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 25th 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
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