July 19

So many things crammed into a day. Once again, things want to come out in mixed up jumbo that won't make much sense. Mama is a retired mid-wife. She is also loud, bossy, brash, and all sorts of things that perhaps only someone who has loved Grandma Paulson dearly could also adore Mama. This morning as I came out of my room into the courtyard there were people I had never seen before waiting for Mama to return from mass. Strangers in the courtyard are nothing unusual so I greeted them blearily and perfunctorily and went about my morning business. He was in his 20's or 30's and she was bent over on the stoop, quite quiet and perhaps in pain. After dressing and sitting down to eat breakfast, they were also in the room (the only common room) across from me. Mama had returned and came out of her bedroom with a tiny first aid kit and led them into this other room that I thought was for grain storage, no one ever goes in there.

Mama comes back after a few minutes, chats about random things for a bit. I was trying not to be nosy but couldn't help it any longer "was everything OK?" I asked. She told me they had come from far, she was 5 months pregnant and the baby was "rotten" or "spoiled" (I'm translating from broken French, but that's some word you use for food gone bad). The mother had malaria and something was wrong. There was nothing I could do and I was late for lessons. Mama said she fixed it, the baby's OK now. Class was a nightmare this morning, luckily I talked to you all, so was riding high from all of that and preparations for post visit and the big conference tomorrow where we meet the Togolese counterparts we work with for the next 2 years, so it completely slipped my mind. We had the afternoon free so instead of going home like normal, we went to Kpalime for post-visit shopping, french fry eating and internet time. Coming home I want to show the family the African dress I bought for tomorrow. It's always a game to ask what Mama would have paid for something and then tell her what I paid. There's usually a huge "yovo" markup, but I am a fierce bargainer and a little local language goes a long way. I show my dress, model them for the crowd in the courtyard, you know loud fun brou-ha-ha. I take a bucket bath, come out and Mama is shouting to Ama (10 year old host sister) to bring her bleach and soap. Since Mama yelling to Ama to bring her something is by no means unusual, I stand beside her and make fun of her. Then I realize there is a hurried air that is quite unusual, I ask what's happening. She looks at me and says "the child has left" I'm thinking she's talking about her 40 year old party boy son Jean who just left the courtyard and ask "Who? Jean? He'll be back soon, he's always leaving", "no, no Louise, the baby was rotten, it's gone now." "What? What are you saying?". "It's finished, the mother is resting." Mama is laughing at the obvious shock and horror on my face and my stumbling, stumbling questions. "Louise, what's your problem, it was rotten, now it's gone, everything is fine." I walk around the courtyard in a daze. "But Mama, this is serious, it's sad....." Everyone is staring at me as if I am from another planet. "But Mama, can I do anything?" "Louise, do what? The work is finished. And what do you want to do? What can you do?" All of this is said with total bemusement, laughter, and surprise at my reaction. Everyone else is either laughing at me (not meanly, the " the yovo is so funny and strange" laugh) or going about their business. I am trying to eat and write this at the same time. They are serious about feeding their yovos here.

And all I can think of is hospitals, pre-natal care, malaria medicine, pre-mies that make it and the casualness of death here. They don't have the luxury of mourning every death.

OK, now I think I am going to lose it. No less than 5 minutes after I wrote the above, Kokou (host -brother-30's) stole a cigarette from Mama (jokingly-right in front of her), she also joking, yells "thief, thief" in Ewe, then they tell me that if a thief gets caught they throw a tire around their neck, fill it with gas, and light it on fire. Just thought you'd want to know. I mean , WOW!

No time to close properly. All is great. Off for a week at my new post in Notse. Wish me luck. I love you all and miss America!!

Love,

Heather

July 8th

So once again so many things are happening, it is hard to know where to start. Sometimes it is easier to start with the most recent and work backwards until I reach the time frame where I left off in my last letter. That may be optimistic that I will even be able to order things in such a linear fashion, but I will do my best. Then again, if jumbled up, mixed around time sense worked for Sartre and Faulkner, it can work for me.

As I may have mentioned earlier, I walk or ride my bike next to a busy road to go to lessons every day at least 4 times a day. To get to my house, I turn right on a dirt road, past the miller on the left, sound the community water pump, make a right and go into my courtyard.

