The University of Lome

Imagine a university campus in America, busy students milling around, chatting and looking at test scores posted on the walls. Only the students are much better dressed, like businessmen and women out to lunch in black slacks and neatly pressed button-up shirts, silk blouses and fitted skirts, but with notebooks clenched at their sides. Now make the buildings bare concrete, dusted with red earth. Imagine that all the signs are hand made. As you walk through imagine that leaves of shredded plastic catch the wind and roll across the footpaths, and chickens hop between the benches. Imagine that motorbikes are weaving around wherever they please, deftly maneuvering between lounging students. Professors in colorful traditional garb zip by on Vespa scooters. Imagine dirt paths between buildings densely shaded by vein-trunked tropical trees and flanked by fields of corn and cassava. Now imagine you are me, looking for something resembling a campus map to find my class, ha. 

Everyone you meet will mention to you that the university is transitioning from the French system (License, Maitrise, Doctorat) to the more familiar English system (Bachelors, Masters, Doctorate) and in general things seem to be, lets say… perpetually up in the air. Class offerings, degree requirements, timelines and locations are all subject to change and as such one would be hard pressed to find any of this information in print. Information is primarily passed along in the first person, from professors to students, from student delegates to their classmates, or between peers. Friends are basic logistical necessity, letting you know when class moves rooms or times change, and luckily they are plentiful. 

The students I’ve met here have been wonderful, welcoming, generous, inquisitive and good-humored. Each class begins with about a half hour of handshakes and greetings all around the room and sometimes ends with a friend sharing a home-cooked meal he brought in his thermos. I mostly keep my ears wide, listening to conversations between students about the environment, economics and future of Africa, lamenting endless hypocrisies and endless cycles of dependence, hazarding guesses at what could/should come next. The material taught in the courses is not exactly earth-shattering, but the professors’ manners of explanation are worth the attention alone. I give you one extravagant but absolutely true example.

Photosynthesis was explained with the following:
(It should be noted that students are very adept but lack random pieces of knowledge that we take for granted as something for a 6th grade science fair, such as the process of photosynthesis which had simply never been explained to a student now in a masters program.)

Prof: What did you eat for breakfast this morning?
Student: um, I had some cereal.
Prof: Exactly, you had grains that contained what?
Student: ...
Prof: Ok. Now I’m sure you have seen someone who is very weak in the hospital. Why is that? It’s often because he doesn’t have enough glucose. The doctors give him nutrition, glucose, and what happens? He feels better!
Now cup your hands together and breathe out like this.
(students mimick gesture and cup hands)
It’s hot no?
(nods of concurrence)
Well that’s combustion; one substance turning into another creates heat. Just like plants do when they turn sunlight into energy during photosynthesis!

The Village of Lonvo

Two hours from Lome I find myself a world away, "en brousse" (in the bush) as they say and at the village Mike calls home, Lonvo. As I begin to describe the scene I risk plagiarizing National Geographic. Square mud brick abodes with thick straw roofs. Fences of sticks and reeds and palm leaves. Women with breasts down to their belly buttons squatting beside an open fire. Men out in the fields with rusty old machetes. Chickens shuffling along freely and goats fumbling about. Clothes out to dry on roofs and trees and the occasional clothes line. No electricity, no running water (unless you count old women balancing jugs on their heads and traveling at an unthinkable pace).  Everything looks homemade (except the occasional concrete structures; the primary school, the well and Mike's house) and as always for Americans the level of self-sufficiency is impressive. But remote as this village may be there are hints of the wider web. Rachel, at age 2, listlessly piles dirt in a pair of D&G panties. A Honda motorbike bumps along the muddy road and the whole world stops to watch the wheels turn. A child balances a Spiderman backpack filled with an Obama themed notebook on the crown of his head. Goats munch on the remnants of black plastic bags. And then there is of course the French language which is spoken by some, understood by many, and can be heard inserting itself into the local language Ewe for words like "portable" (cell phone). Everyone speaks in Ewe, which leaves me smiling and mostly mute.

