School vacation, Planting Season, and Wait…I’m busy?

It’s now school vacation here in Togo just like in the U.S. During the week my village is now filled with teenagers playing soccer and generally hanging out. However, summer vacation in Togo isn’t quite as carefree as in the States since here all the kids have to help their families prepare the fields and plant crops. Several girl students have come back for the summer after living in bigger towns during the school year. Some just live in Mango during the year so they don’t have to walk as far to school and others go to farther away regional capitals like Sokode or even Lome where there are more schooling options. Either way, it means there are more teenage girls who speak French hanging around, which means I have some new people to talk to. This week I made two of these new friends and despite being in middle school, they are 18 years old, so not that much younger than me. Girls, especially, often fail school years multiple times, especially exam years where every student in the country must take the same standardized exam, making it common for someone as old as 18 to still be in the equivalent of middle school. If people complain about the failures of standardized tests in the U.S.; you can only imagine how many problems they cause here in Togo. School vacation also means camp season when PCVs find themselves suddenly busy. Volunteers in Togo run a bunch of different summer camps, from a life skills camp to a camp for kids affected by HIV/AIDS to a camp for physically handicapped kids. Volunteers can nominate kids in their various villages for these camps and I was really excited because both of the students I nominated from my village, Alexis and Monique, were chosen to go to the life skills camp UNITE. It will be exciting for both of them, but especially for Alexis who, at 15, has never left the Savanes region of Togo. UNITE takes place in the Central region, so he’ll get to see half of the country on his way to camp. Hopefully, when they get back from camp, they’ll both be super motivated and ready to do some trainings on what they learned with other teenagers in Magna.

Like a lot of other volunteers, this summer I’m actually finding myself kind of busy. This isn’t busy by American standards, but after getting used to filling up many of my days with reading, cooking, and playing with my dog, it doesn’t take much to feel busier. To start, myself and two other Mango cluster volunteers, Megan and Ellen, are running a career development camp for girls from our prefecture in Mango. Megan has a blog about the camp to update her friends and family at home, which you can look at if you’re curious: campetoilestogo.wordpress.com. Then, I’m also involved with organizing a conference for the scholars of a girl’s scholarship program that’s funded by an American NGO and run in Togo by PCVs and an local NGO. The organization is Pathways Togo and you can read more about it on their website (pathwaystogo.org) and even donate if you’re feeling inspired. In Magna, I’m getting ready to plant Mahogany and Moringa trees from the tree nurseries I did earlier this year. Unfortunately, when I went on vacation the women’s groups didn’t repair the broken shade cover for the Moringa trees and most of them died when they were scorched by the sun (20 survived), but we can still plant the ones that made it. Lastly, I’ve been doing family planning trainings with women and men in my village. Since, after 6 months living in Magna, I found out from a third party that 2 women who I sometimes hang out with in my village are actually trained community health workers, I have been starting family planning trainings with them. First, we spoke with the men and chief to get them on board so the women would be less nervous. I was actually really surprised how enthusiastic the men were. My chief, who, mind you, has 14 children and 3 wives, went on a long speech at the end of the training about how it’s important to have a few kids so you can take good care of them. He may not have followed his own advice, but hopefully at least a few people will actually change their behavior. I’ve now also done one training with women and I will have two more in two different parts of the village. At the end of the most recent training, an 18 year old female student approached me and asked to talk to me in private. She had lots of questions and ended up saying she had a boyfriend and was going to start birth control. It felt really cool that she both listened and trusted me enough to come to me with personal questions. At the end, I gave her a bunch of documents about family planning methods that she can share with her friends. Anyways, with the camp, conference, and village activities, I actually feel busy. I still have plenty of time to read and play with Jeeves, but it feels good to feel like I have work to do as well.

As I’m settling into more work, I’m also learning new things about Magna. I had assumed all dry season that, like most small villages in Togo and West Africa in general, all the agricultural labor in Magna would be done by hand. The first surprise came when people started plowing their fields with cows. Then, the other day, I woke up to the sound of a big machine. I looked outside and there was a tractor out behind my house!! I asked my homologue about it and he said that people in Magna rent tractors for some of their farming. He said ten years ago an NGO trained people to use cows and convinced them that it made sense to pay the extra money to rent a tractor for some farm labor. Anyways, I was very surprised and apparently I’m living in one of the most agriculturally advanced villages in Togo. Obviously, there are still lots of issues impeding farming here, but still, I was really surprised to first see my village using animal traction and then using tractors!

Anyways, that’s all for now. Enjoy the nice weather at home and send me updates when you can; I love to hear what’s happening in everyone’s lives!!!