bridge troubles

there are not many paved roads in togo. if i want to get to lomé from atakpamé (i would suggest maybe looking up a map of togo at this point) , i can either go down the route nationale or take the kpalimé road. well, a couple weeks ago a bridge on the route nationale collapsed. this really sucks for anyone traveling anywhere between atakpamé and lomé. not only is it more expensive now, but the kpalimé road is getting worn down pretty good. let me also say that the kpalimé road was not that great to begin with. we're talking major pot holes. and now with so many cars and big trucks going down it, not to mention it's rainy season, the road is looking a good deal worse than it was before. i haven't had to travel that far south yet, but from the stories i hear, i'm not really looking forward to the trip i'll be making in a couple weeks. reconstruction will come eventually, but they're going to wait until the rainy season ends. we'll see if that's true.

a waragni fete

just a little peace corps togo background before i share this story. there are five regions in togo and within each region volunteers are divided into clusters. i happen to live in what many would consider the best cluster in togo ;) the pagala cluster. one of my fellow clustermates, connor, invited me to a village fete (or party, for all you non frenchies), and this is where the story begins.

i told connor that i would be at his village before 8am since the day's festivities were supposed to start around 7. me being stingy or optimistic, i decided i would bike down. it takes roughly an hour to get to pagala on bike and waragni (connor's village) is about an hour further (just under 45k in total from mpoti). i set my alarm for 5 30 in hopes of heading out around 6. my alarm clock goes off and my first thought is: cancelling this early morning bike ride is only a phone call away. so i snooze. i eventually talk myself out of my laziness and get to waragni just around 8 30.

the vast majority of people in waragni are kabiyé (not sure on the spelling), and around this time of year they have a fete to celebrate young boys who are coming of age (about 18). they hold a series of informal wresting matches through out the day in which the boys will crouch in the middle of a circle of spectators and wait for another boy to come challege them to wrestle. there are several going on at the same time, along with people playing music. barrett (a fellow pcv friend of mine who was also there) and i decided to follow suit and wrestle eachother, which got a good laugh from people watching us. i won of course.

another part of the coming of age deal is having to eat dog. each of the boys taking part of the ceremony either buys or has a dog bought for them and they cook them throughout the day in low to the ground covered paillotes (kind of like a straw hut). we were invited into two different paillotes and were given several peices of dog to eat. i think i need to apologize to several people at this point, but i won't lie, it was pretty tasty. not so much the first time around because a couple peices were not tender at all and (at least one of my peices) still had visible fur on it. but i had already picked the peice up and i couldn't just put it back. i ate it before i could think too much of what i was doing. the second time around, though, the peices were very tender. i'll just leave it at that.

i didn't get to see the dancing part of the fete since i had to get back to mpoti, but all i can say is that i am so glad i got myself out of bed that morning. i didn't have my camera but i'll try to get pictures from barrett and post them as soon as possible.

oh how time flies

i'm on a kind of spontaneous trip down to atakpame for a meeting and thought i would take the opportunity to do some updating since i alwys feel like i have way more to share than i have the time to. so here goes.

i'm almost hitting my year mark in country. weird. i've had definite ups and downs and right now i feel i'm on a high, so it's probably a good time to be updating. they talk about different stages people go through on their service, one being questioning your progress, be it in work or cultural adjustment. i think i was stuck at that stage for a few months and have gotten to the point of accepting a couple things. first of all, i'm never going to come close to fully understanding this culture. so, the kinds of relationships i will be able to build are inevitably going to feel different than relationships i can form with people from a culture closer to my own. that being said, i think the reason why this has been the biggest challenge for me is because i believe that the most genuine and effective change happens through organic relationships. what do you do, then, when you have such a hard time building the kind of relationship you want? i'm still in the process of figuring that out. secondly, i've accepted the fact that i'm always going to be looked at as a foreigner, no matter how long i live here or how hard i try to be well integrated. i'm not sure if it's inevitable or not and i'm not sure whether it's a bad thing or not. my physical appearance and all the connotations of being a non-togolese are the first obstacle in my becoming fully integrated. people make assumptions, there are stereotypes, everyone makes them and acts accordingly. togolese are not the only ones or exempt from it. but there is not a whole lot i can, should, or necessarily want to do to change certain attributes of myself. it's cultural exchange (as frustrating as it can be sometimes) and part of the reason why i'm here in the first place. at my lowest point i was wondering why i'm spending my time and effort in a place where i'm not going to really understand most of the people i have to work and live with and where i'm always going to be looked at and treated as a foreigner. at that point i had to ask myself why i am staying and try to answer as honestly as possible. do my reasons for staying the two years outweigh my reasons for going back to the states? i've decided that they do. having family and friends in the states that i won't see for a while make it both harder and easier to stay. i'm looking forward to being with them again, but i'm fortunate to receive from them incredible support for the work that i'm doing. i also have a great support system here in togo. i don't have kind enough words to describe some of the peace corps volunteers around me and forever grateful for their friendships. despite the cultural barrier, i also recognize the invaluable relationships i've built with some of my togolese brothers and sisters. they're not always easy, but what relationship is? above all, i see how this experience is forming and changing me in ways that only spending two years in togo as a peace corps volunteer could. my worldview has expanded for sure and i've asked questions i might not have otherwise even thought of asking. i may not be changing the world (it's true, i'm not), but at least i'm gaining a new appreciation for it and *hopefully* making little changes that will contribute to the greater cause.

stay tuned ...

it's incredible how quickly time flies when you're online on slow computers with slow connections and funky keyboards. i'm about out of time, so i think i'm going to leave the rest of the updating for another time. but rest assured that all is well and i keep learning something new every day.

african women's day is at the end of the month. holler.