We strolled around in the evening making introductions and going to meet the chief, who was to my surprise not a wrinkled old wiseman but a fit and handsome man exuding that sort of gentle strength of a respected leader. Early the next morning a knock came at the gate to Mike's house. We tried to ignore it. The knock came again. And again. Untill finally he went to answer and found practically half the village, lead by the chief, waiting outside to welcome me. They came streaming into the compound, benches in hand, and set up rows for added seating in the straw hut beside Mike's house. I was speachless. Both by linguistic limitations and by my misty morning brain. They had all just come to say welcome and good morning. And then just as quickly they left.

The weekend in Lonvo was both awkward (the attempted conversations with random visitors, the long silences) and comfortable (the welcoming spirit, the calm of the countryside, the refreshing independence of cooking my own food again). It was wonderful. I cant wait to go back, especially when I've got a few more phrases under my belt. 

My new career as a Wedding Crasher

The most formal outfit I have is a flowery pink sundress to wear on my first weekend in Togo, when Adolphe casually invites me to a wedding of one of his colleagues. The invitation looks like a Japanese valentine (red heart cutouts, the slim profile of a couple kissing with foreign characters below). Pertinent details are written inside, including Chief Host of the Event: the Lord Jesus Christ. We skip the 4 hr mass and hop on his moto straight to the reception. We arrive at a banquet hall draped in lime green and white, with rows of chairs tightly aligned like pews. I'm trying to imagine how the "party" part of the wedding will take place with no place to eat or dance. A charismatic man calls out joyful welcomes through an oversized sound system. MC Daddy Roberts booming baritone calls each guest of honor in turn to strut down the aisle. At the flick of a wrist the band sitting casually in the first row comes bursting to life to accompany each promenade (quite an impressive display of musicianship). Like a southern baptist radio disc-jockey the MC fills 2 hours with lengthy introductions of honored guests, providing a moment for each to praise Jesus and can I hear an Amen. When there are only two spots left at the head table he begins telling the story of the kola nut, and the tradition of giving a traveler a kola nut so that when he returns the kola can tell the story of his journey. He's staring straight at me. And thus am I (the blushing Yovo) escorted to the table of honor! To sit among chiefs, family members and wealthy acquaintances of the newlyweds (so much for keeping a low profile). The wedding party enters, dancing and twirling and spreading the joy of aerosol confetti. The 4 tiered cake (reading "Happy Married Life") is cut on the count of Jesus. J-E-S-U-Slice! An odd plain-tasting vegetable is passed around the table of honor with spicy peanutbutter paste. Then the MC really goes to work, solliciting donations to "plant a seed" for the new couple with holy fury. They come slowly at first, a few bills here and there, an awkward silence of all those obstaining lingers, but after enough rangling the cash begins to float up the rows. Finally it is time for the couple's first dance. (I should mention here that the bride is in a Western-style white gown and the groom too is wearing an all white suit, with the addition of a tiger-print cowboy hat and golden cane that I'm sure I've seen marketed as a "pimp" Halloween costume in the States). Their dance is an upbeat polyrhythmic shuffle, shaking their hips side by side, while loved ones throw money in the air, quickly gathering and showering it over the couple to create a perpetual rain which combined with the hat and cane would be perfectly fitted to an early 90s rap music video. A videographer captures it all, scanning the audience and perhaps giving my stark white figure abnormal attention. Guest are served in their seats a styrofoam container of fried rice with chicken along with tall bottles of beer. And then they begin to disperse, and Adolphe insists that we take home a bottle of sparkling grape juice which he believes to be wine (definitely grape juice). The moto stalls twice before we ride home, champagne substitute in hand.

L'Innondation des Introductions

So many people to smile back to my cheeks are sore. Mind saturated with names of places, people, and foods that someday I will find impossible not to have known.
I arrived in Togo after a 5hr bumpy ride from Accra, waiting anxiously for my new colleagues to arrive. A motorcycle pulls up. "Tu es Emily? On y va?" And just like that I was off, my first time on a motorcycle, riding through the warm African night weaving smoothly through traffic with a hand cramped down on that guitar handle like you wouldn't believe.

