Beeping

The sun had just set, and I was deep in my evening ritual. I finished eating dinner and set aside the dirty dishes to wash in the morning: the electricity was out in my kitchen, and I preferred not to wash dishes in dim candle- or lantern-light. Now, as the heat of the day began to fade, and the dusty breeze started to pick up, I was ready for a shower. I peeled off my sweaty clothes and, taking a deep breath to steel myself, stepped into the spray of cool water.

As always, after a moment of shock my body adjusted, and I began to leisurely rinse off the dust and grime of the day.

Then, inside the house, I heard a rhythmic noise. Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. Bzz.

It was my phone. And at this time of day, it was probably something important. Maybe it was even someone calling from home, and if I missed that I'd be irritated all evening. Cursing under my breath, I jumped out of the shower, grabbed my pagne in passing and tossed it over my shoulders, and dashed inside. I picked up the now-silent phone, and looked at the screen.

MISSED CALL, it said, followed by an unfamiliar number. I suppressed the urge to throw the phone against the concrete wall. I'd just been 'beeped'.

'Biper', as the noun was verbed in Francophone Africa, is calling someone else's cell phone, then hanging it up before the recipient has a chance to answer. Your number then shows up on their phone as a missed call, and you're expected to call them right back.

Beeping is common in Togo and other parts of the developing world where, as in most of the world outside the US, the caller pays for all cell phone charges. Add this to the preponderance of pay-as-you-go cell phone plans -- I don't think there were any monthly plans available at all in Togo -- and the idea starts to make more and more sense. Especially in many traditional African cultures, where more well-off persons are expected to 'share the wealth' and look after friends and family, the concept that 'you should call me because you have money and I don't' is entirely normal and even expected.

But, of course, that's not how an outsider sees it. Peace Corps volunteers, when we talked about the culture of 'bipage', were united in seeing it as an annoyance, and even an imposition. People who knew you only slightly, or even didn't know you at all and had received your number from someone else, would beep you without a second thought. Maybe they wanted something, like the people who would show up and knock at your door looking for help of some sort, or maybe they were doing it on a dare, or maybe they just wanted to say hello. The volunteers are rich, people thought -- and, by their standards, they were right -- so why shouldn't they call me back? It's only polite.

But of course that's not how we saw it. Getting beeps from unknown people was bad enough, but when it was from someone we knew, that somehow seemed even worse. Our friends, we thought, should know better than that. They know that it bothers us, and if they work with us they know that we're not made of money. "I've don't answer beeps at all," one volunteer told me. "Not even if it's someone I know. If they know me, then they know I hate beeps, and they can either come see me or pay the 100 francs and call themselves."

As for me, I took a different stance. If I was beeped by someone I knew well, I'd call them back, even if only for a moment. I figured that I owed them that much, and if they knew I didn't like beeps and did it anyway, it must be for a reason. Beeps from an unknown number? I ignored them, but tried not to let them drive me crazy.

But if it got me out of the shower, or woke me up, I found myself weighing the benefits of tossing my phone out the window and letting a pig eat it, or a neighborhood kid grab it or something. Let the beeps bother him instead.

Devastation in the Savanes region (updated)

Over the last few months, heavy rains have been falling throughout Togo. This is normal for the season, of course, but a few days ago things took a turn for the worse.

Heavy flooding has killed at least 17 people in the northern Savanes region, and made refugees of 7000 more, and the toll is likely to increase in the days to come, as another 60,000 people are entirely unreachable since the roads have all washed away.

Savanes is the poorest region of Togo, and the northeastern prefecture where the flooding has taken place is possibly the poorest part of the region. This disaster is only piling further calamity on the people of this area. According to a 2006 UN study, "62.7 percent of people in the Savanes region do not have access to adequate food and 32 percent of children under five suffer acute malnutrition." (see here for more) Officials expect outbreaks of diseases like malaria and cholera, as well as other waterborne illnesses, and further increases in malnutrition and famine in the area. Years of drought -- the rainy seasons, while violent, have been shorter than usual -- have decreased crop yield throughout Togo, and now the flooding has washed away many fields.

Unfortunately there aren't any ways to directly support relief efforts in this district; in fact, there aren't any organized efforts except for the Togolese Red Cross. Flooding throughout West Africa has been particularly bad this year, and most aid organizations have had their hands full in Nigeria, Burkina, and other hard-hit spots.

Update, 13 September: According to an update yesterday, there are now 20 dead, and over 14,000 displaced in the Savanes flooding.

One Year

Friday, August 24 was the one-year anniversary of my group of volunteers. A year ago we were sworn in on the lawn of the Country Director's house in Lomé, and with only a few exceptions (*cough* me) the group is still going strong. Congratulations to everyone who's still there! Partially in commemoration of this event (well, actually, it was a coincidence) I joined my friend Shelly, who came home recently for medical reasons, at a beer festival in Massachusetts. We took a picture together and emailed it to the rest of our group. The sign is hard to read, but it says 'SBD 2006, du courage!'

Peace Corps Update #17 (part 2)

When last we spoke (can we just take my abject apologies as read and move on? Thanks, that’ll save some time), I was barreling down the Route Nationale in the twice-monthly Lomé Limo, the free Peace Corps transport van, with a driver, an apprentice driver, Shelly’s homologue, and my luggage. As we rolled through the hills of the southern Plateaux region and crossed over into Maritime, the women stepping into the road ahead of us waving flattened agouti, the sun set behind the hills and the dusty sky grew dim.

I.

The sun had entirely vanished by the time we came over the railroad tracks and into the northern reaches of Lomé. Though it’s the capital city, there are few tall buildings, so the city itself isn’t really visible until you’re on top of it. Past the turnoff for the bus and taxi station you start to see some build-up, and some buildings a little more decorated than bare concrete. After another twenty minutes the three or so tall buildings in Lomé come into view, and it starts to feel like a real city.

