The Jewelry Makes the Woman

From infancy girls and boys are marked different by jewelry.  All baby girls’ ears are pierced, boys’ are not.  While this little fact comes in handy when doing baby weighing and guessing which one was which, this identification is very persistent and you are not really female unless you wear earrings.

Coming to Togo I didn’t know what I was expecting and the logical thing seemed to not bring much jewelry at all.  I guess it was some silly idea that I didn’t want to draw attention to myself even with cheap fake jewelry that someone might mistake for being of value, but now I wish I had brought more with me.  My two pairs of earrings, now one thanks to my clumsiness, are sufficient, but I wear them every day and it is only time until I wear them out or lose them.  

I remember the first time I dared to leave my house without my earrings in, OK more like I forgot to put them in; my host mother was a little shocked and with a worried voice asked what had happened to my earrings.  At the time I assumed she was just concerned that I had lost them seeing as how jewelry can be valuable.

A second time I didn’t wear my earrings in public, a midwife, whom I had just met, reached over and grabbed my earlobe, “hmm, just checking.  Why are you not wearing your earrings?”  I don’t know... I didn’t feel like it? I forgot? They were making me uncomfortable? There are plenty of reasons why on a perfectly normal day I might not wear them, but apparently this is somewhat unacceptable. 

Just this last week a male colleague of mine did exactly the same thing.  In the middle of a conversation about a project we are working on he reached over and grabbed my ear.  “Women wear earrings, why are you not wearing any?”  Considering this conversation was happening in my own courtyard after I had been woken up from a nap I assumed that it would be OK not to be wearing my jewelry, I guess not.

Can they not see my long hair, my dress, or my female form?  Are earrings really needed to let them know I’m not a man in disguise?  Yes, in the US earrings are stereotypically a female adornment, but rarely is a woman’s identity specifically focused on her ears.  Unlike in America, in Togo there are extremely few to no men with pierced ears.  I am so used to seeing body adornments on both men in women, in both the US and my National Geographic version of Africa; I am surprised to find piercings only on the ears and only on women.  It’s a practice I’ve had to get used to in order to be integrated in my community and it has taken effort, even now I find my hands subconsciously wandering to my ears, just checking…yup, no worries, female today.

Seems a Little Fishy To Me

Today I bought myself a smoked fish.  Normally I stick to a vegetarian diet of rice, beans, and other veggies—yes mom, I get enough protein, don’t worry…beans and rice make a complete protein source—but I guess today I thought I’d spice things up.  I have never before bought or prepared smoked fish and honestly I was at a loss as to what to do with it, unless it is with some cream cheese and bagels, smoked fish doesn’t really find its way onto my plate.

I usually actively avoid the fish area of the market.  Of course it has its fishy smell, but mostly it just seems somehow disturbing and unsafe.  The idea of fish sitting exposed out in the sun on a humid ninety degree day goes against essentially everything I know about food safety.  I suppose being smoked, the fish are of course preserved, but the small crabs and crawfish I see lying out there…the flies…I cannot understand how they aren’t completely spoilt.  Though the only pointers our medical staff gave about it was check for maggots and a smoked fish shouldn’t be squishy, my instincts of self preservation have kept me far away from these aquatic treats. 

On a whim—or maybe a little lapse in sanity—I had a whole smoked fish sitting on my kitchen counter.  Sitting there smelling fishy, peaking out of its little newspaper blanket… I had no idea of how to begin to prepare this fish.  This fish is fish, no special name or flavor, not a delicious salmon filet or tuna steak, just fish.  Of course the internet was the place for answers! but I learned quickly people care much more about smoking the fish than eating it.  There were plenty of links to how to smoke a fish, but very few on how to prepare one that has already been smoked.  With little online inspiration to save me from the fish sitting on my counter, winging it seemed like the best option and that is how I ended up with my tomato curried fish—quite tasty really.

Getting to that point, however, was an adventure.  After staring into my fish friend’s eyes, I made my move; picking up a knife I made to gut the fish, interestingly though I learned that when you cook a fish with its organs still intact you get one solid mass of stuff and the normal techniques just don’t cut it.  Being meticulous, I got rid of every speck of this dark stuff and skinned the fish flicking bits of it across my kitchen with professional skill.  In addition I picked out every bone I could find holding the fish up in different angles of light to make sure I got them all—no choking on fish bones for me!  In the end I had two little filets of fish popped into my pot and voila dinner. 

Cooking dried beans requires a lot of time.  In addition to needing to be soaked, beans use up a lot of my fuel as they sit simmering on my stove for over an hour.  The fish, though, is fish, nothing special.  The extra time of cleaning the fish and the smelly mess I make just doesn’t seem worth the saved fuel.  Maybe I’m just not one for variety; I’ll stick to my beans.

