The Dead Yovo Market

Have you ever wondered what happens to your old shirts? What ever happened to that free t-shirt you were given when you ran that marathon back in ’92? Or how about the shirt that you were given when you helped elect McGovern to the State Senate in ’88? Or how about that stint you pulled working at Best Buy. Are you saying you didn’t continue to wear that classy blue polo?

My guess is that like many Americans, you threw those cloth pieces of treasure into a box until you or your significant other got fed up at how much space it was taking up and took it to Goodwill or some other charitable organization. Did you ever wonder what happened to what was in that box? Did you ever ponder the idea that someone else in the US or wide world would somehow end up with your clothing?

I know where your shirt is…

(I plan on writing a full entry on this next subject. But I need to include a brief summery here to tell the rest of my story.) Here in Togo all foreigners are called Yovo. Loosely translated (and depending on who you talk to) it means outsider, foreigner. (Again, I will talk more at a later time on this wonderful wonderful (SARCASM) word and its many uses.)

No one here can afford to purchase clothes in a store or buy clothe to have them made. To fill this gap in affordable clothing people get there hands on large quantities of second hand, donated clothing. My guess is that they are either purchased by the truck load in the US from Goodwill and shipped here or are “given out” by local NGOs for distribution. Either way piles upon piles of used clothes end up on plastic tarps all over the country. It is known that this abundance of clothing comes from the outside world. The Togolese can not understand why some Yovo (there’s our new word for the day!) would ever give this stuff away. The thinking goes that to have given away something so great the giver must have died. Thus the markets that sell this stuff are called Dead Yovo Markets. Who still living could ever part with these wonderful expensive treasures?

It is a fun game among Peace Corps volunteers to compete for weirdest shirt seen. Now remember, the people buying this stuff don’t read English. They buy it because it doesn’t have holes (usually) and will protect them from the sun.

Here is a nice selection of shirts that I have seen in my short 5 months here.

•Young boy with a shirt that said, “This is what 40 looks like. Jealous?” I doubt he was 40, but I have to say I was a little jealous at how youthful he appeared.
•“Elect Thompson to City Council.” Wait a sec… there are no city councils here!
•Small Girl, less than 10 wearing pink shirt that read, “Sexy Bitch.” I thought she was cute. Not sure she was a “sexy bitch.” But who am I to judge?
•Countless McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and UPS polos. What? It’s a polo shirt with a small logo on it. That works for a business meeting!
•“I’m PMSing” Now my knowledge of biology isn’t great. But, I didn’t think a 45 year old male carpenters could PMS. But who am I to question.
•“Buy Malidu from Me!” I almost asked for a shot. Then I remembered that due to the lack of electricity it probably wasn’t cold. Who wants warm Malibu from a 10 year old at 8:30 in the morning?
•“I’m not easy. I’m just popular.” You know what. I’m happy that that 11 year old boy has friends. Good for him!
•Black shirt with three pictured panels and the heading, “How to Grow a Mullet.” I looked a little more closely and you know what? If the kid wearing the shirt ever wanted a mullet, he was set!
•Countless Graduating Class of ’91, Class of ’89 Reunion, ’93 Soccer Champ shirts and the like. Who knows? Maybe the kid wearing it really did go to Middlebury Middle School in the late 80s?

I’m thinking about casually sneaking my CS@GW shirt with “It’s ok! I’m a computer scientist” written in big yellow letters on the back into one of the piles. If I create no computer scientists through the classes I teach I know that there will at least be one in name wandering around this country.

Street Food

To fully discover a country one needs to eat its street foods.

I remember wandering the streets of Guangzhou with my brother looking for something to eat. We ended up at an open store front with tray upon tray of deep fried food on a stick (I once wanted to open a restaurant called “Everything on a Stick.”) At the far left hand side of the middle row was a tray filled with skewers of deep fried baby birds. My brother being who he is (love the kid) went straight for them. As he bit into the first baby bird I remember him saying, “It’s not so much that I can feel the bones breaking or the innards exploding in my mouth. I don’t mind that. The thing I don’t like about this… it tastes AWFUL!” The point of the story being that for Eric and I to understand the culture we needed to taste the food that people grabbed on their way to work, on a date, or window shopping.

