Togo West Africa

Repost of an old post entitled "What stung beekeeping"

2010-07-17T09:21:00.004Z

This 2008 post is my favorite because it talks about a great solution to the village's problems and the silly yet very serious obstacles in the way of that solution...

Originally posted on TUESDAY, MAY 27, 2008

Beekeeping is a highly viable money making venture in our area. Village members owning forested areas where bees can find flowers and water sources and yet where conditions aren't too wet, keeping bees could support a large portion of the population.

We are working on extending and organizing the beekeeping activities in our area and I am very hopeful that in 2 years time the number of beekeepers could jump from 3 currently to 20 or more.

One obstacle we have encountered that has until now hindered the grassroots growth of beekeeping is interfamilial distrust and grudges. It is quite incredible that the potential saving grace of a population could be held back by such trivial but deepseeded feelings. And it is not the individuals themselves but a certain prevailing social climate that just stamps out trust and hope. It is difficult to understand but it can be mediated. Who knew that you could encourage beekeeping by being a family counselor. I just found that out.

Another obstacle was brought to my attention by the man in the adjacent photo. He says plainly that "people aren't serious. If folks were serious about becoming beekeepers or animal breeders they could learn all of the necessary skills." Indeed people lack a certain spark that scientific knowledge gives you. The man in the photo has that spark but he didn't have it until his family sent him to a trade school where he learned beekeeping skills. More folks should be sent to trade school. At the same time, the man is right, "vouloir, c'est pouvoir," "To want to, is to be able to."

The elephant in the room...

2010-04-28T01:32:00.002Z

Gingari Kumuka (Eid ul-Fitr)
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

As I was discussing capitalism and US culture with a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer friend, he noticed that there was a larger theme motivating my discourse and my ideas. As he began to inquire about what might be motivating my point of view on US culture and my over glorification of the very positive aspects of African culture, he uncovered a fact that I already knew but that I hadn't stated clearly enough to myself or anyone else.

When I lived in Togo and in my village for almost three years, I put my whole soul into being a part of the local linguistic and social fabric. I prayed regularly in the mosques, I voraciously learned Kotokoli, I did my best to spend my time exclusively with Africans, instead of becoming a part of a group of expatriate Americans, and in general I would attempt to live like and with the Togolese that surrounded me as much as possible.

My strict integration did give me insight into the thoughts and lives of the Africans with whom I lived and I believe that those insights have rendered the effect of my ongoing work there more sustainable, appropriate, and community owned. In addition, however, the fact that I became so engrossed in the ways of those that surrounded me in Togo has meant that coming back to the US marked the beginning of a period of loss and grieving. All that I had worked to become and to be in Togo, was meaningless and misunderstood or not understood on arrival in the US. That is where my sense of loss and grieving began. It was particularly harsh and depressing and I am not completely over it. I don't know if it would be good to be completely over it but thanks to an RPCV friend I am more aware of it.

Reconciling cultures and post-Peace Corps beekeeping

2010-02-19T06:47:00.001Z

ruches - beehives
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

Reconciling life in Togo and life in the US hasn't been fun. Contrary to what one would think given how the whole world is trying to train Africa out of its supposed backwardness, I have more or less come to the conclusion that the culture, eating habits, amount of physical activity, societal structure and the general way of life of my village in Togo are much healthier than those of the US.

In the US we have plenty of money but we no longer know how to live, for the most part we are unhealthy and lost in modern life, and what is worse is that the rest of the world is trying to copy us. In Togo, for the most part people know how to live well. The only thing that is missing is a bit more money. That is where beekeeping becomes useful...

One could very well argue that in the end money will manage to strip Africa of its knowledge of how to live well. In that case money is the culprit.

But scientists continue to say...

2010-01-02T07:12:00.008Z

pitching in
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

To conclude TV or Radio news stories about climate change and the declining livability of the planet, the same message is often repeated: that scientists agree that recycling and more efficient cars and equipment will not suffice to greatly improve the prospects of maintaining a highly livable planet and avoiding the worst consequences of climate change.

What is truly needed to improve our chances, scientists conclude, is for humans to fundamentally change their behavior.

While listening to international dialog about the human-planet relationship, I hear talk of more efficient power plants and more recycling centers, that help us to comsume more with less or allow us to pollute less or as much while consuming more, I don't hear much serious talk about the scientific community approved idea of societal behavior change or cultural change.

In very many ways, I find village life with its hard work, basic foods, and rudimentary entertainment, to be much more healthy than life in the modern desire-driven world. I am fully aware that clean water, good sources of nutrition, and health care are necessary, but how much more than that is NECESSARY? And to what extent does having MORE than that actually have a NEGATIVE impact on our mental and physical health, and on the health of our surrounding world?

It is my belief that we spend much more money and resources solving problems created by modernity's attempt to satisfy desires than we spend solving the problem of fundmental needs. Finding fulfillment in the satisfaction of those fundamental needs and foregoing our 24/7 all you can eat "desire saticiety," is a road that interests me.

What does humanity want? Health, happiness, and the fulfillment of fundamental needs or the fulfillment of unending fleeting desires, less happiness, and declining human and environmental health?

I'll end with a quote from Thomas Merton:
"No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire."

Humanity must decide what it wants and then make a conscious effort to pursue what it wants even if that entails modifying very dear cultural behaviors...

Let me be clear, there is a great need and we can help.

2009-06-25T04:33:00.002Z

DSC01635
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

While I was in Togo I had many personal debates taking place and some of them made their way onto this blog. Some debates encouraged external help coming to Africa and others would seem to discourage external aid. I am happy that I had all of those debates because they allowed me to explore international development, Africa, social change, and more, but I want to make clear that there is a place, a lot of places, for well conceived external help that responds to real needs. I will do my best to meet a few of those needs on a small scale where I can be competent.

In the photo you see a young veterinary technician in his rural pharmacy.

Post-Peace Corps readjustment

2009-03-19T05:53:00.004Z

DSC01631
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

Coming back to the US can be damn hard. Once you are in the States, some wonderful feelings are felt but, no doubt, with the lack understanding ears, one can certainly become mildly and temporarily depressed.

Finding the cultural continuity that I described in an earlier entry can be very helpful to recent Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs), but in the interest of fellow RPCVs I would mention the possibility of collaborating to launch or further a project back in your Peace Corps country. As we know, one must have some very effective ways to insure correct use of funds but with strong contacts on the ground and in our world of cell phones and western union, I have found that possible. Co-designing and providing funds for a sustainable and growing beekeeping project has given me the opportunity to do something meaningful. I planned this project with two fellow community members from my Togolese village before I left that village and did not launch it to keep my emotions up. I helped plan it because I believed in it. I believe that this project will be effective, and that it will not create dependence, given the way we designed it. Because I believe so strongly in the effectiveness of the project and that I am doing the right thing in implementing it, it has given me a mission when my overseas Peace Corps mission has just officially ended. This project has also made me feel present in my Togolese community and happy to still be a member of that community and an active participant in its welfare. I may no longer be a Peace Corps Volunteer but I am still and will always be an Affem Boussou community member.

Fetishism of Commodities

2009-03-16T06:00:00.004Z

DSC_0046-2.jpg
Originally uploaded by JCTownsley

I just heard Cornel West say "Fetishism of commodities." He said "It is also among the destitute because the destitute have a fetishism of commodities, a fetishism of success [and think] 'all I need is success, and then somehow I am a better person.'"

I think it is hard for Togolese to escape the "fetishism of commodities" as they peer out into the world through TVs and Radios and I think it is very connected to what the Ugandan Farmer Said in my last entry. He said "They shared a lot of things together...But now things have changed. Each person is on their own. A few people who have acquired material wealth are very scared of sliding back into poverty. They do not want to look like us." It is hard to not be a commodity fetisher in Togo as you learn of the rest of the world. And I believe the young generation will be heavily influenced by commodity fetishism but I also saw a lot of spiritually learned Muslims in Togo refuse commodity fetishism by emphasizing how fleeting and ephemeral earthly life is and how useless that makes attachment to money and things. A nomadic herder, himself a muslim, asked me, as I handed him money for taking me and my friends out in the bush with his cows, "Do you think the prize is down here [on earth] Kabirou? Forget about the money." That came from a man that can live on 20 dollars a month and to whom I was handing 30 dollars. His photo accompanies this entry. I have seen less of that mysticism and refusal of worldly goods in the Christian areas of Togo, but I spent less time there. It is hard for Togolese to escape the "Fetishism of commodities," in the the Commodity Fetisher Gala that is our world. That is sometimes hard to deal with as a Peace Corps volunteer who may have been able to join the Peace Corps in part because you have rejected commodity fetishism. You find that you and the Togolese are going in opposite directions, them toward and you away from commodities...

"Development"?

2009-03-06T20:17:00.005Z

The following two points of view get at a very sociological and anthropological aspect of "Development": How have Western fueled development and westward emigration affected home-grown development in Africa? Togo led me to ponder this question more and more as time went by.

"Poverty has always been with us in our communities. It was here in the past, long before the Europeans came, and it affected many - perhaps all of us. But it was a different type of poverty. People were not helpless. They acted together and they never allowed it to squeeze any member of the community. They shared a lot of things together: hunting, grazing animals, harvesting. There was enough for basic survival. But now things have changed. Each person is on their own. A few people who have acquired material wealth are very scared of sliding back into poverty. They do not want to look like us."

- Ugandan farmer cited in Voices of the Poor, by Deepa Narayan; Oxford University Press: 2000.

On a very similar note, In a 2006 article entitled "OPEN THE BLINDS", now RPCV Dan Mueller tells us of a fictional African village that was developing at its own pace before the world started trying to develop Africa. It would seem that Mueller is saying that organic grassroots development is made impossible or improbable by the promise of the developed world driving up in a 4 x 4 and magically developing the village with money. That prospect drastically changes the rules of the game of getting ahead and tears apart the fabric of the developing society. Mueller continues, saying that the prospect of emigrating to the "developed" rich world and living the good life blinds Africans and leads them to forget the organic development that their ancestors, like ancestors all over the world, were engaged in. Mueller sees this state of affairs as being quite obvious to the observant development worker.

Cultural continuity

2009-02-19T23:17:00.007Z

Eid al-Adha in village

Life back in the US has offered me two satisfying moments of craved Togolese and Muslim cultural continuity.

The first moment was meeting two Togolese men who are originally from the area of Togo where I lived. They speak the language of Kotokoli that I learned to an intermediate level while in Togo. Speaking Kotokoli, with all of the cultural importance that is placed on certain subject matters and moments in communication, renders unto the last two and a half years of my life the feeling of richness that memories of those years deserve. Richness that, with no fault to anyone, dissipates like fog in the US context.

The second moment of cultural continuity came when I went to Friday prayer at a mosque here in Oregon. There were small differences, none of the Muslim rosaries that were ubiquitous in Togolese mosques, folks were Middle Eastern and Eastern European instead of African, and the sermon, that spoke to God's view on interest or making money off money, made reference to the Western cultural context of being Muslim in the US, to the credit crisis, Plato, and the Catholic church. Not only did I agree with the sermon's message, that we must refuse to make money our first priority, but, as speaking Kotokoli did, the sermon and the prayer that followed rendered the memory of life in Togo full and rich.

Living in the US, It is easy for my life in Togo to be drained of its meaning and utility like a motor of its oil. Moments of cultural continuity put oil back in my motor.

What I heard from Togolese about what Obama's election meant to them.

2009-01-20T16:35:00.011Z

A poster of Barack sold in Togolese markets
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

The morning following the election of Barack Obama, I heard two themes in the reactions of Togolese:

1) This election is a lesson in meritocratic democracy and social equality.

2) This election represents the official removal of the glass ceiling that many assumed would always differentiate the place of blacks and the place of whites in the world.

The election certainly proved everything that I had said to Togolese about my experience of America and about what I believed that America was. It was very nice to walk around an American in Africa for that reason and for the reason that my country had just accomplished the feat of making an expression of love and humanity be heard unmuffled. I was proud. I was disappointed, however, that many assumed that I would vote for John McCain but I understand that assumption.

While giving a class in a Togolese middle school on the US election process and on the 2008 campaign, I asked the students who they would vote for. They responded that they would vote for Obama. I asked them why and they caught themselves and we laughed as they scurried to find policy reasons for voting Obama. When asked who I would vote for, I joked with the students that "of course I would vote for John McCain given my race." They understood that I was making the point that race or ethnicity should not determine who one votes for and we had another good laugh.

Deconstructing the "culture of poverty" theory; The real challenge.

2009-01-12T06:47:00.026Z

Though I was not completely aware of it at the time, I believe that the true challenge that I faced during my service was the challenge of refusing to believe in the easily constructed "culture of poverty" theory or "COP" theory. It is a theory that posits that certain behaviors found in a given culture impoverish the people of that culture. The "COP" theory demotivates those who could work to alleviate poverty by convincing them that cultural change, instead of equitable treatment, is the key to "solving" poverty.

Here are few of my blog entries that show me becoming aware that I had bought-in to the "culture of poverty" theory and then show the result of my realization. The result of my realization was that I rededicated myself to serving my community. The fact that I rededicated myself to service after unearthing my belief in a "culture of poverty," supports the idea that the "COP" theory discourages serving the poor.

I would add, as I did in the first entry below, that my belief in the "COP" theory was supported in large part by the ideas expressed to me by Togolese. Ideas about jealousy, oppressive social atmospheres and work-ethic in African culture. People can believe that their own culture is a "culture of poverty," and many Africans do.

