If you ever want to get into the habit of daily sweeping, daily cleaning, move to the tropics. Dust, puddles, insects, odd smells, and weaving spiders work faster here than anywhere else. Throw in a puppy with sandy paws and shedding fur for good measure. 

If you ever want to throw your sense of the pace of a year off, move from a land of four seasons to the tropics. If you want to realign your sense of how the hours pass in a day, if you want to align your body’s clock to that of the earth’s, it’s a good idea to move to a little rural community comfortably nestled just north of the equator. 

Every day, I wake up as the world begins to brighten. I lift my mosquito net’s tucked-in edges out of the bed frame. This is Zorro’s cue to stand up from his bed, arch his back, perform a perfect downward dog, and start wiggling towards me. Often, he serenades me with a good “aaawoooouuu!” I sit on the edge of my bed and he gets a good scratch behind the ears. Once I’ve stretched my spine this way and that, Zorro usually gets a morning belly rub as well. What a life he has. My days start with throwing open the windows and door, letting the sunlight and breeze in. Only in Senegal and Togo have I been guaranteed of spending part of my day outside — thanks be to the outdoor latrine. A funny way to be guaranteed my daily vitamin D, but I’m grateful for it. 

I put the coffee on, give Zorro his kibble, and begin sweeping the house. Once I turn the flame off and let the coffee finish up, I do my morning yoga. The middle of my days do not have a routine. The seasonal aspect of my work and the variety of projects I have means I’m free to allow each day to be anything — free to take it easy or work like mad. But my mornings and evenings do hold routine: a routine of opening up myself and the house to the outside, and closing down the fortress at night. At night, Zorro gets his final belly rub, I set my kindle and flashlight glowing and tuck myself securely into my mosquito net, keeping what critters there are away. 

September Third marks one year I have lived in my village. As I came up to this bend in my two year cycle, I kept anticipating some great emotional feeling would arrive. When the day came, I simply felt comfortable and content. I have my routines and I have new things developing. When the balance is just right between the two, I don’t think you can ask for anything more out of life. I’m looking forward now to events I know will come: big corn harvest days, sitting with women as we take kernels off corn, the sight of sorghum and millet climbing higher and higher to the sky, the long season of festivities starting in the new year and continuing through March. I will hang on to appreciating the greenery and seeing the mountains circling my village now that I know what Harmattan dust will make disappear. I’m looking forward to new things: travel plans and the enjoyment of returning home after each of them, replanting much of my garden, running school clubs, and developing larger projects with friends here. 

Over the last year, there have been challenges and frustrations. (Of course, some current ones too). But I’ve got my sea legs now. I feel calm and alert. I know to get there I’ve had to let go of certain expectations, certain self-imposed pressures. Recently, the indomitable Kaitlyn Hepp told me, “yes of course two years seems like a good amount of time for a project, if you know what you’re going to do. But if you have to learn everything and make a plan and do the thing in two years, then it’s no time at all.” Of course, Kaitlyn is right. Her words put new light on a thought I’ve had swirling in my head all summer: since I came in as a novice, everything I’ve done is an accomplishment, I’ve only made progress. So why do I not feel accomplished? Why do I not feel a sense of progress? I struggle to actually measure my work and experience here. A legitimate and respectable zero is somehow difficult to measure from.  The question has not weighed heavily on me since my conversation with Kaitlyn, but the puzzle remains..

This one-year anniversary coincided with tying the final ribbon on a couple of events and stretching my connections further. After a summer of traveling back and forth to the training center, I cheered on and waved off the new cohort as they swore into service. I ate well in the capital and even took a small beach weekend. As always, I felt better by the ocean. Also in Lome, I attended a meeting to pilot a program of matching Togo’s national volunteer organization with Peace Corps’ volunteers. After this excursion into what I call Peace Corps Officialdom and Officedom, I was happy to return to my site and the flow of life here. It’s quieter and more direct, no officialese to speak, just Kabye. After a few days, Jane came to my village for a weekend visit. Touring her around my village showed me how many people I know, and how much I’ve learned of the land. This dry season, I discovered new foot paths and marked out the geography of my town. We walked a big loop up to the school, over through the Koukoude and Kpedah neighborhoods and down back home. 

The day before, Emily, the previous volunteer at my site, and I were able to find a time to video call. With her on the line, I walked over to Maman and said I had a surprise. It was a beautiful thing to hand my phone to her and see her realize with such joy who she was seeing and talking to. Emily spent about as much time in this village as I did in Ibel, Senegal. The Covid-19 outbreak cut short everyone’s service. I cannot imagine the pain of that sudden departure. I can hardly remember my spiral of emotions as Covid spun my own life around. But I have a sense of that length of time in a place: long enough to romanticize, then be challenged, and finally find your footing — to feel on the cusp of beginning to really know what you’re doing. It makes me happy to lend a hand in reforming connections. I know I would appreciate the same for Senegal.

During college, I once tried to describe the pain of being connected but not present with my family in Senegal. We shared this intense period together, but now my world was barely describable to them, and my experience with them was hardly describable to the people I lived with. I said it was like my heart was a piece of sticky puddy spread way way too thin, pulled all the way from Oregon to Africa. It’s fragile but unbreakable stuff, even if you try to move it, it will always get stuck somewhere. 

Touring my friend around town, seeing new volunteers off on their beginning, Emily’s call, and my one year anniversary at site all came together in a few days. I’m left thinking of connections, relationships, space, and time. I feel myself more the architect of my connections than I did in my silly puddy heart days. I can make those cords of stronger, more controllable substances.  

How to measure two years? How to tell their story? Is it by accomplishments, by connections, or something I still cannot name? I’m not sure. But here’s a thing that’s different in my Togo experience:  I believe I am more actively telling the story as I go than I have for other experiences. I am making a point to choose the cords and weave the connections. More than that, I am not setting aside these two years into their own canyon of experience. I am enjoying tugging on connections new and old. Maman has waved to my family on Skype. Jacobo has lingered drawing on the chalkboard as I write these blog posts. I am here long enough to write and rewrite the stories of myself and what I experience. What a pleasure. What a gift. 

I am enjoying my repetitions and anniversaries: the floor is cleanly swept and the day is starting again. I have coffee in hand with a clear head, and the time to write. 

– Janet Sebastian-Coleman

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please enjoy an ecclectic mix of recent photos.