Sweatin' a bit

Phew, the heat is really starting to kick in! Not sure whether or not my watch’s thermometer is trustworthy or not, but if it is the temperatures have been getting as high as 105 F in the early afternoon. The harmattan winds are still lingering but they’re sporadic and hot instead of constant and cool. On my bike ride today I was once again confronted by the now moderate winds and I’ve even seen a handful of strong funnel clouds sweeping by at times. Just the other day one came by my house without any warning. While it had been perfectly calm minutes before the cloud swept right through my terrace in a quick flurry and sent two loose papers flying high into the air and carried out of site in seconds by the unusually warm gusts of the cloud. I didn’t even bother looking for the papers because they were long gone.

As I understand it, things will only continue to heat up during the next month. The heat peaks here in mid-March as the sun chases the harmattan winds away until next November. For now I have to set my sights on the promise of the spring rains, which will come around the end of April and signal the end of the heat. Nonetheless, although I may take back this statement in a couple weeks, I will say that the heat is not as intolerable as I once imagined . It’s amazing how one’s body can adapt to such a change in climate. I am sure that 5 months ago I would be near miserable in the midday heat with no air-conditioning. I’m finding that the key is to leave all of the physical work one may do to the morning and evenings and then find a book or some friends, some shade and plenty of water while you wait out the high sun. Nobody knows this better than my dog who generally sleeps during the day but is spunky as ever in the morning and evenings.

From a couple of letters that I’ve received from home it seams that people are pretty curious about some of the work I’m involved in here. It’s tough to wrap everything up all at once, but I’ll try and dip into it a bit here.

As a general rule, each volunteer that is sent out by the Peace Corps results from a specific demand of a community. In my case, it was an association of gardeners who work on reforestation who wanted the help of a volunteer. So, if I was going to try and sum up neat and simple my work here you might say that I’m in the business of reforestation since my priorities at this point rest with the association (whose name, if translated from Moba, means “the shade is good”). As of now the brunt of my work is with them. When I was doing all my biking in the first weeks at post it was to help with the construction of fences for 4 separate hectares of land they reforested and now needed to protect from grazing animals. Now we’re switching our focus on planning for formations on reforestation in neighboring villages and planning for a botanical garden they hope start while I’m here. The idea is to set up a botanical garden (I might say botanical garden/forest) that has a collection of all of the region’s disappearing tree species. But more about that as it develops!

Beyond the association, I also have a responsibility to my village community as well and thus try and respond to other issues with any ideas I may have so long as the interest is sincere and somewhat widespread. As a modest example, yesterday I led a composting session.

Folks in my village, and most of Togo for that matter, face the ever compounding problem of soil degradation. Most people harvest the same fields every year. When they harvest the crop and then burn everything else in brush fires, each year the soil is left a little worse than it was before. The common solution is nothing more than the application of chemical fertilizers. These are expensive for them, have uncertain health effects and do little to restore soil quality. Composting is a modest way to improve their soil and thus their crops, with no inputs beyond labor and recycled farm matter. A handful of farmers in my village had heard about composting and wanted to learn more. So yesterday morning we got a group of about 11 men and 5 women together to demonstrate a compost construction. Again, just a modest gathering, but hopefully something that will spark community interest in compost as a way of improving their crops, reducing waste, improving the struggling soil and ending brush fires.

On that note I tried taking some photos of a brush fire (unfortunately, they didn’t come out too well so I apologize for that! They burn at night making them hard to photograph but you can get a sense for how they light up the sky and cover huge areas) that was lit a couple days ago to give people some incite into the commonly talked about issue. Back home we are usually at least able to till crop residues back into the soil in preparing our gardens or fields. But when hoes and dabas (large hoes) are the only tools generally available for such a job, one can understand why tilling might not be appealing! Compost itself is fairly labor intensive on the large scale and so even if the technique is known or heard of, it may not be applied when one has the option to clear his field quickly with fire. So, the fairly common solution to the unsightly and impeding crop residues is burning.

Legitimately, the practice might not be so bad if there was more planning involved. Although burning does result in a loss of soil nutrients, ashes can add something back to the soil if they’re reabsorbed. In fact, the law does allow brush fires between November and December. This is when things can be burned with little chance of unwanted spread and leaves some time for vegetation to reestablish before the dry season. However, when brush fires are lit in the middle of February (like the one in my backyard the other day) they get out of control easily and any nutrients that might have been left in the ash are swept away with the breeze before the soil can take them up again in time for the next crop.

Fortunately, it does seem that general consensus is heading in disfavor of brush fires. Nonetheless, old habits die hard and the impact is still quite visible both by the bright burning night fires and the charred landscape that’s left the next day as well. Hopefully, little by little, simple alternatives such as composting can be popularized here to help things out.

Anyway, I went off more than usual but I hope it was interesting. I’ll get back on when I can!

