Amerika!

Ok, I am home in the US and will therefore be hunting down the last several letters I sent home to post on here and pictures too. Yeah internet! It is quite odd to be here. I am happy to see my friends and family but already miss the sounds of fufu being prepared, the Fanmilk honk, people balaying, etc. etc. I won't go so far as to say I miss the yovo song. Well, maybe a little.

Merry Christmas! Will get my usual cell number turned on today. Give me a call and buy me dinner!

Kisses,

hy

Amoebas

OK computer just ate everything I typed. Short version: got amoebas, got really sick, hve good days and bad days wondering if I should stay. Someone please proofread previous entries and correct grammar and spelling. It is killing me. Am coming home for Christmas. Please send cumin, bay leaves, mint and cilantro seeds.
Sorry, computers here make and already grumpy person grumpier.
love,
heather

August 13, 2007

So typical day at the saltmines. Got up, didn't bathe, found a 1940's turban of Mama's the kids were playing with in the dirt, crafted a fabulous outfit to match (Chanel red lipstick included) went to school (interspersed with general greeting and village excitement about my fabulous attire with the turban) learned stuff, missed 2nd class with an incredibly gratifying phone call from Mom & Dad, left school to be greeted by a full speed ahead run from the boys from my neighborhood screaming my name (I live 15mins from the school, they've never gone there and waited for me before), hung out with my boy posse for the rest of the walk home, stopped in a coutourjer (seamstress) shop to say hi and they started asking advice on the business, had a meeting with them on how to calculate REVENUE-EXPENSES=PROFIT, hard to teach an illiterate audience, but it worked. Came home finally, Mama freaked out because I wore her filthy hat with a Versace stomp (they call it "Miss Togo" as in "Louise, Louise nous voulous "Miss Togo") sat down to eat after some general revelry with the 20 kids that followed me home only to hear wailing from the 9 year old cousin who lves here half the time. "What's wrong" I ask. "She drank sodabi" was the reply. At which point I FREAK OUT. Sodabi is moonshine that could double as industrial cleaner/biodiesel fuel of the future. "Who in the hell gave her sodabi? Do you know how bad that is for children???" Everyone in the courtyard is cracking up. She found the sodabi and drank it on her own and now she is butt wasted. Honestly at this stage, around and still wailing because she got yelled at for drinking in the first place. I told her to try to make herself barf and lay down. Stay tuned for the next episode. Did I mention that I freaking love it here? I was made for this stuff.

Some day later-

So after, like, intense impatience for this artificial school-world known as "Stage" to be over, my girlfriends and I aside- we are the only girls/people out of 20 of us to
a. drink beer
b. talk about sex
c. be fun

Tonight we tried to name ourselves-since we are four, we decided on "(No) Sex in Togo" Apparently, I am a mixture of 1/2 Charlotte, 1/2 Samantha- totally accurate though I would have appreciated some Carrie fashion sense and some Miranda "know-it-all, get shit done" kind of tude, but hey, I can't be all 4 characters now can I? Carolyn is awesome and sort of from DC(Love OLD BAY) doesn't shave, is totally loud, and fun, and brash, and a professional cheerleader- hello- see a fit?? Kate is from Oregon, hippy ass lit professor mom, Middlebury College, urban planning degree from UT and dry as hell and honest and wonderful. We three are bitches. And then there is Megan- sweet sweet Megan- bad ass vintage trash digging awesome eye for color clothes wearing former high-end bedding designer from Chicago. Yes Gibran- we will all party together in Chi-town. Those are my girls. My friends, my sanity. God how I love you. P.S. If I do say so, and you know I will, we are all pretty. We are like the "Mean Girls" of Peace Corps. Dude, that's like a novel title right there. Love it. Or Heathers for those of you of my generation.

Later same night- to all future generations of Peace Corps Volunteers, NEVER, EVER underestimate the power of the hokey pokey. Seriously, If you are ever in a tight situation, teach a crowd of people that and you are golden for life.

