Happiness in the Heart

“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” 

~Abraham Lincoln

For this blog post I’ve decided to talk about the things that make me happy. Living on your own isn’t always easy, especially when you are in a foreign country halfway around the world from everything familiar. Some days you feel like there’s no one you can really to talk to, but for me this loneliness has taught me to appreciate the little joys in life. Having low expectations can be a blessing in disguise, because now I am able to find joy in very simple ways. Here are some things that make me happy:

• A good cup of real coffee  

• Packages or letters from friends and family back home 

• My little neighbors running up to give me a high five or fist-bump when I am heading into my compound

• People downtown recognizing me and calling me by my name

• A good book 

• Jogging to the waterfall early in the morning when no one else is there

• Looking at pictures of my ADORABLE new nephew, Kai. He’s the cutest baby I’ve ever seen in my life. Seriously, baby dolls should be modeled after his looks.

• Having no rain on the days I do laundry (I used to have the WORST luck with this)

• The Voice of America on Saturday mornings, when they play music that is currently popular in the U.S. I never recognize the songs now, but it makes me feel less out of touch. 

• When my students say “Miss Emily”

• Opera music (especially Puccini and Verdi)

• When it starts to rain AFTER I have finished my run in the morning

• The sound of the Fanmilk horn (Togo peeps will get that)

• Getting a good deal on pagne

• When I sort of understand what someone is saying in Ewe

• The movie, Pitch Perfect (“I’m doing horizontal running.”) 

On Peace Corps Togo Staff there is a woman named Blandine. She organizes all the training for volunteers and manages the training staff. Some of the volunteers have taken to calling her “Queen Blandine.” During my first few months in Togo, Blandine shared with us the motto that she frequently reminds volunteers of throughout their service in Togo: “Keep the happiness in the heart.” I think she is saying that you can’t rely on outside things to keep you happy. Peace Corps service is hard work, and staying happy on the inside helps get you through the hardships that come along.

Highlights from this Week

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back 

and realize they were the big things.”  ~Robert Brault

• Had a volunteer visit me in Kpalime for the day; I love having visitors!

• Watched the movie, Lincoln, for the first time. Daniel Day Lewis is amazing.

• Taught my little neighbors how to do a “thumbs up.”

• Received three postcards for the class project I'm doing this year. Thanks Natalie, Leslie, and Kelly!!

• I officially became an Auntie!!! My sister finally had her baby, the first of my siblings to have one. His name is Kai. He is beautiful, lots of hair, so sweet.

• Switched to a new malaria prophylaxis. I started my service with mefloquine, but had horrible, scary dreams and a little bit of depression (all typical symptoms of the medicine), so I switched to doxycycline. Now I am switching again because doxy caused a bad sun sensitivity (like only 10 minutes in the sun and I’m burnt) and also a burning feeling in my esophagus. So now I will be using Malarone.  

• Bought some new pagne fabric at my favorite shop in the market.

• Spent a stormy afternoon dancing around my house and singing as loud as I wanted to (makes the thunder and lightning a lot less scary).

Malaria

“There will be statues of Bill Gates across the Third World. 

There’s a reasonable shot that because of his money we will cure malaria.”   

~Malcolm Gladwell

I’ve been contemplating whether or not I should write this blog post, but I’ve decided that I have to. Being a Peace Corps volunteer isn’t all fun and games; there are many difficulties and one of them is staying healthy. I want my blog to ring true, reflecting both the highs and lows of my time here in Togo. After a year of successfully avoiding malaria, it finally caught me. I’ve never felt so sick in my life.

It all started with an excruciating headache one day. Then I woke up in the middle of the night with a fever, shakes, and chills like I’ve never had before. The next day I called my PC doctors and they told me to get a malaria test done at the hospital in Kpalime, which came back negative. That afternoon I had a repeat fever like the night before, only this time it was a little worse, 103.5. I was lying on my couch in a fleece jacket, wrapped in a blanket on an 85-degree day and still couldn’t stop shivering. I felt like I was going to die. I called the doctors back. They instructed me to go down to Lome the next day. I woke up feeling horribly nauseous, and the paralyzing headache was back. Next was a two-hour car ride squished into the back seat with three other people, thinking I was going to puke the whole way. I just had to keep telling myself “don’t throw up, don’t throw up, don’t throw up.” I saw my doctors in Lome, who determined a positive diagnosis and started the medicine. My first tests were negative, because malaria starts in the liver and isn’t detectable until it reaches the bloodstream. At first I wasn’t able to keep the medicine down. I spent the rest of that day in bed trying not to move because of my headache. Any tiny movement amplified the headache, so I tried to stay as still as possible. The next day I was able to re-start the medicine and keep it down. With each day the headache became weaker and weaker. It still took a week or so to feel normal again.

