written on July 19, 2013
On Monday I wake up in a new part of Togo.
Tomorrow (Saturday) I begin the voyage to my post, Koni, the village where I’ll be living for the next two years. At 6am a Peace Corps vehicle will pick me up at my home in Gbatope. I’ll be making the trip up with four other trainees and our Togolese counterparts. Each Peace Corps volunteer serves as the American counterpart to a Togolese person who will be our main point of contact and primary work partner at our destination villages. I met my counterpart today, and he will travel back with me to Koni, longtime village of his family and soon to be my new home base.
The plan is for all of us to stay overnight in Kante, a town in the beautiful mountain region of Kara, in order to break up the 12-hour trip. Said trip is only about 375 miles long. The state of the roads accounts for a transit time that seems, to an American, so incongruous to the distance.
There is much anticipatory suspense tonight. What will my village look like? Who will my homestay family be? What about my living space? Will there be space for a garden and compost? How far is the water pump? Will people understand my Moba? What if they don’t even understand my French?! Without my trusted host mother around to prepare my food in the way prescribed for finicky American digestive systems, will I get sick?
Underlying all of these questions is the heart of the matter: can I really live in this new place for two years?
More importantly, can I thrive there? Integrate? Collaborate with my counterpart and the community to accomplish something useful? Tomorrow won’t answer all of those questions, but it will be the first concrete glimpse into my future environment. On Sunday I will wake up in Koni.
Waking Up in Togo 