Dear Family and Friends,

I hope you’re all in good health and enjoying the start of summer (if you’re well into the Northern Hemisphere). Here in Togo we’re praying for rain and the cool breezes it brings. More importantly, the growing season rain brings. According to friends in village, the corn was already planted and nearly knee high at this time last year This week we had three days of heavy full clouds that never broke. I swear I could feel the atmospheric pressure in my bones and it was giving me a headache. 

Yesterday was the day of joy: the clouds rolled in, hung there, and then the wind obliged to shake the trees and call the rain down. I locked myself inside (along with the pup Zorro) and stared up at the tin roof expectantly. Rain came in staggered bursts — each cloud was beating out its own rhythm. Eventually great waves of it came down, thoroughly soaking the ground and filling basins left under the eaves. 

After a good soak, the afternoon was filled with cold sea-breeze rain. I rode my bike up to the school enjoying the crisp cold on my skin. Zorro, running alongside me, did not seem quite as charmed. The people were happy though. My troisième students came to our review session damp but uncomplaining. After, I rode down to my tailor’s house. She took my order, then bundled up and happily headed out to the fields to plant corn. Her husband, my work partner Monsieur Tchangani, has been steadily hoeing rows the past couple of weeks to prepare for the moment when rain will be steady. All around, people were breaking and turning the ground over. At last, at last, seemed to be cheered on the cool breeze. (Let us hope it stays). 

When I returned home, I did as the Romans (Kabye) do and cleared a patch of land for orange sweet potatos and watermelon. Marcel, a host cousin and fellow gardener came by to help shape the sweet potato mounds. I have always loved to see people work their skills. Here the skills are often unfamiliar, so the more fascinating: steady and straight lines hoed, the dig and flip of forming mounds, my tailor’s quick and precise finishing stitches, even just the manner people gather every last loosened weed with their fingers. It makes me wish I could show people how I knead out pasta dough or write these posts, to pay them back for all the observations I’ve made of them. 

~~~

Sometimes, I think calling my site placement “my community” is quite aspirational. The largest emotional challenge here is loneliness. I have only recently named this for what it is; naming it has helped in beginning to understand it better.  I am blessed to be in contact with friends and family the world over, other volunteers, and to have nice people around me in village. But there’s a certain security in being part of a community that you are also physically present with — and I lack that here. The people I am closest too, those that bring me comfort just by being nearby, are elsewhere. I am in a stretched out state, instead of being snuggly woven into a community. 

But the universe can gift us nice surprises even in a stretched out, loosely woven state. The past couple of weeks have been filled with movement and decision making. This left me a little afloat. Coming home felt good, I felt I could rest and destress with several tasks complete. The morning after I got back from traveling to the capitol Lomé, I was greeted in Kabye at the water pump by a neighbor. She greeted me for me, not out of social obligation, but because she was saying hello to me specifically. It was a breath of fresh air after negotiations with taximen and the noise of Lomé. A day or so later, Monsieur Takougnandi stopped by to see if I had arrived safely. He was very concerned about how high the grass was growing around my house (snakes could hide there). In the afternoon he came back with his nephew and cleared my yard. (I assisted with the hoe for a while, then recognizing the advanced skills of my friends, changed to raking duty). To me, it was incredibly kind; to him, I believe, it was simply what he should do as one of my three or four Togolese dad-figures. Marcel took on my orange Sweet Potato project with ease and competence, and stayed until sunset just to tidy things up and make the yard look nice. 

I am inevitably always some kind of outsider here. (And unlike Martinique, outsiders are thin on the ground. Diversity is limited and thus I stand out all the more.) But, I am far far less of a stranger in my little village than I am anywhere else in this country. Here, I have a place and an identity even if myself and my community are not quite sure what it is yet. 

~~~

As I look ahead to June, there’s more movement and changes on the horizons. Trainees are arriving in less than two weeks! They’re probably packing now. Or laying on their bedroom floor next to a disheveled packed and unpacked suitcase. That also means second year volunteers are heading out for their next adventures. I got to see quite a few of their faces recently as they visited the northern regions for the first and last time. (In 2022 when they arrived, they were all placed along the high way further south in case there was a resurgence of covid and second evacuation). I will be back and forth to the training center in my roles as technical trainer and chairperson of the Services Improvement Committee. It will be busy but, I hope, fulfilling work. 

That’s all beyond the home though. In this very moment, I am excited for the bright yellow flowers and stretching tendrils of my first watermelon plant. I cannot wait to eat the reddest juiciest watermelon ever. I am also eager for the green beans almost ready to climb their pole. I am glad to be here long enough to experiment and change in my work, my relationships, and myself. I am grateful for the consistent presence of Zorro. (And, I am so proud that he now knows the command “sit” in addition to coming when I call.) I think Zorro is grateful I pet-sat for a friend which provided him a wrestling and racing friend for nearly two weeks. And I got a lot of joy out of watching them play. I’m preemptively grateful for the regular rain which will allow me to write and read more.

I appreciate the responses from my last post on my questions about service. Thank you. I will keep thinking about the responses, as I keep working through the Big Questions. 

Sending everyone a big hug,

J.