At the mattress place today ("AllFoam" brand, the store nothing more than a dusty room in the side of a building, a dirty wooden desk on the left, mattresses stacked on the right) the man with the triangle scarring between his eyes would not leave us alone. Luckily, while he'd been showing the others around a store across the street, I'd been able to talk with the patron. "Monsieur, ca c'est combien?" A two-place mattress, foamy, soft enough to drop an egg on, hard enough to last two years. "Quarante-cinq mille." 45,000 FCFA. I don't bother doing the conversion anymore; just because something's cheap in American dollars doesn't mean it's a 'bon prix.' "C'est cher," I said, "Diminuez le prix, s'il vous plait." He said maybe he could work it down to 40,000. A GEE volunteer had told us yesterday at the beach party that a good mattress would run about 37,000. "Je peux payer trente-cinq mille," I told him, 35,000. "Probablement les autres acheteront aussi, pour le meme prix." I got the okay before triangle-head returned.

Mensah, our driver, said the price was good, if I liked the mattress. I told the others, and twenty-minutes and much confusion later, five of us bought. L tried to diminuer the prix to 30,000 but the vendor wasn't having it. Triangle-head, who we're pretty sure worked for nobody, and was just trying to skim a tip out of the silly Yovos, kept interjecting the discussion, saying he'd give us the mattresses for just 40 mille. The patron, a tired-looking young man well over six feet, stayed faithful to ourprice, though he did nothing to throw triangle-head out.

When we got back to the hotel, we saw that the mattress guys (the legit ones wearing yellow t-shirts with "AllFoam" written in red across the left breast) had done a poor job of tying our purchases to the roof. Any more bumps and the two on top, which were now just barely beneath the ropes, would have been lost. Most everybody, after unloading the mattresses, hopped back into the cars to go to the grand market. Too tired to care about plastic buckets or straw mats, I headed to the bureau.

These past two days since swearing-in have been decadent. Instead of fufu or pate, I've eaten Lebanese, Chinese, and Italian cuisine. Move-in money, which others are spending on cutting boards and wall-mats, goes toward my stomach's pleasure. The furniture I will have made at my post, and pots and pans are readily available at the markets in the neighboring villages. While others have slept, I've spent hours at the bar, or here at the bureau, writing these posts. Every time I sit down to write those mass emails, my will fails me, and I end up here instead. So I apologize.

My Speech From Peace Corps Swear-In

Excellence mesdames, messieurs le ministre,
Excellence Monsieur l’Ambassadeur des Etats-Unis au Togo,
Messieurs les représentants des corps diplomatique,
Madame la Directrice sous-régionale du Corps de la Paix à Washington,
Madame la Directrice Nationale du Corps de la Paix au Togo,
Madame la Directrice de formation,
Honorables invités, Monsieur le Chef traditionnelle,
Chers collègues, nouveaux volontaires,
Mesdames, Mesdemoiselles, Messieurs.

C’est un grand honneur pour moi de m’adresser à vous en cette soirée solennelle en Français. Quand nous sommes arrivés au Togo le 22 Septembre 2007, à peine je pouvais dire une phrase en Français. Pour la majorité de mes collègues c’était pareil. Par exemple, André, les quatre premiers jours de notre arrivée, demandait aux gens, « Avez-vous un lit pour mon cigarette ? » Mais aujourd’hui, voilà, il peut demander une allumette et aussi peut enseigner le réchauffement de la planète. Et pour nous autres volontaires de la Gestion des Ressources Naturelles, nous pouvons répondre à la question « Que puis-je faire dans la gestion de l’environnement ? » Et les volontaires du projet Education et Promotion de la Fille peuvent parler d’une femme émancipée, ce qui n’était pas facile à notre arrivée.

Grâce aux formateurs de langue nous pouvons parler Français. Mais ça ne suffit pas. Il faut savoir les concepts et les pratiques de nos programmes. C’est là où la contribution des formateurs technique et des volontaires formateurs a commencé. Ils nous ont donné les connaissances dont nous avons besoins pour être des volontaires efficaces. Pour les volontaires des ressources naturelles, notre travail est plus ou moins concret : nous pouvons voir les cultures en couloirs, par exemple. Alors que pour les volontaires de l’éducation de la fille cela parait plus abstrait : ils traitent avec les droits des femmes qu’ils ne peuvent pas voir concrètement. Mais, à la fin de notre service, notre récompense sera un accomplissement équitable : un meilleur Togo. Grâce aux formateurs techniques nous sommes plus prêts que nous ne le pensions.

