End of summer check-in
Back to school is right around the corner
Hello there! It has been a minute since my last post so I figured now is a good time for another update.
Work Activities
Work has pretty much been business as usual. I am still working at the clinic Monday-Friday, weighing babies on Thursday, and doing afternoon health talks when I can get the schedule worked out with our community health workers. We did a lot of enriched porridge demonstrations and I have some ideas in the works for future health talk topics. I also think that I am going to start doing health talks during our Thursday vaccination days; it helps to have a captive audience.
One exciting update is that I submitted a small grant application to get latrines constructed at the middle school. There have never been latrines of any kind at the middle school, leading to open defecation, which I think most people can agree is not ideal. I will also help to organize a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) committee that will train the community on hygiene topics and help to maintain the latrines over time. Once the grant gets approved by Peace Corps headquarters, it will be posted to their website where we can begin fundraising. I will definitely let you all know when that happens. This is a great way for YOU to get involved and influence real change.
School starts sometime in September (the dates are still a mystery to me). I think I will be teaching a health class again and probably doing an English club (another mystery). It will be nice to start off this school year already knowing the staff and most of the students. Across the country, a dismal number of students passed their exams, so most of the kids are going to be the same. I have better language and classroom management skills than I had last year, so I am optimistic for this time around.
Outside of Work Activities
Part of the reason this blog is late is that I have genuinely been very busy. After submitting my primary med school application, I had to work on the secondary applications. This ended up being a lot more work than the primary application and I spent essentially every free moment I had in June and July working on getting everything submitted. Now I am just waiting to hear back if I get interviews, so I have some time to relax.
In early July, there was a big party to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Catholic parish in the district capital. We got matching fabric shown in Figure 1 below, the choir from the parish in Kara came to sing, and there were visitors all the way from Lome. The Mass was about four hours long (I started to lose track) and was celebrated by the Bishop of Sokode. A lot of people got confirmed and there was plenty to eat and drink afterwards. It was an all-day affair.
We are in the midst of the rainy season, which is so wonderful. Not only are more vegetables available (cabbage, green beans, cucumbers, etc), but the weather is much cooler. I sleep without a fan most nights and I am rarely sweating. It does mean more work for most people because they need to do lots of farmwork to ensure a good harvest. Our village normally celebrates the “fête des ignames” (yam party) on August 15th, but it is a little delayed because there hasn’t been enough rain. But when the yams are ready, we will be eating lots of fufu, like in Figure 2 below.
Travel Activities
Another reason this blog is late is because immediately after I finished my secondary applications, I went on perhaps the coolest vacation of my life. Ladi/Lea was gracious enough to take me and a few others along to visit her parents in Madagascar. We flew on Ethiopian Airlines (amazing, highly recommend) and because our layover in Ethiopia was long, they put us in a hotel for free! It was actually the nicest hotel I had ever stayed in, truly an incredible experience. I took the longest and hottest shower of my life.
When we got to Madagascar, Ladi/Lea was reunited with her parents after over a year of separation and she got to see their house for the first time. We spent a few days in the capital, Antananarivo, then drove to Andasibe to see lemurs! We drove back to the capital and then flew to Mauritius, which I honestly had never heard of before this trip. It is a small island country in the Indian Ocean where dodo birds used to live (RIP). We spent a day in the city, a day hiking, and a day on the beach. It was perfect and the Indian food was amazing. We flew back to Madagascar and enjoyed the last few days with Ladi/Lea’s parents before heading back to Togo. Figure 3 below has a few of the highlights from the trip, but it would be really difficult to try to capture the excellence of these two weeks in just a short little blog post.
Gratitude
Here are a few things that I am grateful for that really keep me going:
Great connectivity that allows me to chat with friends and family all over the world
Cool bugs, like in Figure 4 below
The creatures that crawl into my bed to keep me company at night (including but not limited to a mouse and my beloved Lion)
Heavy rains without strong winds
Buscemi, one of our family’s cats, had twins (again)!
Not all of the plants in the garden have died! Check it out in Figure 5 below
Ladi/Lea’s mom made some of the most delicious homemade meals in the world that I will be thinking about for a long time
Visits to Bill’s house with his beautiful garden, see Figure 6 below
My host mom, pictured in Figure 7 below, who cares about me enough to insist rubbing tiger balm on my foot when I twisted my ankle
That is all for now. I hope you are taking care of yourselves and are learning something new today and every day. Until next time!
Fatty
Love your updates! I'm learning so much about another part of the world through you. You look amazing and you're doing amazing work. Good luck with your med school interviews!