Alisha Williams

I wanted to post my commentary on the recent media about the Peace Corps in regards to the unfortunate events that came to pass in Peace Corps Benin. This goes without saying that what happened there is very sad and we as volunteers all grieve for these types of situations that (on average) rarely occur. I am ashamed about how the Peace Corps was portrayed by the American media, but that is really no surprise.

I agree that many elements of that case could have been handled with much more tact and thought towards the family of the volunteer. However, as volunteers were are acutely aware of the risks we are getting ourselves into. It is a different world over here; different customs, attitudes, safety concerns and we are VERY well aware of all of these elements. We are here of our own accord. We can leave at any time if we feel our safety or comfort is being jeapordized. In life there are always safety concerns, especially as a young woman, or any woman. This is our reality, and yes, when we become victims we NEVER deserve what happens, but there is much we can do to avoid getting in these types of situations. Constant vigilence and awareness of one’s surroundings is necessary- no matter where you are in the world, danger follows you like a shadow.

I am very sorry that the women in the 20/20 special felt the way they did about the Peace Corps and their respective services, and felt the need to create such public fervor. This year marks the 50th anniversary of Peace Corps. It is one of the best American institutions to date and we ought to be globally celebrating…as most of us are.

We as volunteers are the number one person responsible for our safety. The Peace Corps is a complicated and vast bureaucracy. Much of the in-country staff are host country nationals; at least here in West Africa private and public lives are not necessarily seperate. I realize it sounds highly irresponsible that information might have been leaked and confidentiality breached, however this could be easy to understand when you understand that first and foremost people here take care of one another before taking into account the lives/well being of foreigners. I believe the situation got out of control fast and no one could have forseen the danger that the PCV ended up in.

I myself feel 100% safe here, at least as safe, if not more, than I feel back home. I LOVE being a volunteer and I know my community genuinely cares about me and would do anything to protect my safety and well being. I also feel the utmost support from the agency.

I extend my most sincere condolences to the bereved of Kate Puzey and any PCV that has become a victim as a result of serving overseas with the Peace Corps.

I know for a fact (as a result of my training, which we were informed is new and much more extensive…if not overkill and creating an atmosphere of unecessary fear for trainees) that the Peace Corps is re-vamping their security training and attention to such problems as a direct result of this tragedy and media coverage.

I can only say that I feel it was unfairly portrayed and I am sorry that this is how media coverage works in our country.

Things I am completely accustomed to doing and seeing on an everyday basis:

-facial and body scarification (this is to identify natal villages, others are ritualistic and for protection).

-babies and small children on motorcycles, in between the driver and the handlebars.

-trash heaped EVERYWHERE; on the side of the road, outside houses, all over the market…

-drinking out of a plastic bag, eating with my hands.

– women peeing standing up with no attempt to conceal it or let it interrupt the journey to their destination (and surprisingly revealing nothing inappropriate…they are my heroes).

-Babies with tar or clay covering their cranial soft spots (to keep spirits out).

– Taxis filled with twice the normal number of occupants and piled twice its height with cargo.

-Giving babies and small children alcohol; tchouck, beer, hard alcohol (?! albeit small amounts, but some more than others if they hang around the tchouck stands long enough).

– Ritual/purposeful animal slaughter.

-Chickens died pink to identify them (first time I saw this was in Kara, the chickens were eating from some seriously toxic looking sludge and for a minute I questioned the cause of the color…).

-Kids, from three and up, with babies half their size wrapped onto their backs.

-Day to day health and safety precautions…everything can become a habit surprisingly easy with time.

-Burning my trash, it sounds counter-intuitive to my work here but there is really no other option.

-Realizing that African people are the experts at recycling and ‘green living’ because there is no other way.

-Community living. It is beautiful.

Things I have yet to normalize:

-The immense patience and nerves of steel it takes to travel through country here, but I am getting much better.

-The chaos of open-air bazaar style markets- also getting quickly adjusted to this.

-Kids doing manual labor in lieu of class (Travailler manuel- Manual labor days, twice a month for the teachers and school grounds. Kids are also go-to’s for all errands and any work an adult can convince them to do. They are tireless.).

-The immense about of labor women and girls do each day, and how physically strong they are!

-Untreated, serious maladies both physical and chronic.

-The attitudes of Togolese men.

-Dogs, and various other animals, constantly being hit, or nearly hit and injured by motos and vehicles.

-Flies, everywhere, all the time. On my legs, on my face, on my food, on my dinnerware, trying to fly up my nose…everywhere.

-People staring at my hair and asking me where I got it and to give it to them after I cut it off.

-Bleaching cream, if I know how to make it and people asking me about the machine that can make their skin like mine. “You know, like the one that Michael Jackson used.”