I met my new host family, an incredibly warm, welcoming bunch, in the courtyard where they had made over the charcoal fire something resembling macaroni (to make me feel at home).  The house is quite fancy by African standards. There is a walled-in courtyard in the front, a small sewing shop in the corner, concrete floors, 3 bedrooms, an unused kitchen/closet (looks like everyone cooks outside) and a WC. No running water, but there is a pump in the courtyard and plenty of buckets. As usual I have no idea how many people actually live there but so far it appears that there is Mama Jose, the respected middle aged matron, Mathi and her husband Adolfe, their 2 kids Mattia (6?) and Ezeikel (3), another sister maybe or cousin named Raissa who's very smiley, and of course the standard young female relative who does the cleaning and cooking and tries to carry everything for me.

Few interesting questions I received on my first night (in addition to the standard, what state are you from, etc):
1) Did you vote for Obama?
2) Do you believe in god?
3) What do you think, if a married couple is not happy should they stay together and pretend or get a divorce?

Television sure is good for prompting conversation. We ate pate (corn flour paste with spicy sauce) and watched brazilian soap operas. I slept well under the gracefully drapery of a peach mosquito net.

The pre-departure pep talk

Plane tickets, check. Vaccinations, check. Sunscreen, check. Way to assuage the fears of family and friends who worry I might drop off the edge of the Atlantic into the African abyss never to be seen again...check! This is for you! (and for me too, of course. A chance to let you in on my world en mass, in hopes I might catch a glimpse of yours once in a while.). However, if months pass between posts do not fret, it probably means I'm having a good time. You can bet if I'm struck down with some tropical bug I'll be bored and blogging away. Less is more. (I know, you're not encouraged, but trust me on this one).

Thank you so much to everyone who is helping me along my journey eastward from Bellingham to NYC, and thanks to all the rest who are taking an interest in my travels. I can guarantee that as exuberant as my travel babble may become, I will be missing you all the while.

About Togo

Togo is the radiant sliver of red in the picture at right. Better known neighbors include Ghana (to the West), Benin (to the East), Burkina Faso (to the North), and the Atlantic Ocean. It sounds very similar to, but is in fact quite far from, the tropical pacific island nation of Tonga (be careful when sending me any mail! The USPS still hasn't got this straight). It is hot and humid, especially on the coast where I will be living in the capital city of Lome. The official language is French, but this is typically a second language spoken in addition to a local language, for my particular region the primary langue maternelle being Ewe (pronounced Eh-vay). If you want some cold hard stats, the CIA fact book will not dissapoint.

Togo is perhaps best known for being lesser-known, off-the-beaten-path, so slim it could almost slip through the cracks of say regional internet infrastructure or the pages of your geography textbook. Other highlights include heart-warming hospitality, feasts of fu-fu, vibrant fabrics, tireless drumming and dancing, and mystical voodoo ceremonies. Simply put: their smiles far outshine their GDP. (More than I can say for France.)

I am set to arrive in Lome October 18th where I will live with a local family.

About My Project

I will be working with a local nongovernmental organization called Young Volunteers for the Environment (Jeunes Volontaires pour l'Environnement) as well as the University of Lome's new program in Women, Water and the Environment to look at the use of solar water pasteurization as a means of improving health, reducing use of environmentally harmful fuels (wood and charcoal), and in the process empowering women as advocates for the sustainable use of natural resources.

On the title: "Yovo" I'm told is the Togolese term for a foreigner (as in, really obvious foreigner, as in white) and, I am told, will become my new name whether I like it or not. (Including an accompanying song which will carry me through the streets Yovo yovo, bon soir, ca va bien merci...) I have heard it said that "there are no foreign lands, only the traveler who is foreign." So these are a few words from a foreigner. Simple as that.