May 15, 2024

Dear Friends and Family,

I’m writing this under the mango trees in the center of the chief’s compounds. There’s four of five mangos clustered together, dangling above me, just turning pink. A heavy cloud stretches under the line of branches and fruit; the cloud seems to be moving towards my house across the way. But there’s a streak of bright blue sky underneath it. Soon, it could pour buckets, or it could all blow away. 

We’ve had three nights and mornings of rain this week. The ground has turned soft and dark. People have set to work clearing fields, piling brush, and hoeing rows for corn. The end of Harmattan brought back the mountains — the blue ridges surrounding my village are crisp and bright and present again. Now the rain is shifting the landscape once more: encouraging people to begin changing the landscape to their own purposes. My mountains will soon be hidden again, this time behind millet, sorghum, and corn stalks. They’ll tower higher and higher over the next half-year until they’re all chopped down again. 

I’m tilting back towards the beginning too. A month from now will mark a year in Togo, come September it will be a year in my village, in my own little house. The land is returning to how we first saw it as we drove up from Lomé to our training center. I’ll be seeing it all with new eyes. For one, the mango trees do not seem far from my house at all now. When I first arrived at site, I mustered my bravery to leave my little yard and join the center of the home. Perhaps it was the few rows of corn and African sesame in between — or it was the strangeness of everything. Parts of the land will not be the same this year: there’s a garden outside my front door and there’s little dips in the yard where Zorro has dug his bed.

Lately, I’ve had to shift often between Official Peace Corps Americana mode and Village Life mode, and that tricky in-between Trying-To-Accomplish-Things-In-Village mode. I keep thinking: next month I’ll fully be in the zone and get x, y, and z done. But I’ve been saying that in one way or another for eleven months I think. The demands have increased so I am saying it more often now. (But it may also be that all through life I’ll be saying that.) I would say projects and life here are always “two steps forward, one step back” except that sounds like a nice rhythm you could learn to dance along to. I’m jumping forward and back, side to side, this way and that, all at different rates. You know how in Dune you “must not walk in rhythm” otherwise you’ll be a tasty treat for a monstrous sand-worm god creature? Well, I will not be eaten by a massive worm anytime soon.

All that jumping around is making me more agile and stronger mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. It also makes me tired. I’m planning some vacations when I hope to relax, reflect, and explore some new places. 

Part of the jumping around has come from a lot of time back and forth to Pagala Training Center. On top of our six-months at site training, I had another training to prepare for being a trainer for the incoming group of trainees. This training included everyone who is involved in pre-service training. So I got to see our language tutors, the drivers, the full kitchen staff, and the rest of the team — it was lovely. I’m looking forward to spending a couple of weeks this summer with the trainees and reconnecting with the folks who were such a key part of our first three months in country. 

The incoming group is a bit smaller than ours, the exact numbers might shift as everyone has to be medically and legally cleared. I won’t have any new neighbors up north, which is too bad. But I’ll get to know the trainees at their training and it’s a small country, we’ll all be in touch. Some of the second-year volunteers have begun to leave (you can finish out within your last three months if you have a job or school offer waiting for you). So our social landscape is changing as well. We are all tied together for life now through this experience — but it is all shifting. 

After training to be a trainer, I stayed on at Pagala for another five days to paint a mural. My design was selected for the Welcome Wall Fresco. With some help from friends we painted all day every day. It was a good amount of work. The kitchen and maintenance staff told us “bon travail” and “courage” many times as they walked by. All things considered though, I got three meals a day plus snacks (that I did not have to cook), got to paint all day, and had a cold beer and conversation with friends to look forward to after dinner — it was quite the luxury. There were a few challenges and I learned what it means to lead this sort of project. From a technical skills stand point, I had never worked on a project this large before (other than assisting in some backdrops for theater with Dad). We all left thinking about potential murals in our own communities. Sue made a great little montage video of the work, it’s on Peace Corps Togo’s social media pages. 