Frozen In Time

Where has the time gone?  Back in the States Thanksgiving is already approaching. This means I’ve been in Togo for nearly six months, but it hardly feels like it.  Being a native Upstate New Yorker I am in the habit of marking the passage of time with the change of the seasons.  Back in New York there is little subtlety to each part of the year; our winters are cold and snowy, our summers hot (relatively) and our autumn filled with colors.

Here though, we really only have two seasons, wet and dry.  To an outsider, however, in spite of the fact it does rain more at one part of the year than the other, it’s just HOT all the time.  I feel like I am perpetually trapped in summertime.  A summertime that keeps getting hotter (thank you approaching dry season…).

I’m pretty sure I have been sucked into an episode of the Twilight Zone.  Being so connected to those in the U.S., so that I have gotten pictures of the snows that are falling, I feel like it should be getting cold here.  In New York, summer is really only two months (three if it extends a little into June and September) so by season logic there is no way I have been here longer than two-three months—six is far out of the realm of possibility.  It’s like I keep being told that time is passing and I can feel it passing but I keep waking up to relive the same summer over and over again.

I know for other people around the world who grow up and live in tropical climates this is normal, but it is freaking me out a little.  I miss my seasons… I like being cold and I like being able to feel what time of the year it is.  I’m sure soon enough I’ll learn to differentiate as I do in the States but for now…  “There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Togo Zone.”

 **Cue Twilight Zone theme music… da-na-na-na  da-na-na-na

A Selling Society

Everyone here is selling something.  I don’t mean this in any deep metaphorical sense, literally everyone is selling something.  On Friday, my market day, you can find everyone you know from work and around town camped out somewhere in the market selling their wares.  I am no longer surprised to have a colleague, such as a nurse or medical assistance, shout hello to me from their stand as I pass though doing my own shopping.  From the farmers, nurses, to my landlord, and my host-family’s uncle—a director at a cement factory, everyone is selling. 

The products they are selling do not tend to be unique.  Few of the products are local or made by anyone selling the goods.  Even much of the food products (in spite of the predominant profession in Togo being farmer) are shipped in from elsewhere.  From speaking with an acquaintance I know that many of these vendors make a weekly pilgrimage down to Lomé to buy whatever random merchandise to resell at our local market and around town.  Some people tend to specialize; you have cloth dealers, those who sell spices, onions, tomatoes, pots and pans, etc. But almost all the products are identical.

I live in a city with one of the largest markets in Togo and you can find most of anything you want.  We have hundreds of people selling goods, but they are all selling exactly the same things.  For the dozen cloth sellers, they all sell the same cloth—probably all from the same supplier.  The same is true with those selling plastic wares and packaged food products.  All these goods come from the same places are of exactly the same quality, and all the same price, the choice isn’t the product, but which of the twenty vendors will you buy it from?

I can find hardly any specialization in the market here.  Few people offer unique products that you can’t easily walk ten feet and buy with someone else.  Maybe I am limited in my capacity to grasp this idea, but if thirty women buy a basket of tomatoes from the same vendor in order to sell them all at the same place, how can anyone really succeed in turning a profit? 

In the US I have on occasion despaired in how much of a service industry country we have become, but I have a greater appreciation for its effectiveness when compared to the system here.  I cannot claim to know all the intricacies of the economic system here, but it just seems inefficient and impractical for the general population.  These local vendors all purchase from the same suppliers in Lomé, padding the pockets of the few people who actually make products (most not from Togo) and sell these goods for a profit of probably only a few cents. 

Just as with the subsistence farming that is the basis of most of the lives of Togolese, this method of reselling goods provides enough to live on but not much else.  

I’ll Beet It Out of You

I love beets.  Maybe it’s because I wasn’t introduced to beets until I was a senior at university, or maybe I’ve watched too much of The Office and fallen in love with the idea of a somehow adorably creepy man such as Dwight taking so much passion in growing this delicious food of purple-red goodness, but I really really like beets.

I first had beets in a delicious goat cheese and balsamic salad.  I don’t know what, after twenty-two odd years of never eating a beet, convinced me to take the plunge and order beets.  I think it was the goat cheese, chèvre, and I don’t regret my decision.

Oh chèvre, something sorely lacking here in Togo.  For the number of goats running around you’d expect goat cheese to be a staple, but when I had asked my family if they ever milked their goats I got a response of “…no” with a tone and long enough pause to say “who in their right mind would milk a goat??”  Hello, I would.

Well anyway, since then I have gotten beet salad at nearly every opportunity.  Many people will tell horror stories of being force fed beets as a child; I never had such luck.  I probably appreciate them all the more for it.  When I discovered that I could buy beets in my marché, a nice big one for roughly twenty-five cents, I couldn’t resist.  I now make myself beets at least once a week.  Sadly without my goat cheese or balsamic vinaigrette I can’t make my ideal salad, but sweet and sour beets are pretty good.

