Home Sweet Home

Up here in Savannes, harmattan is starting. Where last month the ground was covered in tall, green grass or miles of crops, there is now brown, dusty ground and black earth where the burning of fields has begun. Everyone in my village is busy harvesting crops and with everyone gone from the compound during the day, I can enjoy some quiet afternoons. Whereas a month ago, it took all day for clothes to dry, it now takes an hour. The last rain fell over a month ago and the ground won’t feel another drop of moisture until next April or May. It’s finally a bit cooler at night and it’s possible to sleep curled up under a sheet as opposed to being forced to lie splayed out naked in a starfish position in the hopes of getting any sleep at all like during the rest of the year. The bugs are also all dying off; I keep finding dried up spider carcasses around my house. This is very nice, because it means I can sit actually sit outside without being swarmed by flies. Harmattan also marks a full year that I’ve lived at post. Last week, I was down in Lome for the swearing-in of new volunteers and to say goodbye to those COSing (Close of Service aka successfully completing service and going home). The week brought lots of flashbacks to my own swear-in last year and, although it’s exciting to have new volunteers and officially be a second year PCV, it was sad to say goodbye to so many good friends who were headed back to America.



old, current, and new Savanners at swear-in

Luckily, my own pending trip home has made it easier to watch good friends make their way back to the States. In about 3 weeks, I’ll be landing back in the U.S. for vacation. It’ll have been 15 months since I’ve set foot on American soil and I’ve never been more excited to be going home. As Peace Corps volunteers, we all obviously had a strong desire to leave the U.S. behind and most of us were very critical of the States, leading us to seek satisfaction abroad. However, after actually living abroad as a volunteer, most of us come to have a deep, deep appreciation of America and home. I fall into this category. Of course, I’m excited for all the obvious things: good, easily accessible food, constant electricity, running water, hot showers, nice, paved roads, etc. However, I’m most excited to just be where I’m from, where I fit in, where I understand what is being said around me, and where I’m near so many of the people who are most important to me.

In Peace Corps, we constantly talk about “integration.” It’s a buzzword that we are supposed to be constantly striving for. Volunteers do manage to live more like local people, eat more local food, speak more local language, and have more local friends compared to other expats. However, being white and American, it’s pretty impossible to ever truly fit in and be completely “integrated.” After living at my site for a year, there are individuals who treat me more normally, who I feel comfortable around, and who I can have good conversations with. I’m always referring back to my host dad, because he really has made my experience and has dulled feelings of being uncomfortable and out of place. He explains things that are happening in village when I don’t understand and he actually gets why I don’t like being called “batule.” Every local language anywhere I’ve been in Africa has a word for “white person.” In Niger, it was anasara, in Botswana it was makoa, in the south of Togo, it’s yovo, and by me it’s batule. Having any of these words yelled at you wherever you go drives even the most patient volunteer a little crazy. When I take the time to explain to people that I don’t like being called batule, the first reaction is usually, “but that’s what you are.” I then usually say, but it’s not my name, it makes me seem like I don’t belong and like I’m not an individual, and wouldn’t it bother you if you came to America and every place you went people pointed and yelled “black person, black person.” After this, some adults just laugh at me but others do start to understand. Kids are a lost cause, they just look back with a sheepish smile and confused look and sometimes whisper batule again. My host dad is one of the rare types who I never even had to explain this to, he just got it. Whenever he hears someone call me batule, he gets mad, and yells at them saying, “don’t call her batule; her name is Samira.” Of course, most people are not my host dad and he isn’t there to stick up for me wherever I go. In larger towns, like Mango, there is no hope of getting people to stop. Whether biking, walking, or riding on the back of a moto, I will inevitably hear the batule chant, which, when I hear it, causes the same physical reaction in me as when you hear nails on a chalkboard. However, what’s most disheartening is hearing it in my village where everyone does know my name and where I’ve lived for the past year. Of course, it is just the children who still chant in Magna, but I’ve told these kids a million times in Anofo, “Buferen ma batule, Buferen Samira” (my name is not batule, my name is Samira). Still, almost every time I leave my house, walking on some narrow path in my village through rows of corn, I hear from the bushes, from the compound in the distance, or from a nearby tree, “Batule! Batule!” Even if it’s not batule, it’s something repeated loudly (Samira! Samira! or Bonjour! Bonjour!) until I’m no longer in view and considering how many children there are, I’m always in view of a child. This constant attention and reinforcement of the fact that you don’t fit in gets exhausting and is probably what is hardest for me living here and what makes me most excited to have a little break and vacation to where I won’t be such an object of attention.