Personal shout out continued.

6. Tasha- Thank you so much for your card and letter. I am so happy things are going well in your new job. It is true, everything happens for a reason. I am also happy to hear the car is doing well. I loved that car so much so I am pleased to know it is in good hands. I hope Brooke & Patrick are happy and healthy as well.

7. MDP Peeps- a. Debbie , my mom told me you are putting my letters on my blog THANK YOU THANK YOU!!! I want to hear all of the goings on's at MDP. Fill me in!!! I miss the people and am curious to know how my accounts are doing but I am so far removed, it seems like light years ago. Even good old Baltimore political gossip would be great. Is Sheila Dixon still mayor? When is the race? Who is running? Is Keifer in the mix? How is Ed Hale? What is he up to? Do you ever see my dear Julie @ Maryland Art Place? How is Genny? I need Hampden updates!! Any Happy Hours? Pat Dugan? Are you well my dear? Give me office gossip and gripes and stuff. lee still tan and Leigh still Republican?? How are everyone's kids and marriages???

8. Julie Ann, my love. How are you? I miss you. MAP well? Any news there? Gossip? I think about you often and hope you are doing well. I am worried about you. How is Stefan? please tell me what is happening. How is your family? How does it feel to be married?

9. Bond & Lancaster peeps (except for Lipika & Andy) shame on you!! No letters? I need to know what is happening and I need Bill and Alex silly/wise words. Everyone gearing me up for the wedding of Gary & Suzie? Oh shoot- it just happened, well how was it?? Seth & Shannon, Terry's going away, Scott & Courtney, Alan & Jill- I need pictures, and gossip. I watch Jacque & Craig's Fell's Point documentary and cry. I miss you guys and I miss the hood.

10. Gibran- where is your globe trotting ass now? I need your wittiness. What are you thinking about? What is on your mind? How's Life? I need to know.

So totally random letter. Granola bars, conditioner, witch hazel, shelf bra tank tops and cute Forever 21 dresses are always welcome! Oops, beef jerky too- need protein big time! Gossip mags, Baltimore mags too. Much love as always. I am very happy here, but miss you too.

Love always,

Heather

Oh and used DVD's are great as well, chick flicks, documentaries, classics, TV shows- whatever. Anthropologie catalogs and cool ones like that! Fashion mags too please.

August 8th

My wonderful friends & family-

1. Please , I beg of you, post a note on the blog and ask for help posting my letters. No one knows if I am alive or dead and the few who truly love my bitchiness are beginning to get concerned. Thank you very much (or as they say here" akpe ka ka")
2. You know, homesickness is a funny funny thing. Mail & packages from home are so bittersweet. You should see us on mail day. We honestly smell each other's letters and shout "America, America-it smells like FREEDOM". It kind of reminds me of what it must be like in jail on mail day. "It smells like the OUTSIDE, like Freedom". Same excitement, same sniffing of efficient looking stationary. Newspaper clippings especially smell like freedom. Funny thing, distance.

3. Rachael, your letter was perfection. And we were talking. It totally heard you. General note again. Stamps are so expensive. Letters get sent to M & D, then hopefully posted. It's the best I can do. I will write more personal stuff to you shortly. In the meantime, stay away from Fair Hill and do not write to me about the HARRY FREAKING POTTER UNLESS YOU ARE GOING TO SEND ME THE BOOK!!!! Are you kidding me!?!?!?!? I love you more than always for real.

4. Lipika, dear sweet friend. Your letter was fantabulous. Please send more Lippy tales and Bond Street gossip. I crave it!! There is a Baltimore girl here that I met briefly. She is headed home for a visit in September. I begged her to go to Bond and Lancaster and hold up a sign and yell "Heather sends love from Togo." Then to go to One- Eyed Mikes. Please buy her drinks. her name is Bonnie. She promised me she would. I will get everyone back on the drinks when I get home, I promise. I miss you all dearly. Send pictures of BBQ's etc. Real ones not email. Obviously that just ain't gonna happen.