Bonne Journée!

Chez-moi

So I wanted to take this blog as a chance to describe in some more detail the area that I’m living in. Hopefully the picture I’m going to try and post with this comes out, but that’s always a toss-up whether the upload will work or not. I know I’ve tried to describe some the rolling landscape, harmattan and the trees in the past, but it can never take the place of a decent photo.

Anyway, I took this picture on just about the windiest day we’ve had yet, about a week ago. It felt like a storm was coming through, except all day long and without a trace of rain. Generally, the winds stop during the night. They’ll start to pick up around 9 in the morning (so get your sweeping done early!) and peak around noon. However, they won’t fully stop until the sun starts to set. It can make for a real difficult time biking! I’ve left for work in neighboring villages in the morning and made it with no problem, but had to come back through the wind later in the day. It can make a normal ride seem like a stretch in the Tour de France! Hopefully you can kind of see how the wind is kicking up dust in the background. Fortunately, the winds have since died down some from when I took the picture. I’m told that the coldest weather is now behind us, although the winds could continue until late February when the breeze dies and la chaleur (the hotness) begins.

But this picture also gives you a snapshot of my house. I actually live in what we would call a “compound” here. Most families live in these kind of circular and compartmentalized concessions that have separate little houses/rooms that are built into the wall. There’s usually some kind of gate or door that opens into the compound where the family shares a space you might compare to a crude courtyard. Guard dogs are generally the extent of security for the actual compound interior and then it’s the individual rooms that often have locks on them. In the case of our compound we have a mango tree growing in the middle, popping out from a hole they made in the cement floor. Looking around we have about ten separate rooms, ranging from where the donkeys and goats sleep, the chicken coup, two or three kitchen rooms and then the bedrooms.

For me I have a section blocked off for myself. My portion of the compound consists of a kitchen room, my “house” (two small rooms), my shower and my latrine. I fenced off this area with straw fencing that I had made in village, just to give myself some privacy when I need it. There’s also a section that is shaded with a bit of an outdoor roof. In the picture you can see from the outside the two rooms that make up my house, which are on the right side of the compound.

Little by little it’s starting to feel like home. The difference maker is that I’ve finally starting getting some furniture and wall decorations (besides spiders and geckos) to fill the empty space. With the temperatures relatively cool it’s turning into a cozy little space. However, I think mosquitoes may become an issue as they’ve started showing up in numbers in my kitchen and latrine!

I’m working on putting together a little garden/tree nursery on the opposite side of the compound, close to the well. We’re also shaping up our “peyote” (not sure how to say it in English but it’s like a shaded terrace made from branches and hay, equipped with log benches) outside of the compound where we can greet people under some shade (hard to see in the picture but it’s just to the right of the tree to the left of the compound).

You can’t see it the picture but there is a riverbed in the kind of valley I live near. Right now it’s just about dried up except for a few spots where people go to find water or do their laundry. The other thing that’s worth mentioning, but which may be tough to make out, is the trees that line some of the roads here. In the background you might be able to make out the dirt road that heads up the hill and into a stand of giant trees. One of the neat things about biking the roads here is that a lot of the roads are lined with these huge trees. In French they are known as Kapokier trees, but they were actually planted by the Germans along their roads in the early 20th century when Togo was still a German colony. Although the villagers don’t like the trees because they don’t go well with their millett crops, I appreciate riding into my village center being greeted by the shade of these neat trees.

My house itself is only a five minute walk from the village center where I can get most of my needs (relative to the picture, my village is behind where I stood as I took the photo). There’s a couple of schools, a couple churches, numerous boutiques, a number of street vendors, a handful of buvettes and then the market (which is generally empty except for Tuesday and Friday when the market comes to town). It’s actually a sizeable little village. From there the city is roughly 15k away if I have any more specific needs (such as internet to post this blog!).

So if you were interested I hope that helps out with your vision of my new surroundings. It’s difficult to describe it all, but like I said, it is turning into home for me.

As always I hope everyone is doing well, or as the Moba would say “Lafié” (meaning health). A plus!

So above is my most recent attempt at putting up pictures. It’s quite the process trying to load pictures through the connection here but I thought it would be worth the effort to give everyone at least a snapshot of things from time to time. Eventually I will be putting up photos of my new 'milieu'.

So I’ve finally made it to my post and started to settle in! The last couple weeks I’ve had plenty on my hands largely thanks to the task of swearing in and getting ready to finally depart on my own as a volunteer.

The last months have been solely occupied by training and I’d been with this one family of nine in the tropical maritime region. I have nothing but good things to say about them. They really took me in as one of their own. Hopefully at some point i can get a picture up of them.

