'Tis the Season

Happy Holidays! I love this time of year in Colorado! It's not bad in Togo either but I can't wait for snow and to be cold!! Then it will really feel like Christmas!

Well, I have officially been a Peace Corps Volunteer for a year now and it feels great! It has been a year full of life changing, challenging, incredible and fulfilling experiences. I wish there was a way to describe it to you all but there just aren't words. I will do my best to continue sharing what I can through this blog and my pictures.

Oh and there are new pictures that go along with my last blog entry so check them out. I had a friend upload them and I didn't have time to label them so I hope they are self explanatory. I will try to add captions maybe when I am home at Christmas and have fast internet at my fingertips.

So, since I last wrote, what have I been up to?... lets go month by month:
(Just a brief overview)

September:
I was helping with the new group of trainees, who are great and full of enthusiasm. I had a lot of fun sharing stories with them and absorbing some of their positive energy.
I also found out that my proposal to move to the city was accepted and scheduled for November. I had written to senior staff requesting to move to the city 18k from me for some great work opportunities and to my surprise, it was accepted. I was thrilled but the move is bitter sweet. I will have exciting new projects that include working with the Ambassadors Girls Scholarship Program NGO and a woman’s shea butter co-op. I will have a wonderful house with running water and electricity and I will always have cell reception (no more climbing the mosque for reso)! But I will very much miss the family that I adopted, that took me in as their own and made me feel so welcome! I will also miss the simplicity of village life. I actually liked depending on moon and candle light and I loved my out door, under the stars bucket baths!
Ramadan, the month of fasting for Muslims, was most of September and it was so amazing to see how strong these people are. I fasted for one day, and I tell you what, there is no way I could do it for 30 days in a row. The tradition is to fast sunrise to sunset. Just imagine waking up at 4am (earlier for women to cook) to eat and you better eat a lot because it has to last you all day. You work in the fields all day and you can't drink water! Then after the prayer at 6pm, you break the fast, pray again at 7 and go to bed only to do it all again the next day. I commend their faithfulness and strength! I did lots of biking in September to get on shape for AIDS Ride in October which I will talk more about later.

October:
Since I knew that this would be my last month in village, I spent a lot of quality time with my family and friends. I will miss them significantly but will visit often. One of the new volunteers will be living and continuing the work I started in Wassarabo so I will have a chance to go back.
Every year volunteers across Togo organize and participate in AIDS Ride. It is a week long bike tourney that reaches out to small, rural villages that rarely get attention from outside NGOs and development organizations. This year, along with 9other PCVs and 2 Togolese counterparts, I biked around 120k over 5 days and did HIV/AIDS prevention presentations and condom demonstrations. We reached around a thousand villagers and although it is hard to know if we created any change, we shared useful information and started discussions in place that might not have ever heard our message. Biking was tough at times, always beautiful and overall, I am so glad that I participated!

November:
An exciting, historical month!
I was so excited for elections this year! It is amazing to see so many people getting involved. I am so proud of my country and our democracy! We really are so lucky to have the governmental system we do. I can say with confidence that it is the best in the world and after seeing what systems are like over here, I have a new appreciation for my vote!
The person replacing me in Wassarabo came for post visit the first week of November and I really like her. Her name is Emily and I can see us getting along great. She was so positive despite the scariness of seeing your village for the first time. I feel good about having her in Wassarabo. She even kept her cool when she saw her first scorpion outside the house, so I know she'll do great!
I moved into my beautiful house in the city. It isn't home yet but it's getting there. I have started making contacts and mapping out ideas for projects and I am really excited for the opportunities to come.
I said goodbye to some very special people who helped shape me as a volunteer and got me through really tough times. I will miss them so much, you know who you are, but look forward to a lifetime of friendship! Congrats on making it through and thank you for all you were to me!
I spent 2 weeks with the new group at the training site and got to remember what it was like to go through training. I love the new group and the people that are going to be in my region!
I came down to Lome for Thanksgiving at the Country Directors house. Although I miss my family a lot, I am very thankful for the new family that I have built here. The life in Togo is often difficult and hard to explain to people at home so having a support network is very important. So Thank you to all my PCV friends for understanding and always being there to listen. Thanksgiving this year gave me a whole new perspective on life, as you can imagine, and I look forward to the changes it will make in my life in years to come. I am so grateful, beyond words!

December:
Started off right with a short vacation to Ghana, the land of two lane highways, shopping malls, one taxi seat per person, English!, nachos and strawberry fanmilk! I enjoyed a day visiting silly things like the grocery store and a sports bar, then laid on the beach for a day. It was great! Good company, laughs, beautiful sunsets, great food and relaxation.
Then I came back to Lome and unfortunately found out I had bronchitis. I got the meds i need and feel fine so that’s good. And I can't complain because I get to stay in the really nice med unit with hot water and air conditioning and 3 home cooked meals a day!
I am headed back to Sokode in the morning for one last week before I come home for the holidays! I have some last minute Christmas shopping to do and some meetings to set up then I will be headed to the wonderful US of A for almost 4 weeks.

