Dear Family and Friends,

I hope you all passed a warm and happy holiday season. Welcome to 2024!

I was able to spend both Thanksgiving and Christmas alongside side fellow-volunteers-turned-friends. And, after training and a little vacation, I am back home in my village, celebrating the New Year. The holiday season will continue here: January and February are the months when families host funerals for anyone who has passed away in the past year. It will mean extended family coming from all over the country (perhaps further too) and drumming and celebration to keep away bad spirits and help the person in to the next stage. I don’t yet know how it will all work or what the “meaning” behind things will be. But I’ll learn something soon enough!

For Thanksgiving Erin (“Fatima”) hosted us. I share a market town with her, so we’re fairly close. Most of the Kara region volunteers and a few friends from the north of the Centrale region were able to come. Peachey, ou bien Aïcha, brought a huge live turkey all the way from her village to Erin’s bedroom door (by way of a crowded “bush taxi”). Erin’s host mom made an “African Oven” for us: one enormous cauldron with a bit of water in it that held another slightly less enormous cauldron and lids on top. The bird went inside and cooked very well as logs kept getting fed in to the fire. Maman Fatima also took care of the killing and plucking of the bird, which I think we were all thankful for. Erin, Peachey, and I were all there early, so set to work on the rest of the feast. As more friends arrived there was more helping hands. It was a very joyful Togolese-style Thanksgiving. Erin and her host mom carved the turkey together, we toasted with sodabe (very powerful homemade liquor), and Erin’s host dad was practically giggling as we loaded more and more types of food on to one plate for him. A day for proving that the table can always be extended: we can always eat with, talk with, and pass time with another person. 

Thanksgiving chez Fatima was my first time spending an extended period in someone else’s village. I had visited Katja’s town on market days several times, but these visits lasted for just a few hours — arriving after lunch, some shopping, maybe a drink or snack, and hurrying home before sunset. These are a delightful few hours each time, but busy! And surrounded by even busier people at the market. While visiting Erin’s, we were the ones bringing the festive cheer and openness to a regular calm day. I got to visit some of her friends, eat with her host family, walk around her town, and hear some more Kotokoli – a local language different than the one I’m studying. It’s amazing to see what a variety of experiences we are all having and how unique each person’s site placement is. 

Early November was an emotional slump for me, although I didn’t realize it until I was out of it.  The week before Thanksgiving, I had a wonderfully reenergizing visit to Katja’s town followed by the fabulous Thanksgiving. Katja and Erin, each in their own way, are so good at charming people: chatting easily and laughing away. It’s inspiring to me — their happy relationships push me to be a little braver and reach out to people in my community a little more each time. Inspired and reenergized by friends and a very hearty meal, the slump was conquered. The good vibes of late November carried through to December.

Work picked up pace in early December. I finally had some introductory meetings that felt productive and a guarantee to continue work. I was also rushing to get some grades in the books for my students and prepare their exams before I left for our first In Service Training. And, with the aid of chicken manure, my tomato plants were shooting up like bean stalks. And my beans, for that matter were doing quite well. I started my front yard garden in late October. I wanted a project, a task to do every day; I wanted to learn about the conditions for gardening here; and I wanted something to talk to people about and show them. It’s worked. The garden has been a great conversation starter and folks seem intrigued about the possibilities here.

December sped by in a burst and suddenly it was the 11th and I was on a 7am bus headed south toward a Peace Corps training. December 11th marked six months in Togo in total, of which a little more than three months were spent at our permanent sites. I have now been in Togo for a length of time just shorter than my time in Senegal and my time in Martinique; I’ve been at site for a little longer than I studied abroad in Paris. There’s a lot to ponder there: time and memory are such strange flexible unwieldy things. 

The training was great! It was our first “In Service Training” and it will be our longest at ten-days long. The first week was with just volunteers and staff. We were able to reconnect, chat, visit our old host families, be fed six times a day instead of cooking for ourselves, and many more good things.  For the second week our work counterparts arrived and we focused on technical training and structured presentations about our villages and the opportunities and challenges there. It was great to meet everyone’s counterpart and to see the counterparts connecting with each other too. 

From the American side, perhaps you might think of Peace Corps’ work as essentially the collection of each Peace Corps Volunteers’ individual work. But we’re really nodes on a larger map of connections that makes up Peace Corps. We’re organizers and trainers, but also learners and people who need support. Our work would be meaningless (and likely non-existent) without all the work of our community members and Peace Corps staff. A little obvious once I’ve said it, but not something everyone thinks of. 

Early in pre-service training, staff talked to us about how Peace Corps Togo is an “inter-cultural space” rather than a “multi-cultural space.” At the time the distinction felt vague and the fuss over the distinction a bit jargon-y and corporate. But this training brought clarity to the idea of “inter-cultural space”: a place where cultures aren’t just calmly existing side-by-side but are rather interacting, shaping each other, and forming something new together. Before the training, I was honestly a bit nervous about the mixed crowd. Would we be striving to be painfully polite to one another, but essentially always separate? Would I feel free to be myself as I’m also thinking of my life and reputation in village? More than any particular problem, I feared  a long awkward, potentially tense week. 

