This past weekend we Maritimers got together to send off a few volunteers who will be completing their service this month. It was a fete of pizza, birthday cake, and glow sticks. I can’t speak for all of the regions of Togo, but in Maritime glow sticks appear to be a party staple. A seemingly random gift that keeps reappearing in care packages from home, glow sticks make an appearance at many of our get-togethers.
Glow sticks manage to provide us with endless entertainment. Dancing with bodies adorned with glowing jewelry, having mock roller-skating competitions, wearing togas, and playing games in the dark, the locals think that we are quite an oddity. Questions are asked about what ceremony we are performing and people lurk off to the side watching the strange ways of the Americans. The Togolese must have extraordinary ideas about what American culture is from the brief glimpses our glowing celebrations.
One of the objectives of the Peace Corps is for volunteers to be ambassadors teaching our host countries about our culture and bringing their culture home with us. When we come together we are a family, we work, gossip, and play together. In a strange land we support each other and do our best to show the Togolese our most bizarre American habits. I can only imagine what the average Togolese person thinks about American culture and how the small glimpses of Togolese life that we get while living here cannot really encapsulate the entire peoples of Togo.
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