madame rose et mammy come to the pote

Last Thursday morning Rose, my APCD, and Brownie Lee (called mammy by many people—a generic, respectful name for older people), the national director for Peace Corps in Togo, came chez moi for a post visit. I helped my homologue organize a village gathering the past two weeks to welcome them. Here’s how it went.

Rose and Brownie drove up just past 9 and came to my house where we waited until a group of women came to greet and escort us to the primary school with music and dancing. We sat in our designated seats and Koffi, my homologue, started out by welcoming them and talking about what work Nate had done the previous two years and the kind of work I’ll be continuing. He then gave me the floor, which kind of threw me off because I had thought I was going to give my little speech after the students did their skit. I improvised a little and it worked. Here is the original version of what I was going to say:

Bonjour. D’abord, je veux remercier Madame Rose et Mammy pour nous avoir rendues visite aujourd’hui et pour tout le travail que vous faites au Togo. Soyez les bienvenues à M’Poti. Je veux aussi remercier les élèves pour avoir bien fait le sketch et merci à toute l’assistance pour son attention. Le grand thême du sketch c’était l’équité genre. C’est à dire qu’aujourd’hui on veut parler de l’importance de la promotion de la fille comme le garçon. Selon le sketch, les filles, comme les garçons, ont le pouvoir de réussir à n’import quel travail si la communauté les permet et les supporte. En faisant ça, on va voir le devéloppement de la communauté. Ce devéloppement n’est pas le travail d’une seule personne mais de tout la communauté toute entière. Vous, les gens de M’Poti, sont devenus ma famille et j’espère pouvoir bien travailler avec vous pour l’evolution de notre cité. Ce que je veux demander de vous c’est de me poser des questions, de me donner vos idées, votre bon volunté, enthousiasme, et motivation. Merci beaucoup.

Basic summary in English:

Hey. First of all, I want to say thanks to Rose and Brownie for all the work y’all do in this country. Welcome to the pote. I also want to say muchas gracias to the students for doing a super job on the skit and to everyone else for not falling asleep. So basically the skit is about girl power. Let’s get with the program and support our girls. In the skit, we see that girls can do anything boys can do if you just let them. And if we do this, the community is going to move forward. This work isn’t going to get done by just one person. We gotta work together. Y’all have become my homies and I hope we can work together to make this a better place. All I ask I from you is to ask me questions, give me your ideas, your enthusiasm, and motivation. Holler.

After my standing ovation, the students did an amazing job with the skit and the parole was passed on to Rose. She spoke for about 10 minutes in ewé so I didn’t follow, except for the handful of words I can pick out. She basically reiterated what i'm there for and the importance of encouraging girls to go to school. Then Brownie gave a quick word and we ended with dancing and drinking some tchouktou. We eventually made our way to my house to have lunch and chit chat. They left around 1.

Things had gone so well and I was feeling really good even though I was kinda tired. To keep my momentum going I cleaned my house until my homologue and the students who did the skit showed up to have a congratulations-on-a-job-well-done drink. I got some other things done and by dinner time, a lady I work with from time to time invited me over to eat fufu with her and her kids. I came back home right as it started to rain, got my things all packed up for this week and went to sleep. It was a really good day and a great note to leave village on because I’m looking forward to coming back.

I’m going to try my best to get pictures uploaded while I’m in Lomé the next few days. Stay tuned.