-http://togowestafrica.blogspot.com/2007/09/first-year-blues.html -http://togowestafrica.blogspot.com/2007/10/battle-and-understanding-dust-settling.html -http://togowestafrica.blogspot.com/2007/11/debate-and-consequences-of-its.html -http://togowestafrica.blogspot.com/2007/11/i-get-it-i-know-what-to-do-i-know-how_23.html -http://togowestafrica.blogspot.com/2007/12/contentment-and-joy.html

How could we think that a "culture of poverty" could exist? As good Marxists, we know that a culture is born of the means of production of a given area. Culture does not create the means of production, the means of production create culture. So if we want to go fishing for the causes of poverty, we should look to the "poor means of production" instead of a "culture of poverty."

But one can understand how some people who serve poor communities fall into belief in the "culture of poverty" theory. If you are a highly motivated worker that enters into a community in order to help that community, and you observe counter-productive behaviors, you will ask yourself "if these people aren't doing all they can for themselves, why should I do all I can for them?" This is why it is so difficult for some social justice/ development workers to keep up their optimism. But you cannot blame them. I too was just trying to get to the bottom of it all. We in fact want to fight poverty so we ask "why are these people suffering?" That was the question that I asked myself and the Togolese. Many answers to that question suggested that the main cause of the suffering was a cultural problem. To put out a fire you put the water at the base of the flames, so if the main cause of suffering is the culture, then let's try to change the culture. A very logical road leads to that pitfall. The fallacy is in the idea that poor communities do not deserve an equal playing field, and that is the illogically logical conclusion of some development/ social justice workers who see many counter-productive behaviors in the communities that they serve.

I am not claiming that counter-productive behaviors do not exist in underserved communities. I think counter-productive behaviors exist everywhere, but probably are more numerous in rich areas than in poor areas. That discussion is, however, beside the point. The point is that if social justice workers/ development workers believe in the "culture of poverty" theory, then they will be discouraged and perform less well in the communities for which they work. If policy makers are trapped by the theory, then they will be less likely to support poverty alleviating policies. If any of us are unable to see through the COP theory, then we will be less likely to overcome institutionalized discrimination as a society. It would be tragic if we lost momentum in the global fight against poverty because we had fallen victim to a fallacious theory.

Cuerpo de paseo? cont'd

2008-12-31T19:10:00.003Z

DSC01827
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

I hear that in at least one Spanish-speaking country the Peace Corps is call the "Trip Corps." In other words, the Peace Corps is seen as somewhat of a two-year vacation.

In the interest of accountability I would like to share just a couple of the projects that I worked on in my 27 months.

In the adjacent photo you see, from left to right, a well technician, the Secretary of the County Development Committee, and a local chief.

A concerned individual came to me on behalf of his small village. His message was that there is no potable water in his small village and that worse, during the dry season there is a critical shortage of even non-potable water.

After that initial contact we worked with the county development committee, the village chiefs and inhabitants, and a local NGO to submit a project plan to build wells in two villages that have a critical need.

Cuerpo de paseo?

2008-12-31T18:52:00.004Z

DSC01832
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

I hear that in at least one Spanish-speaking country the Peace Corps is call the "Trip Corps." In other words, the Peace Corps is seen as somewhat of a two-year vacation.

In the interest of accountability I would like to share just a couple of the projects that I worked on in my 27 months.

In the adjacent photo you see a man proud of his nursery of high-yield palm trees. In Togo a plantation ensures a stable long-term income to farmers. Having a couple acres of cashew trees, grafted mango trees, or high-yield palm trees can provide piece of mind to an aging farmer.

This man asked me to find him a provider of high-yield palm seedlings and plastic tree seedling sacks so that he could establish his own plantation and sell seedlings to other farmers who wish to establish plantations. We studied some failed attempts to do the same and believe that our attempt will be successful.

My kind of hut.

2008-12-30T01:51:00.003Z

DSC01766
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

Had I known about all the styles of hut that were available, I would have chosen the style you see in this photo. I would call it the low-round Fulani model of hut with bubble porch. It would be a simple, practical home. I've never seen a hut like this in danger of caving in due to rain nor have I seen, on these round huts, the anti-erosion foundation reinforcement often necessary on rectangular houses. Coming from a culture of rectangular homes, I enjoy the curved form of the hut and porch.

Other ethnicities in the area used to build round huts but have adopted "modern" rectangular styles in the past 30 years. Today, only the Fulani or Peul ethnic group builds huts of this sort in my area. Maybe that is a reason more to like the style. Most Fulani are foreigners in Togo and it is easy for me, as a foreigner, to identify with their cultural estrangement and its resultant watchful attention-deflecting behavior.

Just behind and to the right of the round house is a series of boards planted vertically in the ground to form an enclosure. The enclosure is a shower. The large earthenware jar in the courtyard contains drinking water. The green plastic kettle sitting on the stool is used for performing ablutions before Muslim prayer.

Two great senses of humor.

2008-12-12T16:45:00.007Z

The chief's secretary (left) and the development committee's secretary give each other a hard time, as their subtle sarcasm and dry humor have a habit of making them do.

The chief's secretary is a social straight-shooter, worked at a Chinese-run sugar factory in Togo, speaks 5 languages, has 20 plus children, is an expert in yam cultivation and smokes cigarettes. Douna, the man on the right, is a farmer and liaison between NGOs, including PLAN, and the village inhabitants. His son has a Master's in Accounting and wants to launch an NGO to help students in his home village. Unfortunately he hasn't been able to land a job, a common problem for graduates.

Don't know if i've ever felt as laid-back, light-hearted, and schmoozy, as when I spent time with these two. Don't know when I'll be seeing them again. They do have cell phones. Hopefully those cell phones will allow us a few moments more...

The road...home?

2008-12-12T16:11:00.011Z

The motorcycle taxi driver, whose head and shoulder you see here, is nicknamed Senghor after Leopold Sedar Senghor the former President of Senegal. The other mototaxi drivers say they gave him the name Senghor because his hair has the same texture as President Senghor's.

You can see the dryness of the dry season in this shot and the Nere trees of the savana...

Richer reading of Africa's intellectuals

2008-09-13T16:02:00.011Z

From my first year at university I studied African, specifically Francophone, literature and film. After two years living not only in Africa but in its depths, the village, the experience of that once exotic literature has now become three dimensional, been given color, smells, and emotions.

Of the authors I have read recently, I would mention Ousmane Sembene, Camara Laye, Bernard Dadier, Cheikh Anta Diop, Amadou Hampâté Bâ, Boubacar Boris Diop, and Emmanuel Dongala.

To the right is a photo of Cheikh Anta Diop. I commented on Nicolas Sarkozy's Dakar speech given ironically at the University that bears Diop's name. As I read Diop and his fellow African intellectuals, a thickening dew of ignorancy and pretension forms on Sarkozy's speech.

Read an entry concerning Sarkozy's speech

Misreading the Togolese landscape? updated

2008-09-08T10:17:00.007Z

A study picked up by chance, "Misreading the African Landscape," has questioned the foundation on which my work in Togo is based.

The study questions assumptions of the natural resource establishment of Guinea, in West Africa, which has held since colonization that the land management techniques of peasants in the studied zone are destroying forest and are generally leading to resource depletion. To the contrary the peasants’ complex system of natural resource management has been converting grasslands into forest lands, increasing the forest cover, and the quantity and quality of their local natural resources. In the meantime policy makers, natural resource professionals and the development community have spent large budgets on criticizing the peasants and funding projects intended to counter the believed destructiveness of the natural resource management of those peasants.

The erroneous assumptions all stem from the outsider perspective, held by many “highly educated” Africans and non-Africans alike and probably originating from colonization that draws its conclusions without sufficient knowledge of local history and culture which themselves are deep, fascinating, and humbling.

I believe that this study may have been applicable to my work zone in a not so distant past, though Togo specific history has made the geography of my work zone and that of the study's zone in Guinea bifurcate. My area is in the same vegetation and climate band as the studied zone. I do believe, however, that I, my work, and the natural resource community in which I work has suffered from a similar outsider perspective and lack of local historical knowledge that have probably led to other erroneous assumptions and ill-conceived work plans. Those erroneous assumptions and ill-conceived work plans have probably been in place so long that they have become self-realizing prophecies or have altered their objects of study (land and inhabitants) to such an extent that those objects no longer resemble their former selves. Though of course the land and its inhabitants have been greatly altered by a great number of influences over the course of the past 300 years in addition to the Natural Resource Management policies in place. I very much appreciate the authors' dedication of the book that reads: "This book is dedicated to Mr Oury Bah and professor Rowland Moss, and to their confidence in the ability of African farmers in the transition zone to manage their own environments."

Read the study:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Z4qSmRydtDUC

Read two blog entries that are interesting in light of the study in question:

http://togowestafrica.blogspot.com/2007/09/natural-resource-history-songs-and-news.html

http://togowestafrica.blogspot.com/2007/11/debate-and-consequences-of-its.html

http://togowestafrica.blogspot.com/2008/01/lost-between-tradition-and.html

Ah! So that is one of the reasons why I am here.

2008-07-19T16:36:00.008Z

DSC01624
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

During an afternoon rain storm I took refuge at these young guys' house. Wanting to check-up on the effectiveness of our school library project I asked the tallest boy, in the back on the right, whether he had read "Soundjata Keïta ou l'épopée mandingue" that is obligatory reading for his 8th grade class and that our library had provided. That boy then spent nearly an hour, outlasting the rain storm, recounting from memory the story of Soundiata Keita that he had read with his classmates. I leaned against a wall and listened to his narration that became quite theatrical at times. What a beautiful performance it was. "Ah! So that is one of the reasons why I am here," I thought to myself. I am here in part to help strivers do more and to incite others to strive.

No dough no foot.

2008-07-19T16:19:00.002Z

DSC01583
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

As his foot and leg swelled more and more, this dude did not have 5 cents to send a message to a friend in order to obtain the 20 dollars necessary to cure his infection that could have led to amputation. He is not alone. Some die at the doorstep of a cure, lacking only the 10, 20, 50 or 100 bucks necessary for treatment.

What stung beekeeping. *updated

2008-05-27T12:41:00.009Z

beekeeping
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

Beekeeping is a highly viable money making venture in our area. Village members owning forested areas where bees can find flowers and water sources and yet where conditions aren't too wet, keeping bees could support a large portion of the population.

We are working on extending and organizing the beekeeping activities in our area and I am very hopeful that in 2 years time the number of beekeepers could jump from 3 currently to 20 or more.

One obstacle we have encountered that has until now hindered the grassroots growth of beekeeping is interfamilial distrust and grudges. It is quite incredible that the potential saving grace of a population could be held back by such trivial but deepseeded feelings. And it is not the individuals themselves but a certain prevailing social climate that just stamps out trust and hope. It is difficult to understand but it can be mediated. Who knew that you could encourage beekeeping by being a family counselor. I just found that out.

Another obstacle was brought to my attention by the man in the adjacent photo. He says plainly that "people aren't serious. If folks were serious about becoming beekeepers or animal breeders they could learn all of the necessary skills." Indeed people lack a certain spark that scientific knowledge gives you. The man in the photo has that spark but he didn't have it until his family sent him to a trade school where he learned beekeeping skills. More folks should be sent to trade school. At the same time, the man is right, "vouloir, c'est pouvoir," "To want to, is to be able to."

Peace Corps service coming to a close.

2008-04-20T16:01:00.009Z

Aliou and kabirou
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

What can I say about the autumn of Peace Corps service? It is the most work filled period of service. One has more host-country friends and is more fluent linguistically and culturally than at any other time during service. As a result one feels more at ease and more at home than at any other time during service, though certain frustrations persist. In the face of all this, anticipatory nostalgia grows as the close draws near. Maslow's peak experiences are more numerous as are doubts about the effect one has had. Pondering and planning the future occupies more and more mind time. "Should I become a teacher, a nurse, or a nomadic muslim" one thinks. Hmm do I look like a nomadic Muslim? I guess I kind of do, kind of...

Douna, UN's hardest working (unofficial) employee

2008-04-20T15:36:00.004Z

Douna
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

Meet the UN's hardest worker. Unpaid, unthanked, this man takes the UN's message from the offices in Geneva and New York straight to rural Africa.

Whether it is the millenium development goals or women's rights Douna will get on his rusted-out rickety bicycle and peddle in the intense sun many kilometres to spread the good word. He has just completed a series of trainings throughout the county concerning the Avian Flu. While many chuckle at all the theory, coming out of the UN's air-conditioned offices, aimed at poor African peasants, Douna takes it all very seriously and makes all that theory have a real effect on the ground.

He isn't that different from anyone else, just a bit of high school education under his belt and a powerful source of perserverence and patience.

I am lucky to be able to tag along with him and add my own messages after he has completed his presentations. Today I came to town in a vehicle because my body was tired after biking with Douna to his meetings mornings and afternoons for a week. In the vehicle we passed Douna on his bicycle, peddling to town, amazing...

why Islam?

2008-03-21T12:25:00.006Z

3pm prayer
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

a friend's question: what was it in Islam that made you join IF you weren't born into it??
my response: Indeed I was not born into Islam. I was born into Unitarian Universalism, a religion whose defining belief, as I understand it, is that "the only legitimate authority on religious matters is the individual." This religious heritage left me with a lot of freedom, which would make one ask why I would practice such a strict religion as Islam but the reason is that I believe that there is a golden logic behind good spiritual practices and that one can find that golden logic through a book or through trial and error. In fact I think that many of Islam's practices follow that golden logic and could be adopted by a man living by himself in the forest never having seen the Coran because there is a logic behind good spiritual practices that the quiet and attentive mind can discover by itself. To answer the question then, I chose to practice Islam because of the regular praying habits, i find praying at least 3 times a day, as the nomads do here combining the 1 and 3 pm and 6 and 7 pm prayers, is essential to developing healthy mental habits and I believe that healthy mental habits are the basis for an intentional and rational existence and I believe that an intentional and rational existence is key to allowing what is in your heart and mind to healthfully enter into the world in a controlled way that allows what is in your heart and mind to become a constructive force and not a destructive force (as comes with uncontrolled emotions). This is the primary reason that I have chosen to practice Islam: the ability of a regular prayer schedule to create healthy mental habits key to leading a good existence.
my response cont'd in a later discussion:
I must say, that I have attempted to surrender my heart and mind to the truth and I must say that I am above all attached to the truth and I see that Islam can guide well toward the truth, but above all, above any given religion I am attached to the truth.

