Alisha Williams

I decided to stay in village to celebrate both Christmas/Solstice and New Years despite many invitations to volunteer parties throughout the country to see how Togolese party during the holiday season. This also coincides with the end of the harvest season and so they have good reason to celebrate, and celebrate they do. Daniel decided to come and stay for the week during Christmas and we had a good time enjoying all Ataloté has to offer, not to mention Kanté. D. arrived on Thursday and that night I drug him along to go check out a compound that had puppies for sale and he helped me pick out my beloved Jack, a good call and the only option out of the litter but the second opinion definitely helped. I am not much of a dog person really but here it is quite another issue and very comforting not to mention a security measure. We noted that the puppy had a case of round worm after he took a deuce on my porch and after inspection it was easy to confirm my suspicions as the worms made their escape to our mutual horror. We were planning on going in to Kanté to get supplies at the marché and decided to pay a visit to the vet.

Christmas Eve was far from uneventful. After taking a zed into town, Yanga (my moto chauffeur) helped us find the veterinarians office. The vet was very helpful and after a somewhat muddled and humorous conversation about discerning the size and weight of the puppy with many hand gestures and my questioning about the poisonous nature of the mysterious and unknown drug we decided to trust him and went on our way, highly relieved that the worms wouldn’t be around by Christmas morning. We met up with Mary, my closest PCV neighbor to drop off our helmets and pick up mail and packages (!) we headed out for the marché. As entered there was a guy trying to get our attention and we wrote him off as the usual heckler but he was persistent. As we made our way into a clearing in the stalls he made a run at me and tried to grab my bag, I held tight as Daniel pushed him into the next stall and as he made a run for it a group of three Togolese guys attempted a swing or two at him. Damn “Voleur”, thief. I had thought that he ripped the bag because my billfold had fallen on the ground and there was a big hole in it. After a circumspect and hurried pass through the market to get veggies etc. watching over our shoulders we went back to Mary’s, a bit shaken. Upon further inspection of the bag D. let me know that he definitely had used a razor blade because the tear was too clean, the bag unable to be ripped and my billfold slashed as well. According to the safety and security officers the holiday season and just before close of service are the times with the highest crime incident rates. I guess we will chalk it up to that and I have tried to since feel comfortable at the once welcoming market that is a necessity to stalk my kitchen. I am just glad that nobody got hurt and that the man didn’t make off with a cent. Thanks Daniel, crisis averted.

That night presented another interesting occurrence. Long after we went to bed we were awoken by the sound of approaching drums and a troupe making its way through the village- the standard cowbells and chant like singing. It was nearly a full moon so I could make out the group passing by the dispensary across the street. I knew it couldn’t be a funeral procession and it certainly wasn’t a marriage assembly so I deduced it must be a cause of the celebration. They went off, becoming distant and muffled, only to circle back and stand directly outside the compound and my bedroom window. It had to have been near midnight or early morning and I thought it was a bit odd to be making rounds at that time. We realized that they were the Togolese version of carolers and I surmised that they wanted bonbons or a bit of money for their troubles and if it hadn’t been so late I would have certainly obliged. It is nice to know that some Christmas tradition is not lost across oceans and deserts.

Christmas was essentially what I had expected. Tchouck, fufu, tchouck, fufu with an occasional salutation or shot of liquor sandwiched in between. I had decided not to cook anything that day because I knew the nurse’s wife and maman would be sending over bowls of food. After spending most of the day hanging out on the porch and enjoying the time reading and watching my host family, occasionally chatting across the compound, we decided it was time to go and greet Victor and his family. I had given out pocket calendars of Colorado to maman and the nurse’s wife accompanied by some yams. I fished out some random toys, cologne, some empty notebooks (from things that Betsy had left behind) and added another calendar and an really nice pair of earrings that I had a nearly duplicate pair to give to Madeline, V. and the kids. Madeline is an awesome cook; she served us rice with peanut sauce and tofu for dinner and we hung about the compound drinking some more and enjoying the company of his family and friends.

