Life in Togo

2007-08-22T08:17:00.001-07:00

We have reached the end of our African road.

After two years in Togo we’re ready to return home — filled with mixed emotions about leaving. We are full of Anticipation for our return home to family and friends, yet we are feeling Emptiness at leaving the friends and life we have made here. More than anything, our hearts are Full. Full of witnessing the strength of the human spirit in the face of extreme poverty.

We understand Africa a little better. But we still don’t understand why such a great disparity remains between the rich and the poor. The West’s development efforts of the last 50 years have made little progress to overcome the myriad of issues that keeps Africa in the poverty trap. But that is another conversation.

For now, we hope what we have shared with you has created a better understanding of the remarkable people, culture and life in Togo.

God’s blessings to you all.

The Togo Top Ten

2007-06-24T14:02:00.000-07:00

As we are getting ready to leave Togo in about a month, our thoughts are drawn to reflecting on what we have done in the last two years. So not to blow our own horn, but just to give you a better idea of where your tax dollars are going, we will list, in David Letterman style, our Togo Top Ten: (not counting experiences like eating fu-fu, doing the chicken dance, tolerating the heat, risking our lives on public transport and bonding with lots of great PC volunteers):

10. Stayed relatively healthy (in spite of living amongst malaria-carrying mosquitoes, rampant amoebas and 2 outbreaks of cholera in our town).

9. Served as Good Will Ambassadors for the USA and got to see some of Africa up close while learning there is no good recipe for Development.

8. Aided in publicizing and supporting a local Stilt Dancing Festival to help preserve traditional culture.

7. Served on the organizing committee of an annual 5-day Theater Festival for sensitizing the public on AIDS prevention and treatment, reaching 20,000 persons.

6. Facilitated courses in business and computer skills to small entrepreneurs. Created websites for four NGOs.

5. Learned enough French to communicate most of what we needed to say to survive for two years.

4. Authored grant proposals and oversaw funding sustaining two NGOs that work with people living with AIDS, including opening 2 Internet Cafes on their sites

3. Launched two “Village Savings and Loan” associations, enabling 50 entrepreneurial “market women” to save money, earn interest and make loans to themselves to improve their small businesses.

2. Shared with you the life and culture of Togo as we experienced it via our blog website and email and hosted six family member visitors.

1. Became endeared with the Togolese people, learned from them and their culture, and shared with them the life of two crazy old Americans.

We hope and assume we have made other small differences in ways we’ll never know. Perhaps they will end up being more significant than any of the above.

In the end we know that we will be taking back more than we have given. It has been a life-enhancing adventure and unforgettable journey and we have no regrets! We feel blessed to have had this opportunity with Peace Corps.

We’ll have one more email before we leave. Thanks for staying with us and having interest in our West African experience. We’ll soon be home!

School's Out

2007-06-13T23:03:00.000-07:00

School is out in Togo and we will miss seeing the students energetically walking to school in the mornings in their clean uniforms. Attached are a few student/school photos and a very brief description of the educational system here in Togo.

The system was organized by the French colonialists and is memory-based with rote skills mandated in contrast to the American system which focuses more on critical thinking and problem solving. Discipline is strong and students are respectful. Exams are taken every year to pass to the next level. Since not everyone passes, it is not uncommon to repeat a year which makes for a wide range of ages in the high schools. Normal graduation age is 19, but there are many high school students in their early 20’s. Vocational/technical schools are available and teach accounting, etc., in lieu of academics.

In the past, school was not as important for girls as for boys because education was not required for traditional women’s tasks. Today’s Togolese recognize the need for girls’ education and more girls are staying in school longer, although many still do not finish high school and instead go on to take apprenticeships in hair styling or tailoring.

Public schools cost the equivalent of $7.00 per year for primary grades and $15 to $20 for secondary grades. Private schools are about 5 times as expensive but classes are proportionally smaller (20 vs. 100 students) and books are more plentiful. Education is very significant to the Togolese and many impoverished parents sacrifice much to pay the school fees. These may seem low to us, but they are high when the average income is $30/month.

Using your Head

2007-05-01T09:05:00.000-07:00

Everyday life in Togo.

Off to market with mangoes

Sometimes two heads are better than one

Kids bring water to school . Cate wants to learn how.

Water for Life

2007-04-23T07:53:00.000-07:00

Imagine no running water in your home, and the necessity of finding water EACH and EVERY day for the basic needs of life: preparing food, washing utensils, bathing yourself and your children, laundry and cleaning the home. Not to mention finding safe, potable drinking water to help prevent maladies such as cholera, typhoid, hepatitis and diarrhea from amoebas and giardia. This is reality for most throughout Africa. (On the other hand contaminated surface water enables a host of other diseases like guinea worm, yellow fever, malaria, river blindness, etc.)

It is typically the women and children who have the responsibility of “harvesting” enough water to meet their family’s needs. If they are lucky, they have access to a nearby community water pump. Unfortunately, pumps in general have a chronic break-down rate with repairs hard to come by due to unavailability of parts and/or knowledge of repair. Many villages have a well which can be a social gathering place too, but in dry season (5-8 months per year), they are often dry or murky and can become easily contaminated. Hillside springs are another source of water. The water trickles, but those who are patient can hopefully collect good clean drinking water as the spring slowly bubbles up. (Photo attached was taken this morning at a nearby spring. All of the attached photos were taken a short distance from our home.) And lastly there is surface water from stream and lakes, the least likely to be safe and clean.

In the dry season, when the wells and springs dry up, women need to find other sources. Typically they have to walk farther (in the heat), oftentimes for several kilometers, with the heavy load on their head. EVERY day. In rainy season, it becomes a little easier. Everyone puts their basins outside their home when the rain begins, and those with cisterns have gutters that feed them. Trapping water works especially well if you or your neighbor happen to have a rain spout.

Only a small fraction of Togo’s population has piped running water in their home. (We are one of those lucky few, although we still boil and filter it due to a questionable delivery system). Piped water is available (but not always affordable) in the larger towns and regional capitals, but almost non-existent in the rural areas. Our town of 35,000, Atakpamé, has many privately owned street faucets connected to the city water system spread throughout the town. Providers charge 25 CFA for a big basin, about 5 cents, which is comparable to the cost of a bowl of cooked rice purchased on the street. The charge provides a small profit after they pay the city for their metered water. In town, women probably don’t need to walk more than a ½ kilometer. But to gain a little appreciation for the task, you try walking on rocky roads and steep slippery slopes with an open 50 lb. basin of water on your head. Everyday.

Atakpamé also has a wonderful fountain from a natural spring source in the center of town with a park, whose modernization was funded by Rotary International in Northfield, MN. It is heavily used at all hours of the day and provides free, clean water. Way to go, Rotary - providing good water to hundreds of families in Atakpamé .

I remember, before coming to Africa, reading about the women who have to walk miles to get their water. This is a reality—not some “hard pitch” to get you to donate money to an organization. Water availability is a huge issue throughout Africa. Not just water availability, but access to SAFE water which can help prevent the diseases which are so rampant here. And as Jeffrey Sachs states in The End of Poverty, the water issue will grow in importance with climate change, as population densities and climate change interact to produce more water stress. Sub-Saharan Africa will be one of the hardest hit regions in the world.

One of the things we will bring back with us to the states is a greater appreciation for plain ol’ tap water!

One Husband: Four Grieving Widows

2007-03-24T08:02:00.000-07:00

Not long ago, we attended the funeral of the grandfather of a Togolese friend of ours. Funerals in West Africa are a much bigger event than weddings or other celebrations and the family goes to great expense in both grieving and celebrating the life of the deceased and preparing for the burial. Sometimes the funeral itself is delayed up to a year while the family gathers money for the expenses involved.

As with most funerals here, it started at midnight with singing and dancing all night, in the form of a wake. Chairs and a huge tarp were rented and put up in the street outside the home, along with sound system, lights and music. Fortunately we were not obliged to attend this part of the celebration, arriving instead at the house at 7:00 a.m. to walk with the family and friends behind the coffin which headed through town to the church for the Catholic service. The deceased, a man named ALOUPHA, was 77 years old, a retired master blacksmith, and not surprising for the culture and his age, had four wives. The four wives, all living in different towns, were clustered in a room together and did not participate at all in the funeral, except for when people came to their room to give their condolences. We’ve been told they will stay there together for one month to mourn. (See photo “4 Grieving Widows”—I was asked to take this photo by our friend, a granddaughter, who is related to widow #2, sitting second from the left).

Photo #2 captures the “Animist” participants of what was otherwise a Catholic service (you can see the hearse/pick-up truck in the background). Most Togolese have not abandoned their roots in the African animist religion which worships different deities. This man worshipped, alongside his Catholic faith, the god of iron (he was, after all, a blacksmith). But other clan members of the god of iron, not having anything to do with the profession, are wearing white headscarves and/or shirts to show their affiliation in addition to the single facial scare on the left check which is given in infancy. The animists attended the Catholic service, but also held their own more secretive traditional service which we were not invited to attend.

Photo #3 shows the women at work preparing for the feast to follow the burial. The “kitchen crew” was having a grand time in their colorful dress. The food was some of the tastiest we’ve had in Togo (servings of lamb, beef, guinea hen).

The last photo is of the cemetery, the newest and nicest in the region.

Last note: For you Francophiles, here are 2 verses that were given out and attached to the photo of the deceased with a list of family members and people who helped contribute to the funeral. (It is customary to give gifts of money to help with expenses):
“Notre secours est dans le nom de l’Eternel. Qui a fait les cieux et la terre.” Ps. 124:8
“Que la grâce de notre Seigneur Jésus Christ soit avec vous.” 2 Thess. 1:28

Last Call for Visitors

2007-02-22T23:15:00.000-08:00

We have recently completed the third and last of our family’s visits to Togo. This one was a solo visit by our daughter Claire for 10 days. She came into Accra, Ghana where we spent the first night. The next day it was off to Lomé, where crossing the Togo border is always an experience as hordes of vendors, money changers and taxi drivers descend upon you. It could be a pleasant experience, as it is right on the beach and the waves are breaking less than 100 meters away, but we don’t really notice as it is more important to be concerned about pick-pockets. The city of Lomé is an experience too, with the congested open market and “rip-off row” alley of tourist vendors selling wood carvings, jewelry, clothing and all manner of tourist trinkets.

Our night in Lomé was also our 30th wedding anniversary so we pampered ourselves, spending the night in air conditioned comfort at the nicest hotel in town, lounging all afternoon by their Olympic sized swimming pool, and the next morning enjoying a huge breakfast buffet. We headed to our humble place in Atakpamé the following day, another 3 hour taxi ride. That night Claire surprised us with 30+ anniversary cards from many of you along with decorations to celebrate the anniversary, as well as lots of goodies we asked her to bring-- things not available here. Claire’s time in Atakpamé included participating in our market women’s Savings and Loan meeting as well as meeting the people we work with at the 2 AIDS NGOs. While here, she was able to help out and use her computer skills in developing 3 different websites for organizations we work with. We made time for shopping, of course, and visiting with our friends the landlord and his wife, pounding Fufu, buying bread at the bakery just across the street, as well as a walk out of town one morning to experience a more village setting. And a visit to a family compound found the kids rubbing Claire’s skin to see if the white would rub off.
We also headed west to Badou one day with 3 other PC volunteers so Claire got to experience the “real deal” traveling in Togo: seven people in a small 5 place car, dirt roads and potholes and goats running out of the way to avoid the fast moving taxi. Our destination was the Akloa falls just beyond Badou. It was about a 45 minute hike up hill in the heat of the day (including quite a few stairs) to reach the falls. But once we got there it was, as one of the web sites described it, a scene out of a hair shampoo commercial with cascading waterfalls beneath which we could “frolic.” So it was worth it and the cool water felt great.

Claire’s final experience in West Africa was her trip back to Accra. And it was a WAWA experience; West Africa Wins Again. We decided to take a new route for a change of scenery through Kpalimé (our first mistake). We went with 2 other volunteers and got to experience the county police stopping us for too may people in the car and fining us $10. Really it was too many white people in the car. (They never stop the locals with even more people crammed in). So what was normally about a 7 hour trip through Lomé took us 13 hours through Kpalimé as we had to wait for 3 hours for the 30 seat bus to fill. Unfortunately, even though it was a Mercedes bus from Ghana, it never went over 35 miles an hour and we stopped numerous times to do border checks, police checks and customs checks, emptying the bus every time. However the seats were not typical Mercedes comfort, as we sat cramped 5 across, so we were tired cranky campers upon arriving in Accra, only to find our room was given to someone else even though we had confirmed it with 3 phone calls in the last 2 days. We trekked off to the hotel annex looking forward to a shower, only to find the room so heavily sprayed with bug spray that we couldn’t breathe in it, and later found out the water wasn’t running anyway for the shower we had so looked forward to. So we opened up the windows and went to dinner – only to find our favorite Italian restaurant closed. We settled for pizza at the only semi-Western fast food joint – still a treat for us Togo PCVs.

That’s the travelogue for Claire’s visit. We loved having her here and sharing West Africa and our PC experience. We are so grateful for all our visitors who have helped make our stay here go by more quickly by bringing a sense of family and home to us. Now we look forward to coming back and visiting them (and you?)---in just 23 weeks.

Technology Leap

2007-01-18T05:34:00.000-08:00

Here’s Wayne’s latest on Togo’s Technology Leap.

A few months ago we went to an Information Technology Conference organized by Peace Corps for the 20+ Small Business Development PC volunteers in Togo and their host country counterparts. We talked about telephones, computers, radio, internet, etc and their role in the development of Togo. I presented a session on solar panels along with Claude, the business owner of the small solar panel business I am advising, as a way to help bring technology to villages without electricity by recharging cell phones and radio & flashlight batteries.

One of the topics was a new telephone service now available in Togo called ‘fixed wireless”. It’s a cell phone that can only be used in one locale within a radius of a mile or two. So the pricing is lower due to that tight “roaming” limitation. In the long run it will replace the old land lines which have high maintenance costs.