"Malam Kaolo"

2008-03-03T10:27:00.005Z

"Malam Kaolo"
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

OUKPEDJO Seïdi Mouhamed (Malam Kaolo). Naturopath, Coranic and traditional healer, Arabic literature teacher, Arabic-language author, President of a bureau of the Union Musulmane du Togo, President and founder of the NGO ABOU BABA for traditional medicine and development, founder of a Franco-Arabic school... among yet more titles he is my Arabic professor and prized spiritual councilor...
On this day Kaolo was giving a lecture on "Rouqya: the prevention and treatment of witchcraft of "djims" and the bad eye." I retained best Kaolo's preventions and treatments that are, it seems to me, very practical, both coranic and non-coranic, positive thinking techniques.
contacts:
B.P. 4
TCHAMBA, TOGO
WEST AFRICA
+2289096015
aboubaba8@yahoo.fr

Cash, cashews, and bi-products

2008-02-24T11:22:00.005Z

cashew bi-product: juice!
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

In the past Cotton was a source of cash for families in my area but with the fall in the sale price of raw cotton and the costliness of fertlizers and pesticides, cashew production is looking like a better source of cash income, the 100 kilo sack of raw cashews currently selling at almost 50 US$.

What is more, cashew apples, as seen in the adjacent photo, can be rather easily transformed into juice, chutney, jam, wine and liquor. For the moment some of the apples are eaten by children but many just rot in the field, becoming unused bi-products of cashew nut production. We're attemping to change that.

Another notable way folks are finding important sums of cash income to help out their families is through emigration to Nigeria, Ghana, the US, Europe, or elsewhere abroad.

Kofi Annan on migration to the developed world:
"the evidence on migration’s potential benefits is mounting. With their remittances reaching an estimated 167 billion dollars last year [2005], the amount of money migrants from the developing world send back to their families exceeds the total of all international aid combined. And money is far from being the whole story. Migrants also use their skills and know-how to transfer technology, capital, and institutional knowledge. They inspire new ways of thinking about social and political issues. They form a dynamic human link between cultures, economies, and societies. As a result, we are better positioned than ever to confront the challenges of migration, and seize its opportunities.” ADDRESS TO THE HIGH-LEVEL DIALOGUE OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY ON INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT, NEW YORK, 14 SEPTEMBER 2006.

thoughts on my francophonie

2008-02-04T08:14:00.007Z

Suddenly pro-French...(7/6/2006)
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

My interest in Africa was born out of my thirst to learn the French language and discover all of the countries in which that language would allow me to communicate, known as la francophonie. That interest in Africa has now grown and eclipsed my interest in the French language and in la francophonie, for reasons that I will discuss here, but I thought that the "francophone situation" in Togo deserved a blog entry.

Why was I first interested in the French language? It was because French allowed me to take part in another culture and exist in the medium of that culture. Well, French only allows me to take part in Togolese culture to a limited, but sometimes suprisingly great, extent. When you speak French in Togo you aren't speaking French as much as you are speaking, what is and what is perceived as, a "white" language. So when you speak French in Togo you don't really get the feeling that you are participating in someone else's culture, rather you may feel that you are just grazing the surface of their culture incapable of fully participating or worse reinforcing French culture at the expense of the local culture. Those facts do not fuel my enthousiasm about the French language, or my ability to speak it, that I have when elsewhere in the francophonie. On the other hand, you are, I fave found, highly regarded by Togolese who have attended school if you speak a French well.

Senegalese writer Boubacar Boris Diop describes la francophonie so well when he says that it is divided into two parts, the areas where it is imposed and is not the language of hearts or minds, and the areas where it is the native language of the inhabitants. That division weighs heavily on my perception of la francophonie now, not because it is bad to impose a language on others, afterall the major european languages like French were only regional languages until being imposed on whole countries, but because a language is really interesting to learn when, as I have said, it allows you to truly participate in another culture, and a language can only do that if it is the language in which that culture dreams and thinks and feels...so bring on Hausa and Kotokoli and Ewe and Tchamba and Ani...the local languages that surround me...languages that inhabit the hearts of the people I live with in Togo.

Maybe one day French will become the language of the hearts of the Togolese, like spanish seems to have done in Latino America and afterall my ancestors surely didn't have English flowing in their vains as I do, but I think a majority of Togolese would say that French will never be the language of their hearts and minds. What is interesting is that when Togolese or Francophone Africans travel away from areas where their native languages are spoken, French quickly sounds much more like the language of their hearts. I believe this is because when they travel away and speak French, they are just trying to transmit their feelings as sincerely and accurately as possible in the language that can be understood. If they were to speak French in their native languages' areas of dominance that would not be the case, they would be speaking their second or third or fourth language, IE French, and thus their words would not be as sincere or as accurate as they could be if their words had been spoken in the languages that their hearts and minds operate in. Outside the areas of dominance of their native languages, French becomes the most sincere and accurate way available for "francophone Africans" to make themselves understood.

La Francophonie is still interesting and French is still an important language to learn, as was proven to me last evening as I translated between two Senegalese and a Ghanean customs officer, but la francophonie and the French language aren't as rich as I had thought them before...

2006-2008 has been an period of change for the Francophonie, in France Jacques Chirac, a mainstay of the old school Françafrique leaders influenced by Jacques Foccart, has left power. In Africa, the African intellectuals that brought French Africa into independence are quickly passing away, both Ousmane Sembène and Aimé Césaire have been buried, and Léopold Sédar Senghor preceded them by a few years in 2001. A few old school Françafrique leaders remain in power however, among them Omar Bongo and Paul Biya. It is also worth noting that Radio France International, a key entry point of France in Africa, expanded its FM coverage in Togo during the period 2006-2008. I am a die-hard listener of RFI and I am not proposing that it has a negative effect but one can be aware of its influence in Africa.

How rich the world is! and how poor we are making it.

2008-02-01T14:05:00.004Z

manou
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

This man can teach you to read and write arabic. He can teach you the Hausa and Fulani languages. He can introduce you to Muslim paths to enlightenment. He can show you how to be a nomad. He can teach you to laugh more often and be light hearted. He is a wealth of knowledge, life, and love, and everyone in the world is. We will soon become dust again my friends but the world is such a precious and beautiful thing, let us be interested in it! May our interest in it lead us to love it, and may our love for it lead us to care for it.

The big picture agricultural situation (as I understand it) in Africa can be rather simply summarized:
In the past folks burnt patches of land to clear them and farm on them. When any given patch became less fertile it was left fallow for a period of time in order for it to regain its fertility. Population growth has made land more scarce and has shortened or eliminated the fallow periods, thus soil fertility has suffered. Overfarming, or under-fertilization, has been the result of population growth and it has left soils poor, less able to produce good yields, and less able to feed people. Thus, new ways of fertilizing the soil must be invented. There are many very effective economical agroforestry and manure fertilization techniques that have been researched by many an African agronomist. But until now expensive chemical fertilizers have been the 'solution' pushed on African peasants. Soils have become even poorer with the use of chemical fertilizers. Many soils have become dependent on chemical fertilizers in order to obtain even a half decent yield. That expenseive chemical system, which is out of the financial reach of many farmers, is failing. Soils are becoming dangerously poor..........

With ousmane and manou

2008-01-16T16:23:00.002Z

ousmane
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

This is Ousmane. Ousmane, Manou, and the herd owner that they work for are Fulani from Nigeria. They have walked to Togo with their cattle in search of good forage for the herd. Ousmane and manou each recieve one cow for every five months that they work for the herd owner. The herd owner himself obtained his own herd by working for another herd owner for 9 years. The herd owner's family is in Nigeria where they will wait for his return when the rains and fresh vegetation arrive in June, July and August. Since he does not have boys old enough to herd with him he is forced to hire other young Fulani, in this case ousmane and manou, to help him. Majirou and I spent two nights and one full day in the bush with ousmane and manou. We had a great time and since they will be our the area for a few months we will surely spend more time with them, god willing.
See more photos of our time with ousmane and manou:
http://flickr.com/photos/thompsoncw/sets/72157603729921135/

And then you realize...

2008-01-04T08:23:00.003Z

And then you realize that you cause your own suffering and frustration. There may be outside stimuli (and there are as many as we create) but in the end only you can decide to suffer or see through your emotional distractions. It takes a lot of learning how to be emotionally graceful to take jadedness and frustration, gain understanding and patience, and learn healthy ways of managing and transforming frustration and emotional distractions when they do rear their ugly, destructive, discouraging heads. The method to resolve suffering, as I understand it, is simple but very difficult to impliment well:
Observe your mind. As you observe your mind, observe your thought and emotion reactions to the world. Gain understanding of how and why your mind works, thinks and feels, the way it does. As you see and understand your mental pitfalls you can confront them one by one, knowing that you are on a sacred path. Be confident in that path.

I've read it in books before and tried to apply it but never had to learn to apply it in order to be an effective worker...

This is not managing and transforming emotional distractions just for the sake of it but seeing through the emotional distractions because it is the only way to be rational and rational is a synonym for not letting your emotions control you. Being rational is the most important thing one can do because it immediately gives your entire life meaning. It makes your life intentional and it is the only way you can be truly effective. And why be effective when we are just going to die and head into a black hole you may ask? Well, because as the Gita states or as Jodie Foster's character states at the end of the film "Contact" in front of a congressional committee: Life, existence, and matter are infinitely unique, beautiful, and precious but at the very same time, life, existence, and matter are meaningless, ephemeral, and of no importance whatsoever. So important is the universe, that we must devote our entire lives to serving it faithfully and so unimportant is the universe that we should not for a micro-second be attached or give importance to even the slightest part of it. In the end in attaching or not attaching importance to the universe we are or aren't attaching importance to ourselves as egos. In the end I am saying that our place in the universe is an ever so important one but that we are also so tiny and insignificant that we should not place our egos at the center of that universe by trying to control it and place our labels on importances within it. Being attached, which means letting your emotions control you, is the same as placing your self at the center of the universe. Being rational is seeing your true place in the universe, as a conglomeration of mere molecules so insignificant and unimportant, yet so beautiful and rare. See through your emotions, be rational, be intentional, find meaning. Those are all synonyms.

Quote from Jodie Foster's character in the Film "Contact":"I had an experience I can’t prove, I can’t even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real. I was part of something wonderful, something that changed me forever; a vision of the Universe that tells us undeniably how tiny, and insignificant, and how rare and precious we all are. A vision that tells us we belong to something that is greater than ourselves. That we are not, that none of us are alone. I wish I could share that. I wish that everyone, if even for one moment, could feel that awe, and humility, and the hope, but... that continues to be my wish." I feel the same way about my Peace Corps service.

between tradition and "modernity"

2008-01-01T18:39:00.005Z

In response to my proposals of sustainable agriculture methods like natural pesticides, wood saving cookstoves, agroforestry, natural fertilizers like manure and compost, how many times have I heard this: "Ah, our grandparents used to do that, but with modern times we have left all that for chemical pesticides and chemical fertilizers and the like."
It is almost as if folks have put all their faith in the "modern" chemical ways and are so enamored by those ways that they are surprised to hear that non-chemical traditional-type ways can work effectively. One man said "my grandma always bugs me, telling me to save ashes and manure for the garden but our generation, we've forgotten all that."
In so many different domains, from medicine, to latrines, to water wells, to agriculture, one remarks that the traditional methods that had worked have been left behind but that there is not enough money in the system to fully adopt the "modern ways."
This puts a whiteman promoting traditional-type methods in an ironic position. "Oh sorry, we were wrong go back to doing it the old way." Africa has in her subconscious the ways and the means to develop herself but she is lost between tradition and "modernity." Just a small evolution in the traditional methods of latrines, medicine, wells, and agriculture could give birth to low cost highly effective techniques.
In a 2006 article entitled "OPEN THE BLINDS", PCV Dan Mueller tells us of a fictional African village that was developing at its own pace before the world started trying to develop Africa. It would seem that Mueller is saying that organic grassroots development is made impossible or improbable by the promise of the developed world driving up and magically developing the village with money. That promise drastically changes the rules of the game of getting ahead and tears apart the fabric of the developing society. I believe Mueller is also saying that the prospect of emigrating to the "developed" rich world and living the good life blinds Africans and makes them forget the organic development that their ancestors, like ancestors all over the world, we're engaged in. This state of affairs is really quite obvious to the observant development worker.

Joy and deep sincere calm emotions

2007-12-12T10:10:00.001Z

DSC_0412.jpg
Originally uploaded by JCTownsley

Have you ever experienced fulfilling the mission of your convictions by way of fulfilling your life's passion. It is with tears at the ready and full of gratitude that I tell you that I am living that. Feeling that you are doing what life has taught you is right to do through using your skills that are your life's passion, wow, what else can you want out of life? Maybe food, water, health, a wonderful family, and friends, and I have those too... Al Hamdoulila...Allah Akbar.

I get it. I know what to do. I know how to do it.