But when I was feeling this worry, I wasn’t aware of my own three months of work. Day upon day of making sure I got out of my house a bit, that I greeted people, that I studied Kabye, that I strove to not just be polite to people but lay the groundwork for friendship. Nor was I aware of the work of my fellow volunteers and all our host villages. My good faith effort was shared on the part of the other eighteen volunteers in our cohort. More than that the whole crowd of counterparts, tutors, host families, and more who were also making an effort to make volunteers happy and comfortable — to try to understand, at least a little bit, who we are, why we are here.

During training, I was on solid familiar ground: I understood how things work during these kinds of events, I could joke more easily with other volunteers since we shared a lot of the same cultural background, so much happened in French or even English, rather than local languages..  My comfortability probably let my counterpart, Monsieur Tchangani, see me in new light. The structure of the event also let me get to know him better. Tchangani is very busy in village, but here we had down time to eat, play cards and ping pong, relax. I got to see him making friends with other counterparts and have conversations with him and other volunteers. One night a mixed crowd was playing cards and my counterpart was watching from the side lines. I won the game in a fairly dramatic sweep and Monsieur Tchangani stood up and cheered our town name and literally jumped for joy. I laughed to see him so free and happy. And felt my own pride rise up in feeling that I was representing our town, bringing home some kind of small glory. 

Training ended on December 22nd, so Jane, Sue, Paul, Zach, and I decided to travel together to Kpalimé to celebrate Christmas in a small friendly crowd. Kpalimé is the arts center of Togo, as well as at the heart of many waterfalls and hikes. We stayed at a nice eco-lodge-esque hotel complete with a pool and a perfect location to watch bats return to and leave their cave every dusk and dawn. We had some nice wanderings around town and restaurant meals, as well as just relaxing with cold drinks by the pool. On Christmas Eve we had an adventurous hike to the tallest waterfall in Togo. On Christmas morning Jane, Zach, and I went to a mass at the Kpalime Cathedral. We had excellent pizza with the whole group for lunch. On Christmas Eve and in the evening of Christmas we each stood in our little corner and called the folks back home. I’m very grateful for my internet access that allowed me to wave hello to everyone at my grandparents’ house. I’m equally grateful that when we all hung up we weren’t alone in an isolated little house, but were amongst friends and ready to eat dinner. Some time to relax a little out of the spotlight and out of a crowd, alongside some beautiful nature was what we were all craving.

On the way home I spent the night in Jane’s site so I wouldn’t have to travel at night (which is dangerous because of road conditions and other people’s antics). So now as a Christmas treat, I’ve seen three sites! And got to enjoy an afternoon greeting Jane’s friends and see her town. It feels enormous compared to mine — it’s population is 11,000, whereas mine is about 2,000. (One of the people at her site said my village isn’t a village, it’s a farm. Which was pretty funny and probably not too far off. Once again, just so interesting to see how each of us is living and what we’re making of it.  I made it home just in time for a couple of sleepy days before the New Year. 

I feel good tidings for the upcoming year. On New Year’s Eve I woke up early to help transplant seedlings from my nursery to my friend Kapo’s garden. By 7:30 am we had a bundle of tomato, eggplant, and basil plants in little plastic bags settled in front of him on the motorcycle and I swung on to the back, machete, hoe, and clipboard in hand. We had gathered a little crowd of onlookers outside my garden as I dug up plants, and at his garden a crowd of children soon found us. His garden is the first I can count as inspired in some way by my front yard plot. He’s set up an ambitious twenty-four plots with hopes of maybe a few others for lettuce. It felt great to start the day in such a productive satisfying way: plants in the ground, folks seeing me at my work, exchanging ideas with Kapo.

Here there’s a bit of celebration New Year’s Eve, but the holiday is really on New Year’s Day. It’s a time to make fufu, cook meat, cheer out “Bonne Année!”, visit everyone you know, and eat and drink with every person you visit and every person who visits you. (Jane and I were saying that the Kabiye may be able to give the Irish a run for their money when it comes to drinking — and that’s even before we’ve seen the funeral celebrations that are coming in February). Early this morning, the chief’s son came by with a big bottle of palm wine for me, just after I had changed in to my fancy clothes. So the day was off and rolling! I brought basil from my garden to the chief and Maman and thanked them for the gift. Then went to my counterpart’s house, checking on Kapo’s garden along the way. I gave some basil to my counterpart’s wife as well and spent the morning together with the family. In the afternoon I returned to my house and spent time with the Chief’s family. 

The party is meant to continue tomorrow. Even as I write this there is someone running around screaming “Bonne Année!” outside. Tomorrow is the celebration for the end of the harvest. There will be drums and dancing and more greetings and happiness. I haven’t seen it all yet, but I think I prefer this extended welcome to the New Year rather than a dramatic countdown to the end of one year followed by a sleepy first day of the next. Keep the party rolling, the good cheer coming, and the year is bound to turn out well. 

Sending joyous beginnings to your years,

Janet

p.s. Photos have been slow to upload, or have failed all together. The magic of an internet connection does have its limits. I hope to someday soon post photo collections because I do have some great shots of the thanksgiving spread and the wonderful waterfall that I would have loved to include.