Empty Staff Quarters

I do not work on Mondays; I do some lesson plans, I walk my dog, I read, I write, I go to my tennis lesson at 5.

I do not cook; Moise, a Togolese man in his 50's with three daughters, spends 2 full days a week at our house making enough food so that I never have to boil water if I don't want to. We pay him the generous salary, by Togolese standards, of 7,000 CFA ($14) per day.

I do not clean; Clara, a Ghanaian woman in her 50's with four children, spends 1 day a week here doing laundry, scrubbing our floors, vacuuming, etc. Aside from some dishes on the days when Clara or Moise aren't here and organizing of stuff, I am spared household duties for the price of 7,000 CFA as well.

Despite this ridiculous luxury by our standards, many locals think it's strange that we don't have full time staff. But I feel lazy and guilty by American standards for having said cook, cleaner and all around easy life as much as I do.

So imagine the conflicting emotions that arose last week when Clara broke down into tears about how much she is struggling right now. Her husband died years ago and her nearly grown children can't find jobs as there are so few in Togo. She only works one day a week right now because there aren't any US Embassy families who need her. We keep telling her that we'll recommend her to arriving families, but we can't make any promises.

She is living on $14 a week (sadly, still more than the average Togolese makes) and is struggling. As she cried, I became privy to a family drama that I still don't fully understand. It went like this:

"I wish I hadn't been born African. Africans have black hair, which means they have black minds," said Clara after telling me she needed to leave early to attend a court hearing about some land issues.

"There are bad people everywhere, Clara. It's not just here." I responded, taken aback by her comment.

She looked genuinely surprised. "Really Madame? There are?"

She went on to describe how her late husband's brother had been managing her money because that's how finances pass when a man dies. It doesn't go to his wife - it goes to another man. Her son wasn't yet old enough to be put on their accounts and properties as the owner, so it all went to her brother-in-law.

This man used his dead brother's money to buy a house for his family, instead of leaving it for Clara's kids' education. But this detail came after learning about her present problem. He had recently come to Togo to visit some land that Clara's husband had purchased with 2 other men. According to Clara, he put a "joojoo" spell on the land that would make it so that she would drop dead if she ever stepped foot there. He then asked her to meet him there and discuss its "true" ownership.

She refused to meet him there and was going with some of her friends to meet him at a court house to discuss the land deed. Her brother-in-law was claiming that Clara forged her husband's signature on ownership documents and somehow or another it was actually his money that purchased the land.

This is where I started getting lost in the family drama. Clara's Ghanaian English combined with all of the intricate voodoo references and incomprehensible legal structure (or lack thereof) made things very confusing very fast.

But all I know is that I had an older woman in my kitchen with tears rolling down her cheeks, desperately wanting to ask for more work to help her through this tough time. I know because I was avoiding the question.

We recently gave our cook a huge advance on his pay so that he could cover her tuition. He's paying us back over 6 months. Our gardener (yeah, we have one of those too - it's not normal, I know) was only just recently able to move out of his sister's shack because he's working 6 days a week (shared between 3 houses) on $6 a day, all the while paying for his little brother to go to school.

So where does the help begin and end, in a country where everywhere you look are people in desperate need? How can you be sure that your money will do any good at the end of the day when the family structures and cultural differences are so foreign?

And how can you reconcile suddenly being in a place where you're richer than most locals' wildest dreams, when you come from a place where you're most certainly not?

Most of us were raised on a certain moral code that taught us not to pay for things just because you can. We admire people who can live in mansions but chose not to. We respect those who can afford a full time chef but enjoy cooking for themselves anyway. Just because you can pay for a bell-hop doesn't mean you can't carry your own friggin' luggage.

More than anything though, most of us never have to make the above decisions. Life in the US is simply too expensive, and even when it's not, we all find ways of needing or wanting more and more things that make it so in the end.

But it's not like that here. People with money hire staff. Doing something yourself takes away a job from someone who needs it. People with staff quarters fill them. Leaving them empty deprives someone of a clean, dry room in a malaria and flood ridden land.

I don't need someone cleaning my house two times a week - it'd be absurd - but I can. Does that mean I should?

Joey and I have discussed possibly giving Clara an old sewing machine to help her start another revenue source, or trying to cover some of her younger kids' schooling. We'd hoped to wait a few more months to get to know her better. Mostly we just feel incredibly awkward about the whole thing.

And I can't even begin to process the implications of an African woman telling an American woman that her people are inherently bad and that she wishes she'd been born something else.

Piece Of Cake, Ms. Welsh

Many of you already know that my stint with Kiva was very brief. For those of you who hadn't heard, basically I came to Togo at a very bad time for Kiva. First they couldn't figure out anything for me to do, then they placed me with a microfinance institute whose relationship with Kiva was on the rocks. The organization wasn't being honest about where funds were going, so I was asked to sleuth.

This would have entailed visiting villages without anyone else from the organization, to try and figure out what was going on.