2007-11-23T06:03:00.008Z

dancing 'Ridungo'
Originally uploaded by JCTownsley

This final year of service promises to be fast and furious. Been in Togo for 17 months and I get it now. I know what to do. I know how to do it. I don't have much time left however.

An evolving list of objectives for my final year:
-improved cookstove campaigns targeting tchouk markets and middle school students (middle school improved cookstove contest)
-Continue Moringa powder distribution and trainings at baby weighings
-help feed 10 orphans in Sokode
-cantonwide Agroforestry conference with Bradoc
-Continue radio program-trainings on Radio Tchamba
-teach,assist and work with local middle school students as much as possible, continue penpalship
-Involve the sacred forest in my work
-Can and sell large amounts of mango jam as income generating activity with folks
-help put together a school library at local middle school
-participate in as many football practices as possible and use that forum to further my work
-animal health center project
-collaborate closely with a few select young individuals so that they become models for others.
-collaborate effectively with members of my village living in Europe or the US. Help them help their village.
-well projects/financed projects, possibly a bridge
-Hospital Moringa plantation
-Incorporate moringa Powder into egg-laying hen business
-mass production of Neem pesticide
-Weekend outdoor school among Fulani for village youth
-Continue to sell vegetable seeds but better incorporate non chemical production methods trainings
-Run computer classes with students and teachers at the local middle school where there is no power
-Do trainings by megaphone to the crowds on market days in my village
-Assist to the best of my abilities the birth of a beekeeping project
-Prove to people that Agroforestry and non chemical land fertilization is feasable in terms of required labor, to chemical fertilization
-Have an agroforestry demonstration field in place before leaving
-help provide medicines to a village health center
-help supply a blacksmith with tools necessary to continue and expand his business
- help a kindergarten to obtain needed supplies
-Pursue the other quality projects and opportunities to do good that I have forgotten to mention here and those that I will come across.
-pray 5 times a day
-learn Arabic
-master Kotokoli
-learn Hausa

Updated 11/22: the debate and the consequences of its conclusions

2007-11-15T06:20:00.003Z

Africans want to understand why and how the gap between themselves and the rich world came to be. There are many that espouse behavioralist explanations of "under-development," under-development being a term that Africans who I know employ. This type of conclusion has as a fundamental principle the idea that Africa is "under-developed" because of Africans themselves, African behavior and African mentality. In the opposite camp lie what I will call the materialist explanations of "under-development," whose fundamental principle is the idea that Africa is "under-developed" because of its historical material conditions and its geography.

Sitting on the left in the adjacent photo is a professor who will tell you that Africa is "under-developed" because "Africans are too content with the little that they have, Africans are not driven, they are good at rejoicing, dancing and singing, but not at pursuing progress." If you try to dispute it, he will respond that you have to be African to understand. In addition he will tell you that under-development in Africa is caused by the jealousy that keeps Africans from uniting to achieve common goals. The professor would add: "if you were to tell Africans that their poverty is due to geography, then they would stop trying." Government functionaries tend to espouse behavioralist explanations and point to the villager mentality. A couple days back a functionary looked at a grapefruit tree full of fruit and said “look how lazy we are [we are too lazy to even create plantations of trees that would provide for us].” Does he have it right or is there more to it like tree diseases, too many short term needs, and the lack of a market for grapefruit?

A man from my village who is living and working abroad came back to Togo for a visit and had little hope for his village. He predicted that "Africa will never develop. Look at all the men sleeping on benches all day who wake up and say that they couldn't find any money." This man is echoed by another man from my village also living abroad who declares that "Africans are rich but don't realize it." He points to Leucena leaves, beekeeping, animal breeding, manure use, and fruit trees as some of the many unexploited money-makers in Africa.

In any case, the point of this entry is to introduce you to the debate that takes place among Africans about who or what to blame for historical and present perceived "under-development.” I would also pose the question: what are the consequences of this debate in terms of the outlook of Africans themselves? Afro-pessimism or chronic pessimism about Africa is often fed by behavioralist explanations for under-development. Afro-pessimism is a huge psychological obstacle blocking its development.

Anthropologist Dennis Garvey reminded me today that societies are like organisms. They are made up of many dynamic components, each of which plays a role in the functioning of the whole. Our organic societies also operate in given environments that contain other societies as well as different quantities and qualities of available resources. So why development occurred is a more complicated question than one may think but I am a firm believer in the geography explanation as opposed to the behavior explanation of the level of development of different peoples. It seems to me that Human behavior, while it looks very different as you travel, is more static than one would think wherever you go in the world.

Also see the entry about Sarkozy's speech in Dakar.

"Moringa moringa moringaaaa" we called out at Market.

2007-11-14T12:51:00.002Z

Moringa powder and its audience
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

The tree Moringa Oleifera has been my best received and largest (in terms of time spent) project.
The tree's leaves are veritable natural vitamin pills. They can provide much vitamin A, as well as vitamin C, calcium, iron, protein, magnesium, potassium, amino acids and may be eaten fresh or in the form of powder, as you see in the photo (though there is less vitamin C in the powder, the other nutrients a more concentrated in the powder than in the fresh leaves). Malnutrition can be combatted effectively with Moringa leaves. Moringa leaves can also be a great source of fodder for animal husbandry and the leaves are not the only useful part of the tree. The pods, the seeds, the flowers, and the roots also have important uses... Read some Moringa literature.

Moringa Activities at my post:
-We (my Togolese counterparts and myself) have trained the community health agents on the importance, production, and use of Moringa leaves especially for vulnerable folks like children, women having given birth, older folks, or anyone suffering from nutritional deficiencies.
-We have performed a Moringa planting campaign with the same health agents.
-We have sold Moringa trees, seeds, and literature at local markets and used that forum to get out the word about Moringa.
-We are putting in place a Moringa plantation next to the local hospital. The leaf production of the plantation will be dedicated to powder production for treatment of malnutrition.
-We are training mothers during monthly baby weighings about how to administer Moringa powder to their children.
-We have trained and or assisted numerous community service providers including nurses, agronomists, teachers, and development workers in Moringa production and use.
-We have broadcast radio show-trainings about Moringa.
-We have animated many formal and informal trainings and distributed seeds, seedlings, and or literature to many different individuals and groups in the region (informal trainings are probably the activity to which the most time is dedicated).

School work and "le jeu de 24"

2007-11-07T22:37:00.002Z

More 24
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

Working with youth provides a rich source of highly fulfilling work opportunities. I have been stepping-in to occupy students during periods of the school day when they are idle. We play large circle games, learn about subjects from the history of Blues (with a guitar in hand) to the environment and agriculture. We are continuing the penpalship that began last year with students at an American High School. We are also playing the "24" game (as you see in the photo), an engrossing math game that occupied me in middle school and that has been a hit with students here. In the course of these activities a couple students have come up with some promising ideas for other activities to initiate...

Celebrating the end of Ramadan (Eid ul-Fitr)

2007-11-07T22:00:00.002Z

end of Ramadan holiday (Eid ul-Fitr)
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

My fondest moments here have been sitting with this man, Ticha, smiling and laughing with him, listening to him tell his life's adventures, from listening to Nkrumah declare the Independence of Ghana, to attending an Nkrumah inspired Teacher training college, to living through theft at gun point as a manager in Nigeria, but it isn't the stories, it is him, this father figure...

He is making his first pilgrimage to Mecca this year, May God accompany him.

the battle and understanding's dust settling rains

2007-10-19T20:01:00.002Z

the Africa misunderstanding blurred
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

In the entry "first year blues," I made reference to the internal battle that I have been going through during my first year in Togo. I believe it was, and is, a battle between misunderstanding and understanding. Misunderstanding and understanding of myself, of Africans, of Africa, of what I should do here, of what I can do here, of humanity, of life.

I thank God for helping me along in the battle, for giving me the idea to take breakfast with villagers during Ramadan, for putting wise guides around me, for helping me listen to and study my mind and its reactions to life, and for giving me just enough humility to attempt to identify my faults and mistakes and then correct them. I think if God gives me the chance, the battle might just bear some wonderful fruits.

It is interesting how much personal progress came during the Ramadan fast.

The battle between misunderstanding and understanding undoubtedly warped the image of Africa that I have been displaying to you. The battle blurred the courageous, patient, caring, joyful, suffering, successful, dreaming, thwarted, striving Africa that I see here in Togo. And though one can observe some very discouraging things here, it is the adjectives that I have just listed that best describe the Africa I have come to know.

21st day of Ramadan

2007-10-03T09:43:00.002Z

sokode mosque before morning prayer

Today is the 21st day or the beginning of the last third of Ramadan. I have been eating at a different villager's house every morning around 4 am. It has been a great way to get to know the villagers better, tighten bonds, and hatch work ideas.

This morning was the beginning of the period when Laylat al-Qadr can take place. Laylat al-Qadr, or "the night of power," falls during "the last third of Ramadan, commemorates the revelation of the first verses of the Qur'an, and is considered the most holy night of the year." This morning also brought a magical walk with friend Champion to Sokodé's Grand Marché around 4 am to eat the corn paste and sauce that my skittish fasting taste buds desired. As we walked, the women could be heard preparing food and a few old men could be seen studying the Qur'an in the glowing mosques. There is something about the distinctive sounds of a Ramadan morning that for a month find their home in the silence of the pre-dawn hours. The young men that circulate through the neighborhoods chanting their wake-up call, for women to prepare food, around 2:15 am, the Coran recitations ringing out from blasting stereos and radios, the sounds of women at work preparing food and the almost celestial smattering of light orbs coming from the lanterns illuminating their work. And then come the calls to prayer that wean you off the food and water and usher you into another day of fasting.

Pastoralism

2007-09-17T13:14:00.002Z

the herd (Fulani excursion)
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

Maybe my idea, in an earlier blog, that the Fulani represent "self-confident Africa" came from the fact that they simply have a good job that provides for their needs. Their job also does not require them to move away from their traditional mode of living. Most Africans are stuck trying to get ahead by selling their farm products to nonexistant markets and going to "colonial school." Most of of Africa is jobless and is moving away from tradition, the Fulani have a good job and have remained traditional. This is my distinction between self-doubting and self-confident Africa.

Here is an article that considers the difficulties and importance of pastoralism in present and future Africa:
AFRICA: Can pastoralism survive in the 21st century?

I really have a need and thrist to be in Village right now. This is the last year that I will be able to spend Ramadan in my village and there is a alot of pent-up first year guilt that I can best work out while in village. So I am negociating getting out of some engagements that require me being out of my village.

Among the ideas I have for this next year is running an outdoor school for middle school students that would involve living with the Fulani in the bush. I think that seeing how others live and living among them is a big reason why JFK created the Peace Corps and I think that same effect could be achieved locally and cheaply for middle school students by taking them to live among the Fulani. I have gotten a lot of positive feedback about the idea from Togolese.

First year blues

2007-09-16T15:08:00.001Z

SSC_0552
Originally uploaded by JCTownsley

Ani Song:
Yo gassana, Mosorou, Yo gassana
doh leanya ga bilay bi somo

English:
Hold yourself right, my friend, hold yourself right
the world isn't like it used to be.

Good news is that I have met a Togolese professor of forest ecology with whom I will work on protecting, documenting, and extending my village’s remaining grove of virgin forest. The remaining grove is a rare storehouse of biological diversity in the small Dahomey gap ecosystem.

I have this consuming sense of guilt about my first year of service as a Natural Resource Volunteer in Togo. I feel like I am slowly emerging from a cloud of work discouraging conclusions that turned me against my host culture and greatly hindered my productivity. The most guilt causing aspect is that I now see how productive I could have been! I now believe that my village is more ready than any other village I have seen to implement improved natural resource management techniques. How did I miss that chance to do good?

I must say that I almost do not recognize myself now. How did I become so discouraged? How did I slip into such a jaded narrow mindset? My first night in village I wrote:

“God is great! What a landscape blanketed with unheard-of luck and opportunities! The trip to post was ravishing, like my entire life these days. The history of the village should be unearthed and well noted. I must do everything, discover everything, try everything, attempt everything, see, hear, and feel everything! Look at the sky! Everything I have always wanted to do and to see packed into one moment!”

How did I go from that enthusiasm to the blog entry where I state:

“In the face of lack of work, frustration, and racism, I have begun farming.”

I honestly do not understand. Could it have been the Malaria medicine? Was I always such a negative person? I thought I was an exceptionally positive person.

In the 2007 Peace Corps Togo yearbook, I stated that my first year could be best summed up by the word: “misunderstandings.” There are bits of truth in everything though; my “cloud of discouraging conclusions” must have come from somewhere. But where? From which misunderstandings? Maybe Peace Corps has revealed a side of me of which I was unaware until now. Maybe Peace Corps found some ugliness hidden in a far-off quadrant of my mind and yanked that ugliness to the surface.

Beginning to emerge from the “cloud of discouraging conclusions” comes at an exceedingly bad time. We are now entering dry season and into Ramadan followed by Tabaski and other festivals. I am about to participate in training a new set of volunteers and then will be home for a month. So I will not be in village all that much until December. How shameful it is to go home after a year, having little to show for it except “misunderstandings” and “a cloud of discouraging conclusions.”

I can identify the 2 main conclusions that discouraged my work. Though I believe the conclusions are false, inasfar as they are applied only to Africans, each has a long history and none was come to lightly. Often it was Africans who most convincingly argued in their favor.

The 2 main discouraging conclusions are:
1) Africa’s socio-cultural dynamics of jealousy and a tendency to undercut successes are holding it back (so until that changes what can I do).
2) Africans’ priority is not development. The means are not lacking, the will is (and my being here just reinforces that).

