Only a week late, my days here are now genuinely numbered; not that they haven't been numbered from the very beginning but now it's less than 30, it's starting to finally kick in that it's nearly coming to an end. The closer I get to the 31st, the less I want to leave here and the more determined I am to certainly come back as soon as I can. The current plan is to spend my year out here; which would mean arriving summer 2014 which is only 2 years away... All at once not very, and very, long... Anyway, that's enough of that!
Last week I went to Kara to see the traditional coming-of-age ceremony of the Kabyè people. This is basically wrestling, but in a field with no protection and there are usually 4 or 5 fights going on at the same time. As a young man you have to go through the ceremony 3 times, and the better you do, the better your chances of getting a good wife are. Apparently! The villages compete against each other, and the whole thing lasts for a week. I went to see the finals, and indeed also got to see the final of all the finals which was fantastic and had SO many people there! Went to the final in Sarakawa, very important historically for the Gnassingbé family as the village was built around where the aeroplane crash happened (previous President survived many dangerous and life-threatening incidents, including a plan crash in I think the 80s) so that was cool. Saw the man himself "Faurevi" and was actually the only yovo there which was nice for a change. Such a contrast between that small one and the final at Lassa the day after - probably about 50 times more people! President came in his helicopter both times though, and both times landed about 5 metres away from the crowd, so clearly showing no preference at all... Anyway, that was an enjoyable weekend, and made a friend on the coach to boot - plus her daughter of only 2 who is ADORABLE.
Haven't said that at the end of June we went with Projects to a village to do a kind of raising awareness/sort of thing day. Talked to them about lots of medical things, such as oral hygiene and washing properly, as well as how to avoid malaria, and then the Human Rights volunteers had to talk to them about children's rights. Tough topic, as to be frank, here they don't really have any. Children are very much the bottom of the pile. And that's how it's been for so long that when we come along and preach that it should be different, understandably we're not always taken very seriously. I've noticed since being here that the Togolese in general often don't look obviously interested in talks/presentations etc so it can be hard to judge the reaction but this time our audience was in general, decidedly and unashamedly bored/confused/sceptical to various degrees and in various combinations. But we did our best, and to be honest, the ideal outcome would be an entire cultural shift; something which is unlikely to happen very quickly or very soon. We can only hope that some day it will get there.
Apart from all that, work is going along fine and doing some interesting stuff, like equality of pay and sexual harrassment. Plus stuff to improve the monitoring done around the electoral period. All very exciting! Because it's summer now, we've had a massive influx of young volunteers coming for one month slots and so one week I walked into the office and didn't know any of the 15 people there! New experience for me haha. So we've had lots of comings and goings and not a few problems too but now we're into August we haven't got so many new arrivals. Although a girl arrived in my house the other day who is very nice - and talks 19 to the dozen, genuinely! Politics wise there are also some developments like a new First Minister and governmental cabinet so that's very interesting to follow too. Olympics are not really causing a big storm here, even though it's quite often shown on the tv no one really seems to be very interested! But I heard this morning that Britain are doing very well on the medal front so go Britain!
Hope you're all well, will be seeing you a lot sooner than it seems I'm sure
x
