Saying Goodbye and Reflecting on the Past Two Years

 I write this blog post stateside while sitting on my backyard deck in Iowa. For the first time in two years, I welcome the warmth of the sun rather than running away from it. The month of August was an emotional one. As I wrapped up my work in my community, I said tearful goodbyes to many friends and moved my belongings across the country to my new site. After nearly two days of traveling, I was welcomed home by my family who had been anxiously awaiting my month long stay in the U.S.

Celebrating with my neighbors and farmers

As I enjoy time with friends and family back home, along with the novelties of hot showers, refrigerators, and cool weather, I have started to reflect more on my past two years in Togo. I have received many questions from friends and family, and I am still learning how to best share my experience with others and talk about the things I have learned. My temporary return to the U.S. has been rather smooth; though walking into a Walmart was a bit of a shock, and I caught myself staring at a white baby in the airport (the sheer size of it was impressive!). 

I feel very blessed and loved (though a little overwhelmed) as I have been warmly welcomed home by friends and family, have friends in California and Oregon anxiously awaiting my visit next week, and  have been receiving many texts and phone calls from friends back in Togo making sure I safely arrived home and that me and my family are doing well. 

As I continue to process the past two years of my life and begin to share my experiences with people, I realize there are some key takeaways from my service in Aouda that I want to share with others. 

1. Despite different religions, languages, cultures, and backgrounds, humans are more alike than different all around the world.

Everything in Togo was different than home. The food, the weather, the holidays, the music, the languages, the way homes and towns were set up, etc. People in Togo would ask me what the most different thing about Togo was compared to the United States. I often told them the better question was what the most similar thing between the two countries was. Despite all these differences, I began to focus on commonalities I shared with my neighbors, teammates, work partners, and fellow community members in Togo. Like me, they experience a range of emotions on a daily basis: joy, anger, frustration, disappointment, laughter, etc. They too work hard to achieve their goals and support their families, enjoy spending time with their friends, crack jokes, fight with their siblings, and love experiencing new things. I began to realize many of the most frustrating things about working and living in Togo were the same challenges that I experience back home when managing relationships and balancing work and play, because these traits were rooted in human nature, not in Togo itself. I most often noticed the similarities in the small details: kids playing soldiers with fake guns and swords, people getting excited about the lottery, students cheating on their homework, men getting waaay into a sporting event, and EVERYONE laughing at a fart joke. These little observations often kept me rooted, and they reminded me that we were all just people, trying our best in life, trying to make the most of the cards we were dealt in life (though some people's hands were stacked better than others). So, as I share my experience with people back home, I hope to share about the amazing friends I have met and to represent people as people first: not "Africans", not "Togolese", not "locals" or "natives", but as my friends, coworkers, neighbors, teammates, and family away from home.

My host family: Salas, Mazalo, and Joachim

2. I could not have achieved any of my successes without the help and support of my community members and work partners. 

I cannot give enough credit to my community, Aouda, and my counterpart, Noel, for what we achieved during my two years in Aouda. For development to be effective, it must start from within the community itself, not from an outside source. While I may have been the catalyst needed to link people and resources together and get things in motion, there were already people in Aouda highly dedicated to their community's development and focused on helping others. My counterpart, Noel, was the star of the show, making sure project steps were implemented in a timely manner and that people and details didn't slip through the cracks. Noel demonstrated resourcefulness and savviness to keep projects moving along and to motivate other community members to take a chance on the strange American girl living in their village. I want to thank the farmers who put their trust in me to try new techniques in the field; the group of women who gave up nearly every Wednesday for the past year and a half to work with me on improved crop transformation techniques and who invested their own money to start a yam flour business; the group of boys on the soccer team that welcomed me at practice, passed me the ball, and supported me in starting a girls soccer team; and anyone that took the time to speak to me in their second language, invite me into their homes, and teach me new languages and skills. I learned that in order for development to be effective and sustainable, it must be at the community level, it must have community buy-in, and people must understand the overall goal and see the value in the change. I certainly did not "save" the community in any way, and there is certainly much more work to be done. But I'd like to think I improved a few lives in the community, or at the very least, I impacted a few people in the area by sharing experiences together and having interesting conversations; or I simply brightened a few people's day with a smile or good laugh.

My counterpart, Noel, proudly holding our yam flour

3. I, like most Americans, have been extremely blessed with the life I live and the opportunities I have received in my life thus far. 

It's often not easy to acknowledge your own privilege, especially when you come from a family and a country that values hard work and independence. While I have worked hard in life to achieve my goals and I have had to overcome challenges and setbacks, I have lived a highly privileged life with many opportunities that have set me up well for the rest of my life. Many things we consider basic rights in the United States--running, potable water; nutritious food; and access to education and health care--are seen as novelties in other parts of the world. Simply having an American passport opens the doors to far more possibilities, and we have far more mobility than most people in the world (even despite financial obstacles at times). Being a Peace Corps volunteer is not easy, and there were certainly some low moments over the two years. Though I often found it hard to feel sorry for myself when I knew my situation was still far better than most of my fellow community members. However, this is also not healthy or sustainable. While my problems and hardships were often less severe than my friends and community members who had to worry about putting food on their family's plates or paying their kids' school fees, my problems were still valid and created an emotional stress on me. Recognizing privilege does not invalidate your own problems and worries--every human has those. But it does allow us to be grateful and recognize the opportunities we have been given in life and hopefully use them to bring new opportunities to others who have been less fortunate than ourselves. 

My soccer team

As I said goodbye to people in Aouda, I began to see more clearly the impacts I had on people in the community and the impacts they had on me. I spent the last week in Aouda enjoying going away parties, and many of my close friends and colleagues in town made a considerable sacrifice to make sure I was properly thanked and sent on my way. My connection to Aouda runs deep, and I hope to stay in touch with some of the friends I made. I certainly plan to visit over the next year as I continue to live and work in Togo. After that, I'm not sure, but I certainly won't forget my time there and hope to continue supporting the community if opportunities arise in my own life. 

Our cooperative, Esso Laki

Playing a match to celebrate my departure. Featuring a traditional dress the team gifted me