i'll be holding a peer educator training the second week of august. more on that later.

please keep me and the rest of togo in your thoughts and prayers!

peace, love, and blessings to you all.

may: a mourning, observed - ist - visiting the fam in agou - a visit to ghana

early one morning towards the beginning of may, i headed out to the paved road to wait for a car to go to pagala. as i neared my usual waiting spot, i noticed that half of m'poti's population was gathered on the road already. i inquired as to what the purpose of the crowd was and was told that there had been a moto accident the night before. the guy who had been on it was seriously injured or dead, depending on who i talked to. it always sucks to hear about these sort of things happening (you hear about moto accidents all the time), but it always feels worse when you find out the person is someone more closely acquainted than simply some random person in village. this young man turned out to be the husband of one of my neighbors. when i came back home from pagala and saw my neighbor, i immediately knew he had died since she had shaved off all her hair, something i had previously been told people do when a significant other passes. for the next month and a half or so, i observed other behaiors indicative of her mourning a loss. she didn't do any work, she pretty much hung around the house all day. at ever meal she would place a morsal of whatever we would be eating on the ground,along with a peice of meat. she only wore a certain pagne wrapped around her, and went topless on a regular basis. i missed the funeral since i had been gone the week that he died, but when i came back i went with my neighbor to the house of the guy's family to pay my respects. it was a little awkward for me because i didn't know what the proper thing to say to them was, but they seemed to appreciate the visit.

the week i had been gone in pagala had been for my in-serice training. it was a good opportunity to reinforce our goals in our communities and share ideas on how to reach those goals. it was also great to see people from my training group that i don't get to see on a regular basis and hear how their experiences are going and share ideas.

about a week and a half after ist, i went on a short trip that started out with a visit to my host family in agou. it was a great time. it was a little weird to be back in agou after having been on my own for the preious five months, but that was to be expected. my perspective on things changed in that i realized how educated and economically prosperous agou is in relation to a lot of smaller villages i have visited since having lived there, my own village included. it was also good to be able to better communicate with people, as my french speaking abilities had improved since training (though are still very much in progress, even now). and of course everyone was incredibly welcoming and happy to see us (i went with two other friends) back.

after our short visit, we headed to ghana to pick up a visitor from the states and eat some good food. it was a quick trip but lots of fun. accra is beautiful and i hope to go back. due to lack of time and preparedness, i'm going to leave it at that and tell you that y'all should come see it for yourselves. and stop by for a visit in togo while you're around.

a word to the wise. the bible says so.

i can across a proverb in the message version of the bible the other day that i thought worth sharing. being that i am not a morning person, it made complete sense to me.

if you wake your friend in the early morning by shouting "rise and shine!" it will sound to him more like a curse than a blessing.


amen.

love your enemies: not just another cliché

love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.
martin luther king, jr

i think one of the most challenging things christ demands of his followers is to love those who, almost by definition, should be unloveable. it's an oxymoron: love your enemies? in theory; it's a fairly easy thing to do. all you gotta do is say it. go ahead. i love my enemies. some people even go as far as thinking it every once in a while. when it comes down to it, however, its implications seem contrary to every human instinct. or is it just me? and actually, it's implications are terribly difficult to figure out in the first place. does loving your enemies mean wanting to be around them? does it mean giving them things? helping them? not thinking mean things about them? thinking nice things about them? whatever the case, i don't think any of the above is possible without divine intervention and our own willingness to let go of any wrong done to us. forgiveness, i think, is really where it starts. the grudge-free type of forgiveness. the kind that takes more than a sentence and longer than a day. and if it's a vrai enemy we're trying to forgive, it may be a process we have to restart everyday.

in my past, there haven't been many people that i would consider as enemies. whether this is a blessing or not, i'm not sure. maybe it just means that i dislike conflict and do all that i can to avoid it. and that's the thing; in the past, i've been able to avoid major conflict with people that could have become my enemies. by keeping my distance, i not only avoid developing these stressful relationships, it also makes it easier to forgive those who do happen to cross the line. in doing this, however, i'm cheating myself from the opportunity to experience what it really means to love my enemy. that's not to say i am going to make an enemy for the sake of having one to love, this world has a way of producing them without my added effort.

about a month and a half into post, i began to develop a relationship with a neighbor that had some enemy-like qualities to it. the most frustrating part of the whole situation was that this was a person whom i had just barely met, while still adjusting to a completely different cultural context and having a communication barrier to work around. did i mention i don't like conflict? so i tried to deal with it in the same way i have dealt with these kinds of situations in the past-- by avoiding it. turned out this wasn't an option. my next option: draw some boundaries. this was hard for me to do, but with the help and support of other people, i was able to do it. i could have left it at that. deal with the tension and just be glad boundaries were being respected. but taking the command to "love my enemy" seriously asks me to go farther. and so i started to make a conscious effort to minimize negative thoughts in relation to this person. i then tried finding things about them that i appreciate. then i tried doing nice things for them every now and then (anything as simple as saying bonjour), without expecting anything in return. in this case, it looks like the story is going to have a happy ending. in the past month, this neighbor and i have almost gotten to the point of being actual friends. let's just hope things keep moving in that direction.

this was a challenging experience that fortunately took a turn for the better. my efforts were met with a positive reaction which has enabled us to get where we are now. though i didn't go into details, i also want to recognize that the trespasses i experienced were relatively mild compared to some you may have had to deal with in the past or will have to deal with in the future. maybe you feel like your enemy should be the exception to the rule. that jesus couldn't possibly have known they would be capable or doing or saying what they did when he said to love them. no matter how impossible it may seem, i encourage you to at least consider the possibility of beginning the process. you never know, you may end up with one less enemy and one more friend. and god knows friends are a whole lot easier to love than enemies.