Still alive and going strong!

Hey Hey! So I didn't fall off the face of the earth, I have just been really lazy about updating my blog. Not sure if anyone other than my family and friends even read it and they get a good idea how things are going and what I am up to through my Mom. But alas, a quick update. I hope to add pictures soon as well to go along with the stories!

I finished teaching in June and summer vacation got off to a good start. I had just come from IST, In Service Training, and got lots of ideas for projects. The Natural Resource Management Director gave us all Moringa seed. What's Moringa? It's a miracle tree that has many uses and is really easy to grow. The nutritional value and it's strength to grow in any condition is what make it so wonderful. When eaten, the leaves are full of vitamins and proteins. Its great for the malnourished children all over Togo. I encourage you to Google it to read and learn more! The Togolese counterpart that I took with me to IST was very enthusiastic and we started our nursery right away. We had about 70 trees. We did a formation and presented information and the benefits of the tree to community members and then gave them each a tree. We planted the rest in the community field and my counterpart kept saying that years from now, they will look back on the trees as souvenir that Djamila left in Wassarabo. Ah!

At the end of May, beginning of June I was at camp UNITE! Each summer Peace Corps volunteers do a large funded project to bring girls and boys from around Togo to a week long American style summer camp. This year I was a counselor for Girls apprentice camp. These are girls that are learning a trade, like seamstress, hairdresser, or now that times are changing a bit here in Togo, mechanics and wood workers. The week was full of games, obstacle courses, singing, dancing and info sessions on just about everything from puberty to child trafficking. The girls came in very shy, some of them being out of village for the first time, and left totally empowered and confident! It was so amazing to watch these young girls' transformation! I was so proud! It was a great week, one of the best of my service so far.

Summer time in village has been very different. Since the community is agriculturally based, the summer is their planting season. Most of the men and children go to the fields everyday to farm so the village is a bit of a ghost town. One day, I invited myself to go to work to see what it was that they were doing all day. I went with a student to his fathers peanut field and helped cultivate peanuts. I never knew that they grew under ground in a bunch! I sat in a circle with the women picking peanuts off the bushes as the men pulled and stacked them for us. The women get payed .25cfa (1/4 of a quarter) for a bowl, and usually can make about 250-300cfa in a day! so just under a dollar. Wow, right? It was very interesting and fun to sit with the women and listen to them chat, not understanding a thing of course because they were speaking local language, but enjoying myself none the less.
Most other days I just diddle daddle around village, making small talk when I can, reading books, writing letters, going on bike rides, and playing with the little kids around my house.

In July, I did another camp, this time more local, with my closest neighbor Rebecca, an IT volunteer in the city. She had organized a computer camp for high school students from surrounding villages. She was the IT teacher along with two Togolese counterparts and I was the games and entertainment helper. We did a girls camp and a boys camp both for 3 days. If you are wondering why these camps seem to always be separated, its because Togo has such a patriarchal society that, in the presence of a man, a Togolese woman rarely speaks up or asks question. In doing a computer formation, typically a male activity, we wanted to give an equal opportunity to these girls without them worrying about what they said or did. I am sure you see the point. It was very interesting to see the difference between the boys and girls. The girls rarely get the opportunity to get away from the house so they really opened up and took advantage of every moment, asking lots of questions. Most of them had never touched a computer and mastering the double click was a big accomplishment. They were so enthusiastic and intrigued that we could barely pull them away from the computer to play games or even to eat! The boys on the other hand tended to be a little too cool for school. (Is that really that uncommon?;)Even thought most of them came from small villages with out electricity, very few of them raised their hands when asked 'who has never used a computer?'. They were enthusiastic and hard to pull away from the computers too but asked far less questions and didn't open up as much as the girls. Needless to say, these two camps were a great success thanks to Rebecca's hard work and patience. The students learned a lot and had a wonderful time playing on computers. I have no doubt that there is a future IT person in both groups!

That brings us up to August, wow how time flies. It's getting a little long and I am being brief! There's just no way to share all the things that I've been up to. Anyway, a new group of volunteers Swore In in August and it is weird to no longer be 'the Newbies'. It's fun talking to volunteers who just got here and remember how scared I was. Looking back, its crazy how much I have learned!!

I took my first vacation to Burkina Faso. It was a short four day trip with one of my favorite people in country, Tami. We went to Ouagadougou, the capital city, for a little R&R and some good food. I enjoyed seeing more of West Africa. It gets hotter and dryer the further north you go. The village architecture was more adobe, with flat roofs, and the vegetation was different a lot more desert like. It was a great trip, a nice break from village.

My most recent projects have been another Moringa nursery and improved cook stoves. I got another bag of seeds from the NRM director and planted about 150 trees. This time we are going to sell them for .25cfa and use the profits to improve the community field. Planting trees doesn't really follow the Girls Ed project proposal, but the villagers love it and it's very rewarding to give something concrete back!
Speaking of concrete contributions, along with my counterpart, I've started building improved cook stoves. They are basically a clay semi circle that traps the heat of the cooking fire. They are a lot more practical than the three rock set up that most the women use now. My counterpart and I did a formation with the Mothers Club to explain the benefits of the stoves and to recruit women volunteers to learn how to do it themselves. They are really easy to do. All you need is a little woman/man power, some clay, sand, dry hay and water. The benefits are so great too which makes them so marketable. All the women want one. Since the covering traps the heat in, it cuts cooking time in half, the smoke is directed away from them through chimneys, and the amount of wood burned is drastically reduced. I think the women and I were most excited about this because they spend less time in the field collection wood and chopping down trees and they are protecting the environment at the same time. We have built 15 so far and I don't go down the road without women insisting that I build them one. It makes me happy that they are so motivated and I hope the woman we taught will continue helping the villagers. Sustainability? I hope so!

So now what? I am headed to the training site, where I spent my first two months to plan for the new group that gets in the 20th. I was chosen to be a PCV trainer and share my experiences and life as a volunteer with the new group. It's a chance to look back on what I've been through and how much I have learned and share that with them. Paying a visit to the training site will be nice. I will be able to see my host family and to catch up with Peace Corps trainers and friends.

Well that's it for now. I think I have rambled on enough. I will do my best to get some pictures up soon to go along with these short stories. It'll give you a better idea of what I have been up to. And I'll try to update again in October. I say that now but we'll see! I miss you all very much. If you haven't heard, I will be home for a visit in Christmas and I hope to see you all then! I hope that everything is going well in your lives and as always, I would love to hear from you!
Till next time...

Peace