Pour vivre en harmonie avec les Togolais afin de bien mener nos activités nous avons été sevré avec la formation en adaptations culturelle, aliment de base pour bien vivre au Togo et en même temps un ingrédient passe-partout. Il est en formation de langue, en formation technique, et surtout dans les familles. Au premier contact avec nos familles nous ne savions pas comment nous intégrer. Mais après onze semaines tout le monde a une nouvelle famille. Golda et sa mère ont dirigé même ensemble une entreprise des biscuits. Maman AFRIKIKO n’a cessé de nous souhaiter la bienvenue à longueur de journée. David et André ont eu à tuer des poulets eux-mêmes. Et une nuit Ruthia a dormi à l’hôpital à côté de son frère, qui était malade. Au nom de tous les nouveaux volontaires je remercie très sincèrement toutes les familles hôtes non seulement pour nous avoir hébergé, mais pour avoir fait de nous leurs enfants. Nous ressentons beaucoup de tristesse à quitter autant nos familles Américains que les familles de Kumawou et de Nyogbo.

Avant de finir, je voudrais parler un peu de mes amis du stage. Ils sont les plus authentiques gens que je connais. Avec leur énergie et enthousiasme, il n’y a aucun doute de leur réussite pendant les deux ans à venir. Je sais que nous serons sérieux à propos de notre service, en même temps que nous garderons notre bonne humeur. Je sais que ça c’est vrai parce que quand nous avons demandé à Monsieur Adri, notre formateur de technique, « Est-ce que notre stage est le meilleur du monde ? » Il a dit, « Je ne peux pas dire. Mais, je m’amuse bien maintenant. »

And Now We've Reached the End of the Beginning

Before you know it eleven weeks go by and people back home are shoveling snow and thinking about Christmas break. You've been in stage (pronounced stahge, long 'a'), and December is the beginning of the dry season, and when you wake up at night to sweat, the thought of winter seems like just another Mefloquin dream. While everyone you know is looking forward to the holiday break, you, on the other hand, are just beginning to work.

They say the first three months at post are the toughest. No host family to cook for you, no other Americans hanging out at the tech. house, spending the better part of every day with you, speaking your language, talking coherently about the things you want to talk about. Now it's toothless farmers and tchouk-drunks and a chef who doesn't speak French. It's rowdy CEG students, and weather too hot and dry to cultivate. Do you start sensibilisations? What do you know well enough to gather your villagers together and try to teach them? Sure, you could try soap-making, but without an in-depth feasability study, you'd just be pissing money away if you can't sell it for the right price. So what do you do?

Here's my plan: I'm gonna paint my house. And order my furniture. And travel around the prefecture, taking my bike along the Route Nationale. My region is like a mix between Florida and Kansas, and for some reason this combo makes me feel like I'm in Ohio. The tall grass plains are dotted with oil-palm trees, banana trees, mango trees. Sorghum, dancing in the Harmattan wind, rises like oversized corn, and the red-tipped stalks stoop like old Togolese women.

I'm gonna talk to my community. The best way to be an effective volunteer is to be bien intégré, and that requires knowing the people you live with. My house is in a compound with three other families, so I'll start there. And one of the mamas sells tchouk Wednesdays and Fridays, bringing in many of the toothless farmers, who happen to sometimes be tchouk-drunks as well. I could talk to them about vitamin-rich Moringa powder, Neem pesticide, or alley-cropping with Albisia, which is less labor intensive than Lucuna. We could all buy each other a round, a callabash per man, and by the end of the night we'll love each other, and I'll be too drunk to care that I have to take my shits over a cockroach infested latrine.

It is now 0642h and I'm in the Peace Corps bureau in Lomé. In ten hours my fellow stagiaires and I will become official Peace Corps Volunteers. Anna, from GEE, will be giving a speech in Ewé, one of the most prevalent local languages in the southern part of Togo. I'll be giving a speech in French. I'm as honored as I am nervous.

I must go, since diarrhea is calling, but I want to say one thing first: I am incredibly happy here. The past eleven weeks have been spent with a group of individuals I can only think to describe as genuine. We are Peace Corps Volunteers, not hippies or raging tree-huggers. We are here to work, and we know it, and we've talked about this for over two months now, and we feel lucky. With the energy and enthusiasm that I've seen from these people, there's no doubt in my mind as to our success over the next two years. Naturally, this will be a pleasure as well. As Adri, our lead tech. trainer, told us when we asked him if this was the best stage ever: "I can't say anything except that I'm having a lot of fun right now."