When I turned 9, I started going to the field with my mom, bringing wood from our house to the river [about 1.5 miles away].
When I turned 12, I passed fifth grade and started middle school. I noticed that getting an education was an advantage, and my dad supported me.
When I turned 15, my family had a problem. My father’s brother sold land that didn’t belong to him. Without knowing what was going on, my dad signed the lease papers. He was accused of theft and sent to prison. He was innocent.
When the prison warden learned that my father was innocent, he asked for $700 before he would free my father.
The prison is miserable. There are about 100 people inside the prison, and there are no beds.
When I went to visit my father for the first time, I brought my little brother. As soon as we got there, he began to cry. He couldn’t contain himself. I had enough composure to say hello. My father explained to me how to take care of the family.
I was the person who encouraged my family. My brother couldn’t stop crying. My mother stopped eating.
I told my father to stay calm, to not get angry, to not say things that would bother other people.
My father was released from prison after six months.
My uncle spent a year in prison before being released. He lives in a neighborhood near my house. I see him sometimes, but he no longer approaches me.
I forgave him. God says that we must forgive ourselves and each other. But my mother says that she can never forget.
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The happiest moment of my life was when I was in 9th grade. It was before my dad had any problems. He supported me in school. I took the test to get into high school [the village passing rate is 63%] and thought all the tests were easy. I was admitted to high school. I was truly happy.
The same month, I was accepted to a Peace Corps camp, Camp UNITÉ. The camp was so marvelous! Before I went, I wasn’t confident in myself. Now, I have a lot of confidence and I work with other people in my school.
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Togo isn’t like how it used to be when I was young. There was a lot of peace; everything was calm.
I have family in Lomé [the capital] who have finished university. They look for work and they can’t find any. A lot has been abandoned here.
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The first time I liked a girl was when I was 11 years old. They handed out the New Testament at school and I took hers. I asked her, “Do you like me?” She said yes. My friends called me by her name to tease me.
When I went to her house, I found out that we were related! That was bad. We had the same last name, but I didn’t really think about that at the time. From then on, we were just friends. My friend wanted to know if he could ask her out. I told him, “That isn’t my problem anymore.”
In tenth grade, I met another girl. I could tell by her actions that she liked me. She always hugged me and asked me weird questions. One day, my friend told me to talk to her alone. He said, “You two would be good together.” I said, “Okay.”
She said that she saw a nice future for us together. I asked if she liked me. She said yes. She asked if I liked her. I said yes. We kissed. That was my first kiss. I was so happy because I found my true love.
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If I could tell Americans one thing about Togo, it’s that life here is hard. Finding work is very difficult. But I’m also very proud of my city. There is no violence; everything is calm.
If I could give advice to Americans, I would say first to always be safe. There are a lot of illnesses you can contract if you aren’t careful. Then I would say that you have to go out and meet people. Don’t be a person that sits in his room and says he knows everything. And be kind. Don’t be unkind to anyone, and you’ll lead a happy life.
When I grow up, I’m going to be a doctor. I love being with kids, and I admire adults that treat kids with respect and listen to them.
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Faré is a 17-year-old student in Bassar, Togo. This story is posted with his consent.
On Wednesday afternoon, ten teenagers showed up unannounced at my house. After making them popcorn, I invited them to a session I was leading the next day on malaria treatment and prevention.
When they left, I noticed something odd. Twenty of the 52 cards in my deck were missing.
Only two kids showed up on time to my malaria session. The rest wandered in anywhere from thirty minutes to two hours after we were supposed to have started.
The activity went well, but not nearly as well as I had hoped. On the way home, I complained to two of my Togolese friends.
“Why don’t people respect me?” I asked in conversational-but-far-from-perfect French. “I made you all popcorn and gave you cookies, and only two people came on time! And then someone stole half of my cards. That really makes me angry.”
“Your cards aren’t missing,” one of the kids responded. “I threw them away. In Togo, we only play with the bigger cards. So you don’t need them.”
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Frustrating moments like this happen to me, and to all Peace Corps Volunteers, almost interminably. People decide, far outside of your locus of control, that you don’t need something, and they take it.
My general naïveté and absolute hatred of confrontation lead me to trust everyone unconditionally and keep my mouth shut when something’s off. And my desire to maintain peace yields enough docility that a woman in my village stole $100 from me last spring.