Once you get to this discouraged-and-less-productive-peace-corps-volunteer state, guilt abounds. When you are jaded or discouraged inside, then doing good work or seeing success provokes a guilt reaction in you because seeing good work reminds you of how you see yourself: as a poor performing volunteer. Was I a good volunteer all along? I must add that if there was one area in which I have always been a good volunteer and about which I have never felt guilty, it is my integration into the community. Damn I love them. I just feel that I haven't worked well for them. But I think the love shows through it all...

Good news is that I have a year of service left.

Ewe song:
Némé kpowo cola éginyé fa
Afrique némé kpowo cola éginyé fa
éginyé fa, éginyé fa
niyum niyum niyum niyum

English
When I see you my heart is sweet
Africa when I see you my heart is sweet
My heart is sweet, my heart is sweet,
Oh so so so so much

cwt

Hungry for Ramadan

2007-09-15T11:33:00.002Z

Lomé Mosque

Ramadan began according to your country's interpretation of the moon's position. Togo decided to begin Ramadan on Thursday. It is interesting to note that Islam uses a lunar calendar and that African Muslims are Sunni. No water, food, smoking, or sex from around 4:30 am to around 6 pm. Special local radio programs direct and narrate the events to villagers who are tuned in. Power lines to the neighborhood generator were replaced this year to make sure the women had light to prepare food in the early morning dark.

I am going to do it this year. Training myself to not automatically react to the desires of my mind seems very useful and important to me. Going into the third day, it is easier than I had expected or remember from the 4 days I fasted during Ramadan last year.

Natural resource history, songs, and news

2007-09-08T09:59:00.002Z

small grove of virgin forest

One of the many reasons I can’t wait to get back and see you all in November is that the blog feels like such an inadequate intermediary for relaying life here to you. But I have come up with a new blogging strategy to better transmit life here. I will start and end with a village song and some positive developments…

In Ani
Mosorou dabouda gay tay sa la oh
Bambo no na lay a say sourou na.

translation:
Friend, in life you will often be greeted
but what will be necessary is patience.

Good news this week as it appears the Moringa growing campaign in conjunction with village health agents has been successful. Many of the now Moringa expert health agents now have small Moringa plantations and have distributed and explained Moringa to other villagers. Another promising sign is that wherever I am in the county folks will come up to me to talk Moringa, even a Fulani the other day.

Now some sobering news: First, I would like to thank Jared Diamond for his book "Collapse : How societies choose to fail or succeed," that I had mentioned in a prior blog and have just finished reading. The book gave me a great set of new lenses through which to view my village. With a million new ideas and questions brought on by the book, I went down to the center of village and began talking to young folks about Easter Island and other societies that collapsed after exhausting their natural resources. A couple young folks and I went to speak to the chief about our local natural resource history, something I had done before but without the book to put it context. I specifically wanted to class my village according to the book’s list of reasons why societies make disastrous decisions about their natural resources (I’ll get to my village’s disastrous decision in a sec). Those reasons are: a failure to anticipate; a failure to perceive; rational bad behavior, irrational bahavior, and no available alternative. So without getting into definitions I will get to my village’s story. (And damn, asking old chiefs about the olden days is quite exhilirating)

Before, when our chief was a child, old growth trees 2ft to 5ft in diameter were everywhere. According to the chief, when one fell, you could not see your friend if he was on the other side of the trunk. In fact, since they had no way of clearing the mammoth trees, they had to farm in natural clearings. Wild animals, including lions, elephants, monkeys and many others, were also everywhere, and the meat of those animals was present daily in meals. One did not have to walk far from the house to find a bush animal for dinner. As the chief grew older he remembers hunters from as far as Ghana and Ivory Coast coming to hunt the village’s forest, which occupied nearly the whole landscape. So dense was the forest that the village inhabitants would often not notice the hunters hidden in the bush until seeing signs of them after their departure. As for the elephants, since the hunters were after the ivory tusks, the hunters would bring the meat to give to the villagers. As the chief aged, he remembers the wild animals becoming rarer. These days, well, I have seen a monkey scurry into the bush on two occasions in the space of one year. So, wild game was the first natural resource to be exhausted in the county. Next came forest cover.

In the early nineties, democracy was announced as the policy in Togo. Unfortunately, democracy was interpreted in my village as “do as you please.” And at that moment the old growth forest was literally liquidated. Folks say that you could not nap at one o’clock in the afternoon, the normal nap hour, because of the humming of the chainsaws. (I must explain that my village is a village of land owners. They own the whole county, thousands of acres, and the male heads of family make decisions about land use. Over half of the county’s population is now made up of foreign ethnicities who have obtained permission to inhabit the land from the heads of family in my village.) Back to deforestation…I asked the chief why folks would liquidate forest on land that they knew would remain family property forever? (from the book: the main reason the Japanese decided to protect their forest was because of the long term interest they had in its survival, as opposed to a logging company that may prefer to cut and run). The chief replied that when people saw their neighbors becoming rich from logging, they simply thought, “damn, I want to be rich too.” Folks are also said to have thought, “well, I didn’t plant the tree what loss is there in cutting it.” In recent years the chief has outlawed logging and folks have seen the correlation between rain, wind, and deforestation, but money is a powerful motivator. My counterpart realized that his brothers were logging behind his back after he suggested halting logging. The liquidation was so severe that a 4 km stretch of road that used to be 75 percent shaded is less than 5 percent shaded today. Before the logging, rain came about a couple months earlier and streams did not dry up in the dry season. Because the village was surrounded by trees, the wind from a storm or the yearly harmattan winds could not be felt, only heard, in village. Today, the harmattan winds can blow tin roof sheets off your house. I have feared as much sitting in my house. Before all the logging, the village's soils were fertilized by all leaves that fell from the trees. No chemical fertilizer was used, the soil was just naturally rich. A few years after the liquidation of the forest, the soils lost their fertility and today's soils can barely produce an ear of corn without chemical fertilizer. After wild animals and the forest cover, the soil was the third natural resource to be severely depleted. It just happens to be the most important resource aswell, it is what produces food.

There is one patch of virgin forest left near the village, see the photo above, that was used for animist rituals before the village converted to Islam around 1970. The trees in the remaining patch are between 40 to 75 feet high I would say. One was blown down this year. The soil in that patch of forest is blacker and richer than nearly any soil I have ever seen.

After the chief’s account of the natural resource history of our village, I collected a couple more accounts yesterday. Those interviewees said that if the loggers had not offered money to villagers, the villagers would have, and in fact did, just cut down and burn huge trees without even turning the wood into charcoal. According to this person, folks often cut just to have more farm land, many folks are cultivating over 12 acres today. When I proposed that there are intensive methods for getting high yields on small surface areas, the person laughed and said “if you tried that, other villagers would say you are lazy for not farming more acres.”

So where did all that money from the logging go? Logging money built mosques, bought tin roofing, and ironically meat to eat.

In a prior blog I mentioned that I was following up on the village’s commitment to build enclosures for the cows, sheep, and goats in order to improve village hygiene and benefit from the excrement as fertilizer. At a meeting we held yesterday morning in the Imam’s mosque, I began by showing the village elders photos of the Easter Island statues and proceeded to describe the reasons for the rise and fall of the Easter Island society knowing that people would see how our village’s experience is mirrored by the depletion of forest cover and wild animals that came to haunt the Easter Islanders. It seemed to me that the thirst for money quenched by logging in our village was in some ways analogous to the Easter Island clan chiefs’ thirst to build more statues, which necessitated logging, and I think our village elders saw that parallel aswell.

I then tied in the explanation of the book with the logic behind pinning up the animals and using their excrement for fertilizer and in this way reminded the village of the commitment it had failed to fulfil. At this point I was very pleased with my performance because the village elders proceeded to passionately self-critique and to discuss remedies for the degradation of the village’s natural resources and the pinning up of the animals. It was a joy to see the passionate debate about what village reforms needed to be put in place. I feel like I put the elders in front of their own truth, and in front of the Eastern Island truth, and they did the rest. Getting everyone to confront the truth is often difficult though, especially when tradition discourages critiquing the family chiefs. Many see the family chiefs’ narrow-minded, and sometimes greedy, management of village resources as a reason for much suffering, like on Easter Island.

Good news now and then a song:
We are planning a new animal health center in village. A young man from village that has been trained in animal health at an American training center called OIC is going to spearhead the project. Right now many folks are discouraged from raising animals because of the animal death rate. People have the money for medicines but one must travel far away to find them and paying for the gas to go get them becomes inhibitive. As the young man has also been trained in beekeeping we will equip the village animal health center with equipment to extract honey from hives that certain villagers already have. Often the couple villagers that have hives are forced to call for someone to come from the city to extract the honey. Animal husbandry, good health of the cows used for ploughing and manure, and beekeeping would be good alternatives to logging no?

Another piece of good news is that results are in and the students at the local middle school were the most successful in this region of Togo last year! I have found a magazine for students that I am distributing to them as a reward.

In Ani
Welay chimi tomo
Welay chimi tomo
Lay chimi tomo
Na bay sa na mo

Translation:
Tell me the truth
Tell me the truth
If you tell me the truth
I will be so happy.

Love,
chris

2007-08-27T19:37:00.000Z

Back last year, I called a meeting to confront the village about two problems plaguing it. Problem number 1 was the non-pinned-up roaming sheep and goats whose excrement was spreading filth and illness all over the village (as well as ravaging my Moringa nurseries despite my enclosures). Problem number 2 was the steady depletion of soil nutrients and growing dependence on expensive and eventually harmful chemical fertilizers in a village that is highly dependent on agriculture. I submitted these problems to the village. Though I had ideas of my own, I asked them, in presence of the chief, what should be done, explaining that the village was poisoning itself with a substance that could potentially enrich it.

The village and the chief independently decided that the best way to rectify the situation would be to enact laws requiring villagers to pin-up their animals, at night to start, from that day onward. Starting January 1, 2007 the animals would be pinned-up, except for grazing outside the village, day and night. The fine to the owner for each animal in violation was the equivalent of 1 dollar. The village also independently decided to have a village clean-up day every first Wednesday of the month (See prior entry) .

The pinning-up or tying up of the animals lasted 3 or 4 nights and the Wednesday clean-up took place one and a half times.

At the time, having been in village for 2 months time and not wanting to insult the chief for non-enforcement of the laws it enacted, after subtly broaching the issue, I did not feel comfortable confronting the village. But I have decided to call the village on its failure to follow through. I feel I have enough respect in the village now to spend on such a move or maybe I missed an important opportunity to intervene before. My counterpart complains of 20 years of similar failures to follow through on the part of the village, leading to his giving up trying to intervene in village affairs and development. Maybe the white guy can turn things around ;-).

A situation encountered by some volunteers :

2007-08-27T19:23:00.000Z

A situation encountered by some volunteers :

You see some people in need, you go there and perceive that you are treated often mockingly according to your skin color and your richness. You perceive the link of common humanity that you feel towards the people being rejected by them and thrown back in your face. You also perceive that the feeling of human solidarity that motivated you is being baffled everywhere. How does your commitment to idealism do in that environment? If it comes out strengthened your heart will become golden and your life joyful... These are perceptions that can arrise during some volunteers' service...

Living among Fulani

2007-08-25T23:39:00.002Z

Through my work zone pass nomadic Fulani (about Fulani on Wikipedia). From their calm demeanor to their colorful women to their pastoralist profession or their tasty cheese, they have caused many a Peace Corps volunteer to sit and marvel.

So we went to live with them... ...spent the last two nights in a Fulani (Peul) camp. The experience shook my way of thinking about Africa. The shaking came from the juxtaposition of two experiences, that of my experience of Africa up until two days ago with my experience with members of a different people.

On day 1 we waited all morning. First a seller of bootleg gasoline was trying to secure our adhesion to a group of departing Fulani, then we found out that there was apprehension on the part of the Fulani herders themselves who told our translators that the support of their Alhadji (Alhadji meaning a man who has been to Mecca) chief would convince them to go along with our plan to camp with them for a few nights. Having obtained the support of the Alhadji Fulani chief, and endured various delays, we headed out, passing through a couple sedentary farming Fulani households, a couple small rivers, and 4 miles of bush before arriving, nearly in unison with the cows back after a day of feeding, at camp . Our stay would last two half days, two nights, and one beautifully full day.

I will try to put up my thoughts about this experience because they were important for my understanding of my experience of Togo and Africa. To give a brief taste in the little time I have, I would say that living among the Fulani, granted for only 2 nights, put me in contact with self-confident Africa. I refer to "self-confident Africa" in opposition to the Africa that I have been living in for one year: An Africa besieged by the message that there is something wrong with it, in constant comparison with the West, and at its mercy as for the means "needed" to "fix" itself. In the Fulani I met an Africa sure of itself, creative, eager to learn, eager to exchange, not afraid to do weird things or be different. I don't mean to say that the rest of Africa does not exhibit those behaviors but simply that it seemed that with confidence in who they are, the Fulani could slowly changing, adapting, from the standpoint of a proud people that doesn't have foreign paid experts gathered, crowded around its every activity telling it how to do better... and in this way they may change on their terms and remain Fulani, not become Frenchmen at French school or Englishmen at English school. With their knowledge of who they are they may be more able to make decisions about who they will be. It seems to me that they have escaped mental colonization. They are the proud Africa of before... Questions came to my mind: Who decided that Africa had something wrong with it? Who decided that foreigners needed to come in or send things in and develop Africa? It seems to me that self-confident Africa would be better at developing Africa than a belittled tormented self-doubting Africa. In any case I have spoken in error but have at least began a thought, to be continued...

more photos of the fulani excursion.

(for Peace Corps admin: At all times I was in my work zone and was fulfilling at least two of the Peace Corps' three goals, as well as researching possible future natural resources related collaboration with the Fulani. At all times I had cell phone service).

