Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard

I’ve now been at site for two full months, and teaching for a full four weeks. And what an experience the Togolese classroom is! I feel a little lucky that I’m doing this having never taught before… I can’t imagine being an experienced teacher and having to adjust to the crazy differences in education between the two countries.

My School - CEG Nassiete

Every morning, I wake up at 5:00, giving me enough time to eat breakfast, get ready, and make the 15 minute walk to school by 6:45. At that time, the “major generale” (the head student of the school) blows his whistle, calling for each class to line up on the front lawn. We stand quietly and watch as the Togolese flag is raised up on the big branch we use as a flagpole, and then the major calls on one of the classes to sing the national anthem. Then the whistle is blown again, students scatter back to finish sweeping the classroom floors, and teachers do last minute prep in the office before first period starts at 7:00.

The school is a big cement building with five rooms – four classrooms and the office. Each room is big and airy, with a big grid of window holes built into the walls. Wooden desks fill the room, and each seats between one and three students, depending on the size of the class. (My largest class, 108 students, has kids packed like sardines three to a desk, with barely enough space for a skinny Togolese tween to navigate between the rows. Me walking to the back of the classroom is out of the question!)  There are two large blackboards, one at the front and one at the back of the classroom.

The school day goes until noon. Each grade has five classes, 55 minutes each, with a 25 minute break in the middle of the day. Each classroom houses one grade, and students stay in their rooms for all of their classes – it’s the teachers who switch around. At break time, two or three women show up near the school to sell snacks – beignets, porridge, and plates of rice with hot sauce.

I teach three grades – the sixieme (the youngest kids, just out of primary school), cinquieme, and I co-teach the quatrieme with Monsieur Kolani, the other English teacher at my school. I’ve already shocked you all with the size of my sixieme class (I repeat – 108 kids!), but the other two classes are more manageable, with between 40 and 50 students in each.

Not Actually Teaching, Just a Photoshoot

We’re expected to do three activities in each class – usually a vocabulary lesson, a grammar lesson, and some kind of reading or listening activity. Reading exercises are tough, because resources are tough to come by. The school only has about 13 books for each class – and those are ragged photocopies that my homologue painstakingly reglues at least once a week – and even in my smaller classes, three students need to crowd around each copy. Other exercises are tough, too, because of the number of students – Even if I could call on everyone each class, it wouldn’t be nearly enough talking for them to improve their English. Groupwork is a totally foreign concept in the rote-memorization environment of Togolese school, but I’m trying to introduce it little by little.

Though I’m not a Togolese student, I imagine the biggest obstacle is having school entirely in French. It’s nobody’s first language – children speak only Moba until they start learning French in primary school, and though that’s earlier than most American s start a foreign language, it’s still wild to me that by age 12, they’re required to attend a school where all subjects are taught in the second language they’re learning. I couldn’t do that. It’s totally impressive, and also no surprise to me if kids struggle!

There are five other teachers at my school – all men – and our director. Other, larger schools have other authority figures (like a senseur, or chief disciplinarian), but because we’re so tiny, a lot of those kinds of duties fall on the teachers and director. So far, everyone has been very welcoming, and are very lenient with the amount of non-teaching responsibilities I’m ready to take on at the school!

Fellow Volunteer Morgan, Me, Kolani, and Soyenou

Kolani, the other English teacher at the school, is my Peace Corps appointed counterpart. We’re all supposed to search out many homologues to collaborate with, but he is my springboard. He’s incredibly nice, and excited about being able to converse with someone whose native language is English. We’re hoping to start an English club at the school, and maybe a local English Teachers’ Club, for teachers in neighboring villages to get together and talk in and about l’Anglais.

My other best friend at school is named Soyenou. He teaches French and History/Geography, and has volunteered to help teach me Moba, the local language. Twice a week, we meet at the school in the afternoon, where we spend an hour learning new vocabulary words, and practicing sentences I can use at the marche. “N bwa n da dam piile,” I find myself saying often, “I want to buy 100 francs worth of Tchakpalo.”

Learning local language is a great key to integration. Nothing seems to make my neighbors happier than being able to greet me in their mother tongue. I’m not sure whether its sincere appreciation of the effort I’m making to be a part of the community, or glee at the ridiculousness of some white girl mispronouncing phrases they’ve known from childhood, but either way, I’m happy to put a smile on someone’s face when I can answer “A saa le?” – “Where are you going?” with a broken but confident “N saan kalatu je,” “I’m going to school, but I’m coming back!”

Savamily Goes to the Caves

A few weeks ago, the volunteers in the Savanes took a field trip to a village called Nagou. It's my friend Michael's site, but also, boasts the only UNESCO World Heritage Site in Togo. Several hundred years ago, the Moba people built a series of caves on the top of a mountain, which they retreated to during war. The caves are perfectly situated to defend, and our tour guide (a man from Michael's village) pointed out rooms where women would cook, where poison arrows were hidden out of the reach of children, and hidden gullies into which warriors would lure enemy cavalry.

We woke up early to hike Michael's mountain, and spent the afternoon exploring the caves, drinking tchakpalo in the Nagou market, and dancing with the village.

Check out some pics!

Setting Out for our Climb

Made it to the Top!

