Journey to Agou

Ndor (hi in Ewe) Everyone,

Thanks again for all your messages! It is great to hear news from abroad. Life continues to go well in Togo. Thus far I have yet to have any kind of sicknesses (knock on wood), so long may that continue.

As disorganized and bureaucratic the Peace Corps was to get into, it is amazingly organized in country. EVERYTHING is taken care of! We left Lome last Wednesday and arrived in Agou with a huge reception from the village with music and dancing. It really was an amazing sight! Our training village has between 4000-7000 people (people seem a bit unsure). It is at the base of Mt. Agou. It is really a lovely area of Togo. We are all living in host families. I asked for a calm host family and really got what I asked for! I live with a single woman in her 30s who makes cakes and cookies that she sells in Lome, Kpalime and the village. She is really nice and very very concerned about my safety and comfort (the first night she even told me to go put on trousers and socks so I would not get bitten by mosquitoes). All the Peace Corps host families have to be inspected multiple times. The Peace Corps requires that we have mosquito screens on all the windows and doors. This is great for a bug free area and makes for ease of finding all the other Peace Corps rooms as they are decked out with brand new mosquito screens. It has seemed like Christmas everyday as we were given huge water filters, new gas stoves, gas, new lanterns, mountain bikes, new helmets, locks, lights for the bike, repair kit, saddle bags, toe clips, bleach, mosquito nets, French books, dictionaries, health binders, and flip charts to give presentations about HIV, nutrition and sanitation. They really have this staging down to a fine art! Our host families have meetings every week to discuss having a volunteer staying. The trainers also live in the village and our safety and comfort are top priorities for them. We have a very strong Togolese woman who is the P.C.V. coordinator.

to the village, the village has a main road (which I live on) that has a few shops and houses. The road is paved but all the other roads are this amazingly red mud. I think most of the population lives out in the surrounding areas. We have ventured off a bit into the other areas but are usually told not to go too far. Yesterday we went to the market for the first time (all 35 of us!). It was an interesting experience. The people were not really in your face at all, just pretty curious about why we were all there. We eventually decided it was way to hot for walking around, so took over the only bar in the area. I am very fond of a drink called "sport actif" which tastes like diluted grapefruit juice WITHOUT added sugar - it is very tasty and refreshing.

The area around the village is mostly trees and mais fields. My house is rooms around a courtyard. My shower area doesn't have a roof, so I get to bathe looking up at the mountain and trees - a very nice setting. If I look the other direction it is the main street and I can almost see over the top of the shower wall, so I prefer looking up at the mountains.

We have been divided into health and business volunteers in two different villages. Yesterday was the first time we met back up again. We had a good time recounting various stories. I think the funniest one was this one from a guy who doesn't speak any french - his family had given him some maïs (corn in french) and he thought that they were saying "mice" so he sad NO THANKS pretty firmly thinking that they were trying to feed him rodents.

The training days are pretty packed - 7:30 until 12:00 and 2:30 until 5:30 and then homework afterwards. Today is our first half day off since we arrived at staging. We all decided to come into Kpalime, which is the nearest large town to use the internet and get various other things not available in the village. Kpalime is about 15 minutes by taxi from the village.

In other news in my life, my Grandmother died peacefully on Wednesday. Everyone here has been very supportive and I could have been beelined to Accra had I wanted to go back for the funeral. Yesterday I showed pictures of Granny to my host sister which was nice. My host sister's mom died last year so she was a good person to talk to.

I hope this e mail finds you all well and sorry it is a bit random, the internet is slow so it has been written in spurts.

Peace,

Helen