The Moon Was Bright

It was okay with Sam that I stay over at his place, but when we got back to the compound I decided to make the trek. Only four kilometers back to my village, a heavy moon, nothing to worry about. When I got back to the compound it was near ten o'clock. The other families have stayed up later before, but this was a school night, and the door was locked. Blame it on whoever you choose, but I was never given a key to the front door. Rather than wake my compound-mates, I decide to vault the wall. Not wanting to leave my bike in plain sight by the door, I wheeled it with me to the corner, where it would be hidden. A gap in the roofline provided the perfect place for scaling the wall. I locked the bike, intending to retrieve it in the morning, and placed my hands on the concrete, ready to hoist myself up.

I'm flat on my ass, my back against a tree stump. Despite the dark and the shock I can clearly see half of the concrete wall, about three feet by four feet, lying on top of what used to be the front wheel of my Peace Corps issued bike. I telephone Lao. There is irony.

The next morning M. Bamazi asked me, essentially, "What the fuck were you thinking?" Kpekpou said the same thing, sort of, with, "You should have knocked on my window." Despite their assurances that the only important thing is that I wasn't hurt, the general feeling was that I was a dumbass.

This all came at a bad time. Following two great weeks in village, with attentive classes and significant farm work, things began to decline. A visit from a stranger searching for plastic bags (for a tree nursery), that just had to be bought from my boss. A short and crowded weekend with the girlfriend, held in the regional capital instead of her village, as originally planned. Her mild illness, and thusly affected mood. A second visit from the stranger, who spent 600 CFA in travel to ask me a question in person; the answer: "No." And then a flat tire, which, due to a faulty hand pump, took me a total of three hours to patch and pump on Tuesday morning. Yet, by Tuesday night things were better. Tchouk with Sam's friends, dinner and beers at a local hotel (which is too expensive for local people to ever use. One room, with AC: 9,000 CFA a night. The average salary of a waiter, which is a damn good job in that village: 12,000 CFA a month). And now this.

I could blame the sudden destruction of the wall on sorcery, if I wanted. Two weeks ago was the first time I'd heard anything about my village's history with with the dark arts, but since then, I've heard nothing else. Even the CEG science teacher, who declared that he doesn't believe in God because of the Truth of Mathematics, stated (not ten seconds later) that sorcery was the only unknown to be feared in this world (where was God, he asked, when the sorcerer made that boy's penis disappear? [do you want to know the details? No.]) But in the end, when I tell the story to other volunteers, the consensus of the cause seems simply to be Togo.

Once again, I'll declare that what I'm writing comes after a period of intense dislike of, well, everything. This is, I've heard, simply how life is going to be for the next two years. It never really levels out, or gets any easier to deal with the frustration. The thing to do is remember there's always a bright side. I've got tree nurseries and sensibilisations planned in two other villages. As soon as the rain hits for real, my six village volunteers are going to start our agroforestry experiment. And despite my stupidity with regards to the destroyed wall, and thusly affected bike, there is still something to smile about: somewhere in village there's a mason wondering just how the hell a white man ever got the best of his handiwork. Right now, I'll take whatever satisfaction I can get.

Some pics

To Clarify

Rereading the previous two posts, I detect a certain negative spin. I would like to first mention that anything and everything I say is my opinion only, and does not reflect the hopes, thoughts, etc. of the Peace Corps or the United States government. I'm required to say that. Weird, huh?

Secondly, those posts were written on a friend's computer late at night in my village, after frustrating, long days. My friend lives 26 km away, and does not have electricity, so she lets me keep her computer. Last week I biked to see her, and was 'harassed' on the way back. I use quotations around harassed because it's something that bugged me but may not necessarily be a problem. The 'harassment' consisted of a Togolese man following about six inches behind me on his bike. This happens nearly every time I go on a long ride. I don't know why. Following uncomfortably close behind white people just seems to be the thing to do.

Normally I slowly come to a stop, let the man pass, and wait for him to stop fifty yards ahead of me, and turn around as if to ask, "What's taking you so long?" Then I stare until he goes away. But this time, thanks to a combination of heat, lack of water, and a frustrating meeting that morning, instead of slowly stopping I slammed on my brakes. The man crashed into me, knocking my saddlebag off the rack. He looked at me with his mouth open, pointing at his front tire. "Fais attention! Tu vois?" There was nothing wrong with his tire. "Ne pas suivre," I said. I mounted and rode off. A few minutes later he overtook me, pedaling furiously, elbows and knees flapping out to the sides, his back hunched over the brakeless handlebars of his undersized pink bike.