As you may know we have been using our landlord’s land line phone connection for our email connection. It was much more convenient than going to the Internet café a mile away. But the land line connection was fraught with problems – either the phone had no dial tone or the phone card company wouldn’t answer or the server had no connection available. So often I was back on my bike to the internet café. Needless to say when we learned that the “fixed wireless” phone had an internet option for unlimited use 24/7, we went for it; especially when we saw that it was about 5 or 10 times faster than dial up. It’s definitely not broadband DSL or cable – they are 5 or 10 times faster yet. But for Togo it’s a big leap.

With this increased speed, we can use Skype, a free software program, to make phone calls for free to other computers anywhere in the world who have also downloaded Skype. So contact with our family has gone up considerably. And the quality is much better than our cell phone. Or we can do “instant messaging” too.

Our new phone also has us better connected to home through listening to National Public Radio on KPLU internet. We love the jazz and news. But maybe the most amazing thing about our new internet connection is what we can listen to as a live broadcast. Would you believe Cal Lutheran University football games on Saturdays? Not only can we hear Karsten and Sherith (Cate’s brother and niece) yelling and screaming loud and clear, but we can send an email to the announcer and have him thank his listeners from Togo at the end of the game!! Add to that listening to the Rose Bowl and Seahawk playoff games and you get the idea! (although I couldn’t get a connection for the last Seahawk’s game so I listened to Dustin’s TV over Skype.) I still miss the video but this sure beats just reading a newspaper article online after the game.

Now you know Togo is a step closer to the developed Western world and that the whole world continues to get smaller. However our electricity was cut off almost everyday for the last few weeks before the holidays in an “8-hour on / 8-hour off” pattern, so sometimes it’s one leap forward and one step backward. (But as you see in the photo we got used to using the computer on battery by lantern light.) All of this technology is still juxtaposed with the things that have not changed for the last hundred plus years, like the women cooking on outdoor charcoal stoves and carrying water on their heads walking through the free range chickens, goats and sheep foraging on the pathways that pass for streets. It makes for a mind-boggling contrast.

The 30th Edition of The Hillard Herald

2006-12-27T05:09:00.000-08:00

Christmas greetings and blessings

to you,

our family and friends.

As you go about in the hustle and bustle of Christmas in a consumer - driven society, perhaps trying to concentrate on the Reason for the Season, consider us. We are trying to muster up the Christmas Spirit in Togo, a country that hardly recognizes the religious significance of Christmas, and on top of that doesn’t have the economy or consumers to support any commercialism. Although we don’t miss the shopping or Santa Claus, we do miss the lights, the music and concerts, the church services, the cold weather…they all help mark the rhythm of the year. Not that we’re noticing time going by or anything, but we are now 70% done with our Peace Corps service and have about seven months remaining before we return home.

We look out each morning now and if we squint our eyes, we can imagine a light snowfall. The effect is caused by the Harmattan winds which come from the North and bring the Sahara sand and dust with them. Folks here refer to the winds as cool (many locals are wearing heavy jackets) but to us the slight drop in temperature means maybe wearing a T-shirt instead of a tank top. The low humidity does make the same temperature feel a little cooler. The winds bring so much dust that we are finding it harder to breathe, and thus exercise. Lucky for us we don’t have all those holiday goodies and extra calories YOU might be encountering on the party circuit! The winds could last into March. It’s a long dry season. You get winter. We get the Harmattan.

You might be asking, “What are Wayne and Cate doing for Christmas?” We are staying home in Atakpamé for our last Christmas in Togo. We’re planning our own Candlelight Service on Christmas Eve as there are no church services to be found here. Assuming we will have electricity (it goes out regularly now in an 8 hour on - 8 hour off pattern), we plan to listen to Handel’s Messiah, some Christmas carols and maybe watch It’s a Wonderful Life and/or A Christmas Carol on our laptop. Perhaps we’ll try making Swedish meatballs out of our soy-based meat substitute, which we find preferable to the REAL meat we see being butchered (and hovered over by a colony of vultures) in our local market. We’ve also invited local volunteers not lucky enough to go to home to the states to join us for brunch on Christmas morning and we’ll celebrate together. It’s not an easy time of year for anyone to be so far away from home. Next year…Sammamish!

Things we look back on in 2006:

Family visits: Karsten, Dustin and Julianna came in August and Nada and Nelius came in November - times we thoroughly enjoyed and treasure. You can see a few photos of them (as well as accounts of other experiences) on our blog at http://www.catewayneafrica.com/
Vacations: Doesn’t get much better than Morocco and Egypt in the same year.
Living and working in West Africa: you already know the details if you’ve been reading our emails or blog

Things to look forward to in 2007:

Claire’s visit in late January, our 30^th wedding anniversary, our 60^th birthdays, a bit more travel?
Returning home and taking stock of the last two years. How will we be changed? We don’t know, except for the obvious: a few more pounds (so many carbs!), a few more wrinkles (could it be the sun?), more gray (for Wayne), challenges overcome and the experience of an incredible adventure together.

We happily welcome any email Christmas greetings at mailto:CateWayneAfrica@yahoo.com (our airmail address is Corps de la Paix, B.P. 3194 Lomé, Togo, West Africa.) We’d love to hear from you and hope all is well with you and yours.

We wish you good health, joy, peace, love, laughter, and a Joyeux Noël.

Family Visits

2006-12-10T10:44:00.000-08:00

We have already been blessed with two visits from family and our daughter Claire is coming in January. Karsten, Cate's brother, and Dustin & Julianna, our son and daughter-in-law, came in August. Karsten and Dustin hauling in fishing boats with the locals in Ghana.

Together in West Africa.

Another celebrity couple?

A happy Karsten!

Then Nada and Nelius, Cate's sister and brother-in-law, came in November.

Getting a feel for village life with Gabriel, a fellow PCV.

Nelius volunteering at our neighbor's bakery.

Nada passing out condoms during a World AIDS Day event.

What are we doing here, anyway? Part II

2006-10-22T06:44:00.000-07:00

Eight months ago we wrote Part I of this email describing what kind of work we are doing here, and we think it is now time to re-visit that topic so you don’t think we’re just running around the world having fun and visiting exotic places. We’re doing that, too, taking full advantage of being on this continent at every opportunity, knowing that we probably won’t be returning after our Peace Corps experience. So here is a run-down of some of the projects in which we’re involved in Togo.

Wayne has been consulting a young man in establishing a small solar energy enterprise. The individual solar panels can charge cell phones and radios and are especially useful in the many villages that do not have electricity. They are cost efficient and environmentally beneficial because the quality of batteries sold here is very low and they only last a short time. The ground is littered with old leaking batteries with which we sometimes see children playing. See photo of Wayne and Claude, the young entrepreneur, as they assemble the panels at our living room coffee table. Wayne has also been teaching computer classes to the staff of two NGOs and is presently trying to get a used computer in the town library so they can have an encyclopedia reference. A computer will draw in more people than the old books on the shelves.

Cate has written several proposals to organizations to help find funding for different events in the fight against AIDS. You will be hearing more about a Theater Festival centered around World AIDS Day on December 1st when 25 regional theater troops will perform educational skits to more than 20,000 persons in our region to inform them on the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS. Street theater is the traditional African way of creating community awareness, and if you have seen “The Constant Gardener” movie, the scene of the actors performing the AIDS-related skit on the street is very accurate. Cate also works with 2 NGOs who provide services to people living with HIV/AIDS in helping to maintain and justify their programs to international funders.

Together, we have been teaching Business Skills Classes to owners of small enterprises. We are using our own strengths: Wayne handles the math part, and Cate tells the stories, and together we hope we are reaching them. Business skills for small enterprises include teaching cash flow, profit and loss, selling and buying with credit (big issue in Africa), and marketing. Small enterprises include businesses and/or entrepreneurs such as tailors, hair-dressers, wood sales (for cooking), food items in a small boutique, and a small electronics store.

Togo is one of 26 countries recently listed on the World Bank list of nations at risk of political and economic collapse. Perhaps due to this “fragile state,” our biggest accomplishment may be introducing a new micro-credit system of savings and loans to the “poorest of the poor” in our community We are presently working with a group of about 20 women in Atakpamé who sell products such as yams (a staple food item here), charcoal (for cooking), tomatoes, or individual meals such as boiled grains wrapped in leaves or contained in small plastic sacks. For the most part, they walk around and sell them from big basins which they carry on top of their heads or they lay their produce out on the street where people can walk by and make purchases. Some of them rent a small space in the outdoor market. These women work hard daily, earning just enough money to feed their family and make simple provisions. With the creation of a small, informal, autonomous savings & loan association, they should be able to increase their household security through savings, have an opportunity (where otherwise impossible) for a loan either for investment in their business or other needs, and have access to a Social Fund for relief from emergencies. The unique thing about this program is that all the financial transactions take place at the meetings of the entire group when the cash box is opened by three different keyholders, providing complete transparency.

In introducing the concept to the group, we role play and present skits so that these women, who are illiterate, (not unsophisticated—just illiterate), will understand the system. Don’t let the “poorest of the poor” and “illiterate” confuse you into thinking they are not intelligent, strong and hard-working women. They are industrious, good-humored, independent, strong women, and Maya Angelou describes them well in her poem “Phenomenal Woman.”

We feel especially good, at last (work has been slow and our feelings of usefulness are not always fulfilled), that developing this concept of micro-credit savings and loan for small groups is a way for us to make a real contribution to some local Togolese people. Maybe, afterall, we can make a small difference!

If you’re still reading this, thank you for your interest and support of our life and work here. We are somewhat captivated by our African experience, but we never forget that “life goes on” in the states. We are missing the weddings, the births, confirmations and graduations—the “passages” of our family and friends. (And it’s again hard to even think about the approaching holidays). We might be having the time of our lives here, but we truly look forward to our return home in just 10 months.
Solar Cell Assembly

Walk Like an Egyptian

2006-08-31T14:54:00.000-07:00

While writing this, we are cruising the Nile River in non-Peace Corps fashion, enjoying the luxury of hot showers, air conditioning, and sumptuous food served elegantly—all of this insignificant compared to the beauty and majesty of the ancient monuments that are scattered up and down the Nile. We have Dustin and Julianna (son and daughter-in-law) with us, which is making the trip absolutely perfect. (Daughter Claire will visit us later in Togo).

The Nile is flanked by a narrow strip of lush vegetation and we can see desert and sand dunes just beyond. We are viewing small fields of sugar cane, corn, groves of palm trees, mud brick homes with farmers going to and from their fields in donkey carts, children swimming along the shore, tall reeds which make us imagine how Moses might have been found as a baby, mosques, Coptic churches, egrets, water buffalo, feluccas (small sail boats), fishermen in rowboats….and other cruise ships. Fortunately for us, this is the low season for tourists and we are getting exceptionally attentive service as we are 4 of 12 guests aboard a ship that usually carries up to 90 passengers. We are south of Cairo which we visited before the cruise. The cruise is taking us from Aswan to Luxor.

We have seen many ancient temples, some very early in the morning to beat the heat (it was 106 degrees yesterday—no question we are in 'low season'), one at dusk when accent lighting came on to make it a dramatic visual experience, and other times we have just taken refuse in the shade of the ancient lotus and papyrus-carved columns that have withstood the test of time and nature for thousands of years.

As you will see by the attached photos, we took the mandatory camel ride to view the pyramids and got into the cruise spirit with Egyptian dressing (and dancing) like corny tourists. We could write volumes on what we are actually seeing and perhaps we will later for those of you who are interested, but we wanted to get this off to you now while we have the opportunity to use the Internet on the Nile, where thousands of years ago Egyptians first created the written word and recorded it in stone still legible today as hieroglyphics.

More to come in a report on the visit to Togo by Dustin, Julianna and Cate's brother Karsten. Great memories were created and Togo may never be the same!

Let it Rain!

2006-07-02T20:40:00.000-07:00

The rainy season has come to Togo and it’s enough to make us homesick for our Seattle area home. The temperature now occasionally drops down to 75 degrees which almost makes us feel like putting on our fleece. It’s still plenty hot during the day, especially out in the sun, but at least we have some relief. Seems like many of us are in a little better mood…just like in Seattle when the sun comes out after days of rain.

The attached photo of the gleeful girls showering in the water spout run-off during a rainstorm might help us all appreciate running water in our homes a bit more. They do not have running water in their home; in fact they are our neighbors and have to carry their water (on their heads, of course, in big basins) up our steep hill from the well below. Water is used sparingly when it is hard to come by—perhaps this is the reason we couldn’t help but hear the girls laughing and having so much fun in the steady run-off outside our home.

The second photo titled “Rinse Cycle” shows clothes that have been washed in that basin but not yet rinsed or hung to dry because of the fast moving storm. Aside from using the rivers, we haven’t seen clothes washed any other way but by hand in these big basins. We should also add that their method (double wash, double rinse, methodical rubbing) gets clothes just as clean, if not cleaner, than our machines.

The third photo is of a local farmer standing in his corn field with his one tool. He has used this tool to weed and cultivate his field. Before the rains started, we noticed tiny patches of ground all around us being tilled and planted. Once the rain started, the corn started coming up fast. It is dry land farming with no irrigation and it seems most households find at least a small area to plant some corn or yams. This farmer’s tool is the only “equipment” we see used in the fields.

The last bit of news about rainy season is that it also brings snakes out of the ground. We’re being a bit more careful where we walk. The Togolese don’t like snakes either, and each household is busy with their machetes cutting down the weeds and growth around their homes where snakes might want to hide. Our perception of the machete has changed since coming to Togo. It is one very useful tool here, as opposed to a weapon. It is not unusual to see boys of age 10 carrying them around and using them productively.

So, as we head with pleasure into our rainy season, we wish you a happy 4^th and an enjoyable summer!

Togo Scores!

2006-06-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

World Cup Putting Togo on the Map

by James Helm BBC News June 7, 2006

When Togo played Saudi Arabia in a World Cup warm-up in Sittard, Holland, only a few hundred people turned up to watch. But what they lacked in numbers Togo's supporters, grouped behind a goal, made up for with their noise. The drums beat out a constant rhythm, flags were waved, and the songs exuberant.