While there are no deep fried baby bird sticks here, there is still a very interesting world of street food to be had.

One of the staples of my diet is a wonderful thing called Bui (not sure of the spelling) that I always eat with a Benyay (again… not sure of spelling.) Bui is ground corn (the most common), millet, or tapioca (my favorite and most uncommon) cooked with boiling water. That’s it. When cooked it becomes very liquidy and easily drunk from a bowl. Every morning when I go to school I sit out front before my first class and get 25 CFA (5 cents) worth of Bui (a small bowls worth) and a Benyay (deep fried dough ball) for another 25CFA. One can always tell women that serve Bui because of the large plastic tubs covered with a simple insulator of plastic and cloth sitting on a crude wooden table in front of them. There is something about the warm lumpy stuff that really satisfies an early morning hunger.

Another one of my main food sources is Wachi: rice cooked with beans (everything here is very simple.) You can spot a Wachi women (I like the ring of that…) by a large metal tub that contains a giant lump (the rice and beans) wrapped in plastic and cloth. It is ordered by price (100CFA is what I normally get), scooped out by hand (her RIGHT hand of course! That’s the clean one!) and placed into a plastic bowl. Sitting next to the metal vat are usually an assortment of different size stainless steel, lidded pots. In each pot (sometimes there is only one) is a different sauce (but always palm oil based and very very red.) There is usually the fish chunk sauce (I stay away from that one) and sometimes the overcooked goat chunk sauce (usually stay away from that one… sometimes I get brave or inebriated and end up tearing at a few pieces… not the best idea.) Occasionally you get lucky and mixed in with the fish sauce are pieces of a local “cheese” called Wagash, deep fried to the point of breaking your teeth (SOOO GOOD!) I put cheese in quotes because I’m not 100% sure that it really IS cheese. It is cheese in the sense that milk (or some dairy product) was somehow made hard (my cheese making knowledge is not that extensive). One can purchase Wagash at the market in large red (they die the outside with millet to help preserve it) wheels stacked on a metal tray carefully balanced on a women’s head.


While I love the taste (most of the time) of the street food, my favorite part is the interactions that take place while eating. There is something bonding about sharing the food of another’s culture.

In the future I will write about other street foods and specific eating experiences.

Until then…

The Market

I am lucky by Peace Corps standards. I can get lettuce every day of the week.

Where others are happy to have a market every 6 or 7 days, I live in the second largest city in the country. That means I can find fun things like onions, lettuce, green peppers, and wonderful wonderful soy cheese (how I crave protein!) at the Grande Marché (main market) EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK! When I go to visit friends I usually bring along a large bag of food to put a little meat on their skinny skinny frames (Peace Corps diet works WONDERS!) Some of my friends have to bike 4km to find a loaf of bread, other friends are lucky if they can get tomatoes in their village.

I usually stop at the market on my way home from teaching. The market is a large concrete structure (uncommon except in the largest cities) with wooden framed and metal roofed stalls overflowing on all sides. I usually park my bike at the Post Office across the street. In getting to the post office I cross a lane of oncoming motorcycle, ox cart, car, and people traffic. I swear that crossing will be the death of me! But it will be worth it for all the wonderful food it has given me.

I lock my bike with the blue Chinese made (everything comes from China around here. God bless Globalization's cheap prices) bike lock and cross back over the street. All Peace Corps volunteers have "their lady" at the market. All that means is the one veggie seller who was lucky enough to be nice to you on your first week at post that you have continued to go back to. My lady has a great smile and very fresh veggies. To get to her stand I need to duck into a small covered walkway boarded by stands on both sides leaving about 2 feet of space to walk. The first stand on the right as you enter the small walkway sells rice. They probably have 7 or 8 different types of rice in huge bowls sitting open, waiting for some nice person to take some home. On the left is a stand with the same large bowls only filled with beautifully orange palm oil. You usually buy it in small slender see through bags that are kept in yet another bowl. They kind of remind me of buying fish when I was little and the fish store guy putting them in bulging, water filled plastic bags, only here it is palm oil and smaller.