We came to the ring road, the Boulevard Circulaire, and followed it to Kodjoviakopé, the neighborhood where the Peace Corps office is located. After a short, bumpy ride along the unpaved road leading to the office, we pulled up in front of the pedestrian entrance to the office block. Shelly’s homologue gave me a hand with my suitcase, and I signed in at the gate.

Struggling with my luggage, I made it into the office courtyard and thence to the volunteer lounge. The lounge is two connected rooms on the ground floor of the office building, with the major points of attraction being the two computers with (relatively) high-speed internet and the air conditioning. (The volunteer-only bathroom is rather a wash, due to its lack of ventilation.) In the larger of the two rooms there is a circle of couches and stuffed chairs surrounding a large coffee table which is usually covered in layers of magazines, books, and abandoned snack food (anything left on the table is fair game), and around the walls of the room are various bulletin boards, private cubbies, and bookshelves with the Maritime province’s volunteer library. (This is generally considered to be the weakest of the libraries, since so many volunteers come through the lounge regularly and borrow reading material for the long rides into the interior, then forget to return the books.) As I walked in, the half dozen or so volunteers looked up briefly, then returned to their conversation. One of them said hello.

“What brings you to Lomé, Andy?”

I rolled my suitcase into an unoccupied corner -- the floors were surprisingly crowded with bags, suitcases, and cardboard boxes, which I later realized was because a number of volunteers were COSing (closing service) and preparing to leave Togo -- and stood it up carefully before responding. Though my heart was racing, I answered calmly.

“I’m quitting. I’ve had enough.” As I spoke the words, I knew two things. First, they were true. Second, I had no doubts at all anymore. I knew what I was doing.

My interlocutor laughed, a little uncomfortably. “Seriously?”

“Yep. Dead serious.”

At this the other conversations in the room ceased, and everyone turned to look at me. I’m not often the center of attention, and I don’t always know how to handle it gracefully. I walked over to the couch circle and plopped down in an open spot, as everyone looked at me curiously. They seemed to shrink back from me a little, like quitting was a disease they were all a little frightened of catching. I was asked a few questions, but people either lost interest fairly quickly, or were in fact afraid of catching the fever too. (Quick aside: during my time in Lomé, several other volunteers told me that they, too, were feeling a lot like I described, and were thinking about quitting too. As far as I know they’re all still there, but at the time -- and now, too -- it felt good to know that I wasn’t the only one going through those issues, and that maybe my decision wasn’t setting a bad example for them. Perhaps, in fact, it was setting the right example.)

I chatted with Todd, Ali, and Shelly for a while. They were all headed to the airport that evening, Shelly to go on a trip to the Caribbean with her family, and Todd to pick up his brother who was coming for a visit. Ali was just along for the ride. A few minutes into our conversation, my phone buzzed. I pulled it out to discover a text message from Todd. “Andy’s ETing.” I showed it to Todd, puzzled.

“Oh, sorry. I meant to send that to Chris.” And so the news began to spread.

I had to leave not long after that, since I had to go sign in to the medical unit before they closed for the night at 10 PM. Besides, they were headed off to the airport. I packed my backpack with some clothes, but left most of my luggage at the lounge.

The Medical Unit is a smallish building several blocks up the Rue des Rossignols (Nightingale Street) from the office. Though it’s in a good neighborhood of Lomé, the street is still unpaved, so it’s a ten-minute walk through intermittently deep sand to get there. Added to the sand are the piles of trash, puddles of unidentified liquids, and smoldering piles of trash, so you have to keep your eyes open and your steps nimble to avoid inconvenience or serious injury. I managed this feat, and arrived at the medical unit in time to try to explain to the guards that I should be allowed in.

“But the doctor isn’t here!”

“She said I could stay, and I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”

“Are you sure?”

They finally let me in, and I went inside and claimed a bed in one of the two sickrooms. It was the same room I’d briefly napped in on my second day in Togo, when sleep deprivation and mild dehydration caught up with me and made me, briefly, a fainting (and vomiting) trainee. There’s a poster on the wall in that room depicting a bare-breasted young woman, presumably Togolese, drinking from a coconut in what might be described as an enthusiastic fashion. (It’s a tourism poster.)

After a few minutes while I enjoyed the cool air and unpacked a little, there was a knock on the door. The medical officer was on the phone for me. I went back out to the guard desk, and had a quick chat with Paula. We agreed to get together the next morning around 10, and I signed off to go take a shower, since the road dirt was finally catching up to me. I went into the bathroom and fired up the shower. The medical unit has hot water, but the last time I’d been there it was broken, so this was my first hot shower in over seven months. I’d had hot bucket baths, and liked them a lot, but the feeling of hot water pouring over me with no effort expended, and with no waiting, was intoxicating. For a moment I just abandoned myself to the feeling, perhaps in the same way that the Togolese damsel abandoned herself to coconut milk.

Then reality set back in. I needed to clean off.

There was no soap.

I thought for a moment. Nope, I’d left my soap dish back in Sotouboua. I remembered thinking about it as I locked the door for the last time, but then saying to myself ‘what, I don’t need that. Joelle can have it if she wants.’

I managed to scrounge a few scraps of a bar of soap from the sink and scrubbed the worst of the grime off with that, a tatty-looking mesh cleaner that someone had left there, and main force. I dried off, feeling cooler but not particularly clean, and went to bed.

The next morning my alarm woke me around 8, and I made myself a bowl of cereal from the refrigerator they keep in the hallway. Well, actually, it was a cup of cereal, since there were no bowls to be found. I was lucky there was even a spoon. After breakfast I read for a little while (I’d brought a few books from my tiny collection down to Lomé with me, telling Joelle to donate the rest to my region’s library) and went upstairs to the medical office proper to have a chat with Paula.