A Togolese woman in traditional dress waved a national flag: "I feel so good about this day," she laughed. "You know, if you say you come from Togo, people don't know where Togo is. It is such a small country. Maybe now, with the World Cup, they will know about Togo.”

Wayne is writing this now an hour before the first ever appearance of Togo in the World Cup on June 13^th. (For you non-sports fans, this is the tournament leading to the “Super Bowl” of world soccer that happens every 4 years.) I am sure many Americans are being exposed to Togo for the first time as a result of their being in the World Cup. They are probably wondering if Togo is somehow related to Togo’s sandwich shop. (The answer is no. I think Togo’s sandwich shop is named after the initials of a couple of San Jose State college students who started it back when my brother Dale was a student there.) But Togo is a long thin country sandwiched between Benin and Ghana and it is on a roll. (Thanks to John Crumpacker of the SF Chronicle for the puns.) Togo did well in the qualifying World Cup games last year, but then went to the African Cup tournament and lost every game. As a result, the Togo Soccer Federation fired the coach. In February they hired a new coach, but he quit on Saturday night. It seems the players were on strike because they had not agreed with the Togo Federation (run by the half-brother of Togo’s president) on the bonus money for playing in the world cup. (Apparently they did not get paid the promised amount for the Africa Cup, so they are playing hard ball.) On Saturday the coach said “How can I do my job if you can’t settle this? I quit.” That pretty much discouraged the Togolese people. Once again things go poorly for Togo. But this morning I saw on the internet that the coach has returned. Apparently the bonus dispute is settled. (Togo’s Prime Minister went to Germany to fix it). So perhaps the people are not as disappointed in the leaders as they were on Sunday. I was out this morning teaching the internet to a couple of our small business class students and the streets are full of folks wearing yellow, green and red, the Togo team colors. I can assure you the that Korea will come out on top in this match as Togo is now rated 61^st in the world now and is playing in a tournament of the best 32 teams in the world, in which Korea came in 4^th four years ago.

Now I have just returned from watching the game in the Atakpamé library with Cate. The stadium in Frankfurt was a sea of red, the Korean color. Very few Togolese fans were there as Germany denied visas to the 500 fans the Togo Federation tried to send to the games. (It seems that the fans did not submit their financial statements.) Atakpamé rolled up the streets during the game – the place looked deserted. The first half was great fun as Togo played well and was leading 1 - 0. The fans here went wild when we scored of course. See the photo. (I almost have to eat my words about losing.) But the second half went poorly and Togo lost 2-1.

So we walked home from the library with lots of disappointed folks in the streets. I was wearing my Togo T-shirt so I received lots of attention and encouragement; “Du Courage” they said in French, meaning “Have the courage to keep going”. The Togolese get a big charge out of seeing Westerners supporting them. I think they can’t quite believe it. (A few hundred years of colonization has only been gone since the sixties, so many Togolese still see white people as being here to run the place.)

The next game is against Switzerland on June 19^th. Be sure to watch and root for Togo. J And our last game is against the unloved French on June 23^rd. (We only keep playing if we come out in 1^st or 2^nd place amongst the 4 teams in our group.) Enjoy the game!

The Great Escape

2006-05-24T18:57:00.000-07:00

It will soon be one year since we arrived in Togo, and we have just returned from a vacation to Morocco which has given us yet another perspective on life in Africa. Although Morocco is on the same continent, it felt like we left Africa since the culture and nearly all the people we saw there were Arab and/or Berber, both of whom came from the Middle East. Muslim is the predominant faith, and the dress is long robes for both men and women, with many covered female faces. Most Westerners visiting Morocco think it is quite poor, but from our West African perspective, it seemed quite developed. Gourmet meals, hot running water, reliable and comfortable travel, and fun shopping made us feel like we were living “high on the hog.”

As part of our Moroccan adventure, we stayed in “riads” - lovingly restored, beautiful and somewhat quirky centuries-old homes (narrow stairways, tiny doors, tranquil courtyards) inside the walls of the old cities. The cities themselves were amazing places to visit with lots of juxtaposition of new and old: Donkeys carry baskets on their backs for garbage pick-up while passing high tech internet cafes situated in a labyrinth of stone paved pathways not wide enough for cars. Women walk the family bread dough daily to the neighborhood baker to be baked in a wood-fired oven (just as has been done for centuries) while men talk on cell phones in front of their own shops. A motorbike pulls up to a butcher shop counter on the street (where un-refrigerated beef hangs on the hook) and the driver purchases the day’s meat, departing without dismounting. Wandering around the Djemaa el-Fna square amidst the snake charmers and acrobats, what rolls by but two tourists on Segway transporters, new fangled machines that look like overgrown lawnmowers we have only seen on TV newsreels & read about until now.

We spent our first day in the very cosmopolitan Casablanca visiting the 3^rd largest mosque in the world and the only one open for touring to non-believers in Morocco. King Mohammed V built it in the 90’s in 6 years with local workers working around the clock, an impressive place on the ocean, holding 25,000 worshippers (with a retractable roof and huge titanium doors) costing over half a billion dollars. It was decorated by Moroccan artisans with geometric tile and wood carvings. (Muslims are not allowed to depict living things in their art). We enjoyed lunch at “Rick’s Café” where Wayne, in a Humphrey Bogart state-of-mind, sat at the piano and Cate asked him to “play it again, Sam.”

Fes, the “symbolic heart of Morocco” was the most cultured, artistic, religious and refined town we visited. It is 3 towns in one; ancient (as in medieval), old (13^th century) and new (French colonial). We focused on the ancient walled city called the medina and needed a guide to show us around the incredible maze of over 9000 tiny, twisting alleys, narrow streets and blind turns. And what trip to Morocco would be complete without a rug purchase (so Cate said), so we succumbed and felt like we had the Moroccan equivalent of a timeshare condo sales pitch, leaving it feeling both remorseful and happy; remorseful about the price but happy with our choice. (The thorough sales pitch by our now best Moroccan friend who served us traditional mint tea during the presentation, included the fact we could resell the rug on eBay when we got back to the states and it would pay for our trip. That’s why we took his suggestion and ended up with more than one rug and are feeling a little sheepish…maybe from all the lamb we ate?). We also visited a large pottery shop to see pots, dishes and tiles being hand made and painted by boys and men. Then on to the tanneries where the foot stomping process of dying leather in small vats of vegetable dyes remains unchanged over the centuries. We also saw hand weaving of silk and cotton into beautiful cloth. The colors, crafts and goods of Morocco were a feast for our eyes, especially in relation to Togo where the economy is so bad creative arts suffer and mostly essential items are found in the shops.

The next day we visited Volubilis, a Roman ruins site dating from the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries and one of the most remote Roman outposts. The high point was the stunning mosaic floors left in their original locations, now exposed to the elements, that were walked on 1900 years ago. Then we visited the small neighboring town of Mouley Idress where a leader of the same name founded the country’s first dynasty in the 8^th century after he was driven out of Mecca by rival Muslims, bringing Islam to Morocco. It is a picturesque, white walled city situated on a hill surrounded by lush vegetation.

We then traveled south through the Atlas mountains in a taxi where stops included a visit with free-roaming monkeys in the wild, a very animated poor village rug market and an elitist ski resort village. After a night in a small, dusty, dry mountain town we downgraded to local bus service to get to Essaouira, an ancient beach town known for its 18^th century ramparts and movie making by Orson Wells. Our guest house was inside the old town looking down on the rocky Atlantic coastline just outside the walls. Fortunately Essaouira is much smaller than Fes and we were able to find our own way around the medina. Now it is mostly a fishing port and tourist destination for Europeans. We had a great lunch on the dock with our own hand selected fish grilled in front of us. As Americans we were quite unique. We tried to use our French (Morocco being a French-speaking country), but they would almost always gleefully answer us in halted English. I guess our accent is a dead give-away. We especially enjoyed the Mediterranean climate. It was the first time since our arrival in Togo that we have used our Seattle fleece jackets. We knew we brought them for a reason!

Our last city was Marrakesh where another old restored city mansion gave us much needed respite from the hustle and bustle of the city. Marrakesh, founded in 1062, has a walled medina (old town) which includes a large plaza pretty much dedicated to the tourist, both Western and Moroccan. Restaurants surround the big plaza in which they promote the medieval myth and mystery of Marrakesh with snake charmers, story tellers, acrobats, musicians, jugglers and henna artists. The aroma of grilled meats and fresh squeezed oranges permeate the area and located nearby is the myriad of “souqs” (small markets) which sell every handicraft made in Morocco and include tiny meat markets, hardware stores and motorbike repair shops.

We went to Morocco with high expectations and happily we were not disappointed. Returning “home” to Togo, however, was surprisingly nice, especially the feeling of it being “home.” Our community of friends missed us and gave us a warm welcome back (did they think we might not return?). We appreciate even more now the evident joy of life here, shown in the way people talk, laugh, dress and move to whatever rhythm they might be hearing. We realize we have developed a comfort level with some of the quirkier facts of life here. Our mid-Eastern experience in Morocco gave us a stronger appreciation for the essence of Africa and we’re glad we’re here in Togo. For family and friends, however, don’t worry about us extending our time (as some volunteers do). We are also looking forward to the perspective we will have upon returning to the US.

Have you seen Him?

2006-04-19T21:29:00.000-07:00

Have you seen Him? Easter morning we started looking at 4:00 a.m. along with hundreds of other Christians in Atakpamé who started celebrating early.

Easter day starts early for Christians in Togo. Up at 3:30 a.m., dressed in white from head to toe as we were instructed (like the angels at the empty tomb), we paraded through the streets of town with a loud brass band and drums “searching for Jesus”. During 2 hours of walking and dancing, perhaps 8 kilometers, we covered most of the town, including the cemetery, and celebrated that He was nowhere to be found. All this was to symbolize “He is risen indeed!” Alleluia! You will see from the photo that it was a joyful bunch.

Holy Week is by far the most important religious week of the year for Togolese Christians and the central activity of the week consists of processions through the community. Palm Sunday is marked by a parade with palm leaves that leads to the church. We went to the neighborhood Catholic service at 6 a.m. where the congregation met in the street just around the corner from our house for a brief service and then paraded to the church, about 1 kilometer away, with palm leaves in hand singing acapella. (See photo) This is one of 3 Catholic churches in town and the sanctuary was packed with 500+ folks for worship. Maundy Thursday worship is centered around foot washing, but we didn’t learn about that until afterwards, so we will wait until next year for that experience.

On Good Friday we again joined the local Catholic congregation. Worship started outdoors across town from the church, beginning at high noon, a time not insignificant in this heat. We processed with hundreds of Togolese, stopping to kneel in the street at 14 different Stations of the Cross situated around town, leading towards the church. (See photo) After 2+ hours of processing, praying and kneeling, the service at the church (so we understand) lasted another 3 hours. Needless to say the Togolese relate to the suffering of Christ.

We celebrated Easter morning with 3 other Peace Corps volunteers who joined us at our home for breakfast after the “search” and before the 9:00 a.m. worship service. It, too, was a very joyful service. There was lots of singing and dancing in the aisles as they collected the offerings by having the entire congregation circulate up to the alter to place their offering in the plate – twice – to brass band music and singing and dancing. The women were all dressed to the hilt in their new pagnes (the colorful fabric here) and elaborate hairdos.

We were fortunate to be invited into the home of a Togolese family for a traditional Easter meal of salad and pate (a starchy corn meal paste similar to a dumpling) with two different kinds of sauces. See photo — Wayne looks happy, eh? We think the experience of visiting a home and sharing a meal is worth a separate email in the future.

We are really enjoying learning and experiencing first hand the African traditions, but we also miss the traditions we have in our personal history, centered around our church, family and friends at this time of year. We colored hard boiled eggs (to the delight of our Togolese friends), taught some children how to do an Easter egg hunt, shared our treasured M & M’s…but it’s just not quite the same. We miss our family and friends! Hope you all had a wonderful Easter celebration.

Total Experience Eclipse

2006-03-29T07:21:00.000-08:00

God’s blessings shined on us today as there was not a cloud in the sky this morning. The partial eclipse began around 8 am and was only viewable with the special dark glasses which turned the sun into a dark orange orb on a black background that was gradually eaten away. It progressively got cooler in the sun and a little darker until right on time at 9:15 am the total eclipse started and we could look at the sun without our special glasses and see the corona. (I wonder how much brain and computer power it took to calculate the exact time of the eclipse for every point in the path from Brazil to Mongolia?) We could see one star but it was still light enough to walk around. It was like dusk – not midnight. Then after 3 minutes it was as if someone flipped on a light switch as about 1% of the sun peeked out from behind the moon and you needed your special glasses again to look at the sun. The whole process made our planet’s place in the solar system very tangible.

The Togolese national government declared a half day holiday today and everything was closed up tight this morning. The roads normally teeming with people were empty. No school and no work. Everyone was at home with their family behind closed doors as the media had educated folks to use the special glasses or stay inside and not look at the sun. Everyone we talked to yesterday to was too afraid to trust the glasses and they were staying inside. About half an hour after the total eclipse the neighborhood boys showed up to use our glasses. It was a very quiet morning near our house except for the roosters and guinea hens crowing again after the eclipse. For us, it was most likely a special once in a lifetime experience.

March 29, 9:15 a.m. END OF THE WORLD

2006-03-19T11:42:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, March 29, at 9:15 a.m., Togo will experience what some say is one of the most awe inspiring spectacles in all of nature: A TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE. Atakpamé, our home town, is just about exactly in line for some of the best viewing of this event in the world. Good timing for us to be here!

In simple scientific terms a solar eclipse can be explained as: “An eclipse of the Sun can only occur at New Moon when the Moon passes between Earth and Sun. If the Moon’s shadow happens to fall upon Earth’s surface at that time, we see some portion of the Sun’s disk covered or “eclipsed” by the Moon.