The next stand sells fetish items. The three main religions of Togo are Christianity, Islam, and Animism (aka Voodoo) A fetish stand sells things for voodoo ceremonies: gnarly bone handled knives, different size rusty and non-rusty nails (gotta be able to chose!), an assortment of dried skins and furs from something that used to be alive, and powders of all color and consistency. Animism is an old religion still practiced by many people in West Africa. I have friends that live in small villages (small villages way out in the wild are the biggest practicers of the traditional religion) who tell stories of Witch Doctors doing demon dances, chicken sacrificing (what a nice welcome!), and other interesting (sometimes kind of scary) stories. I don't see much of it as I live in a largely Muslim city. The extent of my exposure to the practices are the occasional talisman (string with various things from the fetish table attached to it) hanging in a tree next to a house to ward of spirits.

After the fetish stand I enter the concrete structure that houses most of the food sellers. All the ladies that work in this corner section know me and try to get my business. But I walk, saying hi to everyone, and head straight for my lady. She always has a great pile of lettuce, cucumbers, green peppers, green beans, and the occasional (what a great day when they are there!) eggplant. Everything is ordered by price. For example I say I want 100 CFA (that's 100 West African Francs, equal to about 20 cents) of lettuce, 100 of cucumber, and 200 of eggplant (that comes out to 4 small heads of leaf lettuce, 1 cucumber, and 1 or 2 medium eggplants). She puts it all into one of the ubiquitous black plastic bags, adds a cadeu (Present in French) of a pile of green beans. I then look for someone with nice tomatoes. Everyone specialises in a couple of veggies, selling only them. Tomato sellers always stack their tomatoes in pyramid piles of either 50 or 100 CFA (10 or 20 cents). For that you get about 4-6 small tomatoes. I finally leave followed by calls to buy potatoes, more tomatoes, and all other sorts of wares. I cross back over the street and get a loaf of bread for another 100CFA that's a soft crusted baguette (one of the only good things the French did in Africa (I like to pick on the French) was teach people how to make bread.) I finally unlock my bike and head home.

Travel in Togo

In the US we take getting around for granted. Most people have cars. Others, like me who at 23 is still licenseless, use public transportation to get where they need to go. Paved roads connect almost every house, shopping mall, and school.

In Togo there is one paved road that runs from the capitol in the south to the most northern border with Burkina Faso. There is nothing else. If you turn off this main road you turn onto pot-holed, dirt roads that can become impassible during the rainy season.

To make travel in this country even more difficult imagine a population that can not afford to send their children to school for $8 a year. Then ask yourself if that population owns cars.

There is no public transportation. There are no local airports, no local or national bus routes, no subway systems. The way people get around here is a wonderful thing called a bush taxi. In my opinion it is wonderful wonderful capitalism at work at its best. In a market economy if there is a need of a service, that need is filled by an individual who hopes to profit.

A bush taxi in its simplest form is a car that drives along the national route picking people up along the way and then dropping them off along the route closer to their final destination. That sounds fine.

In reality bush taxis are cars that have been out of service in the US or Europe since the late 80s that are shipped to Africa and sold for a couple hundred dollars. These are held together and driven until they literally FALL apart on the side of the road. I was once in a bush taxi that had to stop 4 times to pick up different pieces of the car that had fallen (muffler, hub-cap, some pipe from under the car, and a strip of metal about 6 inches long… Guess none were that important.)

It makes sense for a driver to want to fill his car as full as he can with people. I have been in a basic 4 door sedan that is meant for 5 (driver plus 4) filled with upwards of 11 to 12 people. That works out to 4 up front (two in the driver's seat and two in the passenger seat… sometimes three in the passenger seat) and anywhere from 5-7 people (and we arnt talking small children… We are talking full grown adults) jammed into the back. There are also larger passenger type vans that normally hold 15 people. They have the front section (cab) and then 4 rows of benches. I have seen these cars filled with as many as 30 people. There are no seat belts, no air-conditioning, and only rarely a window that will open. You have no idea how after being crammed into the back seat with 5 other people for 4 hours you CRAVE the luxury of Economy Class flight.