It’s been about one week at post now and I’m just about as far north as you can go in the Savannah region of Togo (whole new climate with a whole new language and culture). I’m exhausted from biking all over the place! I’d say for the past week I’ve been averaging 15 km a day. It’s amazing how much these people bike. In village, bikes are like cars. Most people have them, there are a couple mechanic shops and people depend on them to get things done. There really are no cars and only select people own motorcycles.

Hands are full right now trying to set up house. It’s a pretty exciting feeling having my own place to customize just the way I want it. Thus far my priority has been getting a bed made. To help with staying cool when the hot months of February, March and April come a lot of people make what are called “leplieco’s” (not sure how to spell it but it kind of means “pull tight”). These are easily portable beds that stay cool. What they do is sauder an iron frame together, like a bed frame, except that one end is hinged to either lie flat or at an angle (for sleeping or resting/reading) like a beach chair. Then they tightly weave plastic string across to make a sort of very tight hammock. You set the angle how you want and as you pull it flat the bed firms up nicely. I was able to have someone in village make one custom for me to almost the size of a queen bed and extra long. I even picked out the color string. It should work out fine and in the meantime I’m debating having a hay mattress made to put on top. I’m also waiting on an Adirondack type chair that is made from branches that I asked someone else to make for me.

Last time I mentioned that “harmattan” was starting up down south. Well it’s just about in full swing up here. I actually find it quite refreshing. It basically feels like fall, except that instead of leading into winter it leads into “challeur” (hot season). It still gets hot during the day but there is a frequent breeze and even gets chilly during the night. At 6 am when I come out of my house my fleece comes in handy until the sun’s high enough to warm things up. It’s a funny sight seeing some of the locals walking around with winter jackets on because they think it’s so cold!

sweet shirts and ice cream

Rainy season is coming to an end. It hasn’t rained for probably a couple of weeks. Here in the south there is two rainy seasons. Where it’s drier up north there is only one, but here they benefit from a fair amount of rain. As we would think of it back home the rainy seasons come during our spring and fall. Then there is a short dry stretch that lasts for a month or two during July and August. Obviously things work a little different up north (I’ll figure it out soon enough), but throughout the country work is generally a function of the rainy seasons that bring crops and most people’s livelihoods.

Nonetheless, the end of rainy season signals the approach of what they call the “Harmattan” winds here. Basically as autumn back home comes to a close winds coming off of the Sahara start to make their way off the desert and reach countries like Togo. This kicks up a lot of dust, cools things off and dries things out. The Harmattan winds have not yet fully reached us here in the south, but when we were up north you could already start to see the effect. Up there the whole countryside is fully vegetated (a scattering of trees, but grass basically everywhere), yet as you look out across the rolling landscape you can see the dust that’s getting picked up. In another week I’ll be up in the thick of it again and likely will be able to tell about it in more detail. For now, it just means that although it’s still quite hot during the day, by the time morning rolls around it can be relatively chilly following the night. A couple of times I’ve even been tempted to put on a long sleeve shirt.

Normally, the thought of a long sleeve shirt is preposterous! Im constantly thinking of ways to stay cool. I’ve been assembling a wardrobe of the most lightweight clothes possible and although I usually feel obliged to wear pants, all my chemises are short sleeved. Unfortunately, most of the clothes I brought from home are just too hot. Most of all the clothes here are made from thin, cotton fabric that dries extremely quickly, especially if left in the sun during repos (which is the universal 2 ½ hr break in the middle of the day…basically because it’s too hot to do anything while the sun is high, plus lunch is the biggest meal of the day). Essentially, you set out in the market and hunt down a piece of fabric that sports a design that you like and buy sections of a couple meters or so depending on how much you need for your chemise or complet (pants + chemise in the same fabric). After you’ve found a fabric you like and bargained a decent price (usually no more than 1500 CFA) you take the fabric to any of the many tailors/couturiers that are found basically anywhere in the country. Then you can either draw them a picture or bring a sample to demonstrate the style and he or she will have your stuff custom made within the week (sometimes the next day even). So by now I’ve already got a handful of shirts that help keep me cool.

While I’m in town for the day I’ll no doubt be taking advantage of my new life saver, “FanMilk”. My sweet tooth hasn’t gotten any better here in Africa. There’s not too much for ice cream here in Togo but there is this one company that does their best to fill the void. Most all of the large towns have a FanMilk distributor. Although there is usually a store you can buy the ice cream from, you usually buy FanMilk from men who ride around with portable coolers attached to their bikes and sell along the roads. The ice cream comes in little sacs the size of a Reese’s packs and flavors like vanilla (when it’s melting quick in the heat it tastes just like a milk shake), chocolate, punch and pineapple. On a hot day when your thirst is dying for something cold to quench it, the sound of a FanMilk man’s noisemaker (basically like a horn a clown might use) can make your day if you have 100 CFA to spare.

I have to say that I did miss everyone back home on Thanksgiving. I hope it went well for everyone!