Heat Index Bliss

I think we all expect to learn something about ourselves throughout life and particularly when doing an out of the ordinary and stressful activity like Peace Corps.  The single most important thing I’ve learned about myself is that my happiness and attitude are significantly impacted by the climate I am in.  Some may say I have discovered that I am a whiner, but I had already come to grips with that sometime in high school.

Here I whine about the weather.  I have surely annoyed a friend or two as I vent on my constant uncomfortableness down in the south of Togo.  Without meaning to I have even found myself in arguments with a few passionate Savanners who believe their couple months of heat (sometimes reaching above 120F during the day—yeah I know, it is definitely something to complain about) are really the most extreme and complain worthy.

For those of you not familiar with Togo: Savannes is the most northernly region in Togo and is in the savanna climate zone (very low humidity, less rain, and at times during the year extreme heat).  Maritime (where I live) is the most southernly region and is in the tropical climate zone (high humidity, relatively consistent temperatures throughout the year, and higher rainfall).

In my opinion, being in the south is rough.  While temperatures are more often than not hovering around 85-95°F we have humidity that ranges from 60-70%.  This is all year long.  As the seasons change (Dry to Wet) there are some average changes, but not by much.  Those in Savannes have a little different pattern and have times of the year when their low temperature dips into the 50s and times when the high reaches over 125°F.  One thing is consistent though, low humidity (which, I must concede causes many of its own heath issues like increased lung infections, scratchy throat, and dry skin). 

I am constantly uncomfortable—even at times when I don’t feel hot I am still sweaty and sticky.  I live in front of my fan and almost entirely in the nude if I can manage it.  I frequently have trouble sleeping because I am hot and even the most mundane of tasks like doing the dishes or watching TV leave me dripping in sweat.  I’m honestly not sure if I could survive this region without my fan so, to all my Martitimers without electricity, “Du courage.”

This past weekend I headed north to do some group work in the city of Kara and afterwards a spent a little time with a friend in Sokode on my return trip.  It was over this weekend that I fully understood what I have been missing.  Prior to this weekend I had never been further north than Pagala (which in itself still gave me a taste of the freedom from humidity).  What I found up north was sweet heavenly heat index bliss.  Heat index is the calculation of the perceived temperature by incorporating humidity.

Heat Index Calculation Chart

Kara was hotter than Vogan, but not too hot (I’ve heard there has been an extremely mild hot season so far).  It was hot but I was comfortable.  I know my body perceived the heat as I sweating—thank you plastic chair for letting me know—but I felt dry and comfortable.  I was wearing clothes heavier than I usually wear in Vogan and yet I was happy, eager to walk around and explore and take a poolside nap.  The excitement continued in Sokode when I slept soundly without a fan and walked around at high noon only breaking into a slight sweat.  I envy them and unfortunately couldn’t shut up about it.  I feel as though the Kara and Central regions of Togo find that heat and humidity balance amazingly well.  If I even had a month out of the year in which I could feel that good…

As a right this it is 7:15pm, 31°C (90°F) and 63% humidity; According to Mr. Heat Index that is feeling just about 100°F.  Now during hot season this doesn’t really compare to some for the highs in Savannes, but this is all year round.  On an average day when the temperature reached 95°F it feels like a whopping 120ish°F. Being hot and sweaty really impacts my attitude and work ethic.  So, lesson learned, while I can’t just up and move north right now, I will not be living in a tropical climate my whole life, and one day maybe my dreams will come true and I’ll once again wake up and live my life feeling pleasantly dry and comfortable.  

Trapped

I often find myself complaining that I feel trapped.  I make excuses for not going outside and my lack of exercising because I don’t feel comfortable because I already feel like enough of a spectacle always being stared and shouted at when I’m doing normal things; running wouldn’t be nearly the escape it should be it would be stressful. I suppose my house and my couch are my prison, but still a place that’s mine. 