More esthetically speaking, this total solar eclipse (which will only last a few minutes) can be described as: ”The sky takes on an eerie twilight as the Sun’s bright face is replaced by the black disk of the Moon. Surrounding the Moon is a beautiful gossamer halo. This is the Sun’s spectacular solar corona, a super heated plasma two million degrees in temperature. The corona can only be seen during the few brief minutes of totality. To witness such an event is a singularly memorable experience which cannot be conveyed adequately through words or photographs.” (That’s why we’re writing before the event…)

But to those Africans not “in the know,” the temporary morning darkness may cause panic. We’ve been told some people will think it is the end of the world, that what is happening is a war between the sun and the moon, and if either one should lose, obviously it’s not good. To combat the “war,” there will be noise-making: drumming and banging of basins throughout the town, pleading for the orbs to stop fighting. Schools will be closed for the day to minimize fears.

Lucky for us, Peace Corps Togo has supplied all the volunteers with special eclipse shades for viewing the eclipse without causing any permanent eye damage. Radio and TV broadcasts have started publicizing the event with cautions about eye damage. Locals have started talking about it rather excitedly, and pharmacies are now selling eclipse shades for about 60 cents, a big expense for an item used only once, and about the cost of one day of food for many people here.

How will we celebrate this event? We are planning a small party, serving a light brunch afterwards with the obvious menu choice: Eggs Sunny-Side Up.

If you feel like you are missing out on this grand event, you can look forward to the next two total solar eclipses visible from the US which will occur on August 21, 2017 and April 8, 2024.

If you are interested in finding out more, check out NASA’s technical web site:

http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEmono/TSE2006/TSE2006.html

or for the layperson:

http://solar-eclipse-2006.info/index.html

Thin Mints $30/box

2006-03-18T15:42:00.000-08:00

This message is for all the Girl Scouts out there, and for any of you who think their cookies are too pricey:

Support your Girl Scouts and BUY those cookies. And think of what it would be like if they weren’t available at all. Girl Scout Cookies are not sold here in Togo, and Peace Corps Volunteers really miss them. They miss them so much they are willing to buy a box for $30.00, and on volunteer “salaries,” that is a big chunk of change. But that calls for further explanation…

Last week, Togo volunteers gathered together for an annual conference. The schedule included an auction one night with items donated by volunteers and staff.

The auction helped raise funds for girls’ educational scholarships, part of the Girls Education and Empowerment Program. Girl Scout Cookies were one of the hottest items, although Oreos and M & Ms were very close seconds. A dinner date in the capital with a hunky U.S. Embassy Marine guard went pretty high, too. There was also a silent auction with sought after items like US brands of deodorant and other cosmetics (some partially used), good batteries like EverReady (we think they were unused), DVDs and CDs (maybe in good condition), volunteer art J, etc.). All in all, the auction will help provide over 30 girls with one year of education in secondary school. Not bad, especially considering it came from volunteers’ pockets!

Don’t pass up the opportunity to buy from those cute scouts and please, munch one for us! (We were not lucky enough to win a bid for the cookies, but we’ll make up for it when we return to the US)

p.s. Good luck with your sales, Marlene!

Dancing on Stilts

2006-02-27T15:19:00.000-08:00

Local Atakpamé folklore has it that long ago a hunter went into the bush to hunt, only to find one-arm, one-legged magical creatures jumping and dancing on stilts. He threw some burning embers into the air to draw their attention, but they fled in fear without their stilts. He brought the stilts to the voodoo spiritual leader to have him explain their mysterious powers. After that experience, he made some similar stilts and tried them himself. From that beginning, stilts have become part of the local culture. They are traditionally used now for various joyous occasions, like the end of the harvest.

Picture five local village troupes of stilt dancers competing for the most outlandish, crowd-pleasing choreography set to traditional music in a stadium full of 3000 people. Visualize acrobatic feats on 12 foot stilts. Imagine a 4 year old shinning up a stilt to be pulled up on the shoulders of a stilt dancer. Conjure up “otherworldly” costumes and frightening masks that keep the dancers safe from evil spells. Create in your mind a flowing gold, gigantic, gilded creature with very long arms and legs. Now you have a picture of the Stilt Dancing Festival.

Friday was a great day for a Peace Corps cross-cultural experience in Atakpamé. KAGBEMA, an organization that we work with, held their 2nd annual Stilt Festival here (called Tchébé in the local language of Ife). Stilt dancing is unique to the Atakpamé area in Togo. The cultural tradition is being revived by this festival. A French stilt artist was here to make it an international affair with his graceful, gold creature. (It turns out shepherds traditionally used stilts in France to keep track of their sheep, but he is a contemporary very artistic stilt dancer.) To top it off, the new US ambassador to Togo and his wife to take in the culture and visit with Peace Corps volunteers after the event.

Hope you enjoy the photos and can view the short videos.

Wayne & Cate

What are we doing here, anyway?

2006-02-14T17:37:00.000-08:00

WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE, ANYWAY?

This is a question we often ask ourselves. And because many of you have asked about our work (maybe it sounds like we are having too much fun?) here is an attempt to explain what we’re doing (besides reading, studying French, drawing, traveling, sweating, sleeping, watching DVDs, and socializing).

Peace Corps goals are three-fold:

To help the peoples of interested countries in meeting their needs for trained men and women.
To help promote a better understanding of the American people on the part of the peoples served.
To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of the American people.

These first 8 months, we feel like we’ve made good headway on goals # 2 and 3. Indeed, we think we’ve integrated into our community quite well. The Togolese are getting to know us (in Atakpamé, we are known as “the couple” – pronounced “la coop-la” in French--and we are greeted everywhere we go). You, our reader, have also helped us (goal #3) by reading our emails, being interested in our life and work here, and we think probably raising awareness in your own circle of friends…the ripple effect. Thank-you. We are amazed how many “hits” our blog (for folks not on our email list) is getting, and when we tried to pare down our mass email list, it only grew. So thanks to you we’re not feeling so isolated in Togo. And that works for us.

Goal #1 is the hardest goal to determine just how successful we are/can be. Our work thus far is really intangible. Our French is now at a survival -- but working -- level. (We continue our tutoring 8 hours a week if we don’t have too many other meetings). However it’s one thing to struggle to make conversation in a new language and its another to stand in front of a group and teach. But at this point we just ask them to indulge our poor French and dive in. We have listened to many proposals from locals who would like to work with us, and we have sifted through the proposals to make decisions on who to work with: what projects are verifiable and/or sustainable; who is “serious” (as in goal-oriented, honest and focused); is the organization transparent, i.e. can we track the money to see that it is being used for what it was intended. Would we like working with the person?

Many, and maybe most, volunteers still feel a lack of direction at this point in their service. Although we had an idea when we came what we might be doing, the reality is quite different. For example, the internet cafés Wayne thought he would be helping are already pretty well developed in our community, yet the NGOs Cate is working with are sorely in need of technical support. Thus, we have ended up working together in the same organizations, offering our own strengths: Wayne, computer wizard and Cate with organizational skills. We attend a lot of meetings that have the common denominator of not starting on time.

Integration into the community is considered part of our work, so just hanging out with the locals, getting to know them and gaining their confidence is “work.” Sometimes that means sitting down and having a beer with them. Pretty hard to feel accomplishments in that respect…but our PC literature tells us that a chief source of frustration may be the sense that our efforts seem to yield few tangible accomplishments. The impact of what we do may not be felt for years, so they tell us to maintain a sense of perspective with our goals, accomplishments and relationships. Our personal focus is to develop people, not things; empower people to create new opportunities and take charge of their own future. Sometimes we feel jealous of the volunteers who have well (as in water) projects for their village, as they seem so badly needed and a well is such a tangible thing. But our role in small business in a medium size town does not fit with village well projects.

All of that being said, listed below is a range of issues, organizations and activities that we are either already working on or looking into:

HIV/AIDS. We inherited a project from our predecessor volunteer and have been meeting with 2 NGOs (non-profit organizations) since our arrival. Our role consists of controlling the international project funds and advising the two NGOs, one medical and one psycho-social. Between the two, they give free HIV tests, psycho-social counseling, medical treatment, group support, home visits, nutritional support, community sensitivity and AIDS orphans outreach. We offer organizational aid, computer knowledge, approval of bank withdrawals, reporting of funding requirements, moral support, and sometimes act as facilitators at stormy meetings with the 2 organizations who really don’t like each other much but are required to work together due to funding sources. With their help we have plans to do some presentations to high school classes on AIDS awareness and prevention. Emphasis is on 1.) Condoms (we’ll do a demonstration on how to use them with a wooden penis that PC provides), 2.) Abstinence and 3.) Fidelity. Sexual talk is open and frank and not embarrassing to the Togolese.
SMALL BUSINESS SKILLS. We have recently started teaching a class in business skills to small business owners such as tailors, hair dressers (the 2 predominant small businesses in Togo), and other small business entrepreneurs. We’re popular! The first class doubled in size after the organizational meeting. We make up our own curriculum & first taught “What is Cash Flow and How to Track It.” Next class: “Selling and Buying on Credit” (not credit cards…they are nonexistent here…but small informal loans which are made often without keeping records). Interesting cultural differences complicate these simple concepts.
CULTURE PRESERVATION AND APPRECIATION.

Participation in organized traditional dance and drum demonstrations. Good for locals to see we are interested. Americans have rhythm, too. Well, sort of.
Theater Festival organization. World AIDS Day community street skits on AIDS awareness and prevention. (street skits create a good awareness level in Africa)
Organizing committee (Treasurers) for 2nd annual Stilt Dancing Festival – an almost lost art once famous in Togo. Email and photos to follow after Feb. 24.
Sharing of culture: purchasing local jewelry and art, wearing of beautiful local fabrics (support your local tailor). Cate is having fun with this one, and the locals seem to really enjoy seeing their culture being valued and enjoyed by our culture. (How’s that for justification for buying stuff?)

OPENING AND MARKETING OF NEW ENGLISH LANGUAGE INSTITUTE. We are helping with the grand opening (which means interviewing and hiring a teacher, finding adult students, marketing the classes) of an Adult English Language Institute. Our predecessor PCV helped get the building funded.
CHILD TRAFFICKING. Unfortunately, this is a real problem in Togo. “For the price of a bike”…a child is sold into slavery. We have been asked to help in this arena and are just beginning to get involved with help in finding funding support for a local NGO (non-profit).
COMPUTER TRAINING in business software for non-profit organizations. Wayne has just started teaching a class on Saturday mornings to the staff of a local non-profit.

We will be writing more on these subjects if you are interested, and as our work progresses and we learn more. Thanks for helping us feel a tangible result when you respond to our emails. Hint, hint.

So, not quite in a nutshell, that’s what we’re doing here.

Re-entering "The Door of No Return"

2006-01-16T19:55:00.000-08:00

We are choosing the remembrance of Martin Luther King’s birthday to write about our Christmas visit to the UNESCO World Heritage site in Ghana called St. George’s Castle near Cape Coast. This historical fort, situated on a spectacularly beautiful piece of landscape on the Ghana coastline, was built by the Dutch in 1482, 10 years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. It was built by the Dutch to help create commercial dominance in the trading of gold, ivory and spices abundant in Africa and valued in Europe. There is a chain of 37 such forts along the Ghana coastline, a coastline particularly good for easy access to the interior of Africa. Various European powers including the British, Danes, Dutch, French, Germans, Portuguese and Swedes all exchanged power over a period of 200 years. The forts were used as trading posts for the storage of goods and later, when the slave trade developed, the forts, or castles, expanded into prisons for storing slaves ready for shipping.

For our African American family and friends reading this, we can’t imagine the emotions that you, in particular, might have felt in visiting this site. Perhaps one of your ancestors (perhaps one of MLK’s ancestors) went through the narrow “Door of No Return” (see photo) before being packed into the cargo hold of the waiting ship. It certainly made an impression on us to stand in a dungeon where captured Africans were “packed and stored”. The reality of the brutality, seeing the shackles, the dark, overcrowded and unsanitary conditions in which they were kept for weeks or months at a time was overwhelming, leaving us with a sick feeling. We saw evidence and heard horrific stories of the treatment they received.

As we often find, one must “follow the money” to understand history. From your high school US history lessons, you might remember that the slave trade was a triangle and all 3 corners, driven by profit, were equally responsible for its “success”…….(1) Europeans who sailed the ships, transported the slaves and purchased the North American products like cotton and tobacco. (2) Africans, who captured other Africans in tribal wars or outright kidnappings to sell to the European ships, and (3) Americans who purchased the slaves and exploited them for economic gain. Although the African slaves were the ones who suffered, all 3 corners of the triangle contributed to our tragic history.

When you view the photo of the Door of No Return, you will see how small it appears. It is indeed small…just large enough for those emaciated prisoners who survived the waiting period in the fort to squeeze through one at a time. It is estimated that tens of millions of Africans were captured over hundreds of years, but perhaps only 20% survived the ordeal to actually make it to the US. An interesting note about this door is that recently an African American family who was able to trace their history back to this spot had a ceremonial “reverse entry” into the fort. We hope the symbolism of their re-entry can be part of the healing journey towards Martin Luther King’s dream of justice and equality for all.

Tabaski

2006-01-12T17:49:00.000-08:00

This morning we woke up to the loud bleating of agitated sheep next door. Later we learned why.

Today is Tabaski, the most important Islamic event of the year and a public holiday in Togo. It commemorates Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice his son Isaac on God’s command and the last minute substitution of a ram when God relents. It also coincides with the end of the pilgrimage to Mecca and is marked with a great feast of roast sheep.

Nationwide 12% of Togolese are Muslim, 29% Christian and 59% animist, the traditional religion which has many deities. (West Africa is the home of voodoo, but I digress.) It turns out that we live in a neighborhood where maybe half of the residents are Muslim. We watched a group of our neighbors 20 feet up the hill behind us slaughter about 10 sheep this morning. There is at least one sheep slaughtered per family. They will have their feast this afternoon after mid-day prayers.

We also learned that since the Islamic calendar is based on a 12 month lunar calendar of about 355 days, this holiday will be about 11 days earlier next time, around Dec 30. And the other major Islamic holiday, Ramadan (a month of daylight fasting) also rolls through the year shifting 11 days earlier each time.

Maybe you already knew this but we are still learning about our diverse world. It seems we should all know something about the major religion of Iraq, where we Americans have 160,000 troops.

Regarding the photos: Viewer discretion may be advised.

