June 23, 2023

Today marks two weeks since I left Connecticut to head to Togo. On June 9th, Mom and Dad saw me off on the train to Philadelphia where I met up with the rest of the cohort. The weekend in Philly was a long stream of new faces and a long day in a hotel conference room reviewing Peace Corps policies and “reflecting”. I struggled through these semi-forced reflections in the fluorescent-lighted, white-walled space. For me, it was both too late and too early to reflect. My process of applying to Peace Corps, being invited to serve, and accepting has been stretched out over the last few years. And yet, it did not feel like it had truly begun yet. However, since arriving in Togo, I’ve been more naturally reflective. I hope through my journaling, this blog, and my other creative outlets, to reflect and process both this experience and previous experiences in my own way. 

We had a direct flight from Newark, New Jersey to Lome, Togo which took around ten hours. Peace Corps staff met us at our arrival gate (they had some kind of high level clearance) and guided us through the process. No baggage was lost and despite a chaotic immigration process, we all got our temporary visas. A success! We spent the first night at a hotel in Lome before traveling to our training center (about 5 hours north) the following day. 

The smells from the hotel kitchen and the lingering scent of incense in the hotel brought me memories of Senegal. The feeling of the night air was comfortingly familiar as well. I spent part of the evening on the hotel’s rooftop patio watching children play in the street, motos zoom by, and the sun set. Palms, baobabs, mango trees, and other trees marked the sky line. As we traveled north the following day, Togo unfolded itself as a verdant tropical land. Further north the hills began on the horizon. 

About a week in to training I began reading Tales from the Torrid Zone: Travels in the Deep Tropics by Alexander Frater. Frater writes of his addiction to tropical countries as its own sort of tropical disease:

We tropophiliacs are not bleeders or chokers, do not have fits and spasms. There is a fever, recurring after long periods of dormancy, but it’s all in the head and won’t kill you. Known as le coup de bambou, it’s a mild form of tropical madness for which, luckily there is no cure. 

As a child, Frater caught the virus for le coup de bambou and seems to happily embrace its every return. I don’t think I suffer from quite the same malady. But for the past six months, perhaps the past year, I’ve been thinking about the comfort of certain landscapes. I have an unfinished essay titled “A Return to the Mountains”that I began working on during my weekend in the Colorado Rockies this past November. I was too much in the middle of the return to write truly to capture the feeling. And each time I returned to finish it, the essay became a long tangled yarn. (Perhaps I will finally finish it if I am placed in the mountainous region. More likely it will continue winding on and remain unpublished). Here, I find myself returning to a familiar feeling of air, a pleasant mixture of trees from Martinique and Senegal, comforting kitchen smells and wood fires. I spent our drive to Pagala Training Center watching the country fly by. 

We arrived at the training center to lots of joy. Everyone welcomed us warmly and brought us in to a central pavilion with music blasting. Our training started with lots of dancing. (And we’ve kept dancing). Our training covers language, Togolese cultures, safety and security, health, and technical training for our sectors. On the weekends we stay with host families in nearby villages which is a great opportunity to begin easing in to our cultural immersion. The days have been very full — I’m often very ready for bed by dinnertime. But I can feel the value of all we’re learning and the value of the relationships I’m forming. I feel “the days are long but the years are short” will ring very true for this experience.

Next week, we’ll learn our site placements. I just began learning Kabiye, one the forty languages spoken in Togo, in addition to continuing to improve my French. So, knowing that I’m learning Kabiye, I have a bit of a clue of where I may end up. The Kabiye people are from the north of the country, but there’s also been a migration to the central region. Next week we will also begin focusing more on our technical training for agriculture. My group of fellow agriculture volunteers will visit a couple of local farms and begin our own test garden on the training center grounds. I’m excited to continue learning with my ag-volunteer group — and with our whole cohort. The vibes are positive, excited, and open. There’s an air of summer camp in our downtimes and even in the architecture of the training center. 

There is, of course, much more to say, but for the moment ça suffit.

Love from Togo,

Janet