Well the karma of all my complaining caught up with me when I made to leave for work yesterday.  I was trapped, not figuratively, but literally.  I stuck my key in but it wouldn’t turn; the lock was broken, I was locked inside my house.  I thought about shouting out my window to my neighbors, but no one was around who spoke English or French and could understand my plight.  I tried calling one of the people I work with, no answer… my program director?.. another colleague? Nothing…  Finally I broke out of my house, only sort of breaking down my door. 

Previously I had lost my key and I had broken into my house and now I was busting out.  It wasn’t too bad, but with the bolt still in the locked position I couldn’t really go to my meeting.  Thankfully, I finally got in touch with the ones I was to have the meeting with and they were very understanding and appeared only a few minutes later with a carpenter in tow.  I was saved!

My landlord’s wife came back a short time later.  “You got locked inside your house? Muhahahahahaha!”  Yeah, she laughed at me—I suppose it was a pretty funny situation.  I’ll have to watch what I complain about now, no more feeling trapped or out of touch, maybe I am “so tired of feeling like I eat ice cream all the time.”  I could be trapped with that.

Senegal ahoy!

As I stepped off the plane I was greeted by a huge hug as the humidity of Lomé squeezed me tight practically screaming “welcome back!”  I just got back from a trip to Senegal where the weather was a pleasant high of 75 degrees and as dry as could be.  They were the most comfortable weeks I’ve ever spent in Africa, granted I was by no means prepared and in the morning and at night I was freezing as the temperature dipped into the 60’s and caught my first ever African cold.  Though, while most pleasant, it was not for the weather that I went to Senegal.  Myself and another volunteer were sent to attend a two week long conference and training on malaria.

As many of us have heard at some point in time, malaria is a severe disease spread by mosquitoes that is the cause of nearly a million deaths a year, an estimated US$12 billion loss in GDP in African nations, and is endemic to much of Africa.  In the past malaria was a major cause of mortality in North America as well, but with rapid treatment, mosquito breeding site elimination, protection of homes with window screens and bed nets, and eventually the use of insecticides we were able to completely eliminated malaria from the United States.  Many decades ago the world declared that it would eliminate malaria from other endemic areas such as South East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.  While sincere, efforts were spotty and unfocused and when results didn’t come immediately interest and funding in many ways petered out particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Today we are equipped with new tools to fight malaria including new anti-malarial treatments, new simple and rapid diagnosis methods, a vaccine to prevent malaria deaths scheduled to come out in 2015 (and others on the way to prevent transmission), and most of all a renewed vigor to finally finish what we started.  There have been new efforts to implement universal coverage of insecticide treated bed nets and funding access to Rapid Diagnostic Tests (RDT) and malaria medication.  Another key aspect of the renewed fight is a new goal of unified action both in scientific technology development and on the ground efforts.

That is why I went to Senegal.  For many reasons it has long been in the Peace Corps culture that volunteers and Peace Corps countries have followed their own agenda and not put forth a unified effort on any particular project.  All countries have their own training materials and each sector within a country does their own individual activities.  Today, though, with expanding communication opportunities and an increasing technical knowledge of the issue facing us, there really are no longer excuses to not collaborating and not collaborating really represents a weakness in our efforts to eliminate issues that reach across borders. 

The Peace Corps in Africa is working to unify our volunteers through the Stomp Out Malaria in Africa initiative (stompingoutmalairia.org).  The goal is to have all countries in Africa endemic with malaria create a unified front, making malaria a priority activity for volunteers of all sectors, creating a universal Peace Corps-wide training.  In order to put this initiative in motion the Peace Corps has been sponsoring “Malaria Boot Camps” to educate staff and volunteers who will spear head to start of or strengthening of malaria initiatives in their country.  This is where my trip to Senegal comes in.

