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

Headin' Up Country

The past two weeks have been nuts – brace yourselves for an action-packed entry!

Two weeks ago was Site Placement Day. As volunteers, we have no input into our placement, other than our language abilities and our resume. Even though Togo is a small country, there are huge variations between areas in both nature and living conditions. Needless to say, placement day was pretty nerve-wracking.

While we spent the morning in language testing (I moved up to Intermediate-Mid, by the way), the training team drew a giant map of Togo in the sand, and stuck wooden posts into the ground to approximate the locations of all 47 sites. Our training host families poured into the compound, and when the hour finally arrive, we gathered around the map and waited for Jane, the programming director, to read out our fates.

I was among the first names called – along with ten other new volunteers, I would be heading to the Savanes region in the far, far north of the country, to a village called Nassiete. The “site summary” I was given had little information about the town – 15 km from Dapaong, the regional capital, a beautiful view of a mountain, no electricity. I’d have to wait to find out.

The week passed by in a whirlwind, our time filled with sessions scrambling to prepare us for our two-week visit to site. We learned how to ride on the back of a moto, we met our counterparts (who were in town for their own workshop), and we went to the big market in Tabligbo to buy last minute supplies.

Incoming EGE Volunteers!

Saturday morning arrived in no time. The Peace Corps van picked me up from my compound at 5:30, and drove me to meet the rest of the volunteers and counterparts in the neighboring town of Aheppe. We all said our goodbyes, and piled into our assigned vans. The three vans going to the Savannes would reconvene in the town of Kante, in the Kara region, to spend the night in hotel – the journey north is not a one-day affair!

Travel in Togo has a reputation for being dirty, unpredictable, and generally the worst. We kept ourselves cool by opening the windows, but that meant I was coated in a solid quarter-inch of kicked up dirt a half-hour into the journey.

As we barreled through the Centrale region, we heard a worrisome noise from the undercarriage. We pulled over, only to discover a shot transmission. Welcome to Togo.

We volunteers walked with our counterparts about 10 minutes to a neighboring village, where a family was kind enough to lend us some shade. In exchanged, we terrified their young son with our glaringly pale skin. We waited for about 45 minutes while the other Savanes vans, a little further ahead, pulled some switcheroos, and an (air conditioned!) van turned around to retrieve us and our luggage.

Switching Luggage Around

All Crammed In

The rest of the journey, we crammed three vans worth of people into two, but the company (and the climate control) was pleasant. We rolled into Kante just after the sun went down, and spent the evening chatting with a few volunteers who came up from their villages to greet us. I even topped the night off with a running-water shower.

The next morning, everyone woke up with nerves: we piled back into the vans to finish the journey to our new homes.

Nassiete is only a few kilometers off of the main route, but there’s a world of difference in that small space. We said goodbye to the paved national route and electrical wires, and were greeted by giant, lush fields and towering flat-topped mountains. You can’t take a car to get to my compound, so I was dropped with all of my baggage on the side of the road. All of the village chiefs were there to welcome me, along with the school director, and a handful of other folks.

As is the way here in the north, we celebrated my arrival right then and there with a quick chicken-slaughtering welcome ceremony – a weird mélange of honor and horror for me. (To do: get over American sensibilities about animals, and quick.) Once the poor bird flapped its last flap, we set off on a 10 minute walk through the fields to arrive at my compound.

View From Outside the Compound

I’m living on the Bouna family compound. My host father is the president of the APE – the Association de les Parents des Eleves. He has two wives (polygamy is quite common here), and there are a total of six kids in the family, none younger than eight or so. Also on the compound are chickens, pigs, goats, cows, a donkey, ducks, a million pigeons, two dogs, and a cat. It smells a little barnyardy. I have two rooms of my own, each with cement walls, a tin roof, and a little barred window. I also have a latrine and walled-in bucket-shower zone to call my own. The water pump is about a five minute walk from the compound, but after an embarrassing display of my water-carrying ability, my host family has taken over that task for me. I’ve got some learning to do, I guess.

My Building!

Nassiete is quite large, area-wise, but only about 800 people live in the village – there’s just a lot of space for farms. There’s a primary school, and a “college” (for kids approximately 13 – 17), but for the next level, called lycee, students need to travel to the next town. We have a little boutique which is sometimes open where I can buy cookies and soap. And we have two twice-weekly “markets,” which, in actuality, sell very little, and are more just pop-up bars for the local brew, made of fermented millet and called “Tchakpalo.” And that’s the extent of that. If I want to buy phone credit or a vegetable, I need to hitch a moto ride to a neighboring village.

My Mountain

And everyone is so, so wonderful. People are friendly, helpful, welcoming, and patient with my French. They try and teach me phrases in Moba, the local language, and laugh with what I hope is glee when I can stumble through a greeting.

I’ve even been given a Moba name: Yendoube, which means "God is There." I've got a lot to live up to.