Food:

Togolese staples include (in order of preference):

Watche- rice and beans

Soja- fried tofu with piment (crushed red pepper and oil)

Wagash- fried cheese, (think rubbery mozzarella), often coupled in tomato sauce hard to find all the time because it is made/sold by the Fulani people who are nomadic cattle herders from the North African countries. You can also buy it fresh, take it home, boil it and crumble on to salads like feta.

Fufu- pounded yam/igname (starchy oblong, up to two feet!, potato, not sweet and very dry) mixed with water, think very thick mashed potato eaten with variety of sauces.

Koliko- fried yam…Togolese French fries, also served with piment.

Maca(short for macaroni)- this includes all variety of pasta but generally implies spaghetti noodles normally served with some other starch at the same time, rice, koliko etc. Not always with any type of sauce and often cold.

Pâte- least favorite, essentially any type of flour mixed with boiling water and then formed into starchy- mush-mold, served with sauce and always burns my fingers! This is what I make to feed to my pets.

Sauces are:

Tomato sauce- made with tomato paste and a lot of piment- super hot peppers!!! (my favorite, I literally can’t get enough of it).

Sauce gluant- a couple of different varieties some with okra, others with various native plant leaves…all create a green sauce resembling the consistency of snot, and lacking much taste but probably the most nutritious.

Meats: (I don’t eat any but for common knowledge/interest…)

Crushed and dried fish, put in many sauces and only noticeable by aroma and shiny scales here and there.

Pintad- guinea fowl, supposedly delicious and preferred over chicken.

Chicken, Pork, Beef (Latter two are generally hard for villagers to buy unless it is for a fête, or any meat for that matter).

**most meats are in small quantities and mixed in with the sauces…unless you are at a restaurant in the city or around city living Togolese, which is a whole other world.

Things I cook when I have the energy:

Soup- French onion, cream of onion, potato, carrot, cream of tomato… I like soup.

Breakfasts: Home fries, veggie scrambles, rice pudding from leftover dinner rice, oatmeal, egg sammys with Togolese buns*. If I have guests I might make peanut butter pancakes, crêpes, or French toast.

Lunches: Salads!- when veggies are available, salsa, refried beans, queso dip, guacamole (avocados in the South are a dollar right now!) all with homemade tortillas, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Dinners: rice, beans, cream of mushroom pasta, pad-Thai (or something like it), stir fry, salad, soup, lemon cream pasta (divine), macaroni and cheese.

Desserts: chocolate cake, peanut butter oatmeal no-bake cookies, lemon cake, zucchini bread, banana fritters, banana bread.

Beverages: delicious locally grown coffee, solar tea, sangria.

Things I would like to make but haven’t tried out yet:

pizza, jams and marmalades (coming soon with all the mangos that are about to be ripe in my compound), squash gnocchi (also hopefully soon with squash soon to be ready in my garden), bagels, polenta (should be super easy because I go to mill to grind my own corn flour so I can grind it less to make cornmeal), soja tacos- implies corn tortillas, see previous comment.

*They make good bread here, it is all white bread but at least we have bread, many P.C. countries do not and it is one thing you can eat when you don’t feel like cooking and heating up the house. Most villages do not have bread to buy and you have to buy it at the weekly markets. I am lucky though Sun. and Mon. there is a woman who makes bread in Ataloté and it is by far the best and freshest I have found.

**I usually only have time and supplies to make one to two of these types of meals. i.e. I will make a big breakfast and finish it for lunch or make a big lunch to finish for dinner. I can get a lot of ‘Western’ type food and supplies in the bigger cities but it gets pricey and perishables go bad fast. It is amazing though what you can get away with not refrigerating that we refrigerate in the States (i.e. eggs, ketchup, jam, veggies, mayo/all condiments). Cooking is a hobby that many volunteers relish and indulge…seeing as sometimes it is a good way to pass the time, not to mention delicious.

Typical (Non-work) day:

I wake up around 6-6:30 to the comforting white noise of my host mom and/or sister sweeping the compound of debris: leaves, random trash, chicken feathers and so on. I roll out of bed from underneath my mosquito net, something I have now gotten used to and find it reassuring, if a bit stifling. My bed is essentially a woven cot, many volunteers spring for a ‘real bed’ but I have found the lit picot, (literally woven bed), far cooler. I generally dress and head to the garden in my daily race to beat the heat and the mounting sun, by 8 it is too late.

I water the garden and greet my fellow gardeners in the gardening group that cultivates around the small scale dam in my village. If my plot requires any manual labor for the day I try to get that done in the morning, such as aeration or weeding, as opposed to the evening when it never really cools back down until night and the mosquitoes, chiggers etc. are en mass!

If I am feeling social and don’t have too much to do at the house I will make a round to ‘downtown’ Ataloté to grab something to eat and greet the people hanging around drinking/selling Tchouk and eating bouille (porridge). This is generally if I have had a bit of work at the garden and it is farther on in the morning.
Otherwise I return home, sweep the porch/house, make my pets food, make breakfast and enjoy it on my nice lounging chairs and watch the compound activities or do a bit of leisure/work reading.

