Learning the Words

         The Oxford New American Dictionary defines an escarpment as, “a long, steep slope, esp. one at the edge of a plateau or separating areas of land at different heights”. I only learned that word recently, though I’ve been searching for it since my service’s start. Living in Tandjouare, which literally means “pile of rocks” in Moba, I was near several rock formations’ exciting edges. For all the climbing and hiking I did of them, however, I never knew what they were called: asking locals was fruitless and searching the dictionary for cliff, mesa, butte, plateau, and ridge left me without a match. They were the highlight of my wanderings, a sanctuary I ran to when stressed, and, since moving, the roadside reminder that my first post wasn’t all bad. I recently learned escarpment while visiting friends in Northern Ghana, who said we’d pass some en route to their village. As the surrounding savanna began rolling into hills, I began feeling nostalgic. As those hills came to sharp edges, I felt at home. My friend’s map revealed that their Gambarga escarpments actually end around Tandjouare in Togo; they’re a natural series losing their name but no majesty between borders. It took me leaving Togo to learn the word for something I loved about being there. I hope that my service’s oncoming end illuminates other truths about the jagged, lovely place that’s become my second home.

Companion

            The smell came first, like Mexican food several days old or stale smoke after a concert. Then, the image: gray blobs from a furry, black body and red, viscous goo, blood mixed with placenta mixed with the dirt in its path, creeping across the pale cement floor at my feet. I’d wondered if she was pregnant and she was: though apparently not able to carry it to full term. The kittens came out, moved for a few seconds, and died. Disturbed, I wondered what to do and watched her to divine nature’s wellspring of instinct. She cleans the fetal kittens while bleeding and, when their lack of life is apparently certain, she devours them. Ripping the meat and crunching the bones, a reunion of bodies, their nutritive resources spent, lost, and eaten. Horrified, I wait for her to finish before locking her outside. Kitty just ate her stillborn babies. The smell and mess are spreading across the living room. Kitty is clawing at the door. A guest just saw everything that happened minus any affection for the animal. Kitty is mournfully crying on the porch. I want to immediately transcend the situation but need more time than bohemian posturing allows. Kitty may be psycho, but she’s the best Togolese friend I have.

         When Mango’s previous volunteer asked if I wanted to take her cat, Tchembe, I accepted for practical reasons. Because my new house was large and cracked, a cat seemed necessary to control pests.  Over time she’s become more companion than exterminator, and I christened her Kitty as a pet name. For every mouse and lizard Kitty kills, there are many moments we connect. Times when we fall asleep curled up on the couch at midday, or sit together for a movie. We’re kindred spirits in our apprehension about the Togo outside our door, as she often runs in for the day growling and irritated, just as I do after too much time away. Her self interests, food and security, are obvious in our relationship, but mine, pest control and affection, are likely no less so to her. Cats – human relationships are said to mirror human – human relationships more than those with other pets: cats can be aloof, need time to build trust, are temperamental, and prefer to spend some time alone. That domesticated cats are barely removed from their wild cousins means that they, like another person, could leave the relationship at any time to be independent. Kitty and I have our fights, from her finding and eating my food to her overly aggressive playing, but they never matter as much as the good times. I can’t imagine being in Mango without her, and I hope her staying means she feels likewise.

        After a few weeks, we got over the kitten incident. Togolese people shared that, when cats miscarry, her behavior was normal. I still joke that she’s my “lil baby eater” as I put food in her dish. My host family has heard me talking to Kitty and is perplexed by my fixation with her: cats in Togo are typically kept exclusively for pest control. No fondness, no bonding, you often don’t even feed them; after all, their job involves feeding themselves. One day, a visiting host brother saw me petting her on the porch and asked how I liked Mango. I said it’s fine, that I enjoy the city and love the cat. He just shook his head and quizzically stared at Kitty, saying, “Wow, the past volunteer was the same way. There’s just something about you guys and that cat.” I couldn’t agree more. 

