashlight to read a book or do crosswords. The past couple of nights have been a full, or nearly full, moon. There is usually enough light to see by, to cast shadows, but not enough to see if the thing moving in the weeds is a rope around a goats neck or a snake. A goat with an especially long rope once about gave me a heart attack.
Moon shadows are interesting. They outline everything in stark black. They wash out color and reduce the world to shades of gray, which might be more accurate anyway. Moonbeams reflect off dusty tin roofs and give thatch a silver shimmer.

The moonlight washes out most of the stars, but when there is no moon, the universe is laid out like a map in front of your face. I see stars and other stuff that I never knew you could see, like the International Space Station. One night I watched that soar over my head in a perfectly straight line. The other night I saw an ugly shooting star that burned up in two thick contrails, sort of like what I would imagine comes out of a dragon's snout, only in reverse.

Sometimes I sit out under the magic reseau mango tree and listen. I hear the distant thuds of girls pounding yams or maybe pepper in big wooden pestle as they make supper. There is always at least one dog yapping somewhere, and the sound of distant poultry in distress. Perceived or real, it all sounds the same. Children bawl. Last night I heard one kid off in the brush who screamed with all the rage in the world. There is the staticy hum of radio broadcasts from neighboring houses, or from my own. Music and world news 6 miles in the countryside. It is life in an audio clip.

hi stephen

Last monday, I had a goodbye party for Karen in Nampoch. Abby, Jen, Brandon, and Dani came. All my friends from village where there too. It was a lot of fun. We did a fetish ceremony to protect us against snakebite, and to ask for good luck for Karen. Then we went back to my house to hang out. Karen brought her guitar, so we sang songs while she played it. "One tin soldier," "Wagon Wheel," "Blowin' in the Wind," "Circle Game," "Hallelujah," that one song that goes "the lion sleeps tonight" in french, etc. We were surrounded by Togolese. Eventually we sang our respective national anthems. Later on, we ate a big dinner. Then someone brought a boom box and a stack of cassettes and we had an impromptu dance party. There must have been 60 kids in my compound, plus a lot of other people. We danced until midnight. It was amazing. It was one of the best nights I've had here. I like parties that take on a life of their own.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

happy tous saint day

its been awhile since i've updated my blog. i haven't felt like writing.

i am sitting on karen's porch. she is playing guitar and singing. Jen is reading a Joe Abercrombie novel. i am blogging.

i just got a togocell USB modem that makes this possible. it is really cool cause it connects over the cellular network. too bad i dont any togocell reseau in village. or electricity.

karen made some kind of soup today with butternut squash and carrots from my garden. it was delicious. i think it was like cream of butternut squash soup or something like that.

i also ate iguana, or some other comparable large lizard today. it tasted like a cross between pork and chicken. togolese love it.

i woke up one morning last week and staggered out of my my bedroom in my usual morning fog. i had to dance around the pieces of a bat that nigarmi left in the middle of my floor. he looked at me and went "meow."

the next morning i got outside before i saw anything weird. then it was little David beating a knife blade against a metal basin and cooing. until he saw me and started screaming.

Last week was post visit week. this is when new trainees leave training, or stage, and go spend a week at their new posts. This was kind of a bittersweet week. it's always really fun, if somewhat nerve wracking, to meet new people. but this means that karen has about 3 weeks before she leaves. Her replacement seems pretty cool. we had a post-visit party on friday night for the new people in west Kara. then, on saturday, we had a big party in Kara for all the new people in our region. it was a fun weekend.

Saturday was also really cool because the Guerin-Kouka girls football team went to play the Kara girls football team. Karen and i went to watch the match before the post-visit party. Kouka tied Kara 1-1! Kara scored in the first half, then Kouka scored the equalizer on what was easily the prettiest goal i've seen in girls football here. Kouka's goalie had several spectacular saves too.
It was really awesome because Kouka is out in the sticks of west Kara; they were easily the underdogs. The fact that they could come in and tie Kara is pretty cool and goes a long way to promoting girls football in the region.

it was cool enough that i forgave Kouka for beating Nampoch 1-0 on Wednesday in their warm-up match.

the weather here is changing. i noticed it when i got back up from Atakpame a couple weeks ago. the rains have stopped for the most part, to the detriment of my garden. there is a haze in the sky during the day now; everything looks dustier. it gets cold(er) at nights. the plants have that spicy smell they get when they are about done growing. everything is dustier now that the rains have stopped. harmattan is coming . . . and then hot season.