The miller is the point of this story today. He truly is an extraordinary man. Most of you know how I feel about overly enthusiastic born- again. Christian types, but the miller really was alive with joy. He appreciated every single day fully. When going through our salutations in a mixture of French & Ewe, he never gave the traditional responses, but would say "Today is the most beautiful day, I am alive, you are alive, we are smiling, the children and goats are here. Look around us , today is a joyous day. I am full of the spirit of God, he is with me and I am happy" None of this was by rote and his face would shine with the meaning of his words. He was one of those people you could see from a mile off who was simply good deep inside and it radiated out to everyone around him.. He would sing as he ground the corn people brought him, over the deafening clatter of his mill breathing in the flour in the air.

Since I don't have a host father, as I adopted Dr. Bug as my grandfather, I asked him to be my father here. Thenceforth I addressed him as "mon pere". I would practically bow everyday to him because it just seemed right. He was an integral part of my day and he knew my schedule and would wait at the window for me and would know if I was late.This weekend our town was completely turned upside down with funeral of some important man in town. Tons of people from Lome were here and the streets were lined with new Mercedes and BMWs (can you freakin believe that? In one of the poorest countries in the world. These people may as well have been from Mars). There were also raggedy specially hired buses everywhere and our town was turning into a bush taxi stop as well. The streets were crowded with people wearing their best pagne (crazy colorful local cloth) suits- families would have their outfits cut from the same matching pagne. Now coming from Baltimore, I have seen some crazy African hairstyles with extensions and what not, but the hairstyles of every woman this weekend were extraordinary! Everyone from town was looking spiffy too, but you could tell the Lome-ers from the local from a mile away. The Lome women could wear make-up like we're used to and in a mainly subtle fashion. The local women I see everyday had lipstick on their eyelids and eyeshadow on their lips. The local men are mainly respectful, friendly, and non-threatening, the Lome men hissed and shouted "yovo" (foreigner in Ewe- we get called that at least 20 times a day). That's OK because when you respond back in Ewe and make joke they fall out of their seats on the side of the road in shock and the women literally roar with laughter ( and I like to think respect too), whatever- yovo-1 Lomer-zero.

So when I didn't see the miller working on Friday I assumed that he had to do something with the funeral and a cousin or some such was filling in. We also got our posts assigned that day, so I had a lot going on. Saturday comes and I have class then go to Kpalime to try internet again and buy pagne. I come home late and sleep at school to watch movies.

I woke up this morning immediately realizing I haven't seen mon pere for 2 days and vow to ask someone where he is. Well, he died this morning, to make a very long story short. My family only found out about 1/2 hour before I asked. Of course I burst into tears and ask if I can visit his family, where will the funeral be, etc. etc.

So my family takes me up the road, through some cornfields and winding paths to the miller's house. There are about 20-30 people sitting on stools and benches under the trees and wife sitting on the steps surrounded by women and family. Some people are sobbing and wailing. I'm trying to hold back tears because I'm not sure if it's ok that a yovo who they've only know for a month is crying. My family leads me to her, I give her my condolences, crying, and we hug and cry for a bit. Then they lead me inside to see his corpse laid out and shrouded. He just looks asleep, but I can see a huge lump which must be a hernia of some sort. They said he had it for a long time, but couldn't afford the surgery to fix it. I gave the wife some money to get his body taken back to his native village and we sit back under the trees and cry.

There are so many thins I could say about mon pere, thank god we got our picture taken together just 3 days ago. I really did love him.. This type of thing is what keeps me here when the petty things are tough. If I can help create sustainable businesses that employ people then those people can afford surgery.

There's so much more to share about life here, but this time I will give the miller his due respect and end here.

Thank you and I miss you all.

Love Always,

Heather

Request

Sean- If you know of some sort of laptop cover that would have been useful in the dusty season in Afghanistan, please send as I will be working during a similar dusty season with winds off of the Sahara. Also reserch project for Fells Point crew, Dr. Nikolov at Towson Dr. Tainson or Dr. Duncan can you please give him the blog address?), or if Javier knows anyone in Anthropology at Hopkins. I would like to read all available research and fieldwork on the Tamberma and also the Betamarimbe people in North East Togo and the latter in Northwest Benin. They live in the Tata Somba houses. Not only would I like to be well-informed in order to effectively and sensitively do my work, but also in my spare time see if I can add to the body of existing knowledge or a future PhD thesis of some sort. Please communicate through comments sections so there are no duplication of effort. It's OK if the sources are in French, but English is always preferable and I'll take what I can get. Also a small phonetics/linguistic book would help as the language I'll be learning is probably not written and is not used beyond the area. I would really appreciate as much help as possible as technology is beyond my grasp and academic libraries a long plane ride away. I know this is asking a lot. If the professors are helping maybe they could craft an assignment around it? If money is needed for shipping or book purchases, please contact my parents and consolidate effort there as well. I can't thank you enough. Hopefully, this will make my work more effective and also create sensitive tourism and approaches.

