January

Hello everyone,

I hope January is treating you well. It’s been something of a mixed bag here in Founougo. Projects are getting underway, but there is always plenty of uncertainty and delay and worry that my days aren’t busy enough.

I notice that I haven’t mentioned much about gardening lately, even though I do indeed have a garden box in front of my house. I am sorry to say that since mid November rats (or possibly mice?) have been slowly and systematically taking over my garden. They ate the most palatable seedlings first, but whenever I think their appetite couldn’t go any further, another Flamboyant gets mowed down.

Part of the problem is that the wooden box that contains the garden bed has been breaking down and the rats have eaten holes into the structure so they can burrow around and generally have ownership. I decided it was time to make repairs and talked to a carpenter who lives down the street. He checked it out and said that ‘tomorrow’ he would come by to repair it, so I should move all the soil. The trouble is sometimes ‘tomorrow’ really means 24 hours from now, and sometimes it means ‘sometime in the foreseeable future’. In this case it was the latter, and I haven’t seen him in two days. Even though I knew this was a possibility, I didn’t want to hold work up by not actually being ready the next day if he did show up. So I started slowly scooping the dirt into a large metal bowl with a hand-hoe that I have. There was a lot of dirt. Probably two and a half feet high, three feet wide four feet long. I was determined, but knew it was going to take a long time. After maybe 20 minutes, my neighbor Jean-Marie, who is probably 12, came over to help. Even though it’s pretty normal culturally, I still think it’s astounding that he came over, just because he saw that I was doing a difficult task. He was also really strong the work definitely went more than twice as fast with him using the hoe and me just scooping with my hands. The work that kids do here is really astounding. While I was trying to help him help me I also noticed that the waistband on his shorts said BARACK OBAMA. The whole experience was a good example of how much people here help Volunteers, and how much American culture is abstractly revered. When we finished I was able to invite him into the house for a big glass of Crystal Light.

This week I was supposed to have my second community latrine meeting with the help of the Delegate for Founougo – B. Unfortunately, his adult son died, so the meeting was canceled. I found out about this in a bizarre conversation with the Delegate’s third wife from Togo, who sings at the evangelical church I go to (I know, right?). I said something like,

“I am so sorry to hear about the Delegate’s son”

“Yes well he was sick.”

“Oh. Was it a long sickness?”

“No. He fell and broke his leg, then he started vomiting blood.”

Ok, that’s not being sick. That is a high trauma injury! She went on to explain,

“He didn’t go to the ‘radio’ to see if anything was broken inside. People here don’t do that” Here, I am sorry to say, I think the vagueness is due to my poor translating abilities, not necessarily simple language on her part. But wow, that conversation has really stuck with me. I was able to visit the Delegate today and give him some peanut butter bread that I made for him. Seeing that he seemed to be doing ok was encouraging.

I think that we learn big over arching things in phases. As I am starting to really feel moved in here, as life becomes more normal, I feel like I am accepting more and more how tough life is here. Initially, I sort of deflected the difficulty saying to myself, ‘yes but one can still be happy here, there are still things to take joy in’. That certainly is true. Yet at the same time there is this reality that people die of treatable illnesses and injuries (even if not in the case above, certainly in others), and girls don’t usually finish school and it took me two hours to wash 8 pieces of clothing today.

Writing this up for you guys, I feel reminded that this is why I am here. I wanted to go somewhere where there were challenges so I could try to help with some challenges. But it is easy to feel overwhelmed. It seems unlikely that I am going to be able to completely revolutionize Founougo in my short time of service here, or raise the annual gross income of every household. I would just like to help even one person in a way that will really stick and help them for their whole life. I don’t want to just give away some gift or money that will be gone a year after I am, and the only thing learned will be that nice things in life come from foreigners. Sustainable grass roots development, right? That’s the goal.

Well, this has been a somewhat heavy post so far, hasn’t it? Time to talk about my kitten, Jack. He is the cutest kitten in the world, and he is so social and friendly. He literally walks all over me, and likes to sit on my shoulder while I am walking around the house or cleaning dishes. Sometimes I wear an empty backpack to give him a little more stability. He is also very talkative, especially around mealtime. Sometimes he tries to meow and eat at the same time and he kind of gargles. It cracks me up.

However next week I am going to be a bad kitten mama and also break my new-month resolution of being at post more. Hopefulls the trade off will be being a good Peace Corps Volunteer. I am headed south for the 10^th birthday of my host sister Sena, and also a meeting with my program director about the projects I am starting work on. I hope both of these are very impactful because right now I feel guilty about how long it’s going to take to get there and back.  I will let you guys know in a week, I suppose!

As always, thanks for reading. I really appreciate getting to share this stuff with you.

With love,

Lauren