It was Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and as a federal US holiday all Peace Corps offices were officially closed. But Paula had shown up just for me (not a terrible imposition, since she, like several other Peace Corps administrative people, lived elsewhere on the same street), and let me into the small office.

She wasn’t too surprised to hear that I had made my decision, and we swung directly into working on the final medical work before I was cleared to go. I was weighed, and I gave a urine sample, and had to fill out a few forms regarding my personal health, both then, and for the several months prior. Once this was all done, I was free for the day, so I wandered off to the office for the day. Though it was closed, the lounge was open, so I sat in the cool air and did some reading. Normally I’d have returned to the medical unit for meals, but unfortunately Rose, the cook and housekeeper, was on vacation and wouldn’t return until Tuesday. Instead I ate street food, and reminded myself that these might be the last few brochettes and bowls of beans and rice that I ever ate in Togo.

II.

Before I go on, let me insert a small disclaimer. Both because things seemed to go so quickly, and because it was over four months ago, the sequence of the rest of the week’s events have become a little muddled in my head. I may have gotten the order of things a little wrong, but the events themselves are as described. Onward!

It now being Tuesday, and the office was open, I went upstairs to break the news to Alex. Surely he was expecting something of the sort, I thought, but it was by no means a conversation I was looking forward to. I knocked on his doorframe -- he’d just moved into a new office next to the copy machine, rather than sharing Karen’s office -- and he invited me in.

“So,” he began, “I got a call from Jocelyn. He says you’re quitting.”

My heart sank. I had specifically asked Jocelyn not to call Alex (he was interested in renting my house if the Peace Corps was done with it) until I’d had a chance to talk to him first. “Yes, I am. I’m sorry you had to hear it that way.”

“It’s all right, I heard on Saturday from Paula that you were coming to town, probably to quit.” Are there no secrets in this country? Signs point to no.

At any rate, we briefly discussed my reasons for leaving, and the paperwork I’d need to fill out before they’d clear me to go. I had to write up a description of service for Peace Corps records, as well as a site report about Sotouboua to give to my replacement (who, by the way, should be landing in Togo in about a week and a half! Good luck, whoever you are). He gave me examples of both to crib from.

“You’ll also need to talk to Delphine. Doris normally handles COS [close of service] duties, but she’s on vacation.” This was a bit of a problem, as Delphine wasn’t very familiar with the COS process. She gave me a checklist to work on, and told me she’d start in on booking me a flight home. “Maybe Thursday, maybe Friday. Or Saturday.”

Several of the checklist items were related to returning various Peace Corps-issued gear, such as my water filter, my bike, and the big boxful of books they had given us through training. This was a bit of a problem, since, as you may recall, Paula had suggested I leave all that behind, and let Peace Corps get it later. Well, that wasn’t the official administration position, which said that if I couldn’t produce those things, they wouldn’t clear me to leave. Fortunately, however, there was a Peace Corps truck up in the north of the country at that very moment, and with a little bit of legwork I managed to get them to go by my house and pick up the necessary items. (They arrived on Thursday, and I bit my nails until then. But everything, eventually, was accounted for.) Can I suggest a title for the next Harry Potter, if there is one? “Harry Potter and the Logistics of Departure” has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? It’s clearly a real page-turner.

That day was the prototype of my remaining time in Togo. I sat down in the air-conditioned volunteer lounge, chose an interesting-looking book (including ‘Equus’ and ‘The Night Manager’), and divided my time between reading, working on my departure checklist, and playing around online. Aside from the two computers in the other room, they had recently installed a DSL line into the lounge, and anyone with a laptop could plug in. This was the fastest internet I’d had since arriving in Togo, of course, and I made constant use of it. Other volunteers came and went, sometimes bearing food, and most had already heard why I was there. Those that hadn’t were sure to ask, and I had the same short conversation about my departure several times every day.

Towards the end of the afternoon, I got a phone call from an apologetic Paula.

“I’m sorry, Andy, but since you’re not sick or anything, um, and we have some sick people coming in, well …”

“I need to stay somewhere else?”

“Yeah. Rose will make you dinner tonight, but then you’ll have to go stay at a hotel.”

This wasn’t really a problem for me, though I was disappointed about no longer getting to stay free, and get Rose’s terrific meals, now that she was back from vacation. Wherever I stayed, I would get reimbursed, of course, but not paying in the first place made it a lot easier. So after dinner that night at the medical unit I packed up my backpack and headed a few blocks up the road to Chez Mammy, the cheapest hostel in the neighborhood. It’s cheap because the rooms are shared, because the place is none too clean, and because, well, it’s basically a flophouse, though that isn’t always evident. Mammy is a sweet, and ancient, Vietnamese lady who somehow landed in Togo many years ago and built a life for herself here, and she is always pleased to greet volunteers who stay with her rather than in the nicer, but more expensive (and not fully reimbursed) rooms at Chez Lianne or My Diana’s Guesthouse the next block over. I signed in there, got myself a space in a two-bed room (I seemed to be one of the only guests, so I had the room to myself), and headed back to the office to see if anyone was interested in dinner.

Todd and his brother, and Anne and her sister (who had also just arrived) were game, so we headed up to Greenfield’s, a pizza restaurant in the north of the city. We had some terrific food and came back, and late that night, as I headed back to Mammy’s, I saw a European or American guy a block or so ahead of me, with a Togolese woman on his arm. They were weaving unsteadily up the street, and hanging on to each other, and they turned in at Mammy’s. I smiled to myself, and resolved to give them five minutes or so, to make sure they’d gotten to where they were going before I came inside.

III.