So that’s my malaria story. I hope there will be no sequels. It was not fun, but I am lucky I had access to good care. Since it’s the rainy season right now, there are more mosquitoes and more cases of malaria throughout the region. Within the last month five volunteers, including me, have gotten malaria in Togo. We volunteers are provided treatment, but that is not the case for many Africans. Thousands of children die from malaria every day in Africa. Bill Gates has devoted much time and millions of dollars to develop drug treatments, insecticides, and other techniques for controlling mosquitoes, such as the distribution of bed nets for sleeping, and working towards a safe and effective malaria vaccine. Bill and Melinda Gates are two of my heroes. They are selflessly working very hard to make this a world where EVERYONE has a chance to have a story with a happy ending when fighting diseases like malaria.      
                                         

Time Out

“We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves,

or more deeply engrossed in anything than when we are at play.”

~ Charles Schaefer

 

I’ve been taking a little break recently, after a really busy couple of months. I needed time to relax at home, do some housework, plan projects, and rest up before the start of another busy school year. A chance to unwind…simple days spent playing with my neighbor kids, reading books, catching my breath. I wanted to share a few book recommendations with you.

The Winds of War by Herman Wouk:  Huge novel about WWII. This author does a wonderful job of mixing together the story of a military family with the chronological timeline of the war. I like historical fiction, because it’s both entertaining and a learning experience for the reader.

Tales of a Female Nomad by Rita Goldman Gelman:  I love travel, and reading this book had me adding a few destinations to my travel wish list. Although she spends the majority of her time outside the U.S., it was fun to read about her brief time spent in Seattle, and her trip to the REI store made me a little homesick!

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain: Very interesting. I think this is a book that should be required reading for all teachers and parents.

The Paris Wife by Paula McClain:  I just finished this today and thought it was great! Although not always a happy story, it was a fast read, and I enjoyed the references to places in Paris that I knew well when living there.  

Mid Service Conference

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens

can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

~Margaret Mead

We recently spent a week up at the Peace Corps’ Pagala center for our Mid Service Conference (MSC), a chance to reunite with all the volunteers who arrived to Togo with me one year ago. I don’t travel much outside of Kpalime, and seldom travel up north; it was a rare treat to see everyone all together again. MSC covered sessions in health, security, and other Peace Corps Admin. subjects. This conference had a Food Security focus, so there were discussions about gardening, sac gardens, drying foods, etc. Although working with gardens and promoting food security isn’t part of the EGE program’s objectives, it was fun to learn about these food security strategies, and I’m looking forward to sharing the information with my community and students.   

I have joined the Gender and Development Committee (GAD). The GAD Committee's main objective is to raise money which will be used to fund volunteers' projects that promote gender equality. Volunteers provide a major source of funding, and can also apply for GAD money to fund their own gender equality projects. The main fundraising events for GAD money are auctions. These take place during trainings or big events when all volunteers are together in large groups. When I first arrived in Togo there was a GAD auction at my swearing-in ceremony. As a member of the GAD committee,                             

I helped facilitate the auction at the MSC. Items up for bid included Togolese art, with paintings, wood carvings, and wall hangings. There were also practical things for volunteers like hammocks, headlamps, a solar shower, and a solar charger. The live auction in the evening had special items such as an REI sleeping pad and fold-out chair, Girl Scout cookies, and activities like a barbeque for 10 at the Country Director’s House in Lome and a two-day stay in the U.S. Embassy Complex. I donated a one-night stay at my house in Kpalime and dinner at the Belgian Restaurant nearby to be auctioned off. It was a successful event and I am looking forward to working on this committee over the next year.
                                                               

                                                                

MSC gave me a chance to reflect on what I have done over the last year and take time to brainstorm and make plans for the year to come. It was nice to connect with other volunteers and discuss some of the highs and lows of our jobs so far, refocusing on our goals, reminding ourselves why we are here, and celebrating friendships! I’ve heard from former volunteers that the second year of service seems to fly by quickly and is also much busier than the first year. With completion of our mid service conference, I feel I am really over the “hump” of my time in the Peace Corps. 14 months down and 12 months to go in Togo.