This was the third Boot Camp put on the by the Peace Corps and twenty-three participants from eleven countries convened in Senegal for training.  A mix of volunteers, PC response, and staff from Senegal, The Gambia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, Ethiopia, Uganda, Zambia, and Mozambique participated in technical training, lectures from experts from all over the malaria effort, and much more from advocacy strategies, how to utilize social media, to how to convince all volunteers to participate.   We began our days at 8am and finished around 10:30pm and had only one day off for the two weeks.  It was a tiring two weeks, but I learned a great deal and have come back motivated to work together with Peace Corps Togo to begin our efforts against malaria.

While much of the time was work it was great to get to know the people from the other countries.  We got to spend a day at a beach in a town called Popenguine, went hiking through their nature preserve, climbed around on old military bunkers, played on the beach, and had some good food.  Over the past twelve days we all bonded and have promised each other to stay in touch.  A group of us were all on the same plane back and the joke was made that we should pretend to be asleep when we got into Lomé and stay on the plane as it continued on for Ethiopia.  If only things worked that way…

This training in Senegal and meeting the team of Peace Corps volunteers has inspired me to worked more in the fight against malaria and sparked optimism that we can accomplish our goals with wise investments and a unified effort from all those in the fight against malaria.  And maybe I can complain a little less about the weather with a new motivation to be doing work here…though I don’t know if I could ever really do that. Haha.

PDM

Periodically throughout service we have trainings with our fellow volunteers to hone our skills and disseminate new information.  This past week my stage (SED & CHAP) arrived in Pagala with our homologues for PDM.  Focusing on behavior change methods, family planning for CHAP, and perma-gardens for SED, we spent five days from 7:30am to 6pm in sessions designed to modify our way of thinking about projects and improve our technical knowledge.

We got one whopper of information near the end of the week. We were informed by the Country Director and SED APCD that PC Togo will be phasing out the SED program.  The West Africa Regional Director made the decision to eliminate SED in order to focus PC efforts in Togo.  As a result we won’t be accepting any new SED volunteers and our numbers here in Togo will be reduced for now by a quarter.  The current volunteers with finish their service, but it’s still hard to imagine only having three programs.

To the training I brought a homologue from a local NGO that works on women’s rights and health, and both he and others enjoyed the fact that he was at the training. He was excited to actively participate in activities, joked around, and caught the heart of volunteers as he rolled his eyes and inserted perfectly timed exclamations of exasperation that seemed to fit exactly with how we all felt about some activities.

One activity was home visits to practice some of the family planning training we had received.  We were separated into small groups of volunteers and their homologues, driven out of town into a small village, given three family names, and told to go talk to the family about family planning.  After being dropped off in a seemingly nowhere place, my homologue heaved a heavy sigh that rolled into an exclamation of “Mon Dieu.”  Yup, that is how we all felt, while home visits can be very effective and important, it was hot and sunny, dinner was approaching, and we had to go knocking on doors—a heavy sigh was appropriate. 

Once the home-visits began though, they were quite interesting.  We have heard about some of the rumors people in Togo believe about birth control, but I had not heard many of them personally.  On our third house we spoke with a man who understood the need for family planning, but was concerned that if his wife began a method of birth control such as Norplant she would take a lover.  It was confirmed, some Togolese actually believe that giving woman an opportunity to not get pregnant will automatically make them adulterous. Because of that fear he said he practiced abstinence during periods that they do not want children.  Sam’s homey had a great reply to his practice of abstinence. “Maybe you do practice abstinence and it is effective, but one day you will be feeling really happy, your wife will be there and soon you’ll have that kid you didn’t want.”  That got a quite a few LOLs.

The Peace Corps facility in Pagala is very similar to summer camp, and from what I’ve heard it was a retreat camp in the 70s that the Peace Corps bought years later.  The facility is very similar to a camp you’d think of in the U.S.—we stay in cabin-like bunks, eat together in a dining hall, and there is even an old swimming-pool that has long been abandoned.   One difference is that the camp has not been sue-proofed.  The pool is not fenced and there are few paths that do not have jagged rocks and roots traversing them.  It was with these rocks that I had my exciting interaction.