Barren Becoming Fallow

        When I look through my bedroom window, I see a house’s concrete skeleton, adults and children ambling in the heat, and brown – yellow dirt expanses pockmarked by trash. By the time I moved to Mango last November, the rains had left and the fields were finished around my quarter. I’ve never known this space any way but how it exists today. Recently, however, unseasonably early storms have invited small green patches to break up the monotonous paysage. With grasses and weeds sporadically growing again, the farmers will follow with crops in a few weeks. This land, that’s seemed so arid and dead, is alive again. Perma-barren was fallow all along: fertility accumulating underground, waiting for the weather to change. Bettering itself as life comes closer by the day, a fecund renewal for the community and everyone in it. My own potential energy, recently building as I reconnect with work and hobbies, is feeling more kinetic. I’m moving more, laughing more, meditating more, and feeling more like myself than I have in ages. My final chaleur is coming to pass, and one last rainy season is about to begin. And then, return, autumn in America. Hopefully thriving in the harvest of whatever my service has sown. 

Outsider on Repeat

At the Post Office

“Excuse me, the bus is over three hours late at this point, can we change our tickets or get a refund?”

“Can’t you just wait? It’s close and will be here very soon.”

“That’s what you said hours ago, we don’t want to travel at night.”

“Well, I have to get the director on the phone.” Dials the phone, obviously irritated 

“Director? I have two white people here who are having problems.”

The Mt. Agou Elderly Woman

“May I take your photo?”

“Of course.” frame the image and take a wonderful profile shot

“Thank you so much, look how well that turned out.” show the image, she nods

“What are you going to give me now?”

“What?”

“100 franc, candy, something. Where’s my gift?”

“I don’t have anything for you…”

“That’s no good, in Africa you give something for photos.”

“Next time?”

She looks away, obviously irritated.

In the Market with a Friend

“Excuse me Madame, how much is this frying pan?”

“That pan, it’s 6,000.”

“Really? That’s too expensive, please reduce the price.”

“I can’t, that’s THE price.”

He looks at the pan more closely, flipping it over

“The price written on the bottom of your pan is 3,700.”

Embarrassed laughter, then straight face  “So, I can sell it to you for 4,000.”

At a Tchakpa Stand

“Hey, white man, can I get your address?”

“Sure, I live near the primary school by the kapokie tree if you’d ever like to meet.”

“No, no, no. I want your address chez vous. In your country.”

“But I live here now, you won’t be able to contact me in the US.”

“I don’t want to talk to you now. I want to contact you when you go home.”

“No.”

“How about your computer address then?”

“No…” 

An Acquaintance on my Porch

“Who does your cooking and cleaning here?”

“I do, they’re nice ways to pass the time.”

“That’s not good, you need to get a woman to do those things. I will find you one.”

“No, I’m fine really. I like cooking and cleaning.”

“What about your pleasure? You need a woman for pleasure.”

“I’m happy on my own, REALLY.”

“You’re bizarre.”

Looking at T – Shirts

“Hey, white man, how are you?”

“I’m good, you?”

“Good. And your woman?”

“…she’s fine.”

“That’s not true. You don’t have a woman!”

Nervously laughing “Of course I do, she’s just back in the US right now.”

“No you don’t.”

“…”

“If you had a woman, you wouldn’t be good because she’d be at this market spending all your money!” Laughing and smiling

Crisis averted, smiling politely “Yes, she would be shopping. Women love to shop.” 

My inner feminist isn't pleased.

...free...

         I love the feeling of powerful ocean waves surging over my body. Of planting my feet, decisively, in shifting ground, only to be blasted down by the sea and shore’s crashing reunion. To be prostrate in the frothy surf afterwards, feeling no stronger than the grains of sand swirling around my soaked mass. I like to imagine where the particles on this Ghanaian beach may have come from, trending towards the lovely (Maine islands, Sahara dunes, etc.), minding the gnarly (Lagos waste water, Pacific garbage gyre, etc.), and averaging the aforementioned’s mélange somewhere in the middle. I admire the sand’s ability to rest on any shore, regardless of grime, and roll into any wave, irrespective of its fury. On my best days, I’m channeling sand.

        I envisioned integration as becoming a local in Mango. In my mind, it would be like shedding my American skin and being reborn Togolese; feeling as at home fetching water and working on the farm as I ever did taking hot showers and working in a theatre. There would be moments when everyone, including myself, forgot my recent arrival. Having served over nineteen months, I haven’t experienced that calm. And, in my service’s balance, I’m not going to. And, I’m glad. I’m glad there are waves of rude locals to harass me, of African languages to drown out my best French, and of American memory induced despondency to batter my best attempts at fitting in. Because I’m not Togolese or a native French speaker or heterosexual or any of the other things I dreamed of pretending to be. I am who I am, even here, and existing outside my culture can never mean entirely existing outside of myself. I can be culturally sensitive and appropriate, I can try to understand things that would have once wrecked me, I can become a more adaptable and empathetic person. But there are aspects of my life that I can’t reconcile with here, and there’s nothing wrong with myself, Togo, or the Peace Corps as a result. Learning about Mango, shopping in our open markets, and spending time with my host family: I can be contently incomplete through everything. I can be the odd, rocky grain on our beach, blending the best it can and resting through the crashes and time between. Some days savoring it all, others waiting to wash up elsewhere. Another shore, another integration.