Tabaski

Can_you_stomach_this?

A most non-commercial Christmas

2006-01-08T12:32:00.000-08:00

New Year blessings everyone!

Before Christmas seems any farther away, we thought we would tell you a little about ours. This Christmas was so non-commercial, we would have missed it entirely if we weren't intentional about celebrating it on our own. And we now understand a little better why it is so. West Africans hardly celebrate Christmas. When asked why, one Togolese friend said "The Bible doesn't say Christmas was on December 25, and anyway, what is important is the resurrection, not his birth. And we celebrate the resurrection every Sunday." Who can argue with that train of thought?

So basically, Christmas in West Africa goes unnoticed, except that it is a day for food, family and visiting friends. No manger scenes, no gifts, not even a picture of Santa Claus to be seen. But it is a holiday, and families get together. Lots of cooking and eating. A bigger time for celebration is New Year's Eve and Day. Our French tutor described his New Year's celebration: At 8 pm, he and his family (wife, 3 children ages 3 months to 6 years) went to church and stayed with hundreds of others until 4 a.m. (yes, you are reading correctly). They worshipped, sang, and danced for about 8 hours. When the children are tired, they sleep on the floor around the perimeter, or if very young, stay attached on the mother's back. It is a big party—at the church. An hour later, at 5 a.m., all the women in town start making fu-fu, the traditional dish of mashed cassava/yams. The men start drinking "sodobé", a traditional alcohol drink made from palm wine. They sleep it off before the early afternoon when lots of visiting takes place and rice is the main dish everyone serves, because "there is always enough rice." Alcohol is served again, as one is considered a good host only if he provides plenty of alcohol (and rice) on this day. It is important to make visits to your friends (something we were not told of earlier and we are hoping we didn't offend anyone). We stayed home "under the radar" reading and napping.

For our Christmas we traveled to Ghana and attended a Lutheran church in Accra on Christmas Day (no Christmas Eve services to be found in any denomination). We sang a couple carols, and the church had a small artificial tree, balloons and streamers to mark the occasion. The 2 hour service which started with about 15 people (including us) filled up to about 200 people over half way through the service. But once it got going, it rocked. People were singing and dancing in the aisles, but not to "carols" that we recognized. The typical Lutherans that we are, we did not feel quite comfortable joining in. Especially after the pastor made the remark about people being late: "The black man has the time, but the white man has the watch". Then he said "We should be more like the white man and look at our watches" so we could start on time. (We felt a little uncomfortable wearing watches and as the only whites in the congregation.) It seems that the colonial mentality has not been yet erased in their 48 years of independence.

Our Christmas was very enjoyable and relaxing in a bungalow 30 feet from the beach (see photo). The hotel where we stayed had a loud band which played party music in the evenings, not Christmas carols, so the holiday atmosphere we are used to was lacking. But we met a lovely woman who lives and works in Accra and she invited us to have Christmas dinner with her and a friend. So we joined them at a nice hotel in town. They were both American. One, an American world trade expert who has lived in over 30 countries in 3 decades. The other, an artist from Cape Cod who fell in love with Ghana, is building a bed and breakfast on the coast.

After Christmas, we went 3 hours further west along the Ghana coast to the Cape Coast area. We were fortunate to meet a fun French-Canadian family with 4 adult daughters who we joined for the next 2 days. We walked a high-suspension rope canopy walkway above the top of a rain forest and stayed in a cottage/hotel with a lagoon that is home to a number of full gown alligators, and a restaurant that was good for bird-watching: hundreds of white egrets roosting in nearby trees and "weavers," pretty yellow birds that we watched actually weave their nests while eating our meals. But the highlight was visiting a 15th century castle which was later used for the slave trade. We will write more about this in 2 weeks…right around Martin Luther King's birthday. It was an emotional visit, and for those of you planning to visit us in Togo , it should certainly be on the itinerary.

We have not yet taken down our Christmas decorations. Plenty of time for that... just one string of lights, one red garland and a 12 inch artificial tree! We are still listening to Christmas music as we haven't quite gotten our full dose of Christmas yet. We're still burning our red and green candles, and we're still celebrating the birth of the One who gives our life meaning. We're also remembering all the blessings of 2005 and making resolutions for 2006.

To our French speaking friends, who might be wondering if we are learning anything:

Nous vous souhaitons : Une bonne et heureuse année, Santé de fer, Longévité, Prospérité, Succès dans les affaires, Paix, Bonheur, Bon chance, Beaucoup de bénédiction

And a translation for everyone else:

We wish you: A good and happy new year, Strong Health (like iron), Long life, Prosperity, Success in your business, Peace, Good times, Good luck, Plenty of blessings

Waiting for Christmas

2005-12-18T12:42:00.000-08:00

It’s the Fourth Sunday in Advent, and we’re still Waiting. For those of you not familiar with the official seasons of the Church Year, Advent is the period of time that is the 4 Sundays before Christmas when we “wait” and “prepare” for the birth of the Christ child. In the states, when the commercialization of Christmas starts just after Halloween, the waiting is long and hard. This morning the 2 of us held a worship service using the home made altar in the photo. We found the joyful, whimsical cross in the street, a discarded piece of cement.

But in Togo, they really know how to Wait. As we write this one week before Christmas, there is no sign of Christmas. No advertisements, no grand finale sales, (imagine the very biggest store in Atakpamé, a grocery store, being smaller than most 7-11s), no Christmas trees, no twinkling lights, no festive sweaters, scarves or gloves (or tank tops), and unfortunately, no Christmas concerts. We have heard that two days before Christmas, lights will start appearing, at least on some of the homes that have electricity.

We think we are integrating pretty well into the Togolese culture. (You might have enjoyed seeing us learn the traditional circle dance to drums in the street the other night. The locals loved it). But in the privacy of our home we are looking more American. We have “already” put up a string of Christmas (we don’t call them holiday) lights, we have an 8” wooden Swedish Advent tree with candles on our table, a poinsettia table runner and wall hanging, and we are playing Christmas music. Tonight we attended a concert: Handel’s Messiah, by the London Philharmonic—right in the comfort of our home (on the 2 inch speakers of our laptop). After the concert, we went out for dessert (moving to our tiny kitchen). OK, it wasn’t the same as our favorite place in Seattle, Decadent Desserts, but the Oreo’s sent from the US were a very good second.

Christmas trees would be a real anomaly here, where deforestation is a blight on the land. Wood is a rapidly diminishing resource which is used primarily for cooking and furniture. We are not missing a tree this year.

Gifts? We think the Togolese don’t place a lot of importance on them—unless they are from the rich Americans. We are often asked to give gifts (like our watch, our camera), but it has nothing to do with Christmas. We have noticed a sudden introduction of the sale of balloons (not inflated yet) on the streets, so we think that balloons might be a typical gift for the children. We don’t see any toys for sale. What we see is poverty that is hard to escape and people who are coping with it.

Another observation: Even in the midst of poverty the household budgets seem to accommodate good holiday appearance for the women. The “coiffure” (hairdresser) business is really picking up. The women are looking very elegant indeed! Their tresses (braids, etc.) last for up to 2 weeks, and it appears they are getting ready for Christmas with complex, beautifully designed hairdos.

We had a delightful time yesterday teaching a Christmas carol, “Silent Night, Holy Night”, to a group of youth that meets every Saturday. They seemed to recognize the tune from the radio and were eager to learn the English words. (Jingle Bells also). Then we became the students and they taught us a song in French. We all laughed and it was good for them to see us struggle with the song they sang so beautifully.

To anyone reading this, we wish you a blessed Christmas, happy Chanukah, or simply joyful holiday season. Whatever is appropriate for you. (I hear celebratory drumming in the background which reminds me not to forget the animists, whose beliefs seem to be interwoven with the newer Christian and Muslim faiths here). For us, we will be missing family and friends, but celebrating Christmas on the coast in Accra, Ghana, where we hope to find a place to worship with other Christians.

World AIDS Day

2005-12-01T13:51:00.000-08:00

Greetings on December 1, World AIDS day. We hope and assume you have seen/heard publicity in the US. As Peace Corps representatives, we were involved with festivities in Togo to recognize the day. We have been on an organizing committee to help plan a 4-day theater festival which started today.

The day started with a 2 mile march of 150 actors (and 3 Peace Corps Volunteers) singing, drumming and carrying signs through the business streets of Atakpamé and ending at the High School. There we held the opening ceremonies with singing choirs, dancing troupes, speeches and theater skits. Then the dignitaries (which included us) went off to a short reception at the nicest run-down hotel in town. This was the opening of the 2nd annual FESTHES, Theater Festival for Health, the first (as well as the second) being organized by Cate’s Togolese counterpart, Eugene. This year’s edition has over 20 theater groups performing skits about how to prevent the spread of AIDS. The skits are spontaneously given on the streets in the community near places where people gather, like the market or the stadium. They are in comedy, and are quite sexually explicit in their language and message, as they need to be to get the message across. The message is 3-fold: Abstinence, Fidelity and Condom use (not always in that order). There are 4 days of events starting today with the activities already described followed by street theater performances in Atakpamé. Tomorrow is a full day of skit performances by the troupes in the Jr. High and High Schools, followed by a USA-Togo soccer match (Peace Crops Volunteer Trainees vs. actors). Then there’s a rap contest in the evening (AIDS related). On Saturday the troupes go out to the neighboring villages and perform there. On Sunday there’s an acting class for the actors and the closing ceremony.

FESTHES is a small example of the effort Africans are making to combat AIDS in Africa. The funding for this festival comes from Western sources (however this year’s festival only has $3500 to work with), but the organization and efforts came from Africans (with a little help from Peace Corps). There is awareness – AIDS permeates family life, society, and the economy. The estimated AIDS number in Togo is roughly 6% (about 300,000), but most think it is even higher. Even at 6% it’s high enough to touch every extended family in the country on the average. FESTHES plans to get the “Stop SIDA” (Stop AIDS) message to about 20,000 people. We know there are many other events throughout Togo that will also be helping to spread awareness and hopefully action. The goal is to make the message real enough that the population is convinced that it can happen to them and they need to act responsibly to prevent it.

Thanksgiving in Togo

2005-11-23T08:55:00.000-08:00

“Enter into His gates with thanksgiving…be thankful unto Him, and bless His name.” Psalm 100:4

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone from Cate & Wayne

We have many blessings and we are giving thanks to God here in Togo, also.

We have invited other volunteers in the Peace Corps “family” to join us for the most traditional Thanksgiving we can put together, and our turkey just might be fresher than yours! He is currently tethered up in our entryway , eating corn and waiting for tomorrow morning, when at 6:00 a.m. we have help coming to “prepare” him for our feast. (We’re choosing our words carefully for the vegetarians who are reading this). Turkey is rare here, and therefore expensive. Tom, who weighs about 10 kilos or 22 pounds, cost us $34 (a good monthly salary) and was brought up in a bush taxi from Lomé, the capital of Togo, about 3 hours from where we live. He looks fat with all his feathers, but he is free-range and we will be braising him (thanks, Ana) in our Dutch oven over our gas burner. To complete the meal, we’ll have mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, dried cranberries (thanks Kirsten), green beans and onions, green salad, fresh pineapple and papaya (in season here),sweet potato pie, and corn bread if it turns out OK. Maybe you’d like to join us next year? Please bring a pumpkin pie.

We feel truly blessed to be having this adventure in Togo. We are thankful for our work here and the new friends we are making, but our hearts are always with our family and friends in the US. Blessings upon blessings to you.

“Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done.” 1 Chronicles 16:8

"Meat Tom"

"Dutch Oven Herb Garden"

A House Becomes a Home

2005-11-13T01:35:00.000-08:00

After considerable time and effort, we are finally ready to share with you what our home in Atakpamé looks like. You may find the place looks better than you would expect (and the pictures are probably better than the real thing since they don’t seem to convey reality, just the facade). And we have to say that our “chez” (place) is much nicer than the typical Peace Corps dwelling in Togo. Most live in a cement house but not many have tile floors, an indoor bathroom, running water and electricity. So we feel very fortunate because when we signed up we expected to get the stereotype mud hut (which we now know is not really the stereotype).

Wayne is writing the description below to go with the photos, so there will be more detail than you would get if Cate wrote it. But I will try to keep it interesting with various tidbits of information.

When you arrive at our home you go through a stone walled entryway to get to our front door. (The house is on a steep hill and sits in a deep cut out of the hillside with the front door facing the hill. There is an unfinished clinic on the floor above us that our landlord, a retired nurse-anesthesiologist, never completed.) We have collected a number of old “bassines émaille” (enamel basins) which are colorful and were used for cooking – which led to the bottoms getting burned out.) So we have decorated the entryway with them to create an artwork out of what the culture has discarded.

Most of our effort to create a “home” has gone into decorating since we were able to buy the majority of our furniture from the volunteer who preceded us. The first step was to find curtain material at the market and have them sewn into curtains for 3 windows. Then we hung these with clothes line nailed to the wood window frames. Next we put up photos of family and friends on the wood panels in the bedrooms where there used to be air conditioners. (Our building was built in better times, about 20 years ago, when people could afford such luxuries. Gone also is the hot water tank, so we heat water on the stove and take ”bucket showers” when we want a warm shower. The poor economy is due in part to the lack of aid from the Western world. In 1993 monetary aid was stopped due to the country’s human rights record. It remains to be seen if the new president (the old president’s son) will make the changes demanded by the EU to resume aid. The EU has asked for a free election of a national congress. The president has agreed but not yet scheduled it. Peace Corps has continued on for some reason, probably since it is not officially an aid program, rather a volunteer program. But I digress.)

