Summah Days

The past couple months have been full of long summer days. Things have died down a little bit after the school year and after my week as a camp counselor for Camp Unité ended. I’ve had people come visit Amlamé and I’ve visited a few other villages. I took a trip to Benin and spent two days with awesome friends on the beaches of Grand Popo.

When we got back to Lomé after the trip, it was the first day of the World Cup. Being here for the games has been amazing. In the states I had a few people who would follow matches with me, but here the games are playing on every radio and tv, on every corner, in every quartier (neighborhood), in every village and it’s awesome to experience. Everyone is excited. It’s understood that everything stops at 2pm when the games start. Everyone is pretty depressed today that Ghana lost last night though.

It was fun rooting for the US team while being here! Every win was that much more exciting for us volunteers. The BBC commentators on the radio after the win against Algeria played an interview with Landon Donovan who said something along the lines of “We’re so happy to have won and we know how excited our fans are back in America.” And we chimed in “In Africa too!” I know the odds were only 60:1 of us winning, and I told all my friends here that I was rooting for an African team to win this year, but losing to Ghana still was pretty depressing. It is weird how in being a volunteer here, the littlest comment, gesture, or event can make a day awesome or can make it horrible.

For example, the other day when I got back to village after having a long weekend, I went to the post office to see if a package my mom had sent a month ago to my P.O. box had finally arrived there. I open my box and I have a little blue slip that says there is a package waiting inside. I share my box with other volunteers in my area, so I was extra excited to see that the slip said it was for me! Once I was inside, I waited in line for awhile and when I finally got to the front, the woman who runs everything at our post office tells me there was a mistake and that even though I did have a package it was somewhere else in country because the drivers had dropped off the wrong one. Bummer. But she tells me there is a big package in EMS (The in country mail system that Peace Corps uses. If any of us get mail at the Lome address, or if Peace Corps or other volunteers want to send us updates or newsletters, they use this system). I’m the contact volunteer for our cluster area so all the mail comes to me in big packages first for us and I get to sort it out. I go around the counter, hoping for even one letter or one measly PC note. But, I open up the EMS package and every single letter, padded envelope and Peace Corps update are for other volunteers. I wanted to start bawling.

After going back to the NGO to work for awhile, I rounded the corner off the main road to go back home and a crowd of kids were there waiting to say hi, jumping up and down, waving and screaming “Eidi! Eidi!” (my Akposso name). I had the biggest smile on my face and it instantly made my day better. I feel like there are small things that can make or break your day back in the states, but somehow here it feels so much more intense. They warned us of this in several Peace Corps manuals, but even though it happens all the time, it still surprises me.
Anyway, I’m here in Atakpamé working on some projects I want to start back in village and waiting to get my old phone number renewed onto a new phone (my old phone fell out of my pocket I think on the way up when I was on a moto with Max). Once I’m back in village, I’m going to mainly work on the prenatal health campaign. I think I’m going to try and start a group first with the sage femme (midwife) and nurses in my village to help train a group of women as volunteer community health workers. It should help ease the burden of existing CHWs (I think my village currently has 5 for a population of 9000+) in a way that is sustainable and cost-effective. Eventually, I hope it will create a network of support for the women in my community that will encourage them to seek out care for a variety of health issues, but most importantly prenatal and infant health care.

Overall, I’m doing really well and am still really excited and happy being here. Everyday, it’s hard battling people’s perceptions of me as a woman, as white, as an American, as a PC volunteer, as not married and having no kids, as liberal, etc., but generally I’m really glad to be here and I feel that I’m doing a lot of work and am figuring out a lot about myself. Come visit me! If not, at least write more!

-Camilla and Maxmillian