Teacher Training

"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember,

involve me and I learn."  ~Benjamin Franklin

When Camp UNITE was over, I headed down to Tsevie to start my two weeks as a trainer for the new group of volunteers who arrived in Togo on June 12^th.  It was nice getting to know them and hearing about their experiences in Togo so far, reminding me of when I was back in Tsevie one year ago as a new trainee…boy does time fly! Two years used to seem like such a long time to be away from home, living in Africa, haha, but it’s gone by so fast.   

After a couple of days in Tsevie, I left for Kpalime with the 12 new EGE volunteers, and their language and technical trainers for three more weeks of instruction before heading to their posts. The new group is doing their teacher training at my school’s summer program in Kpalime, participating in model classes. This gives them the opportunity to practice in the classroom, a chance to see what it’s really like to teach in Togo and what to expect from the students.

                                                                                

New volunteers ready for their posts

The first few weeks of teaching are tough. Students don’t participate much because they are embarrassed; they don’t always understand the American accent or vocabulary. Teaching English here has taught me to choose my words carefully, to speak slowly and enunciate very well, because if I don’t, my students won’t understand…they may just tune out and give up. You discover how to adjust your lessons on the spot, if the students aren’t quite getting it, and how to better manage your time. You learn which techniques work and which ones don’t. You figure out how to be approachable and welcoming to the students, but not so friendly that they don’t take you seriously. Ideally, these model classes will help the volunteers feel more confident and better prepared for their first day of school. While observing the classes, I am reminded of how hard those first few days of teaching are. I just keep telling the new teachers not to worry and that it gets better with time. I used to be nervous every day before class, but now I’m so excited for school to start and to be back in the classroom again. 

We took a break after one week of training in Kpalime and traveled back down to Lome for the swear-in ceremony for all the new volunteers. When the celebrating was over, the EGE volunteers returned to Kpalime for their final two weeks of teacher training before moving to their posts. It has been great fun to have all these new friends

visiting my town for a few weeks, a nice break from the regular routine.     I will miss them when they leave, but I think they  are going to do awesome work in their communities, and before you know it, they will be training a new group of teachers next summer! 

The Peace Corps Circle of Life :)

Stargazing and Summer Camp

"Although no one can go back and make a brand new start,

anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending."
 ~Carl Bard 

Hello everyone….I’m ALIVE! I know it’s been a WAY long time since my last post. Possibly due to power surges in villages without stable electricity, or some other unknown reason, my computer crashed and burned. At first I was devastated by this, but after a while I became used to my unplugged life and began to see the positive side of things. I have read many books. There have been quiet evenings spent lying on top of my roof at night, stargazing up at this amazing African sky, where the Milky Way is so big and bright, it feels like you could touch it. I also realized, again, how much I love my shortwave radio, relying on contact with the outside world through Voice of America and the BBC. 

Then one day a miracle happened and I received a package from home with a new Windows tablet. Hurray, I’m back!!! (sort of) I can’t get online at home, because it won’t work with Togocel, but it works wherever there is WiFi, so I just have to trek over to an internet café for my connections. This will mean less time online, and more time plugged into my Peace Corps life, which is a good thing, sometimes boring and lonely, but still good.  And the blog continues……  

July news: I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in Camp UNITE up at the Pagala center. Camp UNITE is organized by Peace Corps volunteers and Togolese counterparts, a youth leadership camp for students from all over Togo. I was happy to have both my nominees from Kpalime selected to attend camp. There are girls and boys weeks, and I attended the girls week as a formatrice.    

                                                                               

Camp was a fantastic experience. It was great getting to know the girls and the formateurs. I led two sessions at camp and also stayed in a cabin with some of the girls. I loved being a camp counselor! My favorite night was a big party where every cabin put on a dance and sang in front of everyone, formateurs included. We had to incorporate songs and dances from all the ethnic regions of Togo. I learned five traditional Togolese dances and songs, and performed them with my girls. It was SO much fun, definitely one of the highlights of my Peace Corps service and a night I will never forget.   

It was heartwarming to hear the girls talk about how much they learned from their time in Pagala. They were so motivated to start fresh, continue their education, and teach friends back home what they had discovered in camp. Leaving on the last day was really sad. When it was time to get into the bush taxis, all the girls were crying and very emotional. They had made many good friends, shared their feelings, and explored new ideas together, all in just five days. The goodbyes were hard for everyone. This was such a worthwhile and positive experience. I am already looking forward to participating in summer camps next year.