Every time I prep my beets I stain my fingers and cutting board a deep purple-red.  I’ve heard people complain that it is this intrusive color that turns them off from beets, personally I love it.  Maybe I’m starved for the artificially bright colors of the food products you find in the US, but its outrageous color makes me happy.  I remember being a little put off when once looking at the ingredients in an organic strawberry yogurt and seeing beet juice as an ingredient to give it more color, I completely understand now.  FUN FACT: Did you know that if you eat a lot of beets it can turn your urine pink too?  Maybe a little unsettling if it happens, but harmless and very true.

Beets have very little to do with Togo except the fact that I can get them here.  I suppose I’m just glad I tried something new even though I had a bit of a bias against it.  Beets:  a food that so many turned a face at when they were kids.  Beets:  a food that makes me happy (or maybe I just like unhappy children?).  Definitely worth a second try.

Per Diem

The past few days I have been in Lomé for a conference with the World Health Organization (WHO) about their campaign to eradicate Polio in Togo and West Africa.  WHO was kind enough to pay for our transportation to their office, but also laid upon us a “per diem” of no insubstantial sum that made a few of us volunteers a bit uncomfortable to accept.  The sum they gave to us is the typical amount for an average person who in invited to attend a WHO event and for the number of people who participate annually, WHO hands out a huge amount of money.  The idea that the money they were giving us to come and participate in a meeting could have very well been spent in a better way, such as buying these vaccinations they need to distribute, haunted some of us as we took the superfluous sum. 

A per diem is intended to cover incidental costs, such as meals and lodging, you have while participating in an event.  The idea of providing for someone to come to your event is not a unique one, but here in Togo the idea of a per diem is taken to excess. 

In the States it is typical to personally pay for training.  If you want to be certified in CPR you pay, but here everyone expects to be paid.  It can be extremely difficult to get participants in any sort of training or project without paying them and a guest speaker (such as a local doctor) can cost you even more.  You can waste a substantial part of a budget on per diem and with very limited funds this can be extremely frustrating.  Often the majority of a budget for a project such as educating a population on an issue has been the per diem.  A substantial amount is expected by participants in the form of a per diem, but the Peace Corps is attempting to discourage the giving of per diem by decreasing the amount we are allowed to allocate for that purpose in our funding applications.

I am not about to say that there are not true volunteers here in Togo, but nearly everyone expects payment for participation.  Even if they are local with no transportation or lodging costs, people want to be paid.  I don’t know if it’s a result of previous institutions being here and creating the expectation of pay for nearly everything or what, but I can’t help but think of the resources that are wasted in the per diem system.  If people would be willing to give their time for free or minimal costs, the money saved could be used to support the aspects of projects and development that actually require funding rather than going towards paying someone for coming to a meeting for a few hours one afternoon. 

A Wraparound

This topic may seem a little risqué, but being here in Togo—particularly when working with mothers—you can’t help noticing and I might as well voice what we’ve all seen, breasts. 

Unlike in the US, breast feeding in Togo is considered completely normal and acceptable in public.  There is no covering up with a blanket or retreating to a private location, no matter who is around or where they are a breast is whipped out to feed a fussy babe.  While sitting and having a conversation with a man a woman will have no qualms about pulling down her shirt. 

While my American sensibilities ask why they don’t show some restraint in when and where, the acceptance of breast feeding here is something one would hope to see in the States.  Breastfeeding is by far one of the best choices you can make for an infant’s health and it’s really a shame that baby formulas have replaced breast milk as the popular choice. 

It is not, however, advocacy for breast feeding that I want to write about.  It’s really the breasts themselves I wish to mention.  Looking at National Geographics of old you make note some of the stereotyped African tribal women with long sagging breasts.  Those old issues showing these women have been the butt of many jokes in TV shows, but my oh my are they real. 

Some of the volunteers have nicknamed them “wraparound boob” thanks to the way they are used.  There have been reported sightings of women feeding their children while they are still on their back.  They just wrap their breast around their side and voila a meal on the go.

I don’t doubt these rumors.  I have seen women snake their breasts out from under their clothes in the most unimaginable ways.  And I have seen a breast released from a bra drop down to a woman’s waist.

These are not the afflictions of old women but those of all ages.  I’ve seen young mothers of twenty with the breasts you only expect to see on a woman of seventy.  The widespread nature of this is surprising but when you think about it you can see how it could happen.

For one, fewer women wear bras here, but that doesn't really explain it seeing as how some of the saggiest I have seen wear a bra.  Second, women have more children and breast feed for longer than in the States.  And thirdly, the factor I think is most important is the fact that the way women carry children is a sling supported almost entirely by their chest (See picture).  While very efficient, wrapping a piece of cloth around your chest to support a child on your back will surely tend to drag things down.  And girls start carrying children this way at a very young age. 

Maybe this explains it, maybe not.  Just observation…