Sounds fun at first, but then I discover that a) the embassy isn't keen blonde girls driving themselves an hour to villages where most people don't even speak French, b) a driver + gas would cost around $500/month and Kiva wasn't covering this and, c) my efforts would likely end in terminating the relationship between Kiva and the local organization: good for Kiva and lenders, bad for Togo.

SO, I decided to take a teaching job instead.

I teach English to high school students part time. Since there are no books or supplies or even a curriculum, I get to do whatever I want in class. So long as I can get them to speak more English, which most of them avoid doing.

Early on I discovered a weakness for American culture. And by weakness I mean adoration. Fortunately for me, I am American. Example:

I started with "Hi (Student Name), How are you?" in the halls where most of them speak French, and forced them to embarassingly respond to me. Then I moved to, "How's it going?" (Most students still respond "I am fine, thank you" to this and don't understand when I keep telling them that the appropriate response is, "it's good!"). A handful of eager students are onto "What's up!?" but only run away from me in response. I will hopefully reach "Sup" with a head nod by the end of the year.

Anyway, in reading an article on Hurricane Earl with my class, I realized that we Americans are very dramatic when we talk about the weather. In this instance, everything was a battle. The storm was pelting down. It marched steadily north. Everyone braced for the onslaught. Etc. It opened the doors to a conversation about our many expressions using "wind": "I got the wind knocked out of me", "she left him a windfall", "he's 3 sheets to the wind."

When I attempted to explain what it means to "get a second wind" I received 12 blank stares back at me.

"You know, it's when you're REALLY tired after lunch but then you fight through the tiredness and suddenly you have more energy again!"

"Oh!" said the kids, "You mean when you take a nap and you wake up not tired anymore."

"No, no, no, there is no napping involved."

(Blank stares)

"You get more energy from... well I don't know where it comes from... it just comes after you were once really tired."

They had no idea what I was talking about. I eventually laughed and said that perhaps it's an American thing because we don't take naps. More blank stares ensued.

Another week was Food week, which started with an article about a new restaurant in Brooklyn that served insects. I thought they'd find this interesting and weird, but the only thing they were utterly confused about was the fact that the diners ate a 5-course meal and paid $85 to do so. They wouldn't let it drop that 5 courses was way too much food (I agree, but was equally confused by their confusion, given some of the meals I've eaten in this country). And $85 to eat bugs!? Eating worms is apparently not that interesting to them, but paying $85 to do so was the funniest thing they'd heard all day.

The week ended with a list of idioms using food: "She's the breadwinner", "He's a tough nut to crack", " They're two peas in a pod." Most of them were easy enough for the kids to understand. But one was impossible to explain: "A piece of cake." Why in the world does this mean "easy." Anyone? I have no idea. But it just does. That was my answer.

As things go, the one expression that made absolutely no sense to myself or them was the one they remember. Now I hear 10 times a day, "It-is-a-piece-of-cake, Ms. Welsh" (each syllable annunciated perfectly). Giggle giggle.

Now onto explaining that it sounds really weird when you actually say all the words.

Baby steps.

Where the Wild Things Are

Imagine the cover of "Where the Wild Things Are," with those huge jungly looking palm trees, replace the hairy monster with my blindingly white self on the beach, throw in the ocean and a few fishing boats, and there you have it. My official Happy Place here.

Ouida, Benin is a little over an hour past the border of Togo. Since Togo's coast line is only 40 miles long, and Lome is right on it, the dirt and chaos of a developing country's capital city has stripped away most of the natural beauty. But Benin's coastline, at least near the Togolese border, has remained untouched.

Once we reached the village of Ouida's center, we had to roll down our windows a few times and ask the locals where to find our hotel. As with most African cities, signs and markers are lacking. They pointed us to a road that ended at the beach, upon which we needed to turn right. On the beach. Sans road.

We passed huts made out of dried palm leaves. Cows and chickens and baby goats and children playing under palm trees passed us on the 5 mile trek down the beach.

We arrived at the little resort in the middle of nowhere just before the sky went completely black. Save all the stars that were perfectly clear once night fell.

I think Joey has experienced remote beaches like this with all of his surf trips. But I haven't. So it was officially the most beautiful beach I've ever been on. The cabins we stayed in reminded me of the housing for the dancers in Dirty Dancing. (Wow I am filled with bizarre visual references for all of you today). They were simple little wooden structures with a porch out front, overlooking the ocean. The only thing between the cabin and the beach with it's thousands of giant WTWTA palms was a tiny little sidewalk.

We ate some fresh seafood for dinner, played some cards with our friends who had joined us, and fell asleep to the sound of the ocean. We awoke early to native singing and chanting, and looked out the window to see a group of men and boys starting their day's work of pulling in huge fishing lines. It was easy to imagine the same thing happening 200 years earlier.

I told Joey that I was moving into one of those cabins and he could come visit me on the weekends ;)