2007-08-20T10:03:00.000Z

I have just begun reading Jared Diamond's « Collapse : How societies choose to fail or succeed ». Diamond's ultimate decision to see societies' success or failure as a choice brings more elements into my personal debate about geography, determinism, and free will in terms of my village's present and future. The author's decision to see the societies' interactions with their environments as generally the most important factor in a given society's chances for "failing or succeeding," will make the book highly à propos for my service as a natural resources management volunteer. Thirdly, his highlighting of success stories of collapse avoidance or good environmental management, through societal efforts both bottom up and top down, may have important consequences for how I spend the rest of my service, especially in the my village's and Togo's context of rapid recent natural resource depletion. Maybe most importantly will be the chance to put my experience here back into the big picture. I find it frustrating, though it is ultimately each person's responsibility, that the Peace Corps, and especially the Natural Resources or environment programs, is not more proactive about getting the volunteers to remain in a big picture mindset. It would make their services seem more meaningful and thus important. Too often the frustrations of being a foreigner in a foreign place occupy many a volunteer more than the fascinating corner of the global and historical 'tableaux' that we occupy… Jared Diamond's « Collapse : How societies choose to fail or succeed ».

Tomato Canning

2007-08-18T13:01:00.002Z

Tomato Canning
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

When tomatoes are abundant, the price plummets and folks are forced to sell before the tomatoes rot. Canning provides a way to preserve the tomatoes until prices rise...

The training went well and in a couple more days we'll find out if the tomatoes were successfully canned.

After past frustrations, I am learning patience and to be satisfied by small successes. Peace Corps: You live there among the folks, you do what is possible, you learn patience to accept what turns out to be impossible, but you never give up on the big ideas you had coming in.

Male slave holding dungeon

2007-08-18T12:55:00.002Z

Male slave holding dungeon
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

From Cape Coast, the former capitol of the British Gold Coast, were exported a portion of the slaves taken in present-day Ghana and the sub-region. Here you see a holding cell/ dungeon for male slaves and trickling in is the only light that reached them.

Arrival of friend Josh and first sight of Ghana

2007-08-18T12:49:00.002Z

Arrival of friend Josh and first sight of Ghana
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

A friend from afar arrived in Accra, Ghana where began our discovery of Ghana, the country of Freedom and Justice, and a booming economy...

Reflecting on the Sarkozy excerpt

2007-08-13T15:33:00.000Z

*UPDATED* Reflecting on the excerpt, seen in the last entry, from Mr. Sarkozy’s speech in Dakar, I must comment that I believe that to the extent that Mr. Sarkozy is right about the African peasant, I believe that the factors that created the African peasant’s mentality are nearly completely geographic in nature. Could today’s Africa be merely a story of geographical imperatives or is that too deterministic? Where is free will in all that?

Secondly, I would comment that though Sarkozy was no doubt referring to some historical African peasant, I know many an African peasant and I believe there is just as much room for “the human adventure and the idea of progress” as the African peasant may decide. What I mean to say is that wherever you roam, openness to new ideas and the ability to assimilate new ways of existing are strengths. Take two villages in my county: I sent two students from one village, we’ll call it village number one, to Camp UNITE this year where they were exposed to many new and carefully selected ideas to help them be successful. Once the two students arrived back in their village, where they were to transmit the ideas to the population, it was as if they themselves knew that the culture of their villagers would hear none of it. The two students just don't know how to confront that cultural rigidity. From village number two I sent one student to Camp UNITE. Once back in village, the student related to me, as did his father, how fascinated he was by the talks about sexual harassment and gender equality at Camp UNITE. The student and his father already have planned out how they are going to transmit the new ideas to their community that they know will listen. They know their community will listen because it is part of the culture of their community to be open to outsiders and new ideas.

So I would say to Mr. Sarkozy that every inch of Africa presents a different situation. Just as in Europe or the States there are open-minded folks and closed minded folks, there are good listeners and other folks too distracted by their culture to listen. What I mean to say is that the keys to success are universal. Some Americans have the keys and some do not, some Africans have the keys and some do not. One's mentality must be a free will piece of the puzzle, and then there is determinism: we all exist in different contexts where we encounter things that are hard to change and that try to shape us, like geography, upbringing, or being born in a market economy or subsistence situation etc...

Mr. Sarkozy in Africa

2007-07-30T09:12:00.003Z

For anyone interested in the philosophizing about how Africa got where it is and how it could get elsewhere, have a read of the French President's first speech in Africa since his election:

In French:

Allocution de M. Nicolas SARKOZY, Président de la République, pronnoncé à l'Université de Dakar.

The speech hits on a number of fascinating subjects and even more interestingly many of Sarkozy's ideas and judgements seem somewhat philosophically scandalous, but scandalous doesn't mean wrong.

Here is a taste of the speech:

"What is tragic about Africa is that Africans haven't entered enough into the course of history. The African peasant who, for thousands of years, has lived according to the seasons, whose ideal is to be in harmony with nature, that peasant only knows the eternal cycle of time cadenced by an endless repetition of the same gestures and words.

In his imagination, where everything is cyclical, there is no room for the human adventure or for the idea of progress.

In that universe where nature controls everything, one sidesteps the anguish that torments the modern man, and our peasant remains immobile at the center of an unchanging order where everything seems prewritten.

In that system man never launches off into the future. The idea never comes to him to break out of his repetition and invent his own future."

Original In French:

Le drame de l'Afrique, c'est que l'homme africain n'est pas assez entré dans l'histoire. Le paysan africain, qui depuis des millénaires, vit avec les saisons, dont l'idéal de vie est d'être en harmonie avec la nature, ne connaît que l'éternel recommencement du temps rythmé par la répétition sans fin des mêmes gestes et des mêmes paroles.

Dans cet imaginaire où tout recommence toujours, il n'y a de place ni pour l'aventure humaine, ni pour l'idée de progrès.

Dans cet univers où la nature commande tout, l'homme échappe à l'angoisse de l'histoire qui tenaille l'homme moderne mais l'homme reste immobile au milieu d'un ordre immuable où tout semble être écrit d'avance.

Jamais l'homme ne s'élance vers l'avenir. Jamais il ne lui vient à l'idée de sortir de la répétition pour s'inventer un destin.

Neighbors Habilou and Missiliou

2007-07-29T15:46:00.002Z

Neighbors Habilou (right) and Missiliou (left)
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

Opposite my house are a family of neighbors who have added alot of laughter and smiles to village life. Missiliou, on the left, will begin elementary school next year, though just the thought of that makes us chuckle given his troublemaker ways... I don't know how Habilou, on the right, will make it through days without the big brother, maybe he will adopt the responsibilities incumbent on him as the big brother of a 6 month old sister named Rashida.

The three children and their parents, whose house and courtyard you see in the photo, have become my closest village family. We feel a bit bonded being all on the fringe of village culture, myself going to mosque but still hopelessly fringe, the wife being a non-Muslim and non-native of the village, and the husband not going to mosque married to a non-Muslim non-native... Even more fringe, unlike most husbands, this one accompanies his wife to the bush to cut and carry fire wood, but in order to avoid ridicule he carries the wood only while out of sight of fellow villagers and then has his wife carry it when they arrive back amongst the village houses...

How to explain where we're at or the birth of sorcery

2007-07-24T15:41:00.000Z

The last couple blog entries, that I have partially taken down, were born of conversations with Togolese friends in which those friends attempted to explain how Togo and Africa came to find themselves in their current situation. I myself was and am confused but here is what I have come up with after further reflection:

As a professor told my training group a year ago, sorcery and magic are nearly always very sincere attempts to rationalize and explain the world. I believe that Togolese, as well as the Beninese and Nigerians that I have talked with, often blame the unexplainable difficulties that they encounter on jealousy and sorcery. Though I don't believe these explanations, I know that nearly all Togolese believe them and their belief in them does have concrete consequences.

I sat last evening with a friend in village and quoted what another African had told me, that "Africans are like crabs in a bucket, if one tries to climb out the others will yank him down to the bottom of the bucket." I asked him if he thought this was true and he immediately said that that was precisely what was holding back the village, jealousy and sorcery. As I looked for concrete examples, my friend couldn't give me any. He told a story of his cashew orchard getting burnt down even after he had cut the grass to protect it from fire. Other examples followed but they all sounded like UFO sighting stories, no real proof. So to conclude quickly, I will say that it seems as if Africans often blame each other for their difficulties, calling it jealousy and sorcery among other things and though I cannot find any concrete evidence for those arguments, I do see their consequences that come in the form of negative and oppressive social relations. Doing something new or succeeding could attract jealousy and dark magic. A while back the chief told me he couldn't enforce a law because he feared someone would kill him. Kill you with what? Answer: "through witchcraft."

Basketheads

2007-07-22T09:28:00.002Z

basketheads
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

Income generating activity: basket weaving. Mr Ségla, on the right, pays his school fees, necessities, and has pocket money left over through his basketweaving activites. He taught the youth and counselors at camp Espoir now we will try to take it back to village...

Inhabitants of Cabin "Les Lions courageux indomptables"

2007-07-22T08:51:00.002Z

Camp Espoir, organized and funded by a number of NGOs, the US Embassy in Lomé, and the Peace Corps, confirmed my theory about the transformative capacity of "summer camp" type retreats.
It seems to me that the camp's effect on campers is similar to the Peace Corps' effect on Peace Corps volunteers in that it places the campers in a new socio-cultural setting, where certain positive behaviors can be encouraged and less productive behaviors challenged.

Project Idea: Fish ponds

2007-07-13T05:03:00.000Z

After a year of testing possibilities and learning about community needs, strengths and weaknesses, it seems about time to passer à l'action.

Constructing fish ponds seems a feasable and beneficial initiative:

Pisciculture links:

http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/AC736E/AC736E01.htm http://cdserver2.ru.ac.za/cd/011120_1/Aqua/SSA/main.htm

I feel like I must first answer the following questions, all of which seem to be recurring ones in my work here:

Why, in all the years of cooperation with government and development agencies, has pisciculture (or other project ideas) not been pursued in the community? If it is a good idea why hasn't it been attempted? Or, if it has been attempted why did it fail? Or of course, if it did succeed where is it?

CAMP UNITE 2007

2007-06-30T12:11:00.002Z

CAMP UNITE
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

The highlight of a recent string of what feels like productive work was being a counselor at CAMP UNITE. CAMP UNITE brings male and female students and apprentices together at 4 separate camps in order for them to discuss and learn about certain life skills and practices such as self-confidence, planning of the future, STD and HIV/ AIDS prevention and treatment, and gender equity that are judged necessary for a healthy, happy, and successful life. The camp's target group is female youth, but the female youths have pointed out that their male boy friends and colleagues are key to their success, and so the latter have been invited aswell.

The other activities that have made time here feel quite productive of late include a weekly village exhibition of homegrown/ local innovative ideas, village youth teaching about the Moringa tree while selling seedlings, seeds, and supporting documents at the local market, supporting local community health agents in their quest to plant Moringa throughout the county, planning of a field trip to the Université de Kara with local middle schoolers and preparing for another camp in July.

It is said that the pace of Peace Corps work picks up at the 1 year mark, and it has...dieu merci.

Le Foot au village: promising project

2007-06-03T13:40:00.002Z

Le Foot au village
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

In an area where woman have difficulty leaving their culturally/ socially defined boxes, why not start a girls soccer team?

In a nearby town I have met a female soccer player and referee, who is frustrated always playing amongst the boys. She is quite enthusiastic about becoming the initiator and coach of a new girls soccer team in my village. An NGO that works for the empowerment of women in Islam is also becoming involved. This feels like some real quality Peace Corps work. Feels good...

Innovative improved cookstove

2007-05-24T18:14:00.002Z

A woman with no formal schooling, few resources, but a certain adventurous mentality thought up this innovative improved cookstove that saves woodfuel as many cookstoves do, but also allows the use of both small and large pots. Usually improved cookstoves are tailored to only one pot which makes them a bit inconvenient. This design solves that issue. Though this stove may be a little less fuel efficient than would be ideal it is a big step up from the "three stone" cookstoves widely used.

This example of ingenuity, given by the woman designer of this cookstove, also supports my belief that development is a mentality. Development is not money, not cars or even clean water. It is about being the conscientious master of your own existence.

village secretary

2007-05-22T15:48:00.002Z

village secretary
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi.

Meet the village secretary. His experiences as a cook for Chinese workers at a sugar factory make him the only person in the area that you can try out your chinese on. This also makes the village quite well staffed in the face of China's growing influence on the world stage.

The secretary is also quite an orator and comedian. His harsh demeanor at first sight melts into a swanky smile, and this along with his cigarettes makes him somewhat of a Togolese Clint Eastwood.

Togolese students recieve photos from American penpals

2007-05-22T15:42:00.002Z

students recieve photos from penpals
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi.

Quite a bit of excitement and many smiles could be seen as students saw their penpals. Though it was a meaningful cultural exchange, the truth remains that most of the Togolese students are hoping that this exchange will one day allow them to leave Togo.

market view

2007-05-14T20:59:00.002Z

market view
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi.

A young lemonade seller takes a break, kneels down, and eats.

ploughing peaunut field

2007-05-14T15:02:00.002Z

ploughing peaunut field
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi.

In "Blood Diamond" Leonardo Dicaprio's character comments (rough quote) that "Peace Corps types only stay long enough [in Africa] to realize that they aren't really helping anyone."

While I can see the logic for that argument I also believe that the least tapped resources in the world are the heart and mind of individuals. So, to the extent that I am able to speak to the hearts and minds, I may be helping and helping develop.