Having the chance to travel home during my service just serves as another reminder of how fortunate I am and how many opportunities I have compared to the people I live with in Magna. Most of the women in my village have never been beyond the Mango market, which is just 3 km away. My host Dad is probably one of the most well-traveled people in my village. He has been to Lome a couple times, crossed into Ghana (25km away), and travelled all the way to Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. Recently, some of the students I work with informed me, when I was speaking optimistically about how they would go on to university, that no student from Magna since the primary school was built 30 years ago has ever passed the BAC and gone to university. A few fortunate students were sent to larger towns with extended family and they may have been able to reach the university level, but no one living in Magna from primary school through high school has ever gone to one of Togo’s two universities. This is due to a variety of factors: farm work, long distances from school, lack of electricity, lack of resources, uneducated parents, etc, but I was still surprised that no one had made it. I’m hoping one of the students I work with, Alexis, will break this trend, but so far, kids born in Magna tend to stay in Magna. In general, our mobility as volunteers is one of the biggest things that differentiates our lifestyle from the Togolese around us. By American standards, our “living allowance” (about $300 a month) is nothing, but in Togo, where the per capita GDP is $900, it goes a long way and means that we are able to make that bimonthly trip to our regional capital or travel down to Lome once every couple months. Each of these trips would be a big event for any individual in my host family, whose yearly crop sales total about $600, a fact my host dad recently shared with me when discussing his prospects for this year’s harvest. So, if travelling an hour and a half to Dapaong is viewed as a large production, you can imagine how people react to the fact that I’m going to America. Many volunteers going home for vacation get bombarded with requests for cell phones, computers, etc, but, once again, my host dad has shown how great he is. He has not asked for anything and has just seemed genuinely excited that I get to see my family. As the patriarch of his extended family, he is constantly hosting relatives who have left Magna and he understands the importance of me seeing mine. Of course, I will bring back lots of goodies for my host family, but it’s nice not to be pressured or asked. Anyways, point being, I am so appreciative that I have the ability to travel and not be stuck in one place for my life.

So, to wrap things up, in case you couldn’t tell, I can’t wait to be home. Since it’s just for vacation, I get to absorb and enjoy all the things I’ve missed and come to appreciate without having to adjust to the more pressure filled, fast paced life that comes with living in America and that I imagine will be the hardest thing to adjust to when I go home for good. I’m excited for creature comforts, but mostly to be back in a place where I blend in and am not a constant subject of attention. Hopefully the break will rejuvenate me, recharge my batteries, and leave me ready to come back and finish up my service.
Just to give you a sense of what it takes to get from a small village in northern Togo to a bustling city in the States, here are the stages of my trip from Magna to Boston:

Dec 11th:
10 minute moto ride from Magna to Mango
10 hour bus ride, on a pothole filled, body jarring road, to Lome

Dec 12th:
10 minute taxi ride to the Ghanaian border
3 hour bus ride on a less pothole filled road to Accra
15 minute taxi ride to the airport
11 hour flight from Accra to NYC

Dec 13th:
2 hour flight from NYC to Boston!!

It will be a long trip, but it’s also pretty amazing that it will only take about 48 hours to go through such an incredible change in climate, culture, development level, language, etc. So, that’s all for now. I hope to see many of you next month when I’m home!!