Part of the final medical exam involved some blood and stool tests, which in the past were done in-place at the Medical Unit. The reason for this was that the Peace Corps and the U.S. Embassy in Lomé shared a medical staff, so we had a small lab and a tech onsite. Due to a reorganization of the medical facilities, however, this was no longer the case. In December the Embassy moved into a new building on the outskirts of Lomé, and was therefore too far away for it to make sense for them to share our medical facilities. As such they were in the middle of separating the Peace Corps and Embassy medical staff in January, and an upshot to that was that our lab tech, Ernest, had gone off to the new Embassy medical office.

Thus it was that Wednesday morning, I hopped into a Peace Corps Land Cruiser, stopped at the Medical Unit for a sealed bag labeled ‘Medical Samples for Ernest’, and rode out to the Lomé II district (no, I don’t know why it’s called that) on the north end of town. The old embassy was in the middle of downtown Lomé, near the Grand Marché, but apparently due to overcrowding and security concerns they built this brand new embassy in the middle of nowhere. It’s one of the first American embassies to come out under the new ‘Standard Embassy Design’, which is apparently a blueprint template for all new embassies. Someone told me this was the smallest of three SED designs, and even so it’s far too big for a small embassy like Togo. It’s six or seven stories high, and sprawls over several acres on a much larger plot of land surrounded by chain-link fence topped with razor wire. We passed the first checkpoint on the road, and the driver dropped me off at the main security entrance.
I went inside, and after some confusion between explaining that I needed to go to the medical office, and that no, I didn’t know what was in the medical samples bag, and I’d really rather not find out, I went through the metal detector, the bag went through the X-ray, and I was allowed into the compound. I then crossed a wide plaza, which was still mostly unlandscaped, as various Togolese construction workers carted bricks and potted trees around. So far I hadn’t seen a single American -- all of the guards so far were Togolese security guards.

I entered the main building and found myself at another security desk. Unlike at the metal detectors, this guard greeted me in English, and was able to find Ernest immediately and give him a call. I also found out that I had been given the run-around at the first checkpoint because someone had neglected to put me on the expected visitors list. I made a mental note to tell Paula the procedure still had some glitches.

Ernest arrived, disembarrassed me of my bag that was almost certainly full of stool samples, and I signed into the embassy proper with the first American I’d seen so far: one of about half a dozen Marines stationed to guard the embassy. We emerged into a tremendous atrium that went up several stories to no-doubt empty offices, and took a side hallway into the medical facility. I had my blood drawn with a minimum of fuss, and said hello to the receptionist who I remembered from the Medical Unit. I retrieved my cell phone from the security post on my way out, and headed back into the city.

Early that afternoon, I finally managed to sit down with George, the Country Director, to formally resign and to have a chat about my experiences, my reasons for leaving, and so on. He, too, was on his way out, and was about a month or so from his own departure. While I wasn’t expecting recrimination or belittlement, of course, I was still taken aback at how sympathetic he was. Of course, having been with the Peace Corps for some time, I wasn’t the first early terminee he had spoken with, and he clearly understood both my frustration and my reasons for deciding to resign. After a short discussion, we wished each other the best of luck, and that was that.

After talking to George, I continued to work on the departure checklist Delphine had given me, and tried to finish up my site report and service descriptions for Alex. Part of the way through the afternoon, the power went out -- this happened daily in Lome -- and this time the office generator didn’t kick in. The temperature in the volunteer lounge, without the constant whir of the air conditioners, quickly grew unbearable. George came in and apologized. Apparently the generators had broken down, so it was going to be a while before we got the power back.

Suddenly, a lot of volunteers decided they had better places to be than hanging around in the sweltering heat of the lounge, especially without working internet access. I, of course, had nothing better to do. I settled down with a book to wait it out. I had to wait a while, but around nightfall the power kicked back on -- city power, not the generator.

On Thursday, I was finally ready to go to the bank and close out my account. That morning, with some other documents I needed to work on, Delphine gave me a letter that I had to give to the bank manager in order to get them to cut the red tape and give me my money back. It was around lunchtime when I was ready to leave the air-conditioned comfort of the volunteer lounge and take a walk to the Circulaire, where the nearest office of UTB was located. In fact, it was the headquarters, and one of the few buildings in Lomé taller than 4 stories. Before walking over, I asked one of the security guards if they’d be open over lunch, and he assured me they would.

“Most places close over lunch, are you sure they’ll be open?”
“Yes, I know a volunteer who went during lunch a few days ago and it was fine.”

I arrived and, of course, they had closed for lunch. I asked a guard at one of the gates, who told me they’d be open in about 45 minutes, so I decided that rather than walking back, then back here again later, I’d just wait. I leaned against the fence, facing the Circulaire, and settled down to wait. I took the opportunity to send a few text messages to ensure the few volunteers who hadn’t already heard I was quitting knew what was going on, and amused myself by watching car after car try to take a left turn into constant oncoming traffic. There were no accidents, though I’d counted at least a dozen close calls, by the time 1:30 rolled around and people began to converge on the bank building from all directions.

Inside the bank building was no evidence of a bank branch, just a typical office lobby. I asked at the front desk, and they pointed me back outside, and next door, to the smaller attached building labeled ‘Western Union’. (Well, of course that’s where the bank is.)

There were three more security guards lounging just inside. I explained briefly my reasons for coming, and he pointed me towards the offices in the back of the building. “Go see the director of accounts.”

I found the name I was looking for, and stepped inside a small office with a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf and a computer that appeared to date to 1990 or so. Behind the desk was a well-fed Togolese executive in a smart suit. I handed him my letter, which he opened and gravely perused.