Carlos, my Lamba tutor and M.’s little bro came over with a TIME mag I had given him for a present to ask some pressing questions regarding the content. He had come to my compound a few weeks earlier relating to me that one of his parents had died or something or other and he needed assistance to continue finishing school and take the BAC exam that is necessary, and very difficult, to filter students out before university. I told him that I couldn’t give him anything but asked about possible Lamba tutoring. He has impeccable French, quite a bit of English, and is very bright. We set up tutoring schedule and while now I know that he is M.’s little brother and not so sure he really is an orphan (here an orphan is someone missing one parent not both). Regardless, it seems to be working out alright and I am able to capitalize the sessions by picking his brain and asking him all the pressing questions I have about Togo, the government, the school system and cultural practices that I feel unable to ask those I am living and working with.

Daniel left on the 29th because we both wanted to experience New Years fêtes in our respective villages. New Years- ‘Bon Année!!!’- is a big holiday here and the celebrations go on for three or four days. I awoke New Years day to a group of local guys singing and making a racket outside in the compound at five o’clock in the morning. After realizing they were not going to give it up, and a couple of shouts ‘Akua’ ‘Akua’ (Ah- qwaa – my local name which supposedly mean we will work together as one, or at least that is what V. told me but I have been unable to since confirm it), I went out to see what they were up to. These are the guys that I see consistently downtown under the baobab drinking and never doing much of anything else. As I emerge freezing, wiping sleep from my eyes and wrapping my pagne tightly around my shoulders I see the motley crew and their makeshift instruments. A small metal bowl one is beating against like a cowbell, an empty bucket for a drum and I can’t make out what one of them is blowing through that sounds vaguely like a recorder. I can tell they have been up all night drinking but their exuberance is contagious and I am glad I didn’t roll over, cover my head with a sheet and ignore them. I tell them to come back at a more decent hour and that I have prepared tchouck to share.

Well not quite. I didn’t prepare the beer, Nadeje, Maman and Richard’s daughter who lives behind the baobab with her three mangy kids and her friendly and smiling husband Luc, the mason who is supposed to fix up my walls at some point, prepared it for me. I bought the sorghum. This was a source of slight contention for me. Maman had gone down to celebrate in Kara for a few days before Christmas and to bring up a couple of her other kids (they had ten over the years) for the holidays. While she was gone, the compound was hurting and I realized how much she keeps it together and how senile Richard is becoming. He came to me the day of the marché before the holidays asking what they were going to eat for the celebration. In other words he was asking me for a present, for money. I had already been planning to buy them a couple of chickens or something to eat for a Christmas present and to demonstrate my gratitude at their hospitality so this was irksome. I asked him what would be appropriate for a Christmas dinner and he said two guinea fowls and a cock would suffice; I glowered at him and offered to buy the two fowl. 4,000f plus 1,200f for the sorghum for New Years. I told him that I trusted him and knew he would get the things at the normal price and I would get gauged if I tried to buy it all myself. He spent all day at the market and came back that night completely drunk and incomprehensible. I walked over to the nurse’s wife and asked her if he’d come back with the birds earlier that day, she looked shifty and assured me he did. Maman returned, I watched them kill their own chickens for Christmas.

New Years was fun. After I got over that nearly nobody came to visit and celebrate with me chez moi, I decided to go and visit with the women around Victor’s compound downtown. It was a good call because it ended up being one of the best times I’ve had yet here in Togo. Awa, Clementine, Madeline and their kids were all going around from compound to compound singing and dancing. Awa is a beautiful women and has a rockin body for how many kids she has put out (Madeline is too but she is much more modest), she was singing and had a sort of cowbell castanets. Pelagie’s daughter and Victor’s daughter Flora were hilarious and amazing dancers. Awa was definitely the driving force and made everyone continue dancing, even me. It was not the typical ‘chicken dance’ that all of us got used to down south which is slow and fluid, this dance was athletic and rhythmic. The women and girls would circle up and the two dancers would get in the middle and have a sort of dance off, partner shuffling. After I let go and realized there was no reason to feel self conscious it was extremely fun and I felt like I was among girlfriends again, laughing and letting loose. After two nights of such exhibition I am now told everywhere I go in town how well I dance and that somehow everybody saw how good I am. ‘Tu danse bein!!’ they assure me and go into some kind of re-enactment. I smile. I don’t regret making a fool out of myself because I know that I have real friends now in this strange new place, women and girls I can feel at home with and be myself. Many things are different, some never change.