For example, if I want to travel to see my friend who lives 40k away I walk to the main road. I stand and wait for a bush taxi to pass in the direction I want to go (there are only two ways to go in a place with only one road.) He stops, I jam into whatever space I can find and we are off. It takes a car about 25 – 30 minutes to travel 40k (about 25 miles) in the US. Now imagine that you were driving a bush taxi where you have to stop every few miles to "show your papers" (wink wink) to the police at a checkpoint, not drive over 30 miles an hour for fear of hitting one of the pot holes (craters), and stopping every few minutes to pick up or drop someone off. That normally 30 minute car ride turns into a hellish two hours. Try to imagine not being able to get out of a crouching position for hours at a time. For the longer trips (it takes about 6 hours to get to the capitol from my city) there are no bathrooms. Every once in a while the car will pull over next to a field and everyone (women included) get out and do their business.

While it is never fun to be stuck in a car with 29 other people, 4 chickens, and a goat it is amazingly interesting. No one complains. It is just the way life goes.

Greetings

If I am walking down the street in the US and happen to see someone I know, I either try to avoid making eye contact so as not have to say anything or give a quick head nod and a, "Hey." If I am feeling friendly I might throw in a "What's up?" But after having done my small duty, continue on my way.

A typical exchange on the street here would go like this:
(This local language is called Kabye. I am also writing everything out phonetically as there are letters used that we don't have in English)

Person 1: Un-la-waa lay (Good morning)
Person 2: Yaa. Alafia. (Yes, it is good.)
Person 1: Alafia way? (How are you?)
Person 2: Alafia. (Fine.)
Person 1: Toe-mee-ai yo? (How's your work?)
Person 2: Alafia. (Fine.)
Person 1: Halow yo? (How's your wife?)
(Note: If the person has two or more wives, not uncommon, you would say, "Pay-way Alafia?")
Person 2: Alafia. (Fine.)
Person 1: Pia yo? (And your children?)
Person 2: Alafia. (Fine.)
Person 1: Plab-tassi. (See you later.)
Person 2: Plab-tassi. (See you later.)

Along with this exchange both people slightly squat down, putting their hands on their knees in a sign of respect. I have seen women carrying huge bowls filled with vegetables on their head squat down without even thinking about it. In the local language of my city, Kotokoli, towards the end of that exchange both people make a sort of grunting sound back and forth. Just a little "mm" or "ungh." They go back and forth grunting for sometimes upwards of 10 seconds.

(After all other greetings)
Person 1: Ungh
Person 2: Unn
Person 1: Ungh
Person 2: Unn
Person 1: Ungh
Person 2: Unn
Person 1: Ungh
Person 2: Unn

Its almost musical, kind of like a song being passed back and forth.

I have asked many people why they do that. The only response I get is, "That's just part of it." It's such an interesting way to greet someone, seemingly not saying anything. But that's just how it's done.

Sometimes in Kabye after all the questions the person being asked will shake his hands back and forth and go, "Ya ya ya ya ya." That basically just means, "Everythings great."

There is something about the idea of asking about someone's life that I really like. While it does get a little old to be asked about my work 10 times a day, it is still nice to know that that human contact is there. This is a culture that values the relationship between people.

ps. Sorry I havnt posted in a long long time. I spent a wonderful Christmas at home with my family and am just now getting back.

Note From Class

As I mentioned in my last entry I have started teaching a computer class at a local school. All my kids are very excited to learn about computers. Overall it's a lot of fun.

During the second class period (the first is devoted to learning the names of all the parts of a compuuter, 'This is a mouse.') I have my students write one phrase. During the class I use the example phrase 'Hi. How are you?' In writing that sentence I teach kids how to use caps, lower-case, periods, spaces, and question marks. When the kids write their own sentences they usually copy exactly what we did and write the 'Hi. How are you?' My older kids usually finish this assignment quickly and want to do something more.

I have 8 working computers in my classroom (a few are out of order at the moment thanks to dust and humidity... that's what you get for living south of the Sahara!). I usually have to put 2 to 3 kids on each computer and have them rotate through after writing their sentence.