5. HAPPY ANNIVERSARY Mom & Dad. I love your love. I hope you know how rare it is and treasure it everyday. I miss backing in the glow of it and being your daughter. Noth that I;m not your daughter, but you know, giving you crap, being sassy, playing cards,etc. I know having parents like you is rare too. I am very lucky. I found this pagne to get you matching outfits, it is hilarious, but I need your measurements. For Mom, I need waist, hips, hip to knee. Dad, I need shoulders, chest, um, neck to waist????? In metric please. Just a shirt for Dad and a skirt for Mom. It will be like the square dancing days.

July 15

This note will be disjointed because I am trying to write a note with a child on my lap.

Lessons learned today:

• Unripe grapefruit bounce wonderfully and make great soccer balls. And after they've been kicked around for an hour, the juice gets ready and you can eat it.
• When playing grapefruit soccer, it is even more fun and funny to have Duran Duran and Bob Marley playing in the background
• Though grapefruits and frisbees can fall into deep wells, it is almost as much fun to get them out again, especially if the bucket falls in in the process
• Request for the letter- please send out a request to everyone we know to send many many band aids (kids ones from Ollies are a great idea and cheap) and some sort of bactine type stuff. The kids don't care when they get hurt, but it kills me.
• White people like myself plain ole can't dance "mama" points that out all of the time. "Louise tu ne dances pas bien" At least she's honest

August 1, 2007

Dearest peeps-

A quick word- I hope these letters are getting posted on the blog because there are alot of people I miss and want to communicate with and given the cost of stamps (more than a days pay for me) time constraints (non-existent), and technology constraints (also non-existent) there is no way I can do that. I had an intense "I miss Debbie" moment today and I don't want her or anyone to think I don't think about them often.

Another caveat, things have been really great lately and unfortunately I have only now found time to sit and write and I just had a really annoying moment so all of the good wonderfulness is going to be tainted with a "Heather impatience" type ordeal. So I am sitting on some steps in my courtyard, mama is cooking dinner and I am trying to work on my we noun memorization and pronounciation. This 8 or 10 year old girl who is really touchy-feely and usually very sweet is sitting next to me so I ask her to read the Ewe work first (there are pictures also mind you) and I will repeat it after her. I also ask her to correct me. I point to a word with a GIANT picture and the Ewe words typed underneath. She says the word in French. I try and say the word in Ewe, though I ask her again "Jane, you speak Ewe, I don't, I'm trying to learn Ewe, you need to teach me how to pronounce it. I already KNOW the word in French". It continues, but now after I say the word in Ewe with bad pronunciation, she just repeats what I say! Granted, it took me 1/2 and hour to realize that she was just repeating and reinforcing my incorrect pronunciation. Also, please realize that the Ewe alphabet looks quite different. (IN HEATHER"S LETTER SHE WRITES THE ALPHABET OUT BUT BECAUSE OF THE LANGUAGE I AM UNABLE TO COPY) and the word for watch (as in wristwatch) looks like this: Gafodgkui- Dude you try and guess how to spit that out. The word for child:Xedudu. Yeah , OK. Duck is fun: Kpakpaxe. That one is easy actually, but it fun to say. It sounds kind of like a chicken clucking. The fun stuff are Ewe words that come from English (there are Ewe in Ghana too). Oh, but before I get to that, do you want to her how to say "I am a peace Corps Volunteer?" Volunteer is a doozy: "Me nye l)l)nud)w)la le Peace Corps " (THE ")" ARE REALLY BACKWARDS "c"-SORRY)

OK, now for the Ewe words from English matching game.(BECAUSE WE AREN"T ALL CONFUSED ENOUGH ALREADY)
1. d)kita a. bricklayer
2. tela b.tailor
3. dreva c. lawyer
4. bikla d. doctor
5. l)ya e. driver
6. tsitsa f. teacher

Match the professions, Ewe & English. *Hint just do your best to say the Ewe word out loud and you might surprise yourself *Answers are at the bottom.