I will be home in Colorado from Dec. 17th till Jan. 8th with some short trips here are there and hope we all get a chance to catch up, whether that be in person or just by telephone (free nights and weekends). I won't have a cell phone but will let you know the best way to communicate when the time gets closer.

I am so anxious to see my family and friends, thinking about it gives me goose bumps!

Until then...

Enjoy the snow!
Remember to take a deep breath and look around at what's really important this holiday season.
Find something to be thankful for, it's really easy.
The world is a wonderful place full of incredible people just waiting to meet you, so open yourself up.

Peace and Love

Jillian

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

At last an update!

So it’s already been 7 months and I can’t believe how fast time goes. I’ll try my best to catch you up with what I’ve been up to without rambling on.

Overall, life is good. I’ve been surprisingly healthy given my surroundings and have adjusted well to the food and change in environment. As for work, I’ve been keeping myself busy. I’m still spending lots of time at the school. It’s the place I feel most productive because the students help me with my French and I teach a class three days a week. The class is called ‘La Vie Saine’, in French ‘A Healthy Life’ also called “Life Skills” by Peace Corps. We talk about the tools ones needs to live a successful life: education, communications skills, decision making, goal setting, and early pregnancy and HIV/AIDS education. It’s a nice change of pace for the students because it’s a more open discussion type class where we play games and read and discuss stories. The challenge for me is that the classes are sometimes 50+ and since I’m a more ‘fun’ teacher, (and the only woman, white at that) it’s hard to get them to listen when I want to be serious. I just don’t have the authority that the male Togolese teachers do. But I’ve learned to hold my own and I think I’ve earned their respect. One of the most rewarding aspects of teaching has been earning their trust and friendship and watching the students gain confidence in themselves.

As for language, my French has hit a plateau, which is apparently supposed to happen around this time of service. I use the same vocab everyday so I haven’t learned a lot of new words, though I have plans for some fun garden, soap and tofu projects planned for summer vacation so I’ve got some words to find. So, here’s a funny story some of you might appreciate: I talk in my sleep and apparently, as of late, have been speaking French! Some of my fellow PCV’s said it was pretty funny and I guess it’s a good sign. Maybe I’m dreaming in French! Local language is a different story. I have the greetings down and it’s always entertaining to try new phrases, but it is so complex and hard for me to pronounce. I still have time to learn but I know I will never be able to speak Kotokoli.

Outside of school, I work with my Togolese counterpart on community needs assessment, project planning and other village meetings ranging from health to agriculture. Since Wassarabo is close to the city, there are lots of NGO’s who come to do formations and help with development and education. They have good ideas and are a great resource for my work.
March was a crazy month for me. I kicked it off with my Birthday which was a lot of fun, hanging out with friends. Then we celebrated International Women’s Day (March 8th). With permission from the Chief, I organized a community fete (party). I asked for student to volunteer and put together sketches about girl’s education, women’s rights and community issues to perform for the villagers. We practiced for a few weeks before and on the day of the fete, the students did awesome. They came in full costumes and even wrote songs. One sketch was about girls and boys sharing household responsibilities and having equal access to school and the chance to succeed. The second sketch was anti-child trafficking and the message was “If you are a good student and well educated, you can avoid being trafficked to other countries for work.” The Mothers club also sang traditional songs and everyone danced. The villagers loved it all and were totally entertained; I only hope they learned something.

March also was the annual All Volunteer and Program Management and Development conference. Peace Corps has a training center in a town called Pagala so for a weekend I got to catch up with and meet other volunteers. It was nice to see people and share our experiences and also have a little fun. We did lots of fundraising activities like a bake sale, date and silent auction, and a t-shirt contest. All the funds went to a girls’ scholarship program called Karren Waid. All Vol is also the time to elect new members to the different committees and publication teams. I joined the Gender and Development committee as the co-director of the scholarship fund. Karren Waid was a volunteer in Togo that was killed in a bush taxi accident in the early 90’s. She had worked extensively promoting girls’ education so after her death, her family started a scholarship program in her name. The scholarship pays for girls’ school all the way to university as long as they pass each year, don’t get married, and keep their pregnancies to one or fewer. There are 61 girls in country ranging from elementary to university. My responsibilities will be checking up with the girls, collecting report cards and distributing funds. We just had out first annual KW weekend camp where we got all the girls from my region together to have fun, reinforce the regulations and build camaraderie. It was really nice to give the girls a chance to make new friends and let them know that they aren’t alone. I am still getting to know the program, but as of right now, there are returned volunteers in the States working to get 501c3 status so that friends and family in the states can make tax deductable donations. Stay posted, I’ll let you know when and how you can help!