A deck of cards costs 200 Francs CFA, an acronym once standing for “French African Colonies.” As the region slowly and tumultuously gained independence, the acronym changed, but the letters stayed the same.
200 CFA is the equivalent of about 34 cents. Over 80% of Togolese people earn less than 1200 CFA (~$2) a day.
I’m not Togolese. I make almost $10 a day. I have more than enough money to buy a new deck of cards, but I don’t. I’m too angry. And I can see the futility in buying a deck of cards that someone is going to just end up taking from under my nose.
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Peace Corps is beautiful and strange and life-defining and horrifying and magical. But it’s also hard. It’s so very, very hard. I’ve done a great job of glossing over this reality before, hiding behind amusing anecdotes of scorpion stings and weight loss. But there’s much, more more to the picture.
There’s the feeling of unworthiness, being a young, artless college graduate with no life experience trying to change how a village you don’t understand lives, in a language you don’t speak well.
There’s the feeling of profound disappointment, waiting hours for a work partner who never comes, planting a garden that grows a singular stalk of carrots that mysteriously goes missing in the night, working in a classroom with no textbooks and rampant student abuse.
There’s the feeling of futility after a woman brings her severely malnourished 6-week-old baby to the clinic and you know there’s absolutely nothing you can do for the mother or the baby except offer a kind smile and say something in a language she doesn’t understand.
There’s the feeling of mind-numbing idleness, wondering why none of your projects are working and is every Volunteer watching as many movies as you are and why did the US government invest so much money in you if you’re just going to sit around and study for the GRE?
There’s the feeling of guilt, traveling to the capital and spending $20 on a meal, knowing that you could have given that money to your neighbor to pay for his children’s school fees.
There’s the feeling of shame when you see other Volunteers celebrate their successes and a little voice in your head screams, “Why is everyone more successful than you are?”
There’s the feeling of isolation, being unable to contact your family when the Internet “mysteriously” doesn’t work across the country for six days, losing service right after you found out your grandma had a stroke and there’s nothing you can do but pray that the rain will stop and you can get an international call through again.
There’s the feeling of cultural ineptitude, being scolded for not properly greeting the village chief or stopping to say hi to a stranger at the market.
There’s the feeling of constant, nagging doubt, wondering if anyone’s even listening to what you’re trying to tell them to help make their lives better and healthier, or if they’re just nodding to make you happy.
There’s the feeling of disfavor, coming back from an emergency procedure in Morocco to admonishments that you were gone too long and didn’t bring back gifts for your neighbors.
There’s the feeling of utter bemusement, never knowing if you should start laughing or crying or running away, like when a woman asks you if you don’t want to marry her four-year-old daughter because she’s black.
There’s the feeling of having no idea where you belong in society, walking to the post office through a group of children screaming ‘ANISARA!’–the local language word for white person–at you until you want to be invisible. And then, only minutes later, you’re told to cut the line of people waiting for money transfers from their wealthy relatives because, let’s face it, you’re white.
There’s the feeling of discomfort, trying to sleep during the unbearable hot season, sharing a 5-seat car with 8 people and a goat, staying home from work because you don’t know what your body is doing but you know it isn’t good; or, as my friend Patty so eloquently wrote: “Discomfort is constant, and therefore meaningless.”
There’s the feeling of devastation when your dog dies, when your best student fails her final exams and has to repeat a grade, when you live in a country where 1 in every 10 children won’t even live to see their fifth birthday.
There’s the feeling of pure sadness when you miss out on your best friend’s wedding, on your sister’s move-in day at college, on your favorite person’s first day of high school, and on your grandma’s final coherent weeks, knowing that you’re an entire hemisphere away and you can’t be with the people you love most.
There’s the feeling of betrayal, of being robbed by someone you thought cared about you. And, somehow more sinister, when a close friend asks you The Question: “Can you please bring me with you to America?” And along with the betrayal comes the anger with yourself: how could you ever think that people would want to be your friend with no strings attached? Don’t you know that people see you as a rich white man, and nothing else?
There’s the feeling of sacrifice, thinking of all you’ve given up to be in a place almost all Americans can’t even find on a map, which reminds you, you didn’t even know this country existed two years ago.