In the Living Room we have hung above the sofa an African scene batik of colorfully dressed people transporting things on their head. We invested in new cushions and covers for our sofa and chairs ($5 per cushion) to make it more comfortable and colorful. Next we had a frame made at the furniture shop for an old “coiffeur” (hairdresser) sign and we hung it next to two decorative statuesque combs Cate found in a dusty artisan shop in town. Then after much shopping, 3 “pagnes” (fabric sold to make shirts and dresses) were purchased and made into banners by a seamstress for less than $2. We made an effort to capture the whimsical culture of Togo in these banners. One has huge thumbprints, one has large coffee cups and the last has a living room scene – more American than Togolese I think . They were hung on the wall above a large water vessel, a plant and a mortar used to make “FuFu” ,the national food. On top of the mortar is a modern sculpture of a woman making “FuFu” that the furniture maker gave to Cate as a “cadeau” (gift) when she stopped by to show him a photo of the frame he made as it now hangs in our living room. (People quickly become our friends here – perhaps because being American makes us a status symbol or perhaps because they appreciate our business. We “saluer” (greet) the furniture maker and his helpers every day as we pass by his tin roofed, open air shop, with all tools powered by hand). The last item was an old carved wood plaque from Ghana which we hung above the table in the dining room (which is the same room as the living room). Cate found this in the other artisan shop in town where the owner at first wanted $60 for it – to which Cate rolled her eyes and said “tres cher” (very expensive). Weeks later Cate got it for $12 with a promise to tell no one the price she paid. By the way “hanging” things here is not that easy as all of the walls are cement. But fortunately they sell special extra stout nails at the hardware store that work pretty well after sufficient coaxing with a hammer. You will note that there is no TV or stereo. Our laptop serves as our DVD player as well as our stereo, playing the MP3 version of our CDs we put on it in the States.

Out on our small terrace, which you enter from the dining room, you may recognize the plastic chairs from an earlier photo. These are the ones Wayne carried home on his head. We look out on a lime tree and through it we can see the hills of Atakpamé. Once outside on our terrace you can enter the kitchen on your right and the bathroom on the left.

The kitchen didn’t get a lot of decorating yet, but Cate did find a new “bassine” and lid which gets used as a large bowl and platter in our kitchen. We also had a furniture maker build a “garde-manger” which is a free standing cabinet in which we store our food and on which we put our Peace Corps 2-burner propane stove. Next to it is our small refrigerator which runs all the time but only gets down to about 55 degrees. Someday we hope to get it fixed so we can make ice.

The “studio”, entered from the dining room, is also our guest room and communications room. We keep our cell phone there hanging in the window since that is the only place in the cement house where we get a signal strong enough to for it to work. The window behind Cate is the one at which we sit during our phone calls with those of you who are so nice to call.

Our bedroom is next to the studio and entered from the living room. It just houses our bed and mosquito net and a built-in closet for our clothes.

So now you have had the real estate tour of our “chez” in Atakpamé. Hope you enjoyed it. We are liking it. I wonder if we can live in about 650 sq ft when we get home.

Faith of the Coiffeurs (hairdressers)

2005-11-08T09:00:00.000-08:00

Coiffeur shops are plentiful here, even more so than espresso stands in Seattle. We enjoy seeing the faith-related store-front signs (see photos). Much focus is put on hair style; it is an art form. You can’t imagine the things they can do with braids, twists and knots. I haven’t been brave enough to ask for close-up photos yet, but perhaps someday…)

Each coiffure has 5 or 6 apprentices working with her. The girls pay for their training. Oftentimes, walking down the street, we see all 6 apprentices working on one head (see photo). The good news is that girls who are unable to afford school can get career training. The bad news is that there are so many coiffeurs and apprentices that there are too many small coiffeur businesses to make much of a living. Perhaps that is why many name their businesses such as they do in relation to faith.

Below are 5 photos, and we have many more that we could have sent. Some other examples of business names: “Dieu Donne” (God Gives), “Dieu est Amour” (God is Love), “Don de Dieu” (Gift of God), and even in English (go figure) “Rejoice in the Lord” and “Jesus Saves.”

The last photo we included for you depicts the Hillard-owned and operated coiffeur boutique which we decided to name “Dieu lui Aidez” (God help Him).

God is ever-present and called upon here, and we are reminded of that in our daily life as we walk the streets. Blessings to you all!

Grace of God

God Gives, Psalm 27

God forgets no one, Isaiah 57:15

Apprentices at work

Dieu Lui Aide (God Help Him)

For all the saints

2005-11-02T11:12:00.000-08:00

Greetings on “Jour de Toussaints,” or All Saint’s Day,

We have just returned from a two hour visit to the town cemetery where we celebrated Jour de Toussaints. Today, November 1st, is a national/religious holiday in Togo and hundreds of Catholics from the 3 Atakpamé parishes gathered together on and around the tombstones to honor the dead.

We should have taken a photo of the cemetery a few days ago so we would have a “before and after” picture. The “before” photo 2 days ago would have shown overgrown grass and weeds covering the tombstones with vultures circling above and roosting in the trees. (We thought perhaps the cemetery had been abandoned, especially because the dump on the hill above it overflows into it). Now we know that each year, a couple days before Jour de Toussaints, people come with their machetes to cut down the weeds and give the tombstones a fresh whitewash.

The ceremony started in late afternoon. Everyone brought candles to place on their family tombstones and a procession of hundreds from the church, led by cross bearing alter boys and priests, reached the cemetery, where hundreds more were already gathered,. Then the vicar arrived by car, processed into the cemetery, and held a service with burning incense and holy water sprinkled on the crowd. After a short message from the vicar and songs from the choir, it began to get dark and the candles were lit and placed on the tombstones. It was really quite beautiful, especially as night fell, and we hope you can get an idea of it from the photos we’ve attached. For those of you who know Wayne’s favorite hymn, you will also know we couldn’t help but sing to ourselves “For All the Saints…”

So even though we missed the USA version of All Hallow’s Eve (and the fun of seeing the costumed kids and handing out candy to the neighborhood trick-or-treaters), we were able to celebrate All Hallow’s Day in a memorable way.

Home again, home again, jiggity-jig

2005-10-17T08:49:00.000-07:00

This is a follow-up to an earlier email “to market, to market...”

You may be asking which “home again” we are referring to in this email. As most of you are probably aware, we have been back to the US for a 2 week visit due to the death of Wayne’s father in Sacramento, CA. He died at his home on Monday, September 19 at age 88. We left our Togo home on 2 hours notice and got a flight on Tuesday arriving in CA about 45 hours after leaving Lomé. (Peace Corps gets an A+ for making all of the travel arrangements in less than a day). On Sunday we held a graveside memorial service where he was honored (due to his service in World War II) with Taps by a dignified Air Force Color Guard burial ceremony in a flag-draped coffin. Afterwards we had a celebration of his life with family and neighbors at his house.

During our stay we were also able to make short trips to Phoenix and Seattle to visit family and friends. It was very disorienting to be “home again” in the states, and the adjustment back “home again” to Togo has been equally disorienting and admittedly difficult. We are enjoying our Peace Corps experience, but we really miss our loved ones!

You may be asking what was so disorienting about our visit and subsequent return. (And even if you weren’t asking, here is an attempt at explaining the “twilight zone”).
Death, even an expected one, is disorienting in itself. We grieve the loss and celebrate the life at the same time. Traveling long distances in a short period of time also takes its toll. We slept in places like Lomé (capital of Togo), Accra (our flight departed from the capital of Ghana), Amsterdam airport, Minneapolis airport, Sacramento, Phoenix and Mesa, AZ, Auburn and Ballard, WA. In the Amsterdam airport, where we had a 10 hour layover, it was delightful to once again realize we could drink from the fountain and brush our teeth with tap water, something we do not do in Togo. In the Minneapolis airport, the familiar Subway sandwich never tasted so good. In Sacramento (arriving at 2 am after ~ 3 days of traveling), we woke up in the house where Wayne grew up and wondered where we were. (This feeling of “where are we?” occurred countless other times on the trip).

Many people commented on our apparent loss of weight. Giardia is great weight control, but I don’t recommend it. It was absolutely heavenly gaining it all back with the delicious food available in the US. Although it won’t compare with the great restaurant food we gorged on, we did fill an extra suitcase to bring back food items such as Knorr pasta sauces, raisins, nuts, granola, energy bars and cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving (now to find a turkey…and we know it will be REALLY fresh, as in alive). Other items we brought back with us which seem very valuable in our present lifestyle were PLASTIC containers, a TEFLON pan and utensils, both nearly impossible to find here. DVD’s for the long evenings (our taste in movies has gone remarkably downhill), books, comfort sandals, more lightweight clothes, our favorite toothpaste (Dr. VanderHoeven are you reading this?)

So we’re back again to walking, walking, walking around town on the infamous steep stone-filled streets of Atakpamé. As we walk, we are careful to stay to the edge of the road, close to the open gutter where garbage is thrown, as the moto(cycle) taxis have absolutely no regard for our safety. Sometimes we feel like moving targets. We are back to drinking loads of water (purified, of course) to stay hydrated in this heat. We are back to our beloved protective mosquito net. We are back to bucket showers with warm water heated on the stove. We are back to occasional lizards in the kitchen. We are back to a limited diet of locally available food. And once again we are awakened at 4:30 am by the crowing roosters and Muslim call to worship which echoes throughout the hills and into our open windows.

Last but not least, we need to mention the overwhelming sense of welcome that we have experienced from the wonderful people of Togo who have given countless sincere condolences to Wayne on the loss of his father, and who seem truly happy to have us back here “home again.” Their welcome has been heartwarming and made our return easier. Their generosity of spirit is awesome.

Speaking of generosity of spirit, thank you also to all of you who have sent condolences and messages of support. We feel so blessed with family and friends. And we miss you immensely (she said quietly).

And with that....au revoir! We won’t wait so long to write again. And we’ll try to write individual emails but know that it is a frustrating process. Enjoy your technology!

Cate and Wayne

Atakpamé, Now Our Home

2005-09-09T08:57:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, September 7, 2005

Where to begin? Well first of all this is Wayne writing so there will be far too many details below to suit Cate. But I have her permission to post this anyway.

We are now official volunteers (as opposed to trainees) and moved into our house in Atakpamé, pop = ~40,000, about 4 hours north of the capital, Lomé. The 21 of us, wearing custom, locally made clothes, were sworn in as volunteers on August 26th at the Peace Corps Director’s house in Lomé in an official ceremony held outside in his garden courtyard. Many host families attended in addition to dignitaries from Togo and the U.S. Embassy. We met some nice embassy staff folks our age (who offered us dinner next time we are in town) and the American school staff of 3, where one of the teachers is from Seattle. The volunteers traditionally party pretty hard after swear-in but we only lasted to the second club and called it a night at midnight.

Then we spent the weekend in Lomé going to the bank to get paid and spending some of our move-in allowance at “yovo” stores (which carry imported goods) on stuff like pickle relish, tuna fish, pepper and balsamic vinegar. There was a problem with our auto-deposit from the Peace Corps to the bank on Friday. So Peace Corps arranged for us to get 80,000 CFA (about $160) as an advance in order to do some shopping. We each went into the bank manager’s office one at a time and got a hand written sticky note to take to a cashier. Then she gave us the advance. Does that give a picture of how banking works in Togo? (By the way each volunteer gets paid $260 per month plus rent reimbursement which is about 10 times the Togolese national average of $25 per month. So although we only make a pittance by US standards, we do live well above the level of the average Togolese. Our rent is $80 a month, the maximum Peace Corps will pay.)

Sunday most stores are closed so we headed for a hotel pool for the day. We went to the nicest one in Lomé, the Hotel Sarakawa, with an Olympic size pool on the beach surrounded with palm trees and lawns where we paid $3 for a huge pool towel and $2 for a beer served pool side (triple the normal beer price). It was a great break from the intense training schedule – almost like Maui except for the lizards who share the grounds with the guests.

Then we headed back to the training center in Adeta for another week of French while most of the PCVs went off to “post”. (3 of us who started with very little French went back for the extra week.) We spent 6 hours a day studying French so Monday morning we were beyond ready to go, sad to leave our host family but exuberant to get out of the guest status.

After about a 2 hour trip in the rain we arrived at our house in Atakpamé with our propane gas stove, water filter, bicycles and bags on top of a rented van. The other volunteer went on North almost to the Burkina-Faso border to a village of a few hundred people called Sanpatoute. The rain stopped just as we arrived and we were quickly unloaded into our house with the help of the driver, his helper and the neighborhood kids. I tried to help too but they did not allow me to do anything. Guess I’m too old and too white.

Our house is at the top of the hill where the street ends. There are a couple houses on the hill above us that are reached only by some winding stairs. But don’t let the house picture mislead you. Our house is not a big as it looks. It is the two story building to the left of me in the photo with the black door to the courtyard. We have a living room, 2 bedrooms, a small covered terrace, a small kitchen and bathroom. Our house is made entirely of cement and the floors are all tiled. Two of the living room walls are covered in attractive stone, a standard building technique used on both the outside and inside of nice cement homes. Our landlord lives next door in the house directly behind me in the photo. He is a retired anesthesiologist and built our house and another adjoining one just like it under what was to be a clinic. So we have an unfinished clinic above us with the round window which we will use for outdoor eating when we feel like hauling a meal or snack up the stairs and cleaning the floor of this unused space.

Having electricity and running water we feel quite spoiled compared to many other volunteers. About half of our group work in villages and have neither. We even have a small refrigerator that gets down to 50 degrees or so. (We were without either during most of training as the wiring from the paved road to the house needed replacement and it is hard to purchase in quantity. Each homeowner strings their own 240v wires on top of bamboo poles to their house.) Living in the village of Adeta where most folks do not have running water, I came to realize how much water we use in daily living and how much time it takes to transport it one bucket at a time. Running water, besides being convenient, really saves a lot of time for other tasks.

But back to Atakpamé; we have spent the first two days unpacking and settling in. The first night we had a no cook curry sauce with couscous and a $2 bottle of Spanish red wine. It was like heaven after 12 weeks of standard Togolese fare for lunch and dinner consisting of a starch with a tomato ginger meat sauce (with plenty of palm oil) and fresh tropical fruit for dessert. (It tasted good to begin with but we were so ready for a change.) That same night we got our first guest. A Togolese colleague of the PCV who we are replacing dropped by after our landlord let him know we had arrived. We have hung curtains we had made in Adeta and batiks that we have picked up here and there. Cate has been going through the copious amount of paper and books we received during training and organizing them. We met with George, the librarian in Atakpamé, who we met through Kelly, the PCV here before us. He has arranged a French tutor so we are set to start classes on Tuesday and Friday afternoons for 2 hours each.

