A Raw Food Diet

No, don’t worry, I have not picked up some new age diet. I have simply run out of cooking fuel.  When I was first being settled into my site I chose to buy myself a two burner gas stove and propane tank.  A gas stove is a significant convenience over the alternatives of a charcoal stove or a kerosene one.  Theoretically for me it is even more convenient as I have a gas station in my city that sells the propane tanks I need. 

This would be a simple bike ride down the road, if they ever had gas in stock.  With cooking three meals a day and a bit of baking to boot, last Saturday represents the second time I have used up my gas.  The first time I used up my fuel I was told it would be two weeks before more gas would arrive in Vogan and I quickly caved and had my tank refilled in Lomé.  This time, however, I did not want to go through that same hassle, and besides I was told more gas would arrive this past Wednesday, and then I was told it would arrive today (Friday) and now…maybe Monday? He’ll give me a call.

An unpredictable delivery schedule and my sheer laziness have placed me on a raw food diet, or to not confuse it with the fad diet, a diet consisting of raw foods aka I don’t cook ‘em.  There is street food available in town, but it is a bit of a hike to get to them and frankly I just don’t want to leave my house for every meal.  Before I realized it would be such a long time until I had fuel, I happily lived off my honey milk balls.  Oh yeah, oatmeal, peanut butter, powdered milk, and honey mixed into delicious goodness.  I unfortunately ran out of honey very quickly and while I still do it, plain peanut butter mixed with dry oatmeal is not as good.  As a healthier option though and to use the vegetables I had in my house I moved onto some glorified cole slaw. I have much cabbage, beets and carrots in my house—add a little vinegar and mustard and you have yourself a slaw, vary it a little with some soy sauce and you have a new one. For other meals bananas and avocados do just fine.

Searching for ideas for tasty foods I don’t have to cook, I came across recipes for people following the “raw food diet,” but besides an avocado chocolate pudding (yeah, sounds strange right? But is pretty good) very few of the recipes were useful at all because of all the bizarre ingredients they asked for. Where am I to get ground yellow flax, lucuma, and almond pulp?  I was really a bit disappointed and found no magical use for my peanut butter or cabbage. 

So, I am left with my slaw and my oatmeal.  But I will tough this one out, I am finding myself stubborn and giddy at the prospect of the challenge.  Now I just need to find a way to use those dozen eggs I bought just before running out of cooking power.  Maybe I’ll pick up body building and make myself some crazy raw egg protein energy drinks!  Six days and counting!

The Little Things

Today was a good day.  No, I did not solve some serious health problem or complete a big project, today was a good day because I found olive oil in one of Vogan’s stores.  No more cooking with regular old vegetable oil for me! Oddly enough it was tucked away in the isle with beauty products.  I don’t understand, but I’ll go with it.  In my excitement I purchased a little more at the store than I was planning on when I went in.  I even treated myself to ice cold Fanta from the store’s fridge.

Adding to the excitement of olive oil is the fact that the three year old girl in my compound has officially stopped calling me “yovo.”  Thanks to her grandmother always talking about me as the “yovo,” she picked up the habit, but no more.  It has taken a lot of work, and thankfully much help from my neighbors, but now she happily shouts “Liss!” every time I appear.  She “helps” me push my bike across the compound and runs ahead to open the gate.  As a bike away she continues to shout “Liss” and laugh hysterically when I turn around and wave.  I hear her calling out long after I disappear from sight.  Now, I am not a big ‘kid person,’ but it is nice to hear someone happily calling after me, not screaming “yovo.”

If olive oil was the ice cream and Liss being the whipped cream, the cherry on top was discovering that one of the banks in town accepts my bank card.  My bank card has no Visa attached to it or other company and I had always thought and been told that it wouldn’t work in any ATM besides those belonging to my bank, well…I was wrong!  Being able to use an ATM locally means that I can now save roughly 3,000CFA and four hours of my time every time I need to go to the bank.  Pretty soon I will have absolutely no excuse to leave Vogan.

It’s true that a big event like professional success could make my days seem much better, but in the end it is the little things that make a day seem so much better.  Just the same, the little things can make an empirically good day seem like a terrible one.  So, thank you olive oil, banks, Fanta, and little children for tipping the scales and making this day a good one.

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.