June 16, 2024

Dear Family and Friends,

Ça fait un an déjà! June twelfth marked one year in Togo. I am just shy of half-way through my service. I would like to have some revelation, some completed thoughts at this important juncture. But, alas, alack, June has started off on its sprint and I haven’t yet taken the time to reflect on a full year. Perhaps soon, perhaps in September when I mark one year in my village.  So what have I been so busy with (if not pondering the mysteries of the passage of Time)? I’ve been planting and planning, training vines and weaving connections. 

Classes came to a close suddenly. In the first few days of June, I was touched to have three troisième students visiting after dinner to review a copy of last year’s agriculture exam. It’s the kind of moment that makes me want to wear my teacher hat more often: students who want to learn, students who trust me enough to bring their questions right to my door, and the time to work through those questions together. They came by the following night to review for English too. Reviewing the exam alongside them, I was unnerved by the discrepancy between what a government exam will ask students to be capable of and what, in these conditions, students have had the opportunity to learn. 

I am thinking through how I want to participate in the school next year. If I continue teaching formal classes, I will be a more effective teacher after a year with the curriculum. I feel the urge to improve my own teaching skills. On the other hand, the curriculum, the structure of classes, scheduling, and issues with communication in the school often inhibited learning this past year. And, those issues with the school —in addition to simply preparing classes and teaching — has been an energy drain pulling me away from other projects in the community. I have considered switching to only clubs, so I have students who are truly interested in being there and more flexibility in how and what I teach. But I think there is also value in my students seeing a different style of teaching (and a different form of authority and leadership) within the classroom setting. I will probably spend the summer seesaw-ing back-and-forth on this decision. 

In the yard, sweet potatoes, green beans, and watermelon are stretching out their vines. I came back from a three-day trip to see a cute little watermelon nestled comfortably in my garden. I have loved watching the watermelons grow — the leaves are a wonderful shape, the flowers a wonderful shade of yellow, and its ability to move and take hold of a space is fascinating to watch. And soon I will eat them! 

My garden has stretched beyond its fenced in area to include sweet potato and even more watermelon mounds on the other side of the house. The sweet potatoes are an orange variety rich in Vitamin A. I’m growing them mostly as a nursery so I can collect the vines and share with community members. Once a few plots are growing, I plan to hold trainings on fortifying typical dishes with this good source of vitamins. Speaking of sharing plants, as part of Togo’s reforestation campaign, Peace Corps partnered with theMinistry of the Environment to distribute saplings to our communities. I have 550 saplings lined up against my house as I write. This week I’ll work on distributing them. I enjoy this style of helping out: growing something, sharing it with others while talking about its benefits. As my garden swells with hot peppers and basil, I’m gifting these sauce ingredients to every person I can. I have my own little tree nursery going and I plan on expanding it. I am also experimenting with saving seeds both from vegetables bought at market and my over abundance of basil plants. 

Within just the past week I have been able to reach backwards and forwards into the Peace Corps Togo Volunteers community. I met Camilla, an RPCV from 2018-2020. She was visiting her old village with her dad (he had planned to visit her in April 2020, and the trip was, of course, canceled due to Covid-19 and the Peace Corps worldwide evacuation). Camilla’s site was just up the road north from where I live. Katja, Peachey, and I met her at Hotel Kara for a pool day and a good long chat. So much can change in a few years, and so much can be the same. The 2022 cohort has always been helpful to our year, but it was great to feel this connection to a pre-Covid world of Peace Corps. Peace Corps has been in Togo for over 60 years, but that gap due to Covid has felt like a big chasm of knowledge loss and lack of cohesiveness. 

This Wednesday through Friday morning I spent back at good old Pagala Training Center where I met the new trainees! It was so energizing to meet these fourteen bright new additions to Peace Corps. They had just arrived on the tenth of June and were full to bursting with questions. Paul and Peachey arrived a couple hours after me, as the official question answerers (they are members of the Peer Support Network (PSN)). Zach followed in on Thursday for our meeting of the Services Improvement Committee. I think several trainees were happy to get his ear as an education volunteer after hearing from the three agriculture volunteers so much. It felt good to pass along some tips (such as: the language teachers are your rock during training and beyond, do your laundry before noon, the weirdest bugs of Togo will be found at Pagala, you are allowed (and definitely should) take walks in the neighborhood, in French you do not pronounce all the letters like you do in Spanish, etc.). It was great as well to have a chance to catch up with my friends and the staff members. I’m looking forward to seeing the trainees and all the training staff again when I return to help in gardening training in a couple of weeks. The trainees are (as we were) eager to learn and get to work. They want to know everything they can and be prepared to begin projects and helping folks out. The bright newness has worn off, but I still want the same: connections, purposeful work, and discovery. After meeting them, I feel reenergized to make connections anew in my village and dig in to my work. (Isn’t it amazing just how many common phrases are agricultural metaphors? This past year I’ve become hyper aware of every time I say “dig in,” “sow the seeds,” don’t count your chickens”).