Our snail mail will come once a week now on Fridays to the “maison de passage” (travel house) that Peace Corps provides for volunteers visiting the city from the bush. It’s about a 10 minute walk from our place. Hopefully we will have much easier access to the internet now. It is open every day (except when the connection is down) and is about a mile away on rocky streets (one of Atakpamé’s characteristics) that are not conducive to bicycles, so it’s about a 25 minute walk. I was struck by a stark contrast yesterday when I went to read email. While I was typing at the internet the loudest sound coming from outside was the clanking in the nearby blacksmith shop that still uses manual powered bellows and tandem pairs of blacksmiths to shape metal into shovels.

PS - The photo of me & my bike is just to give you a feel for what the country side looks like in the Togo plateau region where we are living - tropical, lush and green.

The next installment...

2005-08-17T15:19:00.000-07:00

More from Africa, a place where occasionally we look at each other in astonishment and acknowledge that we are really here on this continent. It seems surreal at times. But then we slap that mosquito, wipe the sweat off our brow, take a cold shower and eat fu-fu for dinner, and we are reminded of where we are and where our home will be for the next two years. Someone asked us in an email (thanks, Pam) if we were happy, and the answer to that question is quite simply “yes!”.
It has been a while since we wrote last. We have returned from our week- long ”post visit” where we had a great time getting to know Atakpamé, our future home for the next two years. We spent time with the PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer) who has been there and was about to return home. She was well-loved and is leaving some big shoes to fill. She was well “integrated” into the community (a Peace Corps goal) and helped select both of our host national counterparts who will be helping us integrate. It was a busy week: We had dinner in four different Togolese homes, tasted the local millet beer, “chuch” which is served out of large plastic garbage cans and served in half of a dried out gourd (I wonder if that has anything to do with a small recurrence of the runs), attended a neighborhood football (soccer) match that was organized in honor of 2 departing PCV’s, and went to a meeting of the two HIV/AIDS NGOs (non-governmental agencies/non-profits) with whom we will be working! We even went to check out a Tai Kwon Do class at 6 a.m. one morning with the departing volunteer.
Best of all we attended a large luncheon in a nearby village that was set up by the director of the middle school there to say “Good-by to Kelly” (former PCV) and “Welcome to Cate & Wayne”. Kelly had helped get funding to build 3 new classrooms which reduced the size of their classes from 164 to “just” 87. The director of the school of 1000 students organized the luncheon at a large bar and 30 distinguished members of the village attended Not surprisingly for the culture, they were all men. Two chiefs were there (dressed in traditional cloth, one with his sceptre in hand and his cell phone in the other) as well as the regional education inspector (Superintendent) and 3 of his directors. We sat at the head table with the inspectors. Cate used her young French to charm the regional inspector. Once he seemed to know how little French we spoke, he felt free to use his limited English. So we had a nice conversation during lunch, which consisted of deep fried bread dough, hot sauce, spaghetti, bread and “interesting” beef pieces to eat with the traditional “sodabi” (a strong fermented palm wine), beer and chuch to drink. I sat between Cate and the only female education inspector in Togo. When it came to making speeches, Cate and I were asked, in good fun, to out-do the former PCVs with regard to building school buildings. Since THEY raised funds to build 3 classrooms, they want US to build six classrooms in two story buildings! There aren’t too many 2-story buildings. The former PCV gave a nice speech in good French (nearly made Cate cry even though she only understood half of it). It was reassuring to hear her communicate so well in such a setting, because she told us our French is better than hers was at the same time when she arrived in town. Cate jumped up when given the chance and charmed everyone with her very basic French telling them we were still learning French “un peu un peu” and saying “merci beaucoup pour votre bienvenu”. They laughed. Was it the pronunciation or the slow articulation? Whatever, we are slowly working our way into their hearts and it comes as a nice surprise that it is our limited French that is at work.
So enough details of our trip. I have noted a few cultural things to share and listed them below:
1. Always carry your baby on your back tied on with a colorful cloth. I have yet to see a baby crying in this position – but I have seen many napping. Sometimes you will see an “older” sister of 6 or 8 years carrying a 2 year old who looks almost half the size of the one doing the carrying.
2. Always pay for your purchase with your right hand. The left hand is reserved for bathroom tasks. It’s impolite to use it in greetings or business transactions and we have been warned it is quite bad etiquette to use it for eating.
3. Material success brings with it responsibility for the extended family. So think twice before you work hard towards success because you will probably be sharing it with your very-extended family. (C & T, can we come live with you in 2 years?)
4. Get well cards and flowers make no sense to Togolese. They expect fruit or money when you come to visit a sick person. Have to admit that their customs are much more practical!
5. Greetings are taken seriously. You greet everyone in the room when you arrive, normally with a handshake and appropriate salutation. Street greetings of “Bon Jour, Bon Soir or Bon Arrivée ” are common as well for anyone with whom you make eye contact.
6. All foreigners are greeted by any children who see them with “Yovo!” They will come running to greet you and sing the “yovo song”. Sometimes they want to touch you. It is difficult to be anonymous here, or just to go out and take a walk without kids “taunting” you with the song. We understand that the song is part of a rote greeting interchange that missionaries used to teach French. It drives some volunteers nuts as the singing draws constant attention but usually the kids are just having fun and want to acknowledge the unusual occasion of seeing a foreigner. They can pick out African-Americans as readily as us pale-faced yovos.
7. Wearing shorts is only for boys and old men. Working men wear pants.
8. Women normally cover their knees (and usually their calves) with dresses, or occasionally, pants. Revealing knees and legs is a sign of a loose woman.
9. It is impolite to cross your legs when meeting with a social superior.
10. If you are offered something to drink, even if it is not acceptable to you to drink (like unsafe water), put it to your mouth and let it touch your lips. Otherwise you will offend your host.
So now we are in our last 2 weeks of training and will soon be headed to our new home, assuming we pass all the requirements. All the volunteers are ready to go. Training has been very structured and at times frustrating and tiresome, and we are all anxious to get started on our own life and work in our respective villages and towns throughout Togo. Many of the returned volunteers we talked to on the phone before we started training said “just get through training”. Now we know what they meant. It will be sad, however, to leave the group of 23 volunteers that we have come to know quite well. We are making some good friends (who will never replace our true friends), and perhaps our next email will tell how they are helping to shape our lives here also. We think that we may come back to the US a lot smarter. (More on that in our next intelligent email).
Love to you all,
Wayne and Cate

To market, to market

2005-07-26T22:22:00.000-07:00

Bonjour famille y amis,

(Two pictures at the bottom)

We write this from Atakpame, the town where we will be living starting in September. We have been sent for the week to start making living arrangements and getting to know the town. We are very pleased with the house where we will be living and the town itself, and have already met many people who have given us a warm welcome. It feels good. We are receiving a great deal of respect, due in large part to our age. It never felt so good to be so grey.

This week we have good internet connection, so we will send what I wrote a couple weeks ago about our first impressions of market day in our training village, Adeta. I write this in part so that those of you who will hopefully be visiting us will have an idea of what to expect. Visiting Africa may not be the exotic travel experience you were thinking. :)

Every village and town has one day a week that is designated as “market day,” the day where people come from all the outlying villages to sell their goods. It is different days in different villages. The larger towns, like the capital Lome, have it every day. Our first visit to the market in our village is hard to describe in any other way than as an “assault on the senses.”

The market, in this village of 7,000, brings in hundreds of vendors and shoppers. It is a very busy scene with vendors coming in hordes with their goods crammed in trucks and tied on the top of vehicles. Many walk for miles with whatever they are selling in a big container carried on their head. (Nobody seems to carry anything any other way. The women often have a baby tied on their back, and a big aluminum basin filled with charcoal, bread loaves, yams, colorful fabric yards called pagnes, or dried fish, but their hand are free). They walk ever so gracefully, even the children, a! nd we have already gotten used to seeing everything carried this way. If a man is coming home from work in the fields, he balances his machete on top of his head. Children as young as 5 or 6 may carry a small pail of food. I saw a woman carrying a good sized dining room table. Everything goes on the head!

But I digress…Everything revolves around market day in the villages. Streets are nearly impossible to travel. Loaded cars and trucks, motos (small motorcycles also used as taxis to get around) have the right of way and come quickly out of nowhere. It is dangerous. I feel like walking around with my bicycle helmet on (well, not quite…). The smell of diesel surrounds the large market area as people load and unload their goods. We must walk through the congestion to get to the heart of the market. Pike Place at its busiest time of year doe! sn’t come close to this experience. Hundreds of venders, mostly women, are selling everything from small piles of dried fish set on a display table or the ground (the flies are very attracted to this), to pots of boiling sauces (sorry, we haven’t had the stomach to find out what they might be made of yet), to unwrapped bars of soap used for our hand laundry, and piles of “dead yovo” clothes. (“Yovo” is a foreigner, especially American. The dead yovo aisles are full of piles of used clothing, and they are referred to as “dead” yovo, because why else would yovos not want these perfectly good clothes unless they were no longer alive? The clothing is thrift shop genre, and I have already purchased a well worn white tank top for about 30 cents (which I used to learn how to batik from a local artist.)

Interspersed with these stalls of curious foods and not so appetizing smells, we find venders selling fabrics in beautiful colors and designs. They are sold in units called pagnes which are about 2 yards each. They come in various qualities, and therefore prices, and this is one of the first things we learned to bargain for in French. Pagnes are what all the women wear. The poorest wear them wrapped around their waist like a sarong. Wealthier folks pay tailors, who are a thriving business, (as are the hairdressers) who can make them into quite stylish, well-fitted outfits. Men buy the pagnes as well. Wayne is having 2 shirts made today for a $5.00 fee from the tailor ($2.50 each). We paid about $4 each for good quality fabric. Place your orders if you want us to send you a shirt. These pagnes are what makes life so colorful here, as even the poorest of the poor of all ages wear them in some form or another. They are worn until they no longer hold together, but still seem to maintain color. The clotheslines on wash days are pleasant to pass by.

There are also male vendors at the market, but not many. They are in the outlying stalls and have electronic equipment like radios which look like they might work, electric fans, batteries and various auto/moto parts.

It’s hard to describe the impact the market had on us the first time we experienced it. I felt horribly overwhelmed, truly, it was almost like being assaulted (OK, I’ve never been assaulted, but this is the only word which seems to fit). An assault on the senses. Aside from the sights and smells and crowds, the noise level is tremendous. Add to that the language/cultural barrier. The good news is that on subsequent visits we have become more accustomed to it, and now look forward to market day and have traveled to a larger neighboring town on their market day. We have actually bee! n able to bargain for pagnes in our newly acquired French: “C’est trop cher!! Diminuez le pris, s’il vous plait!”

Speaking of French, we know some of you are probably curious how we are doing. Although we wish it was coming faster, when we realize that we can form sentences (albeit limited in vocabulary) using 3 verb tenses, we realize we are indeed making progress. We’re working as a team on this….I seem to be speaking more, and Wayne seems to be understanding more. Some things don’t change. Anyone surprised?

So, I hope our little description of market day will encourage those of you who are on the edge of “to visit or not.”

Our hometown (“post” in Peace Corps lingo) in Togo, Atakpame, is quite scenic, nestled in the hills, and our home is (will be, starting September) well above West African standards and very comfortable. We have a fairly steep rocky hill to get to it, but the view is worth the effort and the calories burned will hopefully help negate all the carbohydrates we are eating. The food is quite palatable, although I have to add we are still being careful and haven’t totally gotten into what the natives are purchasing from the street vendors. But we are getting a little more adventurous every day as our digestive systems are acclimating.

We are loving your emails (for those of you who have not written, please feel guilty). Our trips to the internet cafes are highlights of our days. And now in Atakpame, we have found a route to the internet café that goes by the Fan Milk store – the best and only ice cream in town. We are lucky to have a store. In most towns, they are sold from coolers attached to bicycles and it is only by chance that you will see one when you want one. They are a little like the good humor man. So now we have ice cream (well it’s really frozen yogurt) AND your emails to look forward to as we walk! about town.

We are missing you all and feel abundantly blessed to have you as family and friends and know that you are thinking of us and praying for us . Sometimes Africa does not seem so far off, and 2 years not so long. Then again, sometimes it does! :) So, please, we want to know what’s going on in your lives, also, so that when we ret! urn we won’t feel like foreigners, the yovos that we are here in Africa. (And that’s a whole other email).

Love to you all---
Cate and Wayne

Off to Atakpame

2005-07-21T11:51:00.000-07:00

Bon jour

We are half way through our training now; 6 weeks in country and 5 weeks left in training. Tomorrow we meet our Togolese counterparts. They are the host country nationals that have volunteered to work with Peace Corps. They will be the folks we work with most closely in our jobs. Wayne’s counterpart works with computers in a computer maintenance/internet café business and Cate’s is an accountant for the Red Cross who is a board member with 2 nonprofits who have an HIV/AID grant to provide treatment to HIV patients. That’s as much as we know at this point but we will spend the day with them tomorrow so we will learn much more. On Saturday we will travel with our counterparts to the town where we will be for 2 years, Atakpame, and we will spend the week with them and the volunteer we will be replacing. We are looking forward to seeing our "post" and being in the house were we will live. It was the German capital of Togo prior to WW1 and still has some of the buildings which gives a German feel to the town. It is green and hilly so it sounds good. It is also larger than the town we are in for training, so we will have better email access with 5 internet cafes. So please write to us. As Dean Martin would say, "Keep "em coming. My Jeannie and me, we love to get those letters." Cate thinks I'm crazy for referring to Deano, so for the record this is Wayne writing. :)

Below are a few more photos whose titles are self explanatory. The one of Cate and me was taken at an African/American fashion show and we are wearing regal Kente cloth from Ghana that our host family loaned us. The group shot is the same day with the small business development half of the trainees and our trainers.

