A Disordered Post

The writing of a new post is taking a long time. I want to describe the emotions of being at the end of my service, the strange twist of desires to both stay and go, and I just can't get around to making it sound right. I need more time. But since I'm in Lome, I wanted to get something posted.

My time in village now is spent pretty much just relaxing and hanging out with kids. I've planted just over a hundred moringa trees at the dispensary, but that's about it. Whenever I'm in village, alone, I'm fine with this, but when I'm around other volunteers, and they talk about their garden projects, or the fifty thousand trees they planted, or the special week-long day camps they put on, I get depressed, and feelings of failure and worthlessness come creeping back in. The plain and simple fact is that I was not the volunteer I wanted to be. Some of this is my fault, much of it is the village's. I don't really want to go into it, so if it's all right with you I'll just skip it.

My summer has been spent, like I said, mostly at home, but for two weeks, including this past week, I've been at our training site in Pagala, working with Camp UNITE. Camp UNITE takes four groups of kids--Boys Apprentices, Girls Apprentices, Boys Students, and Girls Students--and trains them for a week in "Les Pratiques d'Une Vie Saine," or, the practices of a healthy life. Themes include self-confidence, communication skills, family and future planning, HIV/AIDS prevention, and sexual harassment and rape. Depending on the group, the angle of approach for each session is different. I did camp for Boys Apprentices and Girls Students, and the session with the biggest difference was Sexual Harassment. With the boys we had to emphasize that a lot of what they do is wrong, and they need to stop it. With the girls we had to emphasize that they don't have to take it, that the law is on their side, and we tried to encourage them to just keep saying no, to be firm, to never give in. Other sessions are different, too, but you get the idea.

I had only signed up to do Girls Students, but last-minute circumstances left the coordinators in need of another volunteer for the Boys Apprentices, so they called me and I went. Young Togolese men are not a very appealing demographic, so I wasn't expecting to enjoy myself. Never before in my life have I so poorly misjudged something as that week of camp. I had more fun than I've had in a long time, and I came to respect the boys, and believe in them, and see the changes in them as they were happening. I could talk forever, but since I don't want to I'll just say that I was really proud of those guys.

So then this past week I did Girls Students, which means that I've fallen in love with fifty underage Togolese girls. I can't even begin to describe how fantastic these kids were. The energy level was amazing, especially after Wednesday night, when we did presentation of traditional dances. The participants and even the formateurs are divided up several ways. Every person has a cabin, an animal, and a color. Sessions get juggled between animals and colors (all the lions over here for AIDS, all the greens over there for Rape, etc.) but challenges are always colors, and then small discussions are always the same animal of the same color. Traditional dances, though, are by building.

I was with a group of girls in the Davie building, and we renamed ourselves the Belles-Fortes (which means The Beautiful and the Strong; there's a beer here called 'Beaufort,' or, Handsome/Strong, so we played off of that). The idea behind the dances is that the girls learn songs from outside their ethnicities. For the Belles-Fortes, we danced Akposso, Moba, Kabye, Ewe, and Lhosso. I danced with the girls, and they wrapped me up in pagne just like they were. It's an incredible thing to watch, because after the dances, the solidarity amongst the girls just goes through the roof.

Thursday and Friday, then, you could see a big change in how the girls behaved. Even though they were happy and participated well, they were still a little timid. But at breakfast on Thursday, girls came to the mess hall singing songs from the night before, songs from camp, standing up and dancing around the tables. At lunchtime you couldn't talk over the roar of voices chanting "Camp UNITE ne perira pas," or "Tire bananes, tire tire bananes!" At dinnertime, every time you sat down to get ready to eat, somebody else jumped up with another song, and the dancing started again. This energy showed itself during the sessions, too. Girls who hadn't answered a question all week were raising their hands; small group discussions went from counsellors talking to participants talking; nobody wanted to go to bed.

My favorite girl from the week, a bottle rocket named Delali, would run up to me after sessions to teach me songs she knew in English. My favorite moment with her was when we were playing ping-pong on Friday night, after the girls' big presentation of dances and skits; she asked me to teach her a song. We traded verses on "Stand by Me."

Same thing as before: so much to write about, I need to get it all clear in my head. So I'll just say one last thing, and we'll end it there, disordered and long and not very specific. When we were leaving Saturday morning, the girls grouped around the taxis going to the five points of Togo. The energy from breakfast was subdued, and their faces took on grave expressions. Eventually, one of them broke down and started crying, silently, but with full tears. This started off the others. When we were all in the cars and leaving the center, the weeping turned into full-blown sobbing. After a week of fun, a week in which they were respected and loved, not harassed and ordered around, they were going back to their homes, back to boys who don't leave them alone, back to sweeping and cooking and laundry and babies on their backs, back to fathers who don't listen, mothers who guard traditions. I turned my head to the window and pulled my cap low over my eyes, so they wouldn't see me crying too.