I attempted this little "whiteman" stunt (ploughing and planting peanuts) to get the respect of some folks here and to get their attention long enough to have a sincere conversation. Sincere conversations are hard to have when the other party thinks you are just another rich whiteman that doesn't know how Africans suffer in the fields (no one helped me plough the field, I was adamant about that).

local radio show

2007-04-24T10:15:00.002Z

local radio show
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi.

The fine folks at the local radio station have given me a slot every Tuesday at 3 pm. (after prayers of course). The show on this day was about the importance of the Moringa tree. Yes we are quite sweaty, it was a bit hot, and then there are the "on air nerves."

small field behind house

2007-04-24T09:57:00.002Z

small field behind house
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi.

In the face of lack of work, frustration, and racism, I have begun farming. This is my small field of okra, corn, and hibiscus. I have also started plowing a half acre in order to plant peanuts.

what a universe

2007-03-26T21:56:00.002Z

Here you see a view from training back in August '06:
Trainer Paul shows us that life and the universe are only scary if we decide to be scared. Hold that scorpion tight and we just might find peace, love, and knowledge...

Making skin lotion in village

2007-03-14T19:12:00.002Z

Here you can see the closing moments of a training on how to make skin lotion out of peanut oil, candles, and perfume. Instead of sending their money to Nigeria by buying Nigerian made skin lotion, women can make it with local products. It turned out to be a successful training, but part way through I wasn't so sure.

All the women of the village were assembled and we began to purify the oil by heating it. But as the oil began to smoke and then burn, I sat petrified by the prospect of losing all credibility with the village women. What was shaping up as a nail in the coffin of my village work turned out a great success.

The lotion began to cool and coalesce, one woman dipped her finger in and tried rubbing the lotion into her arm, and suddenly women from all over the village were running to find small containers in which to put the lotion. An argument even erupted over who had the right to the lotion, and it was decided that only those who contributed to buy the materials, would have the right to apply the newest village beauty product.

Barber Adébayor

2007-03-08T13:15:00.002Z

Barber Adébayor
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi.

After talking a bit about the frustrations of village work, I had to come back with a more inspiring story. The Barber nicknamed 'Adébayor' is that story.

Waiting for a bush taxi back to village I decided to get a haircut. Fortunately for me, I was taken to 'Adébayor,' a barber located adjacent to the taxi station.

As the locks fell away, Adébayor began to tell of himself, that he had just returned from the ECOWAS games for the handicapped, held in Mauritania, where he won 3rd place in West Africa in the discipline of Weight Lifting.

His strength is not to be contested. Many told him that suffering from Polio, he would not be able to run a barber shop. But after pleading in Churches and Mosques up and down Togo, he put together enough funds to launch the business that you can see behind him in the photo.

Adébayor's mother left at an early age to Niger and his father was killed in a taxi accident in which he was also injured. Adébayor made it through to 9th grade before deciding that he needed to learn a trade in order to get by.

He told me how he cried the first time he met White handicapped athletes in Nigeria. That experience caused him to feel a solidarity with the whole of humanity. As he clipped away at my hair I certainly could feel that he saw me not as another rich White man, but as a fellow human being.

Today's project and yesterday's

2007-03-07T09:32:00.002Z

*Entry updated* Though all is well, I cannot hide the fact that frustrations exist and the following is an example of one. In this photo you see two projects: in the foreground a tree planting project for which we are filling sacks with soil and in the background the project of a Peace Corps volunteer that preceded me almost 10 years ago and was based in a nearby village. What you can see of the project of the former volunteer are two latrine pits with cement floors and raised foot holds for the user to place his or her feet. These two latrines were paid for with funds from the US. The village's contribution to the project was to build walls, either with mud, branches, and or thatch, around the latrines so that they could be used in privacy. But to this day, to my knowledge, only one of the 15 or so latrines has been regularly used, only one has had walls built around it.

Possible reasonings behind the abandonment of the latrines include:

-The idea that it isn't our actions or efforts that make us sick or rich or poor but God's will. So following this logic, whether you have good hygiene or not has no bearing on your health, either God will make you sick or he will make you healthy.

-"If I do something my neighbors aren't doing, people might think ill of me." As I stated in an earlier post, if your fellow villagers see you developing beyond their level, they might accuse you of something, judge you, or even try to kill you. According to a good source, the university students that come back to village, of which there is now only one, are under threat of verbal and or physical abuse from jealous fellow villagers. Trying to get ahead is not necessarily a good idea in village. It is the same jealousy that blocks personal initiative in village and that reveals my primary job: to make development, or personal initiative (or village initiative etc.), socially acceptable or socially popular. If you are working with the white guy, people are less likely to "sabotage" you (psychologically or physically) as they might if you, as an African, were doing it alone.

-These are just a couple possibilities that might explain why the latrines have gone unused, there are surely many more possible explanations...

More about the latrine story, added 03/14/2007:

As I had long hesitated before writing an entry with negative content, I need to complete my entry about the failed latrine project. My first entry on the subject was not complete and I have done more research:

First off, I should have included in my original entry the fact that a number of months after the completion of my predecessor's project, a non-governmental organization (NGO) came to village and offered to build latrines. So for reasons that I will not speculate about, the NGO built full latrines with cement walls and roofs in many cases right next to my predecessor's latrines. So as I walk around village, I see cement walled and roofed latrines standing right next to my fellow volunteer's unused latrines. This is quite a sight. But in a village of 3,000 the NGO latrines do not suffice, so the mystery of why the others have been abandoned remains.

There are a number of the unused latrines, such as the two in the photo accomanying this entry, that did not have full NGO latrines built next to them. So in those cases, the adjacent families have no usable latrine because they have not built enlcosures around the ones built in collaboration with my colleague. I did more research on why.

According to my best source in village, the lack of will to build enclosures around the unused latrines is not due to the reasons that I proposed in my first entry, though the source did confirm the presence of the phenomena that I had sited as possible explanations. According to him, there are 3 main reasons why the latrines have gone unused:

1)time orientation; many in village just want to eat today, and think less about the future. As long as they are able to put a bit of food in the stomach, they are contented. Thus, given that the latrines necessitate that a bit more importance be placed on the future, they are less considered.

2)lack of schooling; according to my source, many problems in village find their cause in the lack of "ABCs," as he terms schooling. Following this logic, without schooling a villager is less likely to fully understand the importance of latrines.

3)difficulty of collaboration in village; according to the same source, the village has trouble collaborating. For instance, a few people will break their backs digging the latrine hole while other villagers will just walk by and say "good work, good work." Then when it comes to using the latrines, all the folks that did not pitch-in will want to use the latrines that they did not help build. Thus the family that builds a latrine has to clean-up after everyone, or put a padlock on the door as many have done. So if enclosures were built around the unused latrines everyone would come use the latrine at your place...

...and the first two reasons probably result in a lack of motivation to overcome this third reason.

---

9th graders receiving letters from American penpals

2007-02-08T17:05:00.002Z

9th graders receiving letters from American penpals
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi.

I had to explain to this ninth grade class that their American pen pals do not necessarily fit the stereotypes that they, the Togolese students, may have been drawing upon to imagine life in America. In fact while many differences exist, there are a striking number of similarities between the pen pals on each shore of the Atlantic: both are living in rural areas, both live and may even work in cotton growing zones, both pursue studies in underfunded school systems, both ride bikes without brakes and sometimes with little more than knobs for peddles.

Alaska and his double-dug garden beds

2007-01-05T13:54:00.001Z

Alaska (the man seen in the photo is named Alaska) is currently reading John Jeavons' "How to grow more vegetables." He told me he wants to be "our village's gardening expert." These garden beds were our first attempts at double digging. We put hay around the beds to avoid evaporation, avoid some soil compaction, and slowly add a bit of organic matter to the soil.

Tabaski events

2007-01-05T13:51:00.001Z

After a morning Tabaski mass prayer and the slaughtering of our goat, Aimée and I went to say hi to my counterpart at his newly repainted and cemented house.

The Imam's sermon after morning prayer was remarkably existential, he noted that many of the folks who prayed last year on Tabaski had left us, and were not there to pray this year. Given this fact, the Imam continued, we should all attempt to do as much good as possible while we are still alive here on Earth, because a Tabaski will come around when we too will no longer be able to attend prayer.

Local Middle School

2006-12-16T15:38:00.001Z

The local Middle school serves a district of 6000 inhabitants. There are a total of 189 students at the school, 70 in the equivalent of american 6th grade, 42 in 7th grade, 49 in 8th grade, and 28 in 9th grade. There are 10 girls in 9th grade of which 2 are from my village of 3000 inhabitants. Yearly middle school tuition is 30 $ US dollars, making it quite a burden on families with as many as 10 kids going to either Elementary (4 $ US dollar tuition)or Middle school. Nearly always, the financial burden results in having to choose which children to send to school. In addition to the problem of money, student pregnancy and marriage cut short the education of many.

Pile of harvested Sorghum

2006-12-16T15:19:00.001Z

Pile of harvested Sorghum
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi.

Before transporting harvested sorghum back to the house and processing it (beating the grains out with tree branches), it is piled up next to the field being harvested. If you check out the "more photos on flickr" link on the right-hand side of the blog you can see the harvesting process itself.

One motivated gardner

2006-12-16T15:09:00.001Z

If you look back in the photos, you can see a shot of a freshly prepared garden bed. That one bed has become 20 or so, with tomatoes, cabbage, lettuce, green pepper, carrots, broccoli, onions, garlic, local vegetables, and Moringa trees. The man you see here is the owner and keeper of the garden, it is often hard to keep up with his thirst for new techniques and information.

20 km talk

2006-12-11T21:40:00.000Z

A 20 km long talk with a student from my village brought scenes of pregnant women carrying huge loads of fire wood out of the bush on their heads, young Togolese men returning home with a motorcycle after a season spent working on Nigerian farms, slash and burn farming techniques destroying more hectares of forest and 10 year old boys who spend the whole day working in their own fields, among other sights. The student also told me a few things: that it is the money brought back by Togolese migrant workers "that is developing our village." That the motorcycles brought back by the migrant workers help transport sick people in our village to the hospital, and that the money brought back by the workers puts roofs over heads in our village. He lamented having to say that he doubts there will be much if any forest left near our village 20 years from now, but on a brighter note hoped that one day he could go to Europe, Incha Allah, adding that parents of children who have gone to Europe don't farm much anymore, they wait for the monthly money wire.

World HIV/AIDS day events

2006-12-04T16:50:00.001Z

The canton (county) nurse and I put together AIDS talks for 7 villages in our canton. Here a community health agent evokes correct condom use.

Fulani head south for dry season

2006-12-04T15:15:00.001Z

During the dry season the nomadic Fulani (Peul) head to the wetter south. They live in the bush and sell the meat of their injured cattle, as well as fresh milk and cheese, for money. Recently, a number of disputes have arrisen between stationary farmers in village and the Fulani, who's cattle often consume the corn, sorghum, or other crops before or during harvest.

Neem, sewing workshop, and volunteer.

2006-12-04T15:11:00.002Z

Neem, sewing workshop, and volunteer.
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi.

Walking down to the center of village, I am often greated by the apprentices at this sewing workshop. The Imam often sits at the base of this neem tree to observe the activities at the market which is opposite the workshop.

a bread oven in village

2006-11-24T08:24:00.000Z

A woman counterpart of mine has been asking me to find a way to build a bread cooking oven in village...

so far this is the most promising design: http://www.mha-net.org/docs/v8n2/wildac04b.htm

there are also solar ovens: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cooker

Natural Resource Mgmt and Fertility rates - Excerpt from college course material

2006-11-23T16:42:00.000Z

Hoping to integrate family planning/ birth control into Natural Resource Mgmt. work here, I remembered having saved some course material on the subject of fertility rates from Humboldt State University Professor Dr. Paul Blank's Geography course called "Global Awareness." Here is an excerpt from a study unit called "Population" :

" Experience has shown that fertility declines as a result of modernization and industrialization, and only when a level of material security is guaranteed to most of the population. The rate at which fertility declines will determine whether global population levels off at eight billion or twelve billion during the next century. Some of the most important incentives to fertility decline are:

* The transition from an agricultural to an urban-industrial society. In this situation children cease becoming income-earners and become more of a burden, as parents have to provide them with education to succeed in the modern world. This is an incentive to reduce family size.

* The lowering of the infant-mortality rate. This gives parents confidence that most of their children will survive into adulthood, ensuring at least one child to survive to take care of them in their old age. When parents become more confident that their children will survive, they begin to limit family size. Studies have shown that there is a lag of about ten years between the introduction of infant hygiene and reduction in birth rates, so there is a temporary population rise, but this is followed by a permanent decline. One of the most dramatic impacts of infant hygiene is the introduction of infant rehydration formula. IRF is a major savior of children afflicted by diarrhea--the number one killer of children in the developing world.

* The education of women and their entry into the workforce. When women get access to education and earning power, they claim more power over their family-planning decision-making, and most often choose smaller families.

* The provision of birth control. Recent research in Bangladesh and elsewhere has found that if birth control and family planning information is made available, people will adopt it if it makes economic sense for them to do so. It turns out that there is a high latent demand for birth control in many societies, even those at a low level of economic development. "

Theory, Reality, and photos

2006-11-22T13:11:00.000Z

- One of my favorite aspects of Peace Corps life is the ability to do immediate confrontation of Theory and Reality. I am able to read about the developing world in any publication, from the NY Times to a college textbook, and do immediate, on the ground application and critiques of the literature . "Application" could be going out to research about my village's level of knowledge concerning family planning and giving immediate feedback to villagers, after reading about the pressure of high birth rates on the environment. But this freelance application of research papers and news articles brings with it quite a bit of responsibility. Since my word, as a white westerner (an African-American volunteer has told me that it is not at all the same for him), is taken so seriously (nearly as the word of God), I'd better get my information right on often very important issues of health and well-being. One publication that I have very much enjoyed reading and applying is "World View Magazine," so I've added a link to the online edition of the magazine on the right-hand side of this site. - I will also be uploading more photos but not all will appear on the blog. Follow the photo link on the right to my see more...