Looking Out Over the Savanes

Cliffs By the Caves

Molly Descending into the Caves

Exploring

Caves

Ashiana and TJ at the Caves

Moba Dance Party

Je Suis Voluntaire!

Greetings, one and all, from an official Peace Corps Volunteer! I’ve said my oath, I’ve signed the paperwork, I’ve been to the afterparties, and can now say, without any asterisks, that I’m a PCV.

Tuesday the 25^th was our last day at our training center in Zafi. We had our final “Readiness to Serve” interviews, to make sure we were committed to the tenets and qualified for the rigors of service. Following the interviews (and our cheers as we bid farewell to the training center for the last time), the 45 of us piled in the vans to go to the neighboring town of Ahepe for the farewell fete with our host families.

My Kouve family can be a little – hmm – enthusiastic when it comes to Americans, fetes, or fetes with Americans. The weekend before, they encouraged me to invite some friends over for lunch and what they were calling a “journee Americaine” – an American day. I was told we would eat real African food for lunch, but would listen to American music. I thought that sounded great, and a few friends came by around noon. We should have something was up when our lunch was two hours late and my host dad was setting up a microphone system in our little compound (where do you even find a microphone in Togo?), but before we even had time to be worried, my family was parading the nearest three dozen children in front of us, urging them to sing the Togolese national anthem and any church song they could think of into the mic. We clapped uncomfortably as we dug into the peanut sauce that was finally ready, but we were barely halfway finished eating before my uncle let us know that it was now our turn to share an American dance, so stand up! We tried to explain to them that we weren’t going to do that, we didn’t know any American dances, they really just aren’t any American dances, but the excited eyes of the whole neighborhood were not going to let us off the hook. My friend Zoe gamely came to the rescue, demonstrating something that was basically a dance (there was a little bit of twirling, anyway) to the tune of “Build Me Up, Buttercup” that she had performed in the fourth grade. My family was momentarily wowed, and before they could recover to demand an encore, my friends used a distant grey cloud as an excuse to run home as fast as possible, “avant le plu.”

Anyway, with that afternoon still fresh in my mind, I was a little nervous about the big farewell party. As much as I love my family, and know that they are just crazy about cross-cultural exchange, I was not excited to do a lot of performing. Fortunately, it turned out to be all fun and no pressure – a great sendoff.

All of the Kouve families got together and selected a pattern of pagne (the brightly colored and wildly patterend fabric that West Africans wear). They bought out all local stock, and commissioned shirts and dresses for all 16 volunteers and their hosts, so walking into the fete, Kouve was a sea of white and blue geese.

Me and the Kouve Fam

 We took twenty minutes or so to hug and take photos all together, and then sat down to a potluck dinner. There were speeches of appreciation from Peace Corps staff and host families, and two volunteers got up to give speeches of “merci” and “akbelo.” The crowd, as usual, went nuts for the American speaking in Ewe, the local language. A dance troupe came in and performed, and invited everyone to come join them. This eventually devolved into just general dancing, and before we knew it, it was time to pile into the vans again and leave.

This was also my first real taste of traveling with Togolese. I’d been told that travel was a frantic and crowded affair in this country, but was not expecting it to be so in this venue – in vans run by the Peace Corps, traveling a scant 4 miles.  As soon as it was announced that the vans were ready to depart, everyone in the room booked it for the door. I was in the middle of saying goodnight to my American friends when my host family pulled me into the stampede with them. “Let’s go!” they said, “The vans are going to leave!” seeming to imply the possibility that we might get stranded in Ahepe forever.

We were among the first out the door, and immediately, the whole throng poured into the first available van. Surprised, and not wanting to be trampled, I stood off to the side. The vans have room for 14 passengers (which in Togo means 20), but within ten seconds, there were two dozen people crammed in. My host uncle, who was sitting in the back corner of the van, was shrieking my name and frantically reaching across his neighbors laps, hoping to (I guess?) grab me and pull me in, as though they were in the last lifeboat leaving the Titanic.

The driver let me know there was no one yet in the front, so I hopped in. Zoe managed to grab the other front seat, and we were able to pass the 20 minute journey pretty comfortably, especially compared to our 6’4” friend Nate who sat behind us, sandwiched in a row with five Togolese passengers.

The next morning, we said goodbye to our families and hit the road to return to Lome. We unloaded at our beloved Amy’s hotel which, though ominously one-star when we first arrived in Togo, was now some kind of Shangri-La, with its running water and its weird mini pizzas.

The next two days were a bit of a blur – last minute security sessions and paperwork, setting up bank accounts, buying mattresses, and visiting the legendary “yovo stores:” big super-marches with Nutella and real plastic brooms. The nights, too, were a blur, cramming in as much time with good friends before heading off to new homes, hours apart from each other.

Friday morning rolled around – swear-in day! Each of the three sectors selected a pagne pattern to wear for the day, so we left Amy’s for the US Embassy looking fresh and sufficiently matchy.

(No phones or cameras were allowed in the embassy, so please accept this low-quality selfie to get a sense of how beautiful we all looked.)

On y va, Faire la Selfie

Check out these articles on the swear-in ceremony! Warning: have a francophone or Google translate handy.

The rest of the day was spent celebrating, and the following morning, bright and early, we packed ourselves into assigned vans and hit the road for our permanent sites.

On The Road

The Village of Baga