“You’re Mr. Magnusson?” I allowed as to how I might be. “And you’re leaving?” He was on a roll. “Just a moment.” He turned to his computer, and tapped laboriously away at the keyboard for a few moments. Soon enough the dot matrix printer began to chatter away, and he pulled the sheet free.

“This is your balance,” he said. “And this is the closing fee.” After the fee ($5), I had approximately 500 000 FCFA, which is about $1000. I blinked, and he went on. “Go back out front, and I’ll give you what you need to get your money.” He stood up, and I preceded him out of the room. I looked back and forth along the hallway, at a bit of a loss. He gestured again towards the left.
“Go back into the lobby.” I shrugged and headed out. I loitered around in the middle of the room until I saw the director come into one of the teller areas to my right. He beckoned me over and handed me the form, then gestured to the teller line. “Get your money there.” Without another word, he turned and disappeared back into the hallway.

I went to the first available teller and retrieved my money, less 5 FCFA, since the teller claimed not to have any 5 franc coins. I now had a thousand dollars in cash, and I carefully secreted it all in various pockets about my person. I was wearing my black fatigues, so I had plenty of pockets, but I still felt very self-conscious first in stashing the money, then in walking the fifteen minutes back to the Peace Corps office. But I arrived back alive, and the only major issue was that by the time I got back, the rice lady across the street from the office had closed for the day and I couldn’t get myself a good, cheap lunch.

That evening I was hanging around the volunteer lounge -- as usual -- when Pete came in with his father and brother. As they had just arrived from the airport, what better place to go than the bar? I accompanied them on the short walk up the road to the Regent, a volunteer favorite, where we sat down in easy chairs with a few beers and ordered some dinner. A little while later George showed up, and joined us for a few drinks. As he talked, I realized something. This was my last night in Togo -- the next evening I’d be around, of course, but not for the night -- and I was spending it just like the first night: at the Regent, talking to George, and going to stay at Mammy’s afterward. Was it an appropriate bookend? Irony? Or just a reflection on how small Lomé, and specifically the part of it that the Peace Corps is familiar with, really is?

Friday, I had just one objective remaining before I flew out that evening: to change that 500 000 francs into dollars. I’d heard bad stories about the bank conversion rates, and there was always the danger of getting cheated by the black-market moneychangers along the roads in the banking district. I asked around the office, and someone gave me the phone number of an honest money-changer who would come to the office and change it for me here. I called the number, and wouldn’t you know it, he denied knowing anything about changing money. In fact, he seemed insulted that I would even suggest such a thing. Well, maybe he didn’t trust me, or his phone was being tapped. Who knows, but I still had my problem. So I asked a few volunteers, and someone gave me another number. This time the person at the other end was willing to admit that he might be able to help me, so we made a deal on the exchange rate, his cut, and he promised to come by in a few hours.

By that afternoon, I had almost $1000 in cash, plus a few thousand francs. This, of course, didn’t stop all the other volunteers from suggesting I buy them dinner, so eventually I caved and went to the Galion with Eric, who had trained with me, and Olga and Lolo, two volunteers I’d only met that morning. It was a tasty restaurant, with various European foods, and even a little bit of Vietnamese mixed in, and, amazingly, Castel (a common Togolese beer) available on draft, which was actually several steps better than the bottled version. I paid for some of their dinner, and we headed back, since I had to meet the Peace Corps driver around nine o’clock to go to the airport.

IV.

Eric helped me lug my backpack, duffel, and suitcase into the back of the Peace Corps vehicle, then prevailed on the driver to take a picture of us together. I bid him farewell, and climbed in beside the driver. He honked, the guards opened the large door to the street, and we drove out into the darkness of Kodjoviakopé. There was a surprising amount of traffic on the roads, especially considering most of the city was experiencing yet another blackout and there was no light beyond the headlights on the road and dimly-glimpsed fires in courtyards and trash-strewn vacant lots.

We arrived at the airport, and as soon as I jumped down and we opened the back door to get my luggage, a half-dozen Togolese fellows converged on the car to carry my bags. I chose one mostly because he had a jaunty official-looking cap on, and he followed me inside and pointed me in the right direction to check in. The airport was nearly deserted at this hour, so I paid him 200 francs (the only coin I had left in my pocket) and checked in at the Air France counter, then tried to figure out where to go next. With no other travelers, and no clear signs, this was no easy task, but I finally decided to head over to where several security guards were lounging around, guessing (correctly, as it turned out) that the metal detectors, and hence the departure area, couldn’t be far from them.

The concourse I passed through was like a European or American airport in (deserted) miniature, with several shuttered glass-fronted gift shops of various kinds, and one lonely folk art vendor who tried mightily to get me to spend some of my remaining money. I came to the gate area, which was a football-field-sized room that was empty except for me, 2 or 3 other European travelers dozing in chairs, and a couple of Togolese. One was working a small bar near the restrooms, and the other quickly approached me as I came in.

“Are you American? Can I trade you francs for these dollars?” He pulled out a scruffy five-dollar bill, and I agreed to give him 2 500 F for it, without inquiring where he’d gotten his hands on it. This diminished my supply of francs to somewhere around 10 000, which was plenty, I decided, to bring home as souvenirs.

I sat down on a leather couch to the side of the single gate, and opened my book to pass the time. Over the next hour and a half or so about two dozen more travelers filtered in, mostly Europeans but with a few African faces mixed in, including one gentleman in the most stylish white suit (and white leather boots) I’d ever seen, and I allowed myself to hope for a very empty plane and space to stretch out. This was not to be, however, as the plane came in soon after, disgorged 20 or 30 passengers, and took us up. It had just arrived from somewhere else in Africa -- Accra, perhaps, but I don’t quite recall -- and most of the passengers were headed on to Paris, so we entered an already mostly-full plane and filled it up completely ourselves. I sat down next to a taciturn man who I believe was Dutch, and tried to stay awake until dinner was served about an hour later. Once this was done, I closed my eyes and tried to get some rest.

