Dear Friends and Family,

It always feels good to come home — especially in Togo, where travel is unsteady, long, cramped, and hot. But I am a creature of movement; an observer who loves new sensations. The past few weeks have been full of movement. I feel refreshed and energized, even if a journey is always sandwiched by travel days. I feel more attentive and productive during my days at site when I know I will leave again. 

The week I was home between my two Pagala Training Center trips was nicely busy. I gathered final community documents for my grant application, distributed trees, and discussed future plans. I promised I’d be home in time for Evala, the coming of age ceremonies in mid-July. 

I went to Pagala for a week in my role as Peace Corps Volunteer Technical Trainer. For big group sessions I and the other PCV technical trainers, Alanna and Marissa, acted a bit like T.A.s, but took a stronger lead while sharing our experiences or areas of expertise. During the technical sessions (that means sessions specific to each sector: agriculture, health, and education) we took on a larger role. For agriculture trainees, the focus of that week was on gardening and staple crop cultivation. I shared my gardening projects, some challenges I had faced gardening here, what I had learned, and then we got on to the fun practical stuff of actually gardening! Marceline, the agriculture program’s technical assistant, directed the process and showed them all kinds of techniques. Marceline is a real craftsperson: he knows precisely how to use his hands and the tools (daba, machete, and hoe) to shape the land exactly as he wants. Trainees watched closely and then jumped to the work. Practically a whole garden was created in a day: fencing, a bed of tomato seedlings, a bed of directly-sown okra, and a nursery bed of chiles, ademe, lettuce, and gboma (a sort of African spinach).   

The next day, we visited a local gardener’s commercial-scale garden and discussed with him how they have managed a large-scale operation, organic versus chemical products for fertilizer and pest-management, and the different sorts of garden promotion volunteers could work on. For a nice end to the week, trainees had the chance to learn how Togolese build mounds for yams and cassava and how they hoe grain rows and sow seeds. I acted as translator throughout all the technical sessions. Translating took a lot of energy and concentration to leap between languages. Several times I forgot if I was in French or English. But I am glad I was there to play that role. Marceline and the local gardeners and farmers we worked with are great teachers and resources, but they don’t speak English and the trainees are just beginning to learn French. By acting as translator, the trainees got exposed to that local knowledge earlier than if they had to wait for their language skills to develop more. Perhaps when I’m back at the end of the summer the trainees will all be so strong in French they’ll hardly need me. 

The week before training and the week at Pagala were my big work pushes before taking my first vacation in six months. Since spending Christmas in Kpalime, I hadn’t taken off more than a night away from site. There’s no off days while at your site as a volunteer, so while a vacation every six months might sound pretty luxurious, there have been no real weekends. My last night in Pagala, I made a last push and submitted my grant application to Peace Corps’ Head Quarters. I am applying for a grant to provide a deep water pump and materials needed to start a community garden in the Koukoude neighborhood of my site. This is not a traditional grant: much of the money will need to be fundraised by my “network” and what’s not raised might be supplemented in other ways by Peace Corps HQ and Peace Corps Togo. The grant process has not been convoluted from the beginning, and now the specter of now having to raise most of the money myself (which was not clear as a requirement until very recently) is stressful. 

But I believe, if its accepted and I can raise the money, that the impact of clean, nearby water, and fresh vegetables and fruit would have an enormously positive impact on my friends and community here. So the stress will all be worth it (if it works). For now, I have the satisfaction of having completed a project. Marissa stayed up with me and — after I dramatically hit the “submit” button — we went and got a very cold beer to celebrate. 

From Pagala I was off to Accra, Ghana! I calculated it and I believe Ghana is my 21st country I have visited (if you count the French Antilles as separate from mainland France). So I celebrated the start of my 27th year in my 21st country — has a nice ring to it! Perhaps I should squeeze in six more and have a nice 28th country visit for my 28th birthday next year.

 Jane, my travel buddy and fellow PCV, and I explored Accra largely on foot by wandering through a wide variety of neighborhoods, visiting historic sites, watching fishermen from atop an old fort, taking in the filled-to-the-brim Makola market. We went out to a jazz bar and got to pop into a couple of art galleries and the national museum. We treated ourselves to some fancy restaurant meals and tested out the Ghanian street food (although there’s so much more left to taste!). In the middle we had a relaxing beach day, complete with ice cream. It was great to be at a hostel again and having lots of conversation with people from all over the world, on all sorts of journeys. Ghana had a different energy than Togo, a bit more chilled out. It almost seemed more relaxed because it’s more spread out than cities in Togo, although there are denser neighborhoods. The fishing port reminded me a bit of the beaches in Dakar. But the Jamestown fishing area in Accra was squeezed in between the homes of that condense old neighborhood. 