Back in village, Katja and I are continuing our “Tchilalo Chats” promoting health for Agriculture, Agriculture for Health. This month it’s Vitamin A — one of the most serious vitamin deficiency worldwide but one that can be met with a lot of crops here, or versions of them at least. If all goes well with Vitamin A in May (and likely June as well since I have not had a lot of contact yet), then I hope to have a little field school to show folks how to grow orange sweet potato (the local sweet potato is white and lacks vitamin A) and share the vines and starter tubers with whoever is interested. I’m not quite reaching my target audience nor the number of people I would like to. So I’m developing new strategies. 

During a reunion call with Returned Volunteers and other members of the Peace Corps Togo community, I was very inspired to hear the story of a volunteer in the 1980s who rode his bicycle around to surrounding villages to organize a series of trainings. He would show up, ask to see the chief, propose his idea, discuss, and then beg for a spot to sleep and something to eat for the night. After low turnout for the Tchilalo Chat on Iodine last month, I toured my tutor’s neighborhood with my salt testing kit and talked to every household I could before dark. Going to the people works far better than asking the people to come to you. Just a bit of bravery, allies, and organization is needed to. I’m learning as I go. 

Gardening continues; I’m working on a second installment of my Gardening Journal. The garden at the middle school as off to a good start. Students were happy to be out of doors and enjoyed looking at all the different types of seeds. A couple of weeks ago the water pump at the school broke. A few scraggly tomatoes have held on. Watermelon seems to still be sprouting. Okra and Ademe (both local crops) seem just fine. And the basil is doing about as well as the tomatoes. Everything else is dead. 

On planting day, I did not had a good control of the class (I rarely do). With seventy plus enthusiastic middle schoolers, we suddenly went beyond a few nursery beds to planting every seed I had, almost everywhere with no record. I had planned a nursery day and then a carrot, beet, and onion day. But it all went in the ground. It was a good learning moment for me; but a poor teaching moment. And now most is dead. It’s a disappointment to myself and my students. But with the last few days of train I have attempted transplanting a few tomatoes, basil, and okra. The little plants that are carrying on are a good learning moment for students and me. I told them to pray for rain in whatever way they like.

As I come up on a year, on beginning the cycle again, I am taking on a big question. I would love, dear family and friends, your thoughts on it and perhaps suggestions for books, thinkers, spiritual practices, music, anything to help think throughout. The question: how does one consistently and consciously live a life in service to others? More specifically: How do you pursue this way of being without running yourself dry, exhausting yourself? Where can you pull energy from and store it?

I ask because, as I wrote, I’m feeling the fatigue. This sand-worm avoidant pace without rhythm is wearing. Despite the challenges I face, I work to remind myself that this work is not about me, it’s about being in service to others. I cannot take things not working as personal insults, or a judgement on me, but as another step in the process. There’s all sorts of specific Peace Corps goals and program goals. But my overarching goal is to be a useful kind, and helpful person. The peace corps’ goals aid in the specific actions I could take. 

But that outward focus, jumping over roots and scrambling up rocks is tiring. At some point I trip. Last week, I went beyond annoyed, beyond frustrated, beyond grumpy, to actually well and truly angry. What about? I’m not entirely sure. I know where annoyance began in part, but how did it become this feeling? I am rarely angry, and more so rarely angry without a target. This was a diffuse, directionless, but powerful feeling. I holed up in my house, read a bunch, slept even more, and felt a bit better for it. But I felt like a scab that’s pulled the skin tight, I could pick at it at anytime and feel the emotion pour out like blood and pus again, or I could be patient and wait for my scar. I felt better but I wasn’t “healed” and it feels like only a matter of time before I’m hit with unfamiliar feelings again. 

As I come round this bend in June, how do I continue to be in service? What does it mean to all of you, to be in service to others?

Love,

J

P.S. I’m sending this now on May 23rd because my electricity situation is becoming all the more limited. But I’ve been able to charge up now. The fatigue is still here. But I’ve already received one book recommendation (Mountains beyond Mountains) that I hope will help me wrestle with the Big Questions. Looking forward to hearing more from all of you. Sending hugs all around.