Two Days in Togo

I have to admit, I’m typing this after polishing off my first Togolese beer, which is closer to 40 oz. than it is to 16. This evening, a PCV stationed in Lome came to our hotel to welcome us and was generous enough to bring a 12-pack with him. But let me back up.

Wednesday morning, all 49 of us checked out of our hotel, and boarded a couple of coach buses bound for New York – a really fun opportunity to get a last look at New Jersey, the motherland. (The turnpike is a great last view of the USA, right?). After a few hours on the road, we arrived at JFK only to discover we had to wait until 4 hours before our flight to check in. Cripes.

We lolled around inside this sea of suitcases until it was time to check in. Finally, after a full six hours in JFK, we boarded our plane to Brussels.

If you’ve ever wondered about the moment when the full effect of what I was doing hit me, this was it. Taking off in New York was when it really set in.

Of course, we still had to deal with more than a full day of travel before it actually was real. Brussels Airlines was comfortable, but six and a half hours on a plane was not. Neither was the nine hour layover in Belgium. My brother Daniel promised me the best chocolate of my life in that airport, but all I could find was a Toblerone (not that I’ll knock that). Some of us did find opportunity to nap – though our layover lasted the morning in Belgian time, it was still the middle of the night for our internal clocks.

We had one plane ride left – a 10-hour doozy to Lome, with a quick pit stop in Cote d’Ivoire to pick up a handful of passengers. Brussels Airlines came through, with free scotch and ice cream and the seventh season of Friends, but it was still a relief to hear the (trilingual) announcement cuing our final descent.

Pumped full of jetlag and some serious all-nighter adrenaline, we were hustled into the Presidential Suite at the Togolese airport, where we sorted out customs and visas, and were given a much needed liter of water.

Finally, we were able to grab our bags from the tarmac and load ourselves onto busses. This 1:00 AM swatch of pavement was my first, dark, exhilarating view of Togo. Palm trees, and a cockroach I accidentally crushed under my 50-pound suitcase.

For our three-day orientation, Peace Corps has put us up in a little place called Amy’s hotel. The food is great, and we eat it in the open-air veranda that is the first floor. Our rooms are no Holiday Inn, but they’re first class compared to what I expect we have to come. Zoe, Jess, and I are in a triple with running water and a complementary stand-fan (though I do wish the bathroom door in our room would stay closed on its own).

There’s a second-floor covered patio with tables and chairs, and a really gorgeous view of the trees and dirt roads of Lome. Relaxing up there in the evening breeze is nice after a humid day in the 80’s.

We spend the days of our orientation at the Peace Corps compound in the city. I’ve met tons of medical, administrative, and program staff, both Togolese and American. The day is chock full of attending safety sessions, getting additional shots, and choosing a Malaria prophylactic that’s right for me. Tomorrow, I’ll take my French placement exam that will determine the level at which I’ll start my language training.

And the nights are beautiful. The occasional car drives by, noise echoes in from an outdoor movie playing next door, and children wave up at us as we look out over the city. We’ve got cold beer and new friends  - sounds good to me.

On The Precipice & A Peek Inside My Suitcase

Hi, friends!

I'm typing this from my hotel room in Philadelphia, getting ready for a second exhausting day of orientation, called staging. My 48 fellow trainees and I have another full day of icebreakers and breakout sessions today before our final night in the States. We're all cramming in as much last-minute American food as we can, and my roommate and I have been soaking in an embarrassing amount of reality TV to keep us laughing in the coming weeks.

I've been so occupied with packing anxiety and some very emotional goodbyes over the last few weeks, that I've hardly had time to be excited or nervous about this adventure. Even now, when it's so close at hand, the imminent newness of my life is almost impossible to imagine. I'm sure stepping on the plane on Wednesday will bring that all up, but because it feels so unreal, it's hard to write about.

Packing anxiety, though, there's something real! Each of us was given a hard limit of two checked pieces of luggage, neither more than 50 pounds. How do you pack your life into two tiny bags? I found myself making some weird choices - leave the blue jeans, but cram in that six pound bag of trail mix.

Here's the highlight reel of some things I thought were essential to schlep across the Atlantic:

Combination Coffee Mug/French Press, because I couldn't bring myself to kick caffeine.


















My buddy Blue Kitty who was the easiest of my friends to pack.

A headlamp. "So you don't fall in." (Thanks, Aunt Amy!)

And, surprise, last-minute addition: a collection of letters from all you wonderful people to open over the next few years. What a blast this was to get! I am so, so excited to have these - they will, hands down, be my most valued possessions in Togo (though don't quote me on that when the mosquitoes attack). Thank you all!! (And an especially giant thank you to my extremely sweet boyfriend, Kyle, for orchestrating this whole surprise. Thank you, thank you!!)






The rest of the limit is filled with clothes, soaps, and other weird miscellany. I'm sure in the coming months, my life will expand far out of these suitcases - it always does. But in the meantime, it feels comforting to know I can carry my whole existence with two hands.


Keep in touch!