I must have finally dropped off somewhere between the Sahara and Paris, because I opened my eyes to see all the cabin lights dimmed and lights visible in the darkness outside. A quick glance at the map on the monitor in front of me told me that we were crossing the Pyrenees and had just entered France. I blinked, but the view from the slightly frosted window didn’t change. In the otherwise-unbroken blackness, where it was impossible to distinguish mountain from plain from overcast sky, there were patches of glowing crimson scattered across the landscape, like dying coals in a fireplace. As I watched they glimmered and shone, and eventually I stopped trying to make sense of them and closed my eyes again. There was still another hour or more to Paris, and I needed some sleep.


And that was that; I’m sure nobody needs to hear about my ‘adventures’ in the airports of Europe. I came home, I readjusted, and I found a good job at a startup in Lexington, MA. I’m living in Somerville with my brother, which is an adventure, and like I said before, Togo is starting to feel like a dream, or maybe a not-very-original novel that I remember reading some time ago. I’ll probably continue occasionally posting things to far-togo.blogspot.com as I remember them, or as the statute of limitations runs out, but this is the last email update.

Thanks to the other volunteers in Togo, to Tchilalo, to Christophe and Hilaire, to Steven, to Marjie and Alex, and to Mensah and Joe. Thanks to my friends and family, who made the hard decision to come home a little easier, and supported me every step of the way. Special thanks to Essolina, the little girl who lived across the street and promised to weed my courtyard for 200 francs (paid in advance) and never showed up, and to Abdel Rachid, who never came back with the 1500 francs in change for the 2000 F I trusted him with. You guys rock!

Finally, I’d like to thank you all for your continued attention, and I hope that my solemn vow that this is in fact THE END will be sufficient payment.

Encore les photos

OK, this is probably my last post about photographs. Some time ago now, I put all my Togo pictures online here, so go take a look if you haven't already. Heck, maybe someday I'll even put in some proper captions.

Update 7/10/07: Sorry, but my friend Mike has decided that the insane amount of vulnerabilities in Gallery software, as well as the maintenance time required to keep it running, were getting to be too much for him to continue hosting photos for friends. I'll see what I can do about getting them up elsewhere.

Peace Corps Update #17 (part 1)

Well, I must apologize. This has been a very long time in coming, and I've been busy. But I guess it's finally time to sit down and get it all out, especially before my memory starts to fade. Well, to be more accurate, before it fades more than it already has. My whole time in Togo has, in a lot of ways, begun to feel like something that happened to me many years ago, rather than something I was still doing a few months ago. So let's look back to just about three months ago: January 14th.

After a Friday morning phone conversation with Paula, the new medical officer (Godspeed, Marjie, wherever you may be), I packed my bags and prepared to take the Lomé Limo down to the big city for a few days. The Limo is a rented 15-place bush taxi that the Peace Corps sends on a trip from Lomé to Dapaong and back again twice a month, so that volunteers can have a free and relatively safe ride if they need to travel. It's usually pretty empty, but sometimes -- around swearing-in, for instance -- when lots of volunteers are traveling, it can get busy, so it's necessary to call Delphine at the Peace Corps office to make a reservation. I tried emailing her once, but I had to call up later to actually confirm that I was reserved, so this time I just called to reserve my spot.

I had managed to reduce my belongings to the bags I had originally arrived with: one large rolling suitcase, a gym bag, and a backpack. The gym bag and backpack were no problem to walk with -- obviously I couldn't ride my bike! -- but what was I going to do with the suitcase? Walking the mile or two down to the road, then up to the Bar Safari, would probably ruin the wheels on the suitcase. I thought about a few options -- trying to carry it, hiring a kid to carry it, hiring a kid to find a cart to carry it -- and finally decided on the easiest solution: I asked Florian to deal with it. Florian and Benjamin, as volunteers for Plan, had been issued a Yamaha motorcycle. This alone made them fairly unique, as the Yamahas are head and shoulders above the typical Chinese-made motos cruising around Togo. No, more than that. They're head, shoulders, knees and toes above the Chinese pieces of junk, which cost $500-$600 new and seem to last for only a few months before breaking down. At any rate, it's made to have room for two passengers, so I thought he might be able to lash it on the back with a rope or bungee cord, and it should stay long enough for him to get down to the bar.

Well, rope was nowhere to be found, and I only had one bungee cord. It wasn't even mine, in fact: I'd borrowed it from Netta's saddlebag during the AIDS Ride -- she didn't go, but her bike and saddlebags did -- and never given it back. But that didn't stop me from offering it to Florian, who (with the aid of a bemused-looking Togolese who was just passing by) managed to wrap it around the suitcase once or twice and find a few places on the bike where the cord could be hooked. It didn't look too secure, to be honest, but we were getting ever closer to the arrival time of the limo, so he said he'd give it a try.

"I'll go down the hospital road," he said. "It should be a little less bumpy."

He slowly eased the bike into gear and rolled quickly out of sight towards the hospital. Joelle and I took a final look around, put all of my Peace Corps-issued stuff together (Paula told me someone would come and get it), and locked my front door for the last time. I handed my keys to her, and something I'd said so many months ago went through my head again.

"Just the simple experience of walking around without any keys in my pocket was deeply weird, and really brought the whole thing home to me in a way that nothing else had to that point. I hadn't realized that just the weight of keys, and what that weight represents, had become so important to my life, but there you go. Not anymore, I guess."

