Janet goes places, sees things

Janet Irene Sebastian-Coleman

Artist, traveler, writer, historian.

June 7 – letter home

Dear Family & Friends,

I have just returned to village from Lomé. This past week was our Close of Service Conference. All of the volunteers who arrived in June 2023 gathered together for one last time. It was a time of goodbyes as we all head off in new directions, some of us as early as today. It’s tought to say goodbye to each other. And even sadder to prepare to say goodbye to Togo and all of our friends in village. But it is also an amazing thing to see everyone again and hear their stories of Togo. We also just got some time to have fun and relax together.

Before the trip to Lome I was keeping myself busy in town: wrapping up the school year, transplanting in the garden, helping Maman prepare palm nuts, spending an afternoon just relaxing with Tchangani and his wife, and passing out sweet potato vines.

It took a day and a half of travel to return to site so I will keep it brief today in order to go pay some visits this afternoon.

Wishing everyone the best,

Janet

P.S. My flight to the U.S. is July 2nd. I’ll be back and forth to the east coast. July 10-15th I will be in Oregon. I am in CT until July 22nd when I will fly to Colorado. From there I’ll pack up my stuff and drive to Virginia. If you’re in any of those places send me a message I’d love to see you!

My neighbor’s full day of work of preparing a field with a daba (a large hoe). The amount of labor it takes to grow food still amazes me.
Clouds again
An NGO for women’s empowerment visited the middle school and hosted a soccer match
The winning team celebrating 🙂
We had some fun doing a photoshoot at the end of an afternoon’s work at the Koukoude Community Garden
The uncle of my work partners for the community garden lives in Kara. He has invited me to come and see his garden for well over a year. I finally did visit! It’s huge and has irrigation lines throughout. The sweet potato vines I gave him are covering nearly a quarter of the space. He is standing to the left with his wife to the right in the final picture. Kapo (my moto driver) wanted his photo there too.
One last beer chez Jesus. This was Erin’s last visit to the Awandjelo market.The owner of Bar L’escale Jesus de Nazareth (to the right of Erin) has seen us nearly every week for two years. He always has a big smile and our favorite cold drinks for us.
Squeezed in and off to Lome (ft our gozem driver)! The four of us live pretty far north so we got to spend a day together before the conference in a southern city (at a hotel with a wonderful pool)
It’s Tabaski! The meat/animal market outside of Lome was chock full. Herders bring in huge sheep from the Sahel (like Burkina) as well
More of the future Eid feast
The agriculture crew, all cleaned up and all together
On the way to play soccer against US Embassy staff!

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