Termites a flying

2005-07-03T09:17:00.000-07:00

The other night we were sitting in our sitting room reading with the florescent light on. (Every room in the house has a light, but most are very low wattage florescent bulbs with just enough to light to see, but not read.) We started noticing a large insect or two flying near the light. Then there were 8 or 10 and then there were 30 or 40. This was within seconds! Our host mom, Philo, came in and started swatting them with a hand broom. We started looking around to find how they were getting in. When we checked the window screens we found them covered with bugs. We were in the midst of a flying ant or termite swarm. Apparently the rain that day was enough to force them out of the ground. They had wings about 2 inches long on 1 inch bodies. We determined that they were getting in under the front double doors, so Philo laid down a rag in front of the door but it did not cover the whole width. At that point it seemed we had hundreds of bugs inside so decided we needed to tu! rn off the light since that was what was attracting them. Then in order not to attract them into our bedroom we turned off that light too and started using flashlights. At that point there was not much else to do but go to bed safely protected under our mosquito net, so we got an early start on a nights rest. (We are really loving our mosquito net.) The next day all the volunteers were talking about the swarm which enveloped the whole village. Apparently some of the families were catching them and eating them raw after removing the wings. But some took the time to roast them, a real delicacy we presume.

Our mornings are much more pleasant than the evening just described. Due to the temperature being around 80 degrees most nights, we sleep with the windows wide open. The roosters start crowing around 4:30 AM, but in the 10 days we have been here we are already tuning them out so that they do not awaken us. Sometimes we hear singing from nearby or drums from far away starting around 5:30. Other morning sounds are a rhythmic sweeping outside and well water being drawn and poured from the well bucket into larger pans or buckets. (The house well is in the courtyard and has a cement wall around a 2 foot diameter hole. The water is about 30 feet down in the ground. There is a pipe in the well that provides the input to the pump that pumps water into to large tank connected to the house running water system. Don’t ask me why they still draw water with a bucket when the pump is right there. Perhaps they are saving wear and tear on the pump.) We are served breakfast around 6:30 AM! . Usually it’s hot porridge of rice, corn meal or tapioca - with bread and an egg – hard boiled, fried or omelet. Often there is a bucket of warm water in the shower for a bucket shower that was warmed over a charcoal stove outside. Running cold water showers are nicer later in the day when you’re hot. Our classes start at 7:30 and go ‘til noon. Then we have 2 ½ hours for lunch. At 2:30 we start class again until 5:30. Classes consist of French and Small Business Development sessions where we learn about Togolese culture and business. We also have health classes and safety & security classes along with bicycle repair classes.

On Sunday we went to a Baptist church with Philo. It is about a 20 minute walk from the house on the main road near the edge of town. Everyone dresses in their colorful finest for church. It is a simple, large structure like our house with cement walls but with lots of open pattern bricks for ventilation and a tin roof. It holds about 200 or 300 folks. It was very full. There are 6 foot long, 6 inch wide benches to sit on without backs. Men sit on the right side and women on the left. The service is done in both French and Ewe, the local African language. French is for folks who have moved here from elsewhere in Togo where Ewe is not spoken. "Blessed Assurance" was the first hymn sung by the congregation. Other songs were not as recognizable. They ask newcomers to stand and introduce themselves. Cate was moved to try it in French so she blurted out an introduction and told them were we in the Corps de la Paix. The broken French brought lots of smiles and laughter. A coed adult acapella choir of about 25 sang 3 songs with a definite African motif. That was the best part of the 1 ¾ hour long service for me. (They use an electronic organ, trombone and a one string base for musical instruments to accompany the congregation.) The preaching was pretty tame compared to some black Baptist preachers we have heard in the states. One of the texts was Romans 8, which will be recognized by the Lundring clan as Axel’s favorite scripture.

The other day we all went to meet the local tribal chief. He sat on a long porch with an assistant and we sat down on the porch as well. For starters we bowed down all together and said a local greeting in the local language. Then he welcomed us and we introduced ourselves in French. This meeting was done just for protocol to keep the local "powers that be" informed and respected. Chiefs are appointed by the ruling political party which has been in power since 1964 and just won the election in April.

On a more personal note we are feeling fine now, having recovered from our intestinal problems of the first week. (Other volunteers have had similar problems, but none hospitalized.) We are de-caffeinated, de-chocolatized and de-wined – something we thought would never happen! We have a cell phone working now so you can call us for 10 cents a minute. (It costs us over a dollar a minute so don’t expect a call from us.) Dustin and Claire have info on the cheap African calling card. Our number is:

001 228 903-3224.

The site Claire found is: http://www.zscomm.com/classic-africa.htm

We have talked to Claire, K&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;K and N&N so far. Call us any time between 6 and 9 PM our time (11AM and 2 PM Pacific Daylight Time).

Email access is very sketchy, but we have received many messages and thank you for your notes and encouragement. It’s hard to respond to each email, but it is GOOD to hear news from home, so please keep us updated on your lives, too. We are learning how to be patient with the internet…just one more cultural adaptation.

Love and blessings to each one of you!

Wayne and Cate

Now, some pictures (which you can also find here).

What were we thinking?

2005-06-23T04:49:00.000-07:00

Dear family and friends,

We have felt your presence and prayers. Thank you. Our first 10 days have not been easy and we have often referred to the prayer which sister Nada laminated for us: “Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us.”

We already have many stories to tell, but I’ll start with the worst part. Wayne and I have both been sick – but have survived. Apparently amoeba are stronger than we are. I was the first ”to go” (with diarrhea) and spent 2 days in the PC/US Embassy Infirmary in Lome. The group was traveling the day I got sick to our training site 2 hours away, so I stayed behind alone. When I joined the group 2 days later, Wayne was also ill. The first night at diner he fainted as he got up from the table. Our host “mom”, Philo, is a nurse, & after some calls were made to the PC medical staff, we were off to the hospital where we spent the next 2 days. As it turns out he had a bad case of amoebas (causing extreme diarrhea) which caused dehydration, and for an added touch they also detected a small amount of malaria. (This is probably a false positive test – but is makes the story better J, However nobody here takes malaria lightly so they over detect when looking at the slide and give you some pills to cure the malaria. We are also taking a malaria prophylaxis, but it is only 95% effective.) He was on an IV for 36 hours and is doing well now, although still gaining energy. He left the hospital on Monday and started class on Tuesday. He has now fully recovered.

The hospital is run by Baptist missionaries and we had American doctors. He had a private room and I was given a mat to sleep on the floor in the same room. The equipment was quite primitive, but he received good care & attention. We were both glad to come “home”. The staff lives in a compound on the grounds which has a guest house where meals can be purchased. I went for meals there and took food back to Wayne since the hospital itself doesn’t serve food. The Togolese nurses, mostly all young men, were very nice & capable. The equipment (like the IV metal! stand) was totally rusted and the glass bottles looked well used, but we were not worried about sanitation as this hospital is known as the best in Togo. We both gave stool samples at some point. The container they gave Wayne was an old prescription pill container and mine was a Kodak film container. Seems like everything is recycled in this place.

Our host “Mom” is a lovely woman who is a nurse/midwife. Yesterday she delivered twins girls at the hospital, but in our compound/home she also has her own clinic and today there is a woman in labor. She has invited me to “help” sometime. We learned how highly respected Philo is at the hospital. The American doctors hold her in high regard as she has delivered over 2500 babies in the area in the last 20 years. She is from Ghana and speaks English, so although our French will not get as much practice, we are learning a lot. We lucked out on our home. We are only on! e of a few (maybe the only ones) to have running water. Most are getting their water from a well with a bucket. It looks very Biblical. We also have a flush toilet (no paper allowed) but most others have bucket latrines. If I were one of the young volunteers, I might be shouting “age discrimination.”

We are enjoying the group of other volunteers with whom we are training. One has already gone back home to Vermont. We are kept very busy in classes, learning French (W and I are in a class of 3), Small Business Development and “How to Stay Healthy in Togo”. We’ve had too many immunizations to report.

We have, we THINK, already survived the “What were we thinking?” stage of being here. They told us we would experience it, and we admit being here has seemed overwhelming at times, especially with health issues. It is not going to be easy, but there already have been great moments, and we expect they will multiply as we adapt to life here.

We have a nice clean room in an above standard home for Togo. The home has cement floors and walls and a wood ceiling under a metal roof. We sleep under a mosquito net (issued to us by PC along with our bikes, helmets, medical kit, kerosene lantern, water filter and propane stove…) on a comfortable bed and take refreshing (really!) cold showers or warm bucket baths. Food will be described in another email, as I feel we may already have lost half our readers.

We miss our family and friends but feel your presence and your prayers, and it is helping us to keep strong. So keep ‘em coming. Philo, our “host mom” is a Baptist and has enthusiastically asked to learn our table prayer. We have been blessed to be placed in her home.

Now it’s my turn – Wayne typing now. Not too much to add to what Cate said. The best thing about Togo is the people and their faces. The worst thing is the humidity. I expect in a few months we will get used to it. We said we were going to embrace change – well we have done that in spades. Peace Corps kind of doles out the change with a few days preparation in Philly, a few days in Lome” and now training – but it is still overwhelming when you experience it – especially with some hospital time thrown in feeling lousy. But now that I am mostly well I am still glad we have taken this adventure. So far it has not disappointed us in that regard.

Love to you all,
Cate and Wayne

Greetings from Togo

2005-06-13T18:00:00.000-07:00

Monday June 13, 2005 6 PM local time (7 hours ahead time of the west coast.)

This may be more information than you want to read - but for those or you who are interested, here is how we are doing.

We have arrived from Philly without any problems and are in "Stage" training in Lome, as opposed to Pre-Stage training in Philadelphia. It rained pretty hard as we drove in from the airport, but stopped by the time we got to our "hotel". Actually we are staying in the American School residence where teachers stay and there are a few rooms to spare. The humidity is very high (92%) and the temperature in the upper 80s in the afternoon. Our mosquito net looks like 5 fine lace table clothes stitched together hanging from the ceiling by 4 corners. Our upstairs room is pretty nice with a private bath, but (as expected) without hot water. The windows are screened and of the horizontal slat type on opposing sides of the room. But without a fan to create much airflow, we are plenty warm. After getting settled in our rooms and an official greeting from the PC Director in Togo, we went to a nearby PC favorite bar "La Regent" for beers with the director and some PC staff. Other volunteers had come to town and were there to greet us and welcome us into the "PC family".

This morning we woke up to roosters crowing at a very early hour. This evening we are listening to sounds of a 3-on-3 soccer game being played by young men on a side street closed off for the game. The side streets, here by the coast in rainy season, are not paved but made of wet sand with some rocks thrown in for texture. First impressions include women walking balancing loads on their head (like a large platter of new flip-flops), looking down at he street and finding chicken tracks as well as footprints in the sand, and noticing quite a few large old satellite dishes on roof tops of the 2 and 3 story buildings. It seems to me that Lome is less developed than Guayaquil, Ecuador based on the number of paved streets and the small number of tall buildings. But the poverty level seems about the same. There are about 1 million people who live in the city and outskirts.

We got more shots and medical training today as well as a tour of the American medical facility for embassy personnel (of which there are 12 with 5 Marines to guard them) and Peace Corps (which numbers about 100 volunteers in total). We also got a language assessment test so they can group us according to our ability when we start language training on Thursday, 2 ½ hours north of Lome. Our test was short as we couldn’t say too much J. We continue to get to know the volunteers in our group better as well as the 4 experienced volunteers that are here to answer questions and help out during Stage training with cross cultural training. On Thursday we will be placed with a host family in Abade and the intensive French begins.

We walked about 8 blocks to the same bar again as last night. Played hearts and drank beer. Met some more PCVs from previous "stages".

Tuesday, June 14, 2005 11:15 am

Slept pretty well again last night. It was 83 F in our room when we went to bed and 79 F when we woke up. It’s not comfortable, but we sleep well anyway. More medical training today as well as more shots. Today covered how to use our water filter as well as how to use the stool sample preservation kit. This afternoon is cross cultural training from the experienced volunteers.

So we are doing fine and are using the internet café for the first time. Not sure what the access will be to internet cafes during training. We may have to resort to snail mail. More later

We are well and having fun.

Love to you all,

Wayne & Cate

We've arrived!

2005-06-13T07:37:00.000-07:00

I'm sure they'll have plenty of stories about their travel and first days in Togo, but for now I'm (Dustin) just posting to pass on the message from the Peace Corps that they have safely arrived and will now begin training. Here's the email from Peace Corps:

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Greetings.

This e-mail is to let you know that Peace Corps Togo Trainees: Wayne and Catherine Hillard arrived safely in Lomé, Togo last night (Sunday June 12th), and have begun their three month training to prepare for their service in Togo.

All Trainees will be staying in Lomé through Thursday morning (June 16th). On Thursday afternoon they will be traveling to their training sites in Adéta and Govié, which are located approximately 2 1/2 hours northwest of Lomé.

Cheers.

George Monagan
Country Director
Peace Corps/Togo

Robert K. Dedzi
Executive Assistant
Peace Corps Togo

We begin the adventure

2005-06-07T23:35:00.000-07:00

Where do we begin? The last month has been a wonderful whirlwind. Our house lease started on May 15th so we were slowly moving out for the month before that. Of course we had a flourish of activity at the end, cleaning until 3 am on May 15th. Then we were off to CA in a U-Haul truck loaded with a couple of couches & pulling the 4 Runner on a trailer for Claire & Tyler. The first stop was to visit Wayne’s dad Sacramento and spend a day at the cabin in Kyburz. Then we were on to Thousand Oaks for Claire & Tyler’s wedding on May 29th. They had things well planned and it was a great event that will be long remembered by all who were involved. We could not be more pleased with them and their celebration.
Then after a couple days of packing we were off to Claire & Tyler’s new apartment in Phoenix with another U-Haul. And then back to Seattle to Dustin & Julianna’s for a few days before going off to Philadelphia for 3 days of Peace Corps Staging. We depart from Philly to Paris on a June 11 red-eye and arrive in Lome late on the evening of June 12. We'll try to sneak into Paris on our six hour layover!

You can email us at: CateWayneAfrica @ yahoo.com

Don't expect an instant reply as we will probably only have access to email on the weekends during training.

2005-06-07T23:00:00.000-07:00

The Happy Couple