Love,

Heather

June 28th letter

It's 7:55 pm and I am in bed and was trying to sleep, but the singing evangelical miller who lives behind me is really going at it tonight. I swear to you his voice is just like Harry Belafonte's. It's lovely and the miller is so nice, I feel guilty putting my ear plugs in. Plus it is a bit early I suppose. A minute ago, I swear to you he was singing the Ewe version of the song that is something like "if you want to be happy for the rest of your life make an ugly woman your wife". It is cracking me up because the tune is the same (interspersed with breaks for evangelical shouting/praying/sermonizing- I know this because though I may not speak Ewe yet, beyond the basics, "Amen" and "Hallelujah" are universal) but sung in Ewe about being born again.

There are so many things here that tickle my funny bone and I think will sustain me while I am here. I have two more examples as well: I went to a wake the other night for someone in my family (extended- they live in the village, but not in my courtyard). Wakes are a really big deal here (aside - everyone gets their village name and their name tattooed to their forearm so if they die somewhere else they can be brought home for a proper burial. The girl that died had been in the hospital in Lome, so she was apparently brought back in a refrigerator in a pick up truck. Think about it- how else it going to happen? Thank god they had enough money for that). Anyway, the wake is supposed to be a joyous affair. We walk over at night, around 8. A rarity, it was my first time here out after dark. We come to a huge tree in the village with fluorescent lights hung from the branches, over 100 chairs set out, a big drumming and other percussion circle with singers, dancers, etc. There were a few speeches, but mainly songs sung by a group of special women, with men drumming. Then women from the audience would get up and dance in a circle around the drummers. All under a huge tree. Pretty freakin cool. Then they pass around plates for offering,then hand out candy. Or what I thought was candy until I put it in my mouth. COUGH DROPS.....Freaking cough drops?!?! Ahh, stuff like that takes you from be in sappily blissed out in your National Geographic moment to silently giggling at the incongruity of it all. I love this place.

The other funny thing is - you know the crazy colorful awesome African cloth I said everyone wears? Often it is abstract or pictorial in a way that you would imagine like flowers, or birds, or elephants. Well sometimes they depict other things like: drumsticks (as in chicken), sometimes the whole roast, sometimes TVs, toasters, cell phones. I saw a crisply pressed suit this morning with giant taxi stands on it. I'm talking street lamp, cobblestone, guy leaning against street lamp- all in fluorescent yellow, electric blue, vibrant orange etc. An entire suit! I bought one that looks like the inside of an ornate French cathedral, but I heard a rumor there exists ones with Saddam Hussein. I am SO on the lookout for that. Are you kidding me? A flirty dress copied from an Anthropologie catalog covered with Saddam Hussein with drumstick trim??? Seriously, I even have spies on the look out in Lome for especially weird ones.

So we got descriptions of the 19 posts the SED (small enterprise development) volunteers will be gong to at the end of training. I found one that my heart is set on- it is in the north (think hot, dry, dusty, but with baobab trees). There is a really traditional ethnic group called Tamberma who live in these amazing fortress crazy house/ hut things. UNESCO just dubbed it a world heritage site. It might be the only one in West Africa aside from Timbuktu. Google it for me. It is really remote for a SED post, but that's what I want. They are really independent and don't bother with the "Christian/Muslim during the day and traditional beliefs at night" idea the rest of the country has. They straight up have skulls hanging all over the place. You have to go 24K down an unpaved road to get there. I will work in trying to create tourism, support entrepreneurs, and work with micro- finance institutions. I hope I get it. I am already a "kiss-ass", but I am sucking up big time to be sure. By the time you get this, I'll already know. Got to go, it is late and mail pick-up is tomorrow. Write letters, send stuff don't forget me. Don't forget I love you.

Love Always,

Heather