We walked down toward the street, and already I felt a heavy weight lifting from my heart. I hadn't yet decided for sure what I was going to do once I got to Lomé -- Paula had, officially, just suggested I come down to talk, and said it might be a good idea if I bring my things, 'just in case' -- but when I realized how much better I was feeling at the prospect of going home, I knew I had, in fact, already made up my mind. Something that had been floating around in my head surfaced again, and I turned to Joelle.

"You know what this feels like? Breaking up." I wasn't sure she followed, so I elaborated. It was like being in Togo was a relationship, I said. Things were great at first, we were in a honeymoon period for a while, but eventually things settled down and I began to see the problems. Togo snored. Togo didn't put on makeup anymore. You get the picture. And then I got angry at Togo, wondering why it wasn't the kind of place I thought it was, or should be, not understanding that it wasn't there to change itself for me, that's not what relationships are about. And now that I'd made up my mind to break up -- I wasn't angry anymore. Instead, I was sorrowful, but determined to keep moving ahead.

"And besides," Joelle added, "Do you really want to wake up every morning next to Togo?"

We made it to the Route without seeing a crashed motorcycle with a bleeding German next to it, and as we approached the Bar Safari we saw his moto parked outside. I heaved a sigh of relief and we went inside, where Florian was sitting and glowering at a Coke.

"So you made it!" I said. He glared at me.

"Barely. The cord broke just as I was stopping." He handed me the bungee cord, which had lost one of its hooked ends. (Sorry, Netta.) "I was lucky it didn't happen while I was driving down the street."

I paid for his drink and told him to get another, which he did, slightly mollified. I pulled out my camera, and took a few pictures, as did Joelle. I asked Florian to take a picture of us two together, which he did -- we stood in front of the display of new and used clothing that's in the sitting area of the Safari, like some kind of demented Wal-Mart. We drank our sodas -- I was hoping for a pamplemousse, but they were out -- and chatted, and I waited with increasing impatience for the van to arrive. One hour passed, then two, and we were all getting hungry. The omelet sandwich guy was just across the street, but when we asked him about making us some, he replied sadly that eggs were nowhere to be found in Sotouboua that particular day. "Well," he amended, "one guy will sell them to me, but at three times the normal price. I won't do that."

So we made peace with our hunger, until Florian mentioned that he'd seen sausages for sale at another bar down the street. "They're some of those pre-cooked ones," he said. I offered to pay if he'd go get a package, so he headed off and I hoped that the van wouldn't arrive before he returned. It didn't, and he came in triumphantly waving a package of -- well, they weren't sausages, but rather some fairly sorry-looking hot dogs. (Stupid German language, where 'würst' can mean sausages and hot dogs.) But the package was sealed, and cold, so we dug in greedily.

During this time, I had been trying to get in touch with Steven Djoteng ('Steven the security guy', as everyone calls him) to see if he could figure out where the Limo was. His phone kept going to voicemail, so finally I left him a message. Around the time the hot dogs showed up, he called me back. The van was running a little late, and should be there soon. No problem, I said. I figured there must have been a lot of people riding it today for it to get so late, and mentally prepared myself for a fairly cramped ride south. Then the van pulled up just outside, empty.

Okay.

I threw my bags in, chose a comparatively comfortable seat two rows back from the driver and his apprentice (who looked to be at least as old as the driver himself), waved a final farewell to Joelle, Florian, and Sotouboua, and we were on our way!

For safety, accountability, and goodness knows what other reasons, a sign-up sheet is passed around the Limo every time it picks up people. If your name is on the list, then your spot is reserved, and you have to sign in. If your name isn’t on it, you’re SOL unless there’s a free space you can write yourself in. In this case I had no trouble, since I was the only one onboard aside from the two Togolese gents in the front, and a quick glance at the signup sheet told me that only one more person was expected: Shelly, who would be getting on at Atakpamé, the next stop, about two hours down the road. This was good news: I’d have some time to myself to mull over my coming decision, but at the same time there would be someone to talk to before too long, so I wouldn’t get too bored during the 5+ hours onboard. I plugged in my ipod, shifted around on the seat until I found a position that was a little less uncomfortable than the others, and settled in for a long ride of staring out the window and thinking.

Ten minutes later, I was ready for company.

Thirty minutes later, I started trying to take pictures out the window. Most of them came out blurred. But since it was the middle of Harmattan season, everything beyond a hundred yards or so off the road was swathed in a heavy fog (that is, dust cloud) anyway, so it didn’t matter much. The sun was invisible, only detectable in the bone-white sky as a point that hurt the eyes.

An hour after that, I was counting the number of spiderwebbed windshields that we passed. I lost track pretty quickly. I had the volume all the way up on my ipod, and I could barely hear it over the roar of the engine and the scream of bald tires on worn asphalt.

Finally, the territory ahead grew hilly, and the sides of the highway grew more and more thickly encrusted with shack-based business endeavors. We passed a gas station. Though the dust was still thick, and I couldn’t see it ahead, I knew we were coming up to Atakpamé. The national highway skirts the city, which is built much like a medieval walled city, sans wall. It perches precariously on the side of a hill, overlooking the plains to the north and the massifs to the west and east, and no major roads go into the city itself.

To pick up passengers, the limo comes off the highway and jolts up a road that might be charitably described as paved, turning onto a relatively well-maintained street and stopping at the ‘K-fête’ (cafête, or cafeteria), a restaurant, of sorts, that’s inexplicably a volunteer favorite. (You may remember one of my earlier letters from training describing how a restaurant completely forgot my chicken dinner. That was the K-fête.)

At least, that’s how it’s supposed to go. We followed the highway around Atakpamé, and headed south. At first I thought that we were taking another route, perhaps a smoother one, into the city, but as the city receded behind us I began to wonder if the drivers knew something I didn’t.

“Excuse me?” No answer.

“Excuse me?” Louder, this time. The apprentice turned around.

“Weren’t we picking someone up in Atakpamé? I saw a name on the list.”