Connection

I want a transcendent connection. I want someone to remember me so fondly, one moment was long enough to send them searching for more. Maybe I’ll be the person beside them on a spin bike, with calves toned to kill. Or the man that dirty danced just long enough to drive them wild. Perhaps I’ll smile at the grocery and that image will linger long after they’ve checked out. I imagine someone searching, just as I’m waiting to be found.

        What happens if I miss the moment though? The one that was somehow, perhaps incontrovertibly, ours. Will you move on to someone else? Are there other sidewalk muses waiting to excite you? You’re a fairly attractive man, with what seemed like an affable demeanor and brilliant eyes in the seconds that I knew you. Unless, that is, you’ve changed since then. Change, you know: the buzzword of our hyperlocal, globalized world. We’re all either changing too much, or not enough. Not enough to remain competitive anyway, for strangers in passing linger but one day, if that, before distraction leads us away. I’m the same way, short attention span and shorter expiration date, so I want to be remembered in an immediate sense. Putting me further in the past would make my person better or worse than I am through hindsight. The present is where what we shared matters. It’s where we belong.

        The next time you saluer from the champ or comment on my hair at McDonalds, stop. Drop everything else and we’ll build a life together, extending this present as long as we can. We’ll have amazing sex, the kind where your bodies fit together perfectly and every insecurity only makes the other person more real and that much more lovable. We can talk about all the other connections that came first; the ones that weren’t built to last, that didn’t transcend our bourgeois ballet. The distractions will fade to reveal how things where we are, in that moment, are perfect. There’s no one else to miss, so hold onto me now, not in passing. 

Fade

        Our center in Pagala is equal parts faded dormitory complex and spunky seminar site. Apparently built to house German industrial workers in the 70’s, today the repainted off-white structures, empty coffin-shaped pool, and hexagonal meeting huts stand in brilliantly withered contrast to both modernity and the Togolese village outside it. Frozen between cultures and times on a forested riverbank, the center has a distinctive charm that invites ambling daydreams and reflection. Volunteers typically come to Pagala three times for official trainings, plus most national camps, and it can be both a respite from and reminder of everything they hope to, have, or will not accomplish during their service. My last time there, as I walked the grounds under an intermittently overcast sky, memories drifted like the clouds overhead.

I recall my first time here, cast as a fresh – faced optimist searching for the difference he could make. Friends catching up after too much time apart. Review sessions about Moringa’s nutritional benefits, food transformation, and environmental education lasting throughout the day. Sharing meals and conversations across large tables in the dining hall. How’s your village? What would we like to accomplish in Togo? How are the older volunteers treating you? Where are we going tonight? I apparently danced with a Togolese man our final night at the local bar, Chez Plaisir, but I don’t remember that or anything after my fifth beer. I woke up in vomit and the vans took us home too early for my hangover’s taste.

The second training was with our Togolese work partners and, though largely a nice, interesting group, their presence made the event less English holiday, more awkward French symposium. The gulf between my then partner and I had been growing, he’s a friendly though self-interested man, and the training exacerbated our issues together. It felt like the others were passing me in some regards, but I vowed to press on with more than a year left. We hit Plaisir for our final blowout, dancing to whatever American pop we could find, and I thankfully enjoyed the evening in moderation.

Our last large event was near our service’s anniversary and served as a meditation on the one - year mark and plan for the future. We’d been told to bring something to present a successful project, so I used chalk on poster paper to make a neon, comic-esque illustration of what I’d done and my hopes moving forward. I perceived greater success around that room and felt maladjusted. Some visitors came to the displays and spoke to us; few of them stayed long with me and mine.

Dried teak tree leaves crunch under my feet as a decrepit hut seems inviting. Observing the sky through its vacant frame, I begged the clouds to rest and burst, to flood, to wash me and my flaws, or weakness or unshakable lows, away. When they answered, I lingered in the mud’s fresh scent and the erosion of Earth and identity. I won’t be at the center again, but the time I was meant something. To me, at least.