Just earlier in the day I had mentioned how no one in the U.S. could get away with grounds like those in Pagala, when, after dark, I was accompanying a friend to find hot water from the kitchen to tend to her own foot injury and I walked directly into a big rock sticking out of the ground. Stubbing my toe, I busted it right open.  Being the great friend I am I now had a sympathy food injury to compliment my friend’s. Thankfully it turned into only what resembles a really deep blister and after some washing, the removal of a substantial hunk of skin, exclamations of “oh gross!” and some bandages I was able to limp on.

Trainings at Pagala are a great time to catch up with other volunteers and gain important knowledge—my biggest lesson this week being to use a flashlight when walking around at night.  While taking a hunk off my toe was an effective lesson, I think I prefer the home visits. 

I (H)Ate bugs

I do not like insects.  I am not one scream and run away when I see them, but they make me unhappy.  I think it is mostly an issue of personal space.  I like my own space, and only things I invite into my little bubble are welcome.  Now people, and animals such as cats and dogs, can be welcome in my space, but when I don’t want them I can close a door or simply say, “Leave me alone.” And I have my space back; this is not the case with bugs.  No matter what you do they will invade your space.  You can sleep under a net and the little ones will crawl through, you can spray noxious insecticide everywhere and they will soon appear again; bugs are persistent, annoying, and unwelcome.

Most recently bugs have invaded my food.  It started with rice weevils.  I opened my bin of rice and found a few little weevils crawling around in there.  Being a sizeable quantity of rice it would be silly and irresponsible (um hello, Africa?) to toss it out just because there are bugs in it. The solution: cook the rice as normal, just skim the little buggers off the top of the water when then float up.  Of course muttering to yourself with exclamations of, “Eeeww…, gross,” and, “I hate bugs, I hate bugs, I hate bugs” will come along naturally.  Any bugs left in are simply a bit of extra protein—yeah, delicious.

After the rice came the beans.  I bought some dried beans in the market and when I proceeded to sort through them to get rid of little rocks and bad beans I found more bugs.  This time they were sphere-like flying insects.  Their quick escape from the beans into my house freaked me out a bit and I had to take my bean sorting outside.  I did my best to shake out all the bugs and pick out beans that looked fishy, but still today I found one of these bugs hanging out in my beans.  No worries it was squished successfully.  The result of this? I am going to go on a bean diet for the next couple of weeks to use them all up before new buggies hatch.  I really should have bought a smaller amount of beans…

I have looked online for solutions to the “bugs in my grains” problem, but the number one suggestion is to freeze the rice or beans to kill the eggs and keep new ones from hatching.  If you remember I am without a refrigerator and getting anything below 85 degrees is highly unlikely.  The other option given:  Toss them out, but as I said before, I live in Africa…

Other than the bugs in my food my ritualistic spraying with insecticide, which will surely lead to cancer one day, has kept the buggers at bay.  Of course there is a constant parade of ants tromping though my bathroom, but without real ant traps there is no way for me to get my bug poison down to them. 

Another handy solution to my bug problem is that I have a lizard living in my ceiling... or that’s what I think it is… I’m pretty sure this friend, who I hear scurrying around on my drop ceiling periodically, eats up those more unpleasant bugs like big spiders and cockroaches.  At least I haven’t ever had any real problems with them, so I like to assume that that scary sound in the ceiling is doing some good.  Just like those extra bugs I eat give me the little boost of protein that is keeping me healthy, after a few “uggh’s” you have to look for the positives, it's the only way to stay sane. That, and liberal amounts of insecticide. 

Hello Pineapple Lime Preserves

Woale, Nenie atɔtɔ a?  Deka, biye dze eve. Etɔ, biye dze atɔ.

(Good afternoon, how much does the pineapple cost? One, 200CFA. Three, 500 CFA)

Well then… I must buy three and save that 100CFA (approx. 25 cents)!

While perusing the market yesterday I had a bit of a hankering for some fruit.  My usual fruit lady had pineapple and some bizarre looking African fruit I did not recognize at all so, rather than chancing my fruit purchase of the week on the mystery fruit, I turned my eye to the piles of pineapple.