The apprentice pulled out the list, looked at it, and passed it to the driver. There was a brief conversation in Ewé, then we swerved to the shoulder, turned around, and headed back toward the city. You owe me, Shelly, I said to myself.

We turned off to the main city road, which winds up the hill, past the new Red Cross headquarters, a very 70s-looking cathedral, and the taxi station, and turned off onto the bumpy road to the cafeteria. Volunteers load and unload here, but today there were no white faces in evidence. But we pulled over to see, and after a moment a Togolese man ran over.

“Peace Corps? I didn’t know if you were even coming!” By this time we were over 2 hours behind schedule. “Shelly said I could take her place.”

There was a little more hurried conversation between the driver and the apprentice, and after a moment they let the newcomer come aboard. He introduced himself as Shelly’s homologue. “She’s already in Lomé, or maybe already gone,” he explained. “She’s taking a trip.” Though the whole van was empty, he sat directly behind me and leaned forward, resting his forearms where my neck wanted to be and offending my sense of personal space. Oh yeah. This was gonna be fun.

I pulled out my phone and sent Shelly a text message. “Where are you and who’s this guy taking your place?”

She wrote back after a little while. “Lome. He’s my homologue, he’s harmless.”

After a few uncomfortable minutes, he sat back in his seat, we made some small talk, and I put my headphones back on. It was getting dark now, as it was coming up on 5 PM, and in the late afternoon, dusty gloom I kept seeing small figures approach the road as we passed, waving what looked like small, irregularly-shaped boards at us. I looked closer at them as we passed, and suddenly I figured it out. These women -- for they were all women -- were hawking bush rat at us. Yes, on the verge of my departure from Togo, I was finally seeing bush rat. (On a brief side note: this may not have been the first, but only the first conscious sighting of agouti. More than once, after all, I’d had meat that wasn’t very well explained to me. When I asked what it was, the only answer was a vague wave and ‘oh, from the bush’. Good eatin’!) The corpses were stretched out, with their limbs in an X shape like they were reenacting the crucifixion of St. Andrew, and flattened until they resembled nothing so much as miniature trophy rugs. Whatever they’d done to them made the critters rigid, too -- they held them by one leg and waved them at us as we passed by.

A little later, after I’d wrapped my head around the agouti-rugs, a group of men stepped into the road near us, one of them holding what I at first thought was a dead cat, with one hand under the chin and the other supporting its body. A little more thought, and a careful review of what I’d actually seen in that brief glimpse, convinced me that it, too, was agouti, only this time not stretched and smoked. Why the men hawked the raw product, while the women sold the processed version, isn’t clear to me, but maybe those men had just come from a rat hunt. Who knows?

Watch out for Part 2 in the ... future.

Why I Really Left Togo

The teeth! Dear sweet Jesus, the teeth!

Resignation Letter to PCVs

This is the letter I sent to my stagemates and a number of other volunteers upon my decision to resign.

To my friends and colleagues:

As of 16 January 2006, I have terminated my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo. I'll be flying home to Massachusetts on Friday, 19 January. I apologize that I've not been able to speak to you all personally, but perhaps this letter will help explain my actions.

As you perhaps know, I was in high spirits through stage and the first months at post. I knew from the outset where I would be posted, and I was excited to begin teaching Steven's computer classes and find other ways to work with ICT. Around the beginning of November, however, things changed for the worse. As I've described it to some of you, I woke up one morning on the wrong side of the bed, and since then I've been trying in vain to regain the right side. It started when I noticed I was suddenly much more sensitive to the small irritations of being a volunteer in Togo — the lateness, the terrible drivers, the children calling yovo, ansai, and so on — than I'd ever been before. Until then I'd been able to let all of this run off my back, but suddenly I was unable to do so, and every time I went outside I'd be choking back annoyance and even anger. Feeling this way was very upsetting to me — I know I'm not like that, angry and even paranoid all the time — but because I couldn't change it, I started to feel depressed when I wasn't cursing under my breath at children.

I've tried many things to help lift this mood and return me to my former equanimity. I stopped teaching computer classes at PLAN, hoping that a change of projects would give me the motivation to get back on my feet. I switched from mefloquine to doxycycline just in case it was chemically induced. I travelled to Lomé to get out of town for a while. I waited expectantly for the arrival of my new sitemate, thinking that a nearby companion would help me see things in a new light. Yet none of these attempts ended in success, and it's now been over two months of consistent unhappiness. I can't be an effective volunteer under these conditions, and I'm not doing myself, the Peace Corps, or Togo any favors by staying out of a sense of duty or stubbornness.

Therefore, after consultation with the Peace Corps Togo administration, I made the difficult decision to resign from service.

I hope to remain in contact with you, however, for though I was unable to make a workable service for myself, I remain very fond of all of you, and of Togo. You can email me at a.magnusson@gmail.com, or andy@mysteriis.org, and my permanent webspace is at http://www.mysteriis.org . Please keep in touch, and let me know how things go for you. If you're ever in my neck of the woods, I'd love to meet for a drink.

Finally, I want to thank you all for your companionship through the months that I was in Togo, both in stage and after swearing-in. Your friendship and support meant, and still mean, the world to me, and I will remember them always.

Yours,
Andy Magnusson

PS. If you hear any wild rumors about why I resigned, I encourage you to perpetuate them. You're likewise encouraged to come up with your own wild rumors. My only request is that you keep me apprised if any particularly interesting ones come up. Thanks!

A few photos

Me surrounded by Tchilalo's family-ish unit. Only the little kid (and maybe the old lady) are actually related to her.

The famous (or something) baobab-with-notch-cut-from-trunk outside my house.

And, finally, the obligatory bougainvillea shot. That thing is vigorous.