The history of the city is painful, as most cities along West Africa’s coast are. Accra was a port city with forts (sometimes called “castles”) of various European powers along the coast. Although some of these started as posts trading in gold and other commodities, they soon became slave ports. Britain took over each of these forts from its European neighbors until they ruled and colonized all of Ghana. When the slave trade was abolished the forts turned into prisons and several reminded prisons through decolonization and many years into the independent state. Prison conditions improved after Ghana’s independence (for example 20 instead of 50 prisoners in a cell, and a barred window instead of four-inch slits for ventilation). It was a long process until the prisons were closed and prisoners were transferred to a prison outside the city. The sites were turned into tourist historical sites. Ussher Fort paused its tourism use for a period when it held Sudanese refugees until a camp was built — the refugees’ drawings and writings lined the walls, alongside older markings. 

When, years ago, I visited Île de Gorée off the coast of Dakar, the tour of the slave castles was a painful, evocative experience. But when we stepped out into the bright light of day, the rest of Gorée was a tourist town. Beyond the slave castles, the rest of the colonial buildings were meant to be charming, colorful things, filled with knickknack shops. I remember feeling extremely disorientated. I couldn’t switch my myself into a relaxed mode to swim in the sea and have lunch by the water. There wasn’t this sharp contrast in Accra. Our tour guides, especially for Ussher Fort, explained the history clearly and, when asked, in detail. The guide said he holds back on sharing too much with visitors unless they seem prepared because no one can handle knowing all of the pain that has passed in that. Stepping outside the Ussher Fort or James Fort you are met not with tourist traps but with every day life, you are in the midst of a neighborhood. The neighborhood is old as the forts but the people are the people of today: living their lives, playing music on speakers outside of food stands, filling up market stalls, hanging out laundry, standing by buildings with murals and brightly painted walls. The experience of being in that space where horrible things happened still requires time to process, especially seeing two versions of the same kind of space two days in a row. But I found it easier to process by walking through a bright living neighborhood, rather than stepping out on to a tourist beach and commercialized town as I had in Gorée. 

The forts are deteriorating, wearing away with the salty wind from the Atlantic and simple time. Jane found it fitting — yes, encourage people to see these places, to know these histories, but let the places of pain begin to crumble. I think I agree. But the forts have recently been made UNESCO World Heritage sites. I am curious what the plans look like for preserving the structures: will things get rebuilt? Will they preserved as is, so long as its structurally sound? I’m curious about how these projects work, how do people choose what parts of the past to represent in what physical forms? The whole city had my historical brain buzzing and my artist brain biting at the reins too.

The journey home was long but with some good stops along the way. After one last night in Accra, we got on the road later than planned but in good, if sleepy, spirits. We took a more northern border crossing. The border post seemed like a Hollywood version of African border crossing, a bit more “in the bush” and with some guards very curious about why some American girls had chosen this route. The Lome border crossing, in contrast, was practically a bustling market with a bus terminal thrown in. All went well enough exiting Ghana. The frontier marked the end of decent roads and as we swung around muddy potholes through the forest in a crammed, falling apart taxi, Jane and I knew we were heading home. The thought of pizza in Kpalime kept us sane — even as we had to wait for the Togolese border control to go back and stamp our passports (they had forgotten to do that despite examining every inch of our visas and putting our names in a huge register). 

When we left Kpalime the next morning, our taxi broke down half a mile outside the station. The belt in the engine had snapped. The worst part? As the car started to make a horrible thwunk thwunk thwunk the Chauffer reached over to the glove compartment to pull out a new (or at least unbroken) belt. So he knew, and yet he still filled the car the brim and started out the journey. The transport got progressively worse and slower as we climbed north. But when the final quinze-place (my third vehicle of the day) crawled to a stop outside of Peachey’s village, Peachey was waiting for me and at her feet Zorro patiently sitting and watching for me. He had had a vacation of his own with Beans, Peachey’s puppy. So a warm welcome back to the Kara region with a friend, two pups, and good food. 

I got to spend Saturday seeing Peachey’s market with her and Lea. I picked up my groceries and ate at their favorite fufu stand. I also indulged in a bit more fabric — who can resist? With Zorro in hand we made our last journey north to my market town by taxi and then on motorcycle off to my own little village. (I should say, although travel is difficult and haphazard here, it does show an inventiveness, people’s creativity in always finding a way to get there.) I got home in good time to sweep out the house, unpack a bit, shower off the road dust and sweat, and then go out and greet some friends. The greetings and visits have continued today. While I worked in my garden (two weeks of weeds!) plenty of friendly voices called out to me. It was pizza in Kpalime that kept me going on that rough road from the border. But it was the excited cheerful voices of my family in village on the other end of my phone calls that kept me going on the long journey north. 

I hope everyone is enjoying the start of July. I heard there were some strong heat waves across the northern US — it may even have been cooler here some days than there! So I hope everyone is finding ways to keep cool and stay healthy. 

Missing everyone and sending love,

Janet