First 3 Months

I’ve just finished my first three months as a volunteer. This is a big milestone in Peace Corps, because the first 3 months are said to be the hardest period and they are also the period where you are restricted in your travel and are not allowed to take vacation days. Now, I have the full rights and privileges of a normal Peace Corps volunteer and supposedly things will start to go more smoothly from now on. Of course, there will still be many ups and downs and challenges, but I’ve completed the hard task of making a home for myself in a village far from home in a completely new culture.

I’ll give a quick recap of my first 3 months in village and how I filled the many hours of downtime. I almost fully furnished my house (I still need an armoir, another table, and some more wall decorations), I got an awesome puppy, I read ten books, I watched the whole first season of Glee and the first two seasons of Mad Men, I said the Anofo greetings hundreds of times, I biked A LOT and am proud to say that I now can somewhat successfully navigate sand and I have not fallen of yet despite my clumsiness, I ran more regularly than I have in awhile, I ate many meals with my host family, I walked through my village and now know my way around fairly well, and I daydreamed about memories I have with all you lovely people back home.
On the work front, I had many meetings with a farmer’s groupement and the Red Cross women’s groups in my village and I have been continuing with my English club. The English club has been running somewhat regularly and I’m starting to see that a group of kids actually do show up each time and do seem genuinely excited about the club. With the farmer’s groupement, we connected with a local NGO and had a gardening training and we are planning to do a reforestation training that will end with a Mahogany tree nursery and reforestation project. With the Red Cross women, I spent many meetings discussing the idea of Moringa (a tree with highly nutritious leaves; good for family health) gardens and planning for the next meeting where we would again discuss the Moringa gardens. Finally after a couple months of meetings, we set a date to actually start the Moringa tree nursery. On the planned date, I showed up on time to the gardens and proceeded to wait for a frustrating two hours while no one showed up. Eventually some women came, but my homologue (my primary work partner in my village) never made it, so we had to reschedule. A couple days later, a couple months after I had originally spoken to the women about planting Moringa, about thirty women showed up at the gardens along with my homologue and we prepared the tree nursery. It was one of the few days where everything seemed to fall into place and I felt like I was living an image on the Peace Corps website. I was sitting in the community gardens, filling bags with dirt and manure brought from the women’s compounds with the help of women, children, and men in my village. When it was all done, we had planted 70 seeds and the women had divided up the labor and made a schedule for who would water when. I then left for my in-service training, feeling happy and excited to see the progress of my Moringa trees when I returned. Of course, the Peace Corps feeling of success is often short lived, because when I returned I was informed that bugs were eating my trees, only 10 of the 70 were growing, and the manure I was so excited to have added to the tree’s soil got too hot in the sun and burnt half of the seeds. However, we planted more seeds and removed some of the manure and hopefully now more than ten trees will grow. I just have to remind myself that these little setbacks are part of life in the Peace Corps and that it’s often the process more than the results that count, because at least the womens’ groups are working together with male farmers in the gardens to try to figure out how to get these little trees to grow.

Anyways, that is a summary of some of the small projects and work I’ve been trying to start. I’m hoping in March to run some health workshops on things like Oral Rehydration Therapy, handwashing, and nutrition for the women’s groups. I’m also now part of one of Peace Corps Togo’s national committees (PCVs in Togo can join a range of different committees that work on national, Peace Corps wide projects). I’m now part of the Karren Waid Committee that provides scholarships to girl students in Togo and I’m going to be helping to plan and organize their national conference in August. I’m really excited for this and it will be nice to have something steady to work on throughout my service.

In addition to getting settled, trying to fill up free time, and trying to start work, my first three months at site have involved hosting my first visitor, Nick, who is still here with me!! Having Nick stay in my village with me has been really fun. Everyone has been SO excited to meet him and I’ve been able to have fun challenging gender roles by having him do things like sweep in front of my host family. When my host mom first saw him sweeping the porch, she stopped dead and just stared and him and then later informed in the entire family of the mind-blowing action of a man sweeping that had happened earlier that day. Then, my host family had their mind blown again when Nick got his own water for his bath. I also had fun telling my host dad that Nick was actually the one cooking each time, in the first couple days, when my host dad asked me if I was feeding Nick enough. Each time, he would just laugh heartily and shake his head. Playing with peoples’ ideas of gender roles here is always entertaining.

So, that’s it for now. The past 3 months were definitely full of lots of ups and downs and I probably felt ever possible emotion, many times all in the space of one day. However, I feel comfortable now in my village and I’m looking forward to continuing with my service. I hope everyone is doing well at home. Enjoy the beginnings of spring as I’m stuck in the full force of hot season!!!