I traveled back from Pagala with Peachey. Along the way, we stopped to pick up Beans, her puppy, from “Grandpa” Bill. Bill was a Peace Corps Volunteer way back, and after a life of travel and living abroad, with lots of return trips to Togo, he built himself a home in his host village and is now retired happily in Togo. His home is beautiful and includes a wonderful garden in-progress. Peachey and some of the other southern Kara and northern Centrale region folks had already met him, so it was nice to put a face to the name. He is someone who takes helping others as a natural course of the every day. He described taking in kids sick with AIDs and caring for them until they could travel to hospital or their parents found. As we sat there a few boys were sprawled on the floor playing Connect Four. One of them had a stye in his eye which Bill was keeping a watch on and giving eye drops for. He is also a lover of plants and is starting a whole orchard of tropical fruit trees. He brought one of the first Jack Fruit trees in to Togo. He has his own slice of paradise, and the peacefulness there was contagious.

I returned from Pagala on a Friday, so I stopped in my market town before heading home. It was one of those great market days where I kept bumping in to friends from the community. And, when I spoke a bit of Kabye, the friends-of-friends were surprised and delighted to hear it and asked who was I and how did I speak the language. And my community members told them all about it while I picked out my mangos and inspected the bell peppers. Students as well passing by and building up their energy to call out “Bonsoir Madame!” It just made me feel part of things and happy to be home.

Yesterday, as well, was a day of reforming connections. I attended Compassion International’s Day of the African Child celebration. This year’s theme was on the importance of education. Children made speeches, danced, and even performed a little skit about trying to pay for school fees. One of the girls perfectly acted out the stereotypical argument style and actions of adults here.  Her acting had the audience cracking up, she nailed it perfectly. I walked back with the Kpedah Quartier chief (after a stop for chouk at the market). We talked about education, traditions and religions, and the connections between Africa and the Americas. We looked over the garden and talked about watermelons once he had accompanied me all the way home. 

I’m grateful for this last week: meeting returned (returned in both directions, really) volunteers Camilla and Bill, the time to catch up friends on the other side of one year, the energy brought from new trainees and friendly faces of our language teachers and training staff. Most of all I’m grateful that the first couple of days after my short Pagala trip were filled with bumping in to friends at market, good conversation, and some good hours puttering around in the garden. The week prior, just the beginning of June, was tough. I was feeling (as I had felt through most of May), this heavy heavy fatigue. Physically and emotionally I was just plain tired, and one form of tiredness increases the other. 

I was already in this state when I learned of two deaths: the chief’s younger brother, and the following day, the death of my host mom’s brother. I knew the chief’s younger brother. He was fairly young. He was often around and served as the chief’s secretary for meetings. During January or February when there were lots of visitors I went to Katja’s town with him, the chief, and the chief’s childhood friends for a drink and lots of conversation. That’s probably when I got to know him best. Katja joined us that day, so at least she knew who I was talking about when I gave her the news. I hadn’t met Maman’s brother. But I didn’t need to to feel pain when I saw the pain on her face as she stopped by before leaving to her hometown once she got the news. 

It was shocking to hear this news. And painful to be in a house of grief. I was also afloat in the strangeness of being unsure what to do, unknowing about how things are done here. I did my best to be present and give my condolences. But things I would know how to do in the US are not easily translated. Burials and wakes are done in their own way here, and quickly after death. There was no line to stand in while wearing black and shaking hands. I could not bring over a casserole to pop in the oven or save in the freezer. There are no freezers, there are no ovens. I couldn’t take over any chores since these are all done in a particular way. And I still occupy guest-privilege, even after a year, so that I would be shooed away even if I tried. Really what ended up breaking my heart was feeling the full weight of the fact that here, there is no time and space to grieve and rest. The work must go on. Water must be pumped, lifted, and carried home. Meals must be made from scratch, over coals or a wood fire. The preparing of fields and planting of corn had just begun — someone will have to shoulder some of the burden of losing the brother, losing that extra set of hands to work. Maman had to quickly go home both to be with her family, but likely also to help her brother’s wife with the domestic duties. And running through all of this is my awareness of how quick and sudden these deaths were. This was not drawn out illness. The explanation I received was that the chief’s younger brother had complained of pain in his foot and then he had died. Was it an infection? Some kind of cancer? Are the two things related at all? I don’t know. I don’t know quite why its so troubling not to know. I think part of me wants to know if it had been preventable. There’s a lot of suffering in one part of the world that is preventable in another. 

So, I’m glad for the relief, the easing of burdens by creating new connections and strengthening old ones. The days are still long and the years are still short. Suffering and joy and connection all live together. And I’m just trying to take it all in and learn something along the way. 

Sending love,

J. 

P.S. Happy Father’s Day to my Dad (who is obviously the best Dad) and Grandpa (who is also — obviously — the best Grandpa)! And happy Father’s Day to all the other Dads out there, including my Togolese host fathers and Baaba in Senegal.