Last week I had a group of 4 or 5 girls that ended up all writing their sentence, one after the other, and finally creating a letter to me. Every time they would finish one sentence they would giggle, call me over, look up as I read the sentence, then go back to write another. When they were finished writing the letter I read it and decided I had to post it.

Here is the letter that they wrote to me. (NOTE: All Peace Corps Volunteers in my country take a local name. It's usually given the first day at post. Mine happened to be given to me by the cashier at the government water dept as I was getting my water turned on. I am known here as Ismael.)

Hello Ismael how are you. How old are you. Have you many wafe? Have you many childrens? Your wafe is my sister. Where do you came from? Where do you live? What do like?
GOOD BYE

Maybe someday I will respond to them. But for the moment I need to figure out which of their sisters is my supposed wife!

Until next time.

I'm Back!

I would like to apologize to all the Aaron watchers out there for the lack of updates. My life has gotten VERY busy yet remains fulfilling and happy. My cat is as playful as ever and seems to double in size every other week. Despite the herbs not doing well (only 3 basil plants came up and a few dill), the rest of my garden is thriving. I have 6 very nice tomato plants that have just started growing their first tomatoes, 3 very well developed bean plants, a few sprouting cabbages and hopefully enough feed corn to eventually feed my hungry hungry chickens. I am RIPPING through books and magazines (PLEASE SEND READING MATERIAL! I average about 200 pages of reading a day!) Life is good.

One reason for my long hiatus was ‘AIDS Ride’. Every year Peace Corps Togo organizes a group of 10 – 15 volunteers to ride bikes through each of Togo’s 5 regions over a one week period, stopping in small villages to do AIDS awareness classes for whoever will listen. During the one week ride my group talked to around 3500 people in something like 12 villages. Please try to imagine me standing in front of a group of 400 high school age kids, wooden penis in one hand, bull-horn in the other, showing kids (in French) how to properly use condoms. It was a very interesting week to say the least. I think our total distance biked was around 150km. I wasn’t able to bike all of that as I got heat exhaustion one of the days. That day we had biked something like 47km (25 of that being through African forests infested with plants brandishing 3 inch spikes. The sound of flesh being ripped from my arm will forever be with me, along with some nice new scars.) I was so relieved to be out of the forest that I thought it was a good idea to kick it up a few notches and bike as fast as I could the last 10 or so km. In the middle of my condom demo I remember getting very light headed. I turned to my partner, handed her everything, and went to go find a place to relax (not the easiest thing in the outdoor area of a school in the middle of nowhere that has close to 700 kids who thinks that the circus just came to town.) Later that night I got a crazy high fever and had to ride in our chase car for two days. Lesson learned… This is what happens when you havn’t physically exerted yourself since ’93. All in all it was an amazing week of biking, sleeping on grass mats, heeding the call of nature in random fields (your stomach can do some pretty mean things to you if you don’t take care of it. Phew!) and lots of great AIDS education.

The other reason that I have been MIA for so long is that I have finally taken the plunge into my work. I have started two jobs at the same time. In the mornings I teach very basic computer classes (How to hold a mouse. How to click two times. How to put a letter in upper-case. Some of these kids have never even SEEN a computer.) For some reason I agreed to teach 15 classes a week. It is EXHAUSTING! I have a small computer center of around 10 computers. Most of the class consists of me sitting in the front of the room pointing at things on a larger monitor and the class responding. I think I have around 400 students. I can not even begin to express how rewarding this job is (even though it has driven me to consider drinking at 9:30am on multiple occasions.) After my class I go home for the 2.5 hour lunch break (BEST THING EVER!). Around 2:30 I head to my office at RESODERC, a local NGO. At the moment I am playing a tech advisor role, helping them get their management better organised (Database stuff. Soon informational website stuff.) Eventually I will also begin to do more development advising for the 65 members of our organisation. My NGO is an umbrella organisation for all other NGOs in the region. I will eventually set up office hours where people will be able to seek me out and ask advise on trainings, general management issues, and other general development stuff. It should be very interesting.


So that is what I have been up to. I get home around 5:30 every evening so tired I can hardly make dinner for myself. After a few hours of reading I am asleep around 8pm only to be back up and begin working at 5am. Gotta love keepin busy!

Until next time.