Generally, around 11 o’clock I will go to the pump and get my water. I am highly lucky; my village has solar powered water pumps with faucets…this is very rare, normally there are wells or hand pumps in village. However, there are times when the pumps do not have enough solar energy to pull the water up. I have found closer to noon to be the best time, also it serves as a social opportunity because normally all the kids on lunch break from school are there as well as my women neighbors. Not to mention the water splashing from the bucket onto my head and body after a few trips serves as a much needed refreshment, and lets me evade a mid-day shower to cool down. I have estimated that, on average, I use less than five gallons of water a day, that includes drinking water and showers (not including garden but that is not drinkable water)…how many houses in the States use that much just to flush the toilet? And I am far from suffering.
After that I think about lunch, I either decide to make it or head down to the village to see what I can find. From noon-2:30P.M. is considered ‘repose’ time and most people nap under trees in the shade and doing much of anything is unthinkable, it is too hot and the sun is at its height.

My garden is fairly large for one person, twenty-one beds and counting, and so requires loads of work. Because of the heat and dry climate it needs watering twice a day- in the morning to prevent the plants from wilting, burning, drying up and in the evening for optimal growth. It is too hot to water/work until around 4 in the afternoon, this is also the time when I transplant seedlings and apply natural pesticides if necessary.

I generally stay at the garden until dusk, and often go have a calabash with Victor afterwards if we have time and try to make it home before dark. Then I shower, make dinner if I have the energy and read/organize/plan work etc. by the light of my kerosene lamp and/or candles until about 9-10 o’clock or so and then snooze off. I used to be asleep by 8:30! but as I become more accustomed to my routine and environment here I have found 9-10 hours of sleep is too much and struggle to find time to get everything done for planning work projects.

All of this is keeping in mind that I rarely have days like this…
Often times, more often than not, something- an opportunity to bike out to an outlying village, greet an ill friend, will crop up. Patience and flexibility, the eternal Peace Corps mantra. Other days I have work meetings: Thursday mornings from 9-12 I have my woman’s liquid soap groupement meeting, Sunday and Wednesday evenings I have club meetings with the local middle school students. Tuesday is market day and I am generally there all afternoon if I can stand it, being the biggest social event all week. Friday is the market day in Kanté and I come in every/every other week to get veggies etc. and my mail. Saturday mornings I have local language tutoring. Sunday I do my laundry and clean my house. As I get busier with work, my schedule is continually evolving. It took me until now to get this routine down and is key to keeping my sanity, but flexibility is essential to community development.

This may seem like a light schedule to Americans who are so used to jam-packed days…but believe me it is exhausting, and I am as busy as could be.

Togolese life:
I live in a three room row house, (which is HUGE for one person), in a compound, (like almost all Togolese), which is a group of buildings, sometimes interconnected sometimes not, facing in to a common courtyard area.

I do not have the luxury of electricity or running water (believe it or not many volunteers here do have one or some combination of these); I get my water from a pump and store it in big plastic trash cans.

I use a simple latrine.

To shower I fill a bucket with water and pour it by the cup full over my head and body.

To do dishes or laundry I fill basins with water and air dry everything…which is super fast here because of the arid heat up North. Down South is different and nothing ever seems to dry because of the humidity.

To cook I have a tank filled with butane natural gas and a two burner camp stove that I light with matches, (most Togolese in village use two rocks and branches, or a simple charcoal stove and a palm fan).

I had a fantastic time in the grand city of Kara for my twenty fifth birthday. It was very chill and much enjoyed. At that point I had spent nearly a month without leaving Ataloté and needed a break from all that integration work. I love it but it can be exhausting. I brought an interminable amount of stuff back with me and must have looked a sight with a wicker basket and a watering can tied to the back of my huge backpack! The ride back to town took a bit longer than normal because there was a turned over lorry blocking the road. At this point I hold my breath every time we mount the hill pass that leads into Kanté because nearly every time there are horrendous wrecks like this, it is just a matter of if it is blocking the way or not. In many cases you just see mounds of goods on the side of the road with a group of expectant looking people. Then you know that the truck had plummeted off the edge and these people had trekked down to salvage what they could from the wreckage while waiting for another lorry to load it on to and continue the cycle and goods transportation in this region of the World. This time wasn’t as bad, the truck, severely overloaded and nearly twice the height of a semi-load in the States, had simply tried to get by another truck and the drop off of the pavement to the “shoulder” had caused it to tip over and the road was blocked because there was a tow truck with a crane to cinch it back upright (!! first time I have ever seen this!! and is most likely because of the proximity to Kara where the president is based and there is a lot of government funding… hence the nice/developed-ish nature of the city) Anyways, I had to switch taxis cause the other one didn’t want to wait and heading back to Kara and wait for a while on the side of the road. Classic of Peace Corps Togo I ran into a couple of volunteer friends from up North I wouldn’t have otherwise seen for who knows how long and so it was fairly painless.