After All Vol was Program Development and Management for the Girls’ Education and Empowerment program. We learned about funding projects and writing grant applications. We also got a chance to share and learn from each other’s experiences at site. Overall it was just nice to get some reinforcement and encouragement from PC and other volunteers.

At the end of March, I got the chance of a lifetime and took an amazing week long vacation in South Africa. My step-dad Dave works there once a year and I was lucky enough to join him. Some of the highlights: drinking tap water, warm showers without wearing flip flops, seeing old college friends, dairy products like cheese and ice cream, a haircut and blow dry, being with family, letters and pictures from home, going on a giraffe and zebra capture with Dave’s Vet colleagues, seeing amazing wildlife in Krugar National Park, eating 3 delicious meals a day, fresh brewed coffee, good conversation and cultural exchange. It was absolutely wonderful and relaxing and although the travel back was a head ache, I came back refreshed and ready to go back to village.

I picked back up with La Vie Saine classes and have started working with another NGO girl’s scholarship program in village. It’s for elementary girls and they have after school tutoring twice a week. Their French level isn’t very high so we sing songs, play games, and read stories. It’s a lot of fun and I usually end up making a fool of myself but the girls eat it up.

We are towards the end of hot season and the thermometer in my house reads a constant 95+ even at night! Although sleeping outside would be significantly better, I can’t give up the security of my mosquito net. The scorpion count is up to 10 in and around my house, even in my bedroom so I’ll suffer the heat for a little longer and sleep under my net!

The rains are on their way and the few storms that we have had have been amazing! It has already started to get green again and it’s beautiful. The mangos are also ripening so I eat like 5 a day. The end of the school year is approaching so I’m planning some projects to do during summer vacation. I have IST (In-Service Training) next week in Pagala so I can learn about more projects and get some resources. At the beginning of June I am going to be a camp counselor for kids all over Togo, again in Pagala, and I’m really looking forward to the summer camp experience. I was a summer camper for the greater part of my childhood so now I’ll have a chance to give back the fun!

There is also a girl’s bike tourney that I am going to help with and we are aiming for September. We are currently waiting on funding so here is the Peace Corps Partnership Proposal if you are interested in helping out.

Dear Family and Friends,

The Girls Bike Tourney began in 2006 with the main objective of raising awareness on the importance of sending girls to school. Each region of Togo, of which there are five, chooses ten girls to participate in a two-day training and a five-day bicycle tourney. The girls are trained on various subjects (HIV/AIDS, teenage pregnancy, forced marriage, child trafficking), they are trained on how to speak in public, how to ride a bicycle (a novelty for most), and how to create and perform educational skits. Armed with knowledge, a bike, and lots of energy, ten girls along with two Togolese homologues and two Peace Corps Volunteers spend the next five days biking and performing at schools, markets and village squares.

The transformation that the girls undergo is quite miraculous. Girls come in barely able to say their name to a group of their peers and leave having presented skits and question and answer sessions in front of hundreds of people. They gain a deeper understanding of major social problems and how to overcome them, self-confidence, and an overall greater desire to succeed. After the five day tourney, the girls return to their respective villages with their new bicycles and are expected to continue training and working with people in their communities.

Peace Corps Partnership enables friends and family of Peace Corps Volunteers to donate to projects that volunteers are trying to complete during their service. Volunteers first submit a grant application to Peace Corps Washington who then puts the project description on the Peace Corps website where interested parties are just a click away from donating.

As a Peace Corps Togo Volunteer, I ask those who are interested in donating to visit: https://www.peacecorps.gov/resources/donors/contribute/projdetail.cfm?projdesc=693-303®ion=africa

So, if you made it all the way through this blog, congrats and thank you for being interested in what I’m up to. If you haven’t yet, please check out my pictures. I love that I get to share my life visually with you all. I love hearing from home even if it’s just a quick hello. I miss you all and hope all is well.
Peace and Love!

It's Been A While!

I know I said I would be keeping you all up to date on a blog but it is a lot harder than I thought to do so. I have been busy doing all sorts of interesting, and sometimes not so interesting things in the last few months and I promise to sit down soon and write all about it. Can you believe it's already been 6 months?
I am in South Africa right now having the time of my life with my Step Dad Dave, but unfortunately I have to leave in the morning. It has been an incredible trip as you will see in my pictures. Being with family is amazing and I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful place. It's been a real treat. Thank you Mom and Dave for making a dream come true!
I have taken advantage of the computer and some Internet time to upload photos from the last 3 months. So in a way that can be an update on what I've been up to.
Enjoy and feel free to email a quick hello. I miss you all!
Peace