The whole point of this story is that later that night I wrote three pages about how Africa will never develop, using the bike story as a leadoff. What I wrote is not the truth of Africa. The truth of Africa is that there are extremely frustrating difficulties faced by development workers, especially those like Peace Corps Volunteers, who have to rely on teaching life-skills classes, or talking about women's equality to a group of drunk men at the tchouk stand, and for two years nonetheless, instead of building schools and wells and leaving before they fall into misuse and disrepair.

It's hard not to become frustrated when not a single house in village has running water, but nearly everyone has cell phones. Or when walking into the internet boutique I have to sidestep a goat shitting in the street. Or when I pass a child standing in nothing but dirty underwear, rubbing his swollen belly, as he watches a soccer game on satellite TV.

The fact is that the retention of sanity relies heavily on the ability to see the big picture. What do villagers want? Buildings and funded projects. What do we give? Sustainable farming techniques and lectures on AIDS. So we feel like we do nothing to benefit our community, because they feel like we do nothing. But in my village all the PLAN (an NGO) buildings are abandoned and in shambles, yet my 5eme students are doing a garden project totally independent from me. The buildings failed, but the gardening techniques, likely taught to them two or three volunteers ago, continue. So there's still hope.

Okay. Gotta go. Au revoir, mes amis. Je vous aime. Vraiment.

Some Africa Thoughts

Little trees with little leaves and long seedpods sit spaced in fields, the distance between like the steps of Jack’s giant. Afternoon and the sun fuzzy behind dust. Fuzzy like the fruits of other little trees with little leaves. A goat between the forgotten sorghum rows, chewing whatever he can find. I am there. Watching the goat spray little BB pellets of shit into the dust.

Waking up is never much fun. I dream of the States, of luxury, of running water, of being able to find nearly anything I want within three hours and fifteen miles thanks to malls, small stores, and my car. But the chickens are loud and the dust comes through the windows—protected only by iron bars and screen, both of questionable quality—and they settle inside my thoughts and my mouth. I have to get up because people notice when the only white man in village is gone. And my mouth is dry.

In the mornings during the dry season they talk about how cold it is. “If it were any colder,” they say, huddled inside nylon parkas and two or three t-shirts, “we’d die.” Occasionally someone will add, “This is why there aren’t any black people in the United States.” He is then ridiculed by the others.

I wish I’d brought my yo-yo. Both for amusement and symbolism. The spin of the world, the up and down of emotions. Three days wanting to quit and go home. One day thinking I’m really doing something. An hour hating everything that brought me here. Another hour glad that life worked out the way it did. I’d do that cradle move. I’d walk the dog. I’d do around the world, thinking of places I’d rather be, or glad I wasn’t.

A circle of men beneath a mango tree. The sky orange and thick with dust. Trucks on the Route, rusty and half-broken, overloaded, driving too fast. Children walking nowhere for no reason. Women sweeping, selling, singing. Drinks. Sitting on warped benches, tree stumps. When the pail is empty, they leave.

We talk about what to do. Each conversation ends with, “But there’s no money. You see?” All these ideas, but no way to carry them out. No way at all. Because there’s no money. And no time, either. Never mind the two and a half hours of repose every day, nor the four or so months of (male) idleness between rainy seasons.

Neruda. Only a partial quote. Maybe a misquote. “We don’t get far, though, beyond these teeth.” I think that now I know what that means.

The G,B, and U in Togo

The Good

After two and a half months at post (twenty-six rotted tomatoes, fourteen spoiled carrots, two bowls of day-old rice with a foul taste) I bought a fridge. I'm one of the few volunteers in country with electricity, which is rare to begin with, but even more rare for an NRM volunteer. Two shelves, no fruit drawer, nothing on the door to hold jars or ketchups, but a good fridge nonetheless, and a good price thanks to a fast-talking but honest young entrepreneur based in Sokodé. Now, no matter how frustrating the days become, I can return home to ice cold water, cool cucumbers, even last night’s meal.