All the good feelings of the birthday trip evaporated immediately as soon as my moto driver picked me up. As we were heading out of Kanté and towards village he let me know that Victor’s wife Madeline was at the hospital with their four month old baby Adelph. He was very ill and he had taken them there earlier that day. As I entered the graveled pathway up to the pediatric compound of the hospital I could see Madeline’s face and my stomach dropped. Adelph was writhing in her arms and crying in a high pitched, pained manner. There were four or so other mothers with sick children sitting around. Waiting; waiting for the illness to pass or for it to ravage and take their babies away. There was a television in the corner and the doctors and nurses were watching a soccer match. Madeline looked so helpless, scared. She didn’t know what to do for her baby who was clearly in pain and sweating from fever. I couldn’t find any words to say but I touched the baby and felt how warm his tiny body was. As if on cue when I came in the doctor started to shout at Madeline telling her to give more medicine to the baby. Yanga and I helped measure out the four or five products he was to take. One looked like amoxicillin, the others I have no idea other than one solution for dehydration. Then we helped her feed him some watered down pâte (millet flour with water) which most ran down his face and all over his body which necessitated a wash. Madeline held the baby on her feet on the ground and we poured cool water over him as he screamed and writhed.

I knew the real unspoken concern. Yes we were concerned about the baby’s recovery. Yes we were concerned that he might have a bad case of malaria at so young an age. But here in Togo many children die because they never make it to this stage. Parents keep their sick babies at home until the last possible moment because they cannot pay the hospitals; which will not treat the babies without payment, they will and often do turn away sick babies, children and adults that are in real danger of death because of money. I knew she wouldn’t ask and I knew that while Yanga brought me here as a concerned friend to visit the sick, he also brought me here to help our friend in the only way I could. I asked her how much all the care would cost, gave her what I had on me to cover the medicine and promised to be back the next day with the rest and to hear about the test results.

I biked in the next day, normally I wouldn’t leave village again so quickly after just arriving but these were special circumstances. I left on my bike at the worst possible hour, 11AM just when the heat of the day is starting, but the thought not only of the baby but of my best friend in village alone and helpless with the mean doctors helped me push through the heat and the sand of the 15k ride until I got to the hospital on the outskirts of Kanté. He was doing a bit better and Victor was there. I held Adelph and never thought I could be so happy to make a baby smile. V. seemed on edge, rightfully so, and the three of us followed the doctors around with the baby getting/paying for more products, waiting for the lab results. At one point one of the doctors noticed me and asked me what I needed. I told him I was here to support my friends and that we wanted to know what was wrong. He was unable to give us a definite answer. The malaria test came back negative and to be frank it seems like that is the only thing they know how to test for. Everything is the “Palu”.

We went back to sit down in the waiting area. There were some of the women from the day before and also a young girl of maybe 7 or 8, it was hard to tell because she wasn’t much more than a skeleton and didn’t say a word. The doctors were starting to get a little brash, one of them started asking me questions about life in America in relation to life here. I was a little short with him because I failed to see how this was an appropriate time, but I suppose the situation was irrelevant for him. People dying because they are poor. Then he devolved into a typical Togolese man and started asking me if I was married, I told him I was and that my ‘husband’ was in a village to the West. He didn’t believe me, told me that I should take another, himself. I walked away disgusted. Far from the first time I have gotten comments like this, but I expected a level of professionalism from the staff but it seems the more powerful the position a man here has, the more he abuses it. Victor and I took Madeline to get a quick drink of Tchouck, to give her a little rest/relief, before heading over to the marché. We walked the long walk there in silence.

My neighboring PCV was also sick and I paid her a visit. She had malaria but seemed to be doing alright if a little weak and shaken. I stopped by the hospital on my way home and gave V. the money to pay the bill. I knew this was difficult for them but necessary and was nothing to me. I never had a second thought about lending the money. Something I have been battling at post, continually turning down requests for money to help people suffering in one way or another. This was different. This is my family.

As I walked out of the compound I ran into the nurse. I seized the opportunity to corner him and questioned him about the baby. I asked him what was wrong, he shook his head slowly back and forth looking at the ground and said “C’est le Palu”. It is Malaria. I mentioned that the test had come back negative, he replied “Yes, but it is Malaria.” I rode away with a sour taste in my mouth; a residue of the medical staff who are supposed to help these people. Sometimes it seems so futile. Adelph and Madeline stayed for the entire week, the baby had lost a lot of weight and was weak from the parasite and the fever, but he survived and is recovering well. He is lucky.