Imam's 'sermon'

2006-11-20T15:43:00.001Z

Imam's 'sermon'
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi.

On the day following Ramadan, the Imam leads prayer in the morning and then gives a much awaited sermon. This year's sermon was about many things including not passing on rumors or talking about other peoples' business, that we should only say what we have seen with or own eyes. Everyone gets dressed up in their finest garb for the occasion.

the result of poverty

2006-11-20T15:33:00.001Z

the result of poverty
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi.

It seems that when people are poor, they often impoverish their future just to get by.

Gingari Kumuka (Ramadan festival)

2006-11-20T14:53:00.001Z

Gingari (Ramadan festival)
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi.

Bassirou, a friend from my neighborhood, has been teaching me much about Islam and its practices. The photo is from the celebration on the day following the holy month of Ramadan.

establishing a garden

2006-11-20T14:33:00.001Z

establishing a garden
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi.

Using John Jeavons' double digging techniques we have been establishing a dry season garden. The shelter in the background houses sheep who provide manure that, once broken down, is used in the garden. It appears that creating a good dry season garden can be much more profitable than risking the dangerous trip to nearby Nigeria. Many young people see Nigeria as the only way to earn enough money to buy a motorcycle, but it appears that a quality garden can do the same without all the risks.

First monthly village clean-up

2006-11-20T13:56:00.001Z

First monthly village clean-up
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi.

The village has decided to come together every first Wednesday of the month to clean the public areas. The chief (in yellow on the right), in consultation with the public, has decided that beginning January 1st 2007 any animal left roaming will cost the owner a 1 dollar ,or 500 franc, fine. The decision was taken by the village after discovering the negative health effects and loss of valuable manure caused by roaming animals. The photo is of the launch of the first village clean-up, where recently Red Cross trained students explained to the public the importance of a clean village.

Baobob tree and clan (family) meeting house.

2006-11-20T13:49:00.001Z

The Baobob tree and the colorful clan (family) meeting house to the left are next to the market place of which you can see a couple shelters, used for cooking on market day, in the foreground.

the neighborhood mosque

2006-11-20T13:43:00.001Z

the neighborhood mosque
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi.

This is the mosque (the closest to my house) where I have been learning to pray. We are in the Imam's neighborhood, so it is the religious center of the village.

the promise of the west

2006-11-13T20:27:00.001Z

Here is an article that I feel very much reflects the attitude of folks in my village concerning emigration as a means to escape poverty. As the article states, those who have emigrated to richer areas such as Europe, the US, or even neighboring Ghana, are hailed as success stories by their peers. The article also mentions that the "well to do" families in Africa are supported by money sent back by relatives that have emigrated to Europe or the US and this is also the case in my rural village of 3,000. In the article a man is quoted saying: "Many young people think they have to pass through Europe in order to succeed in life," this is also the belief of most all of the youth here. I have conversations everyday with youth who tell me about everything they have tried in order to succeed and they say that they would jump on a row boat and paddle into the Atlantic to reach Europe even if there was a 50 percent chance of death: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56132&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=SENEGAL In addition I have added a link to “IRIN news from West Africa” to the side bar on the right-hand side of this blog. I find that many articles on the IRIN site reflect my daily experiences here.

The walk to school...

2006-10-31T20:05:00.001Z

The walk to school...
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi.

Elementary students make their way to school from their homes in the bush, a trip of 4 km or so. They return home at noon, then return to school at 3pm, and finally return home again at 5pm. 16 km a day.

need wood?

2006-10-31T11:28:00.000Z

Somewhere in West Africa there was a Peace Corps volunteer that sat down for a bowl of beans and rice after a long day of fasting during Ramadan. The fellow seated to his left spoke French particularly well and the two began to converse. Come to find out that the high school educated French-speaker was a logger and had been hired to come to town to do some logging on land belonging to a local. Intrigued by meeting a person who's job was seemingly the contrary of his own, the peace corps volunteer asked if he could accompany the logger to the cutting site the following day. The following morning the two headed out through the sparsley wooded bush, that according to the etymology of the name of the village and the chief, had been a thick old growth forest only a generation ago. Once at the logging site the two sat and repaired the giant chain saw while laughing and talking U.S. politics (yes, in the African bush with a logger talking about politics in the US). After repairs, the giant chainsaw was ready for work which that day would consist of making wood blocks out of the already felled trees in order to be able to transport them out of the bush. So as the logger primed the chainsaw and the naked little children gathered around, excited to see the spectacle, the sahara desert rejoiced, having one less obstacle in its path as it marched south. Yes, all were bearing witness to deforestation, though no one seemed saddned, to the contrary, smiles and interest abounded, and this party atmosphere the Peace Corps volunteer tried to understand. As it turned out, everyone that benefited financially (and there were quite a few who would skim cash, in addition to the land owner and the logger), that is to say everyone who had an interest in this logging, was simply trying to put food on the table that evening. This must have been why the mood could be so light. While in the long term, the logging may have been impoverishing the future of those involved, the short term seemed a little more bareable, a little less hungry thanks to the money that would come from the sale of the wood. So of course people were smiling, they could almost taste benefits of their logging labor. But this was only the first scary truth to come from the outing. The Peace Corps volunteer then asked where the wood would be sold. After all if the the fallen trees were destined to become a bed for a new born and its mother or a bench for the local school, the logging really wouldn’t be that bad. If the trees would be cut only to meet a local need for wood then this whole thing might just be sustainble. But poverty creates amazingly contradictory situations. The blocks of wood, each 6ft x 2ft x 1f., would sell for 12 dollars US each, at most. But the schools of Africa would not receive new benches nor the African family a new bed. Wood of this quality, said the logger, goes to a neighboring country where it will be exported.......to America, or Europe. Poverty creates amazingly contradictory situations....an African future impoverished for a bit more protein in the diet today. There is a war going on in Iraq that costs, the PC volunteer has heard, 80 million dollars a day, while African middle school students drop out of school, unable to pay the 32 dollar tuition. If that 80 million dollars a day was spent on building schools and making education free and compulsory for Africans, this continent would already be developed. But the Peace Corps volunteer doesn’t think he is the only person aware of this. Poverty creates amazingly contradictory situations....there are too many who have a financial interest in Africa's underdevelopment or further impoverishment....even the poor themselves. (To be clear: The poor have an immediate interest (food) in their long-term poverty (deforestation) because of poverty)

Article on Small-scale agriculture

2006-10-20T17:23:00.001Z

I am constantly reminded by farmers that they need to find new markets for their products, the local price forces them to sell at a loss or not sell at all. At this moment farmers are selling corn in my village at a loss of about two thirds of the production cost. This article seems to apply to them all: http://spore.cta.int/spore125/spore125_view.asp please excuse my messy logic and writing in the last entry, slow internet makes you move fast...

bits and pieces of thought

2006-10-20T09:02:00.000Z

Letter to a friend: "yeah, I've been having trouble expressing things in writing. But here goes nothing: I am in a Muslim village of 3000 people, 24km from very slow internet, a 1km walk to water that isnt cloudy, a 30 second walk to the mosque. Nextdoor is a teacher at the elementary school who makes 40 dollars a month and has 10 kids. An orphan girl helps me do laundry and I send her to school and pay for her food. In a district of 6000 inhabitants, 27 students are currently in 9th grade, of which only 10 are girls, and only 2 of the girls are from my village of 3000. Many boys are sent to Koranic school or French-Arabic school instead of catholic or state-run Middle school. My community counterpart is great, he was born in Ghana, and worked in Nigeria, we have fascinating and unexpectedly eccentric conversations. Most men have over 10 kids. Often the kids must leave school due to lack of funds or marriage or pregnancy, only to find small-scale farming as the only means to subsist, so they often go to labor-hungry Nigeria to work in the fields in hopes of bringing back money for a new tin roof on the parents' house or a chinese motorcycle. Those who go to Nigeria cannot go on roads where they might be seen by police, so they go through the bush where they encounter packs of dogs and even some lions, though deforestation and poaching have taken care of most of the lions. There is also human trafficking: the family with 10 or 20 kids has a leaky roof, or finds itself without food at the end of the dry season, or in debt, and a man comes by furtively to see if they might want to send a child to Nigeria in exchange for money, and what happens to the child? Also, due to rapid population growth and lack of access to national and international markets, aswell as poor access (24km on a difficultly passable dirt road) to existing markets for the harvested crops such as corn and soy, folks cannot afford fertilizer or leave their land fallow and the soil is less and less productive. Forest land is often cleared by burning in order to plant yams or other crops. These environmental consequences of the lack of balance between man and nature are where I come in. So as it seemed that high birth rates and unwanted pregnancies that halt education were the principal reasons for many of these issues, I have been teaching classes at the middle school on the connection between population growth and the environment IE: deforestation/ desertification, the productivity of the land, and by extension the amount of money in peoples pockets since every last person is a farmer, even the teachers. But damn, when I am in village life is great, and there is alot of hope, this is why I have troublewriting, if I rattle off the issues of the village it seems so grave,we laugh alot, and give gifts of food, drink, and I come to see the women have their babies weighed and vaccinated, we laugh at my bad local language skills but get through the salutation unscathed. Life is great but it isn't, 5 men in their 20s asked me if I could help them get to America while I was coming to the cybercafé. As my counterpart says, "the devil finds work for the idle man." Despite all this the students at the middle school still want to have many children as the man with many children is revered. " Another letter to a friend: "If I haven't been posting plentiful paragraphs about life and times in rural Africa, it has been due to not knowing where to start. As my impressions change from day to day as to what or who are the true factors and actors at work in African development, I write anticipating a new revelation that will render the past ones silly or naïve. But I guess it is naïve to think that I could come to a grand conclusion about such a complexe situation. And my other worry is that anything I say will be taken out of context, a thought from a moment of despair clouding the thought of great hope and joy. But here are a couple leads on development: Last week, In the space of 24 hours 3 people told me how they had planted a hectar or more of fruit trees only to find the trees burned by folks jealous of the enterprise. Later I talked to 3 high ranking individuals in the community and all said that indeed jealousy is the biggest obstacle for development in Africa. -The first, in the presence of elders, said that while he agreed, the phenomenon is not refered to as jealousy but as witchcraft. -the second said that personal initiative is completely blocked in Africa, that the moment you begin to "evolve" a bit past the others not only will people attempt to destroy your project, but they will first try to KILL you. In addition, this interviewee said that the affirmation of truth is also completely blocked in Africa. People dont like to hear anything that could be perceived as a reproach, so having good ideas is deemed bad and authority is never questioned. -the third agreed but added that in communities with multiple ethnicities there is a level of respect, while in ethnicly homogenous communities it is felt that when someone from your same blood surpasses you, you must be lacking...He also said that in Africa it is very easy to destroy things and very hard to construct things. All this might be exagerated or much more tied into witchcraft but this is what people said. The other revelation was about population growth, one man in my village has 34 children. It seems to me that a main source of poverty (financial/ environmental/ nutritional/ educational/ health) is simply having too many kids. I also think that the quickest route to development is through education of youth, but school seems like a deadend to many especially when middle school tuition is 30 USD for one year and the nearest high school is 24 km away and has 100 students in every classroom already, many of whom have never met someone who was actually all that better off thanks to education. The farmer who cant afford fertilizer has a hard time justifying why he should send his daughter to school when she will soon become pregnant anyway, better to marry her off now and use the money for fertilizer. But here I am again, things are that bad but they aren't, there are many incredible people in the communities that are working very hard for development in their communities, infact the majority is like that, but when all the issues above are thown at you at once what can you do? Lada Sourou, have patience... I have to say again that life is moving along despite all this, I have said alot here but what you should retain is that I will go to village and eat and laugh and pray and discuss, and life moves along like a meandering river, it isnt everything that I have said above at once, it is slower than that, happier and more beautiful. "

Compost pit and a healthy moringa branch

2006-09-19T13:42:00.001Z

Compost pit and a healthy moringa branch
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi.

Two of the ideas we've got going:
Compost:
Officially 65% of Togolese are farmers though since many are forced to farm for supplementary income, and subsistence foods, a Togolese agronomist has told me that 90 % of Togolese farm. This said, a major obstacle for the Togolese farmer is the declining fertility of the soil. No more than 20 percent of farmers can afford chemical fertilizer. At the same time goats, chickens, and cows roam the village, and their excrement is left in public and home areas where is can easily lead to worms and other maladies. Composting can contribute to solving both of these issues. By using the animal manure and other biodegradables usually left in public areas where kids play, the village can clean things up and decrease its dependence on chemical fertilizers.

Moringa trees:
The Moringa is a veritable pharmacy unto it self, from malnutrition to water purification it can contribute much to the community's well-being.

waiting for the chief

2006-09-18T19:50:00.001Z

P9010460
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi.

Arrived at the home of a local chief, I spent some time in the courtyard with his family while waiting for him to come back from his farm.

counterpart

2006-09-10T17:21:00.001Z

My friend and counterpart. Together we philosophize about everything from African development to the Muslim world to the chief's new sunglasses.

My neighbor applying natural pesticide from the Neem tree

2006-09-10T14:19:00.001Z

application
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi.

Fulani women headed to market

2006-09-09T21:35:00.001Z

Fulani women headed to market
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi.

After a meeting with a chief of an nearby village, who offered me three delicious yams fresh from his fields, I was reminded that it was market day by these women.