The Bad

The night Affo arrived with the fridge I went across the street to the little boutique to stock up. Babadé is a small village along the Route that seems to exist simply because people farm here. There are only two boutiques in town, providing soap, tomato paste, spaghetti, and cigarettes. Other fairly regular, but not guaranteed-in-stock items include red onions, small bags of peanuts, sugar, salt, and dried red peppers. In an attempt to pump money into the local economy, I only travel to outside towns to buy what I cannot find here: most major vegetables, oil, flour, butter, processed cheese, tins of corned beef hash. For all the rest I visit the boutiques, most especially the one across from the abandoned building next to the path leading to my house. The boutique’s compound also houses a coiffeuse, and the CEG French professor, a friend of mine. Aside from the short walk, the appeal of this boutique (as opposed to its only competition 500 meters down the road) is that the proprietor regularly stocks bottled beer, Coca-Cola, and orange Fanta. It was amongst these last three items from which I chose the night the fridge came. One bottle of Lager brand beer, one bottle of orange Fanta. The following week consisted of two Coca-Colas, after which the ‘vendeuse’ was all out of sodas. I’d drank myself silly over the weekend in one of the regional capitals, and so did not want beer again. “Next week,” she told me, “we will have Coca.” I left for the weekend, to another regional capital, anticipating some ice-cold luxuries for after classes Monday night. When I returned Monday morning, however, the boutique was closed.

The Ugly

I greeted the tchouk maman who lives in my compound. She was heading home, I was off to the boutique. It was near noon on Monday, and I wanted some Fanta for the night. The vendeuse had told me she’d go to the bar in Adjengré over the weekend to pick up some more sodas. Halfway down the path to the road, I saw that the boutique was closed.

Back in the compound, the tchouk maman asked me why I was back so early. “La boutique est fermé,” I said. “À cause du repos.” It’s hard to find anything in Africa open between noon and two-thirty. Schools, banks, hardware shops, the occasional marché maman, all take a break. Supposedly, it was the African who first said, “Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noon-day sun.”

“No,” my tchouk maman said. “Ce n’est pas à cause du repos….” She explained the reason, but maman doesn’t speak French well enough for me to understand it all. Maman is a woman of indeterminate age. She blinks a lot and is beautiful all the time, but especially when she laughs. My favorite outfit is her Tuesday outfit: a white t-shirt and a pagne wrap for a skirt. The t-shirt has a black and white outline screen-print of one woman tying a corset onto another; both are in their underwear. “Les benois,” she said, “Un problème avec les benois.” Still blaming the noon-day sun, I nodded and went to my apartment, hands empty.

Later that night, after classes, I passed by the boutique, but it was still closed. In my compound there was only the young coiffeuse who lives with her husband in the apartment next to mine. Her shop is in the same compound across the street as the boutique. I asked her why I was being prevented from stocking my new fridge with glass-bottled sodas. The story that follows is a mix of what she told me, and the details that I picked up from others over the following days; it incorporates responses to questions I asked after being told what happened.

“There was a zed-man [taxi-moto driver] who lived in Aouda [4 km north]. His parents live there too, but he drove to Adjengré [4 km south] to work. This weekend he was stopped by a Beninois who wanted to go to Blitta [about 30 km south]. The zed-man took him. It was along the way that the Beninois killed him.

“Because of the murder we are hunting the Beninois. We are going to do to them what they have done to us. The vendeuse who runs the boutique is Beninoise. She has left, along with the others like her. That is why the boutique is closed.

“After the murder, over the weekend, we found a Beninois man, and we beat him. Probably he will die. We hope so. The vendeuse hides because she does not want to be next. But we do not want to be next either. What if she kills one of our children? The Beninois are nasty, dishonest people. They come to Togo with no money, and after two months they open up a shop. How did they get the money? They make counterfeit. They steal. Eventually they kill. All of them are like this. So, when one Beninois kills a Togolese, we find one and kill him. It does not matter if it is the same one who committed the first crime. There are no innocent. They are all guilty.”

Brush Fire Thoughts

The sky, if I could see it, would be blue. Instead there is the color of a robin's egg picked up from the dust, the cool, cotton-candy color of five p.m. clouded by sand from a desert wind and the rising smoke of brush fires. I'm sitting next to my homologue on the sidelines of a soccer game. A little girl in a purple dress, the daughter of the French teacher, fidgets between us. I am miserable.

Say something, I think. What better time to talk about the dangers of brush fires than right now, with the flames licking across the field directly behind the soccer pitch? Well, pitch may be too strong a word. The boys are running on khaki-colored dry spots that haven't seen green in years. Where there is grass, it is tall, and scrapes the tough skin of their shins. A southern slope to the land gives the younger boys the advantage of momentum.

A triangle of flame attacks a teak tree just behind the field. The flames are violent and unhinged. But how, three days into service, do I gather all these spectators, rip them away from their fun, and lecture them about an activity they've done every dry season of their lives? I don't. Several weeks before, late at night, protected by darkness and a mosquito net, the air cool after a rain, I'd asked L what she was thinking. "Nothing at all," she said. "I'm just enjoying the moment." I think of that here, while the trunks of trees char and the older boys celebrate another goal. I have two years to work. I can enjoy a soccer game tonight.

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.