Hiding away at post

After three weeks being away at post, I have finally been able to get out to Kara. Even though they told me that high speed internet was coming to Niamtougou, it doesn’t work at all, so I have been deprived of the internet for a while. But things are going well. The legislative elections took place on October 14th. The two weeks before that were the campaign weeks. This was the least enjoyable part of it all. There were around 6 parties running for two positions per region. In order to get their name out, each party rented 15- seater vans, large speakers and a generator. The speakers and generator were attached to the roof of the vans and then supporters of the party would pile into and onto the van. Then they would drive around my village and Niamtougou for hours and hours, blaring Togolese music. Some days the opposing parties would meet at the dirt road intersection right outside my bedroom, and have a battle as to who could play music the loudest or honk. It was thoroughly annoying. They even would drive around at night, which drove me crazy. When it got closer to the elections, they decided to stay put for a while, so they took up residence at the market that is 300 yards from my house. They continued with the loud Togolese music, even when no one was there to listen.
Happily, they did promotion on their views and stanch on issues at the community center in Niamtougou. I thought at first that they would only be riding around in vans, hoping people would vote for them based on the music they played or something. Every night for a week, a different party came together with all their supporters. I avoided these meetings. Too many people around, made me nervous. Of course the majority party did everything bigger than any of the other parties but they had a lot more money to work with.
One of my counterparts was running for a position. He didn’t end up winning. I couldn’t outwardly support anyone because of security issues with Peace Corps. It was hard to avoid people that I knew from village who wanted me to support their party. So I ended up just staying at my house for most of the time. But everything went well as far as I know and the elections were successful. Most of the positions were won by the majority party but there were quite a few individuals from the opposition party also won their regional election. As far as I could see, everything went democratically, at least in my region. I listened a lot to the BBC to see what was happening. The EU electoral observers were impressed by the success of the elections. Hopefully that means that in the near future aid will return to Togo. At the moment there is very little aid from the developed world.
It was interesting to watch people I have known for a year, suddenly change their personality because they were supporting a certain party. People I had worked with together separated completely from what I thought were their friends simply because of who they supported. My counterpart, who was running, was getting death threats from people supporting another party, people who a week prior might have been drinking with him at the tchouck stand. This was another reason I stayed at my house so much. I didn’t want to witness these changes in people I had grown to like. But things have calmed down since the 14th and people are starting to get back to normal. I couldn’t do much work during those three weeks because everyone was occupied with the election.
Of the work I did do, it just made me stressed. I still have not finished my project to get a plan of action written for the canton. I started working on this back in July. I approached a friend who works for an NGO that works for development. He said he could help me write it and it would only cost a little bit of money to do and would only take four days. Well, that was four months ago. We started the first two phases of the project, then when I went out of town for a week, they stopped working, saying something else came up. So, the project sat until mid-September. My village needed to have handed this document into a development agency back in June. So we are way behind schedule.
Last week, I met with my friend and his colleague who had worked on the first two phases of the project. Members of the village development committee came to meet with them to sign the contract on payment for work. Turns out, my friend and his colleague couldn’t do the project anymore, at least not right away. I had made a new calendar with them present, so they plenty of time to say they weren’t available. They said some other project came up that would take all of the November and December to do. My project would have finish mid-November, if all went well. I got so mad when they said that. It was their fault that they couldn’t finish the plan of action back in August, and now they were saying that some other project came up. I know that this other project is funded up some external NGO and is going to pay them far more money than my village would ever be able to pay. That is the sole reason they dropped the project for my village. It makes me so mad that this is how development works here. If you can’t hand over the money, you get treated like sh*t. My village is really motivated and eager to develop. They just don’t have money to pay the big bucks like NGOs pay. I really hope that if/when EU restarts aid to Togo, that money is not handled in this fashion. With that, the people and villages that really need the money receive aid, not simply money going into the pockets of development workers. They are already some of the riches people in Togo. They know how to work the ‘system’. Saying they can’t do a project unless you pay an excessive amount of money is ridiculous. They are no where close to being hard pressed for money. I wonder how they can live next to people that are living on less than a dollar a day, barely able to feed their children. IT MAKES ME SO MAD!!!!!!!!!!!

Aside from that, I had a very relaxing three weeks at post. I cooked a lot, read several books, listened to the BBC, a lot and played with my kitten. But I all glad that work is picking up again starting tomorrow. I am doing a training tomorrow with a group of women on how to many enriched porridge for their children. Later in the week, I am helping my neighbor volunteer with one of her women’s groups, training them on family planning. I hope some husbands come to that as well, because they are a big part of the problem as well. School also restarted last week so I will start working again at the school I worked at last year. I am planning a Worlds AIDS day event right now. In two weeks, I am leaving village for a week to do this Peace Corps event called AIDS Ride. Volunteers and some counterparts, bike around their region going to villages that are less likely to receive information about HIV. This will go on for a week, biking at least 30km a day. I hope I can do it. But if not there is a truck that follows us and we can ride if we need to. I have been training a bit so I think I should be fine. I biked 32km in the past two days and I was fine. That is, aside from the lightning that almost hit me.

Alright well, I will let you go for now. I hope everyone is going well at home. The emails and letters have been pretty quiet lately so, please write!!!!

Love always,

Alia