When you leave people you can also say "Bye Byelo" and the response is "Yo." Hee Hee, fun.

Adding to this intense frustration with my Ewe studying was the radio. The freaking radio. Anyone that knows me even a little knows that I HATE radio commercially type noises and will slam the off button faster that you can pop a groundhog with a rubber mallet on the Ocean City boardwalk. Ohhhhh, the food you can eat on a boardwalk. Ohhhhhhh, you don't know how lucky you are. I digress. Radio. So apparently, any jackass can get on the radio.

A. The music usually sucks. I am talking rap, hip-hop, Kenny G, Backstreet Boys, and the horror, Celine Dion. The manliest of men here, the coolest of the cool will croon, sway, and sing along to that ear filth poison. UGH. VOMIT.
B. The "DJ" talks and has very important things to say. Like over songs, during songs, whenever a thought enters their DJ pea-sized brains, they spit it out. There's more talk than music.
C. The volume. There is no halfway. Shit is loud. All of the time. Yet people respond to it as if it were background music.

Basically to my ears, it is like the worst commercial that you can't turn off. And that folks, is the cool station. That is the one that blares into the courtyard. The other station that I am hearing loud and clear is the one that Mama has on starting at 4am(on the dot, every day) is the Ewee/French- all church, all the time. Prayer, hymns, sermons, praise Jesus. And Mama, God love her, I know I do, has the worst singing voice EVER! And I am connoisseur of bad voices having a pretty freakin terrible one myself. Well, since Mama is a church -going woman, she knows all of the words to all of the hymns and sings along. It starts at 4am with prayers and hymns interspersed. I put in earplugs, but you can still hear. And Mama goes through an hour long service, on her knees in her room, her volume appropriately loud to praise God. Prayers, hymns, and since she is an opinionated woman, she throws in her "Amen", "Hallelujah", and "Hmmmhmmm". And since it wouldn't be right to not sing if you don't know all the words she hums then just as loud, stumbles on the melody, and joins in with real gusto when the chorus comes around. Ahhhh, the radio in Togo. Total ear poison. 2 different stations on normal days and nights. When other family members come, they bust out cassettes. There is one song that I absolutely LOVE! You must must find it on the Internet and listen. He probably even has a freakin Myspace page. His name is Aladzi. He is Togolese and Ewe. His songs are a mix of languages of Togo thrown in. My favorite song has a baby laughing and farting the whole way through until she/he starts crying at the end. Kokou says the song is called "Togolese" but he might not have known and said that to make me go away.

So, thanks to Heidi & Mom & Dad for the care packages and not that I'm soliciting, because after all, I have 2 years to go, but if C-Mart happens to get any cute dresses, shoes, or shelf-bra tank-tops, don't be afraid to send them my way. Also plain cotton low rise bikini underwear are always great. Bee jerky and Slim Jims, and Velvetta are wonderful as well. When I am able to use a computer I am going to try and buy stuff online. Oh! Also all Anthropologie catalogs-doesn't matter how old they are- will always be appreciated. All furniture I have to get and clothes to have to be made to order so I might as well get cool stuff. More letters soon , I promise. Love, kisses, and eat good things for me. Like sushi and Gorgonzola and spinach. And steak. And non-gross fish. And crabs. And oysters. Send rosemary, basil, mint, and soybean(edaman seeds (rachael's job)) Ama says "Dogbe". I say it as part of my salutations, but I don't know what it means and neither does she.

Love, love, love,

Heather

KEY to test:
1. d, 2. b, 3. e,4. a, 5. c, 6. f

(Everything in Capital letters was written by Debbie- sorry I had to add those comments in there.)

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