Really all I needed or wanted was one pineapple, but they were so neatly stacked in piles of three and the price such a bargain… how could I not get three?  Well, I could have not gotten three and not had a big pile of pineapple sitting in my house that I needed to eat before the end of a few days or I would not only have a large pile of pineapple, but also a large pile of rotting pineapple sitting in my kitchen.  I needed to figure out how to use up this fruit I so frugally purchased. 

Tiger enjoying a pineapple lime preserve sandwich.

Of course I could eat it strait, but a bad experience in the past when I sat down by my lonesome with a whole pineapple and ended up with a tongue sore from the acid burning my tongue, makes me shy away from eating three pineapples straight.  There is always the oldie but goody, pineapple upside-down cake, but trying to limit some of my sugar intake that was out.  So I found a recipe for Pineapple Lime Preserves and they are delicious.

This was my first preserving experience and really I have not of the proper equipment to do it properly.  But after jerry-rigging a contraption made from an old margarine tub and the pot lid to keep my jar submerged beneath the boiling water, it was a go.  Amazingly, I did not burn myself once even though I was pouring a boiling liquid into a boiling hot jar with the limited equipment I could fin consisting of more margarine tubs and a dishtowel.

I now have a tasty treat for my toast, no burns, fewer pineapples, and, with a little luck, no botulism!

A Cool Holiday

France may just be the best place to be if you are feeling nauseous.  You may say with such delicious food and wine, and so many things to see and do? You want to be nauseous there?  Well, I’m talking about its ability to make you feel all better.  Thanks to differences in health care you can walk into a pharmacy ask for something to fix your stomach and, ba-da-bing, you have in your hand the medication they give to Chemo patients to fight their nausea.  One of these bad boys and you are ready to eat and do everything.  You can live like you are dying of that cancer that you no longer feel nauseous from, and with so much to see and eat, Paris may be just the place to do it.

I met up with Matt in Paris for one week of holiday from life here in Togo.  I must say I had a pretty good time and I think Matt did too, but I am still convinced he may have been experiencing a bit of a high and euphoria from those French drugs.

Of course one perk of leaving the equator is the weather.  For the week, Paris was a pleasant forty-something degrees during the day and thirties at night.  I was able to snuggle under blankets, wear warm clothes, and walk around throughout the day without sweating to death.  It was wonderful to wander through the city and explore without feeling like you are going to die of dehydration and sun poisoning. A nice warm hand to hold is not too bad either.

Being the wanderers we are, we walked all over the city seeing many of the typical touristy sites and exploring neighborhoods.  For lunch we tried to decide between the dozens of nearly identical cafes we passed and started thinking about what we would be doing for dinner even before we had lunch.  Of course the food was delicious and an apple crumble, with a topping that may have been a stick of butter, got us to come back for more.  I wish I could have more of this French food back in Togo, but without many of the ingredient like real butter or cheese I’m out of luck and can’t even make them for myself. 

As convinced of how delicious the food is, I am equally convinced that every table in Paris wobbles.  Hardly a problem for the average person a wobbly table can be fixed with a sliver of cardboard, but, put in the hands of one such as myself, a wobbly table is dangerous.  I will jar the table the precise moment you are trying to pour yourself a glass of wine or pick up a utensil, and I will enjoy it, then I will accidently do it again.

Together Matt and I saw weapons, bones, towers, and pigeons fighting over hotdogs and much more.  I finally was able to get clean and stay that way for longer than ten seconds and I got to see Matt after seven months of being apart.  Spending time in Paris made the idea of coming back to humidity and dirt feel extremely difficult, but it’s good to be back, getting a bear hug welcome home from my landlord’s wife and sitting propped in front of my fan listening to my tiny neighbor wail away.  Ah, Togo.

I’ll miss Paris, and even though I may be sweaty and covered in dust, I can’t imagine starting the New Year anywhere but here. Souhaitant une bonne et heureuse année pour tous.