And then, the most powerful of all, the feeling of guilt, knowing that you have something your Togolese friends never will: the ability to pick up the phone, say that you’re finished, and go back to the States for good. You can leave.
You have the immense privilege of being able to leave.
And in these moments where leaving sounds like a cold drink of water on a scorching day, you have to ask yourself, without any artifice: What am I doing here?
And then you remember the intangible moments you’ll never be able to forget:
The boy from your English class who gets relentlessly picked on by the bigger kids–watching him go from timorous to self-confident after sending him to a Peace Corps summer camp.
Here he is, teaching new mothers about malariaThe doctor who tells you that he’s never been trained on bedside manner before and that, because of the presentation you co-created, he’s going to start being more careful with how he treats his patients.
The boys from the camp for children with disabilities that you helped run who went back to their villages and shared information on malaria prevention with over a hundred of their classmates.
The birth attendant who shares with you how much she’s struggled to make sure her kids have a great life, and the knowledge that, unbeknownst to her, you’ll be paying for her kids’ education through college.
The tranquil nights spent with three of your good friends, both Togolese and American, playing Settlers of Catan and eating mac n cheese.
The reminder that 220,000 amazing Americans have come before you, and that you made a commitment, and that you’ll be so unbelievably proud of yourself at the end of your two years of service.
The unexpected Instagram message you receive from a high schooler you met while talking in classrooms during your vacation who tells you that now he’s considering doing Peace Corps after college, thanks to you.
The surprising euphoria in the most mundane events: finding a cucumber in the market, ordering a new outfit custom-made by your very own tailor, receiving a letter from a friend in the States that reminds you that there are people who will always be in your life.
And the feeling of self-satisfied pride. No experience can knock the wide-eyed optimism out of you. No moment can sully your (yes, quixotic) desire to make the world a better place, even if all you do is make one person smile.
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After church this morning, my best Togolese friend Luc took me home on his motorcycle.
“I have something for you,” he said, reaching into his pocket, as we walked into my house.
Friday started out just like any other day. I went to the health clinic, made lunch, and read a book. Life can be so pleasantly quiet here sometimes.
Then, a knock on my door! It was my 14-year-old host brother Charles, one of my closest village friends and the neighborhood trickster. “Gbati, come with me! There’s an elephant by the river!”
Look at that devious faceCan you tell us apart?
Charles is known to sometimes exaggerate the truth. (eg “You are so fat!”) I thanked him for the invitation and told him to have a good time.
After a couple minutes, another knock on the door! This time from my other host brother, Jacques. He makes me funnel cake sometimes.
Jacques is one of the sweetest and most caring kids I’ve ever met. He’s as goofy as his big brother, and he has a heart of gold, too. “Gbati, come with me! There’s an elephant by the river!”I adore these rascals.
As we started walking, we passed two women from the village. “Gbati, a ca laa?” Where are you going?
“M ca kukunte,” I told them. I am going to see the elephant. For those of you learning Bassar at home, be careful! M ca kukunti means I am going to the sauce. Big difference!
“Can you walk all the way there?” the women asked me.
Either this elephant was really far away or people think I’m incapable of walking more than a minute without stopping.
We walked for a half hour, sometimes running, sometimes getting out of the way of motorcycles carrying three or four kids at a time.
Soon, we were at the riverbank. And there it stood.
He was majestic in every way.
With about thirty other villagers, we stood and watched him eat and swing his trunk. He was beautiful.
No one knows where the elephant came from. The prevailing rumor is that he walked over from Côte d’Ivoire, which is quite a hike. Others think he came from Ghana or a village a few kilometers away.
His tusks were stolen by poachers, or his tusks fell off due to old age. He was the friendliest elephant ever, or he was capable of killing you if you got too close.
The elephant’s arrival was almost like the last day of school before summer vacation. School kids, adults, toddlers, old women, everyone in Nangbani ran together to the riverbank to get a glimpse of the behemoth. While they were there, the kids swam and made sand angels. The adults took pictures. It was amazing.
This dive got a Saalaa from the judges! That’s Bassar for 10. I am lame.The most smiles I’ve seen in this countryWhen they got bored of looking at the elephant, villagers started taking pictures with me. It got weird.We went back to visit the elephant the next day. I offered him a banana, but he wasn’t in a good mood. While we scurried away, I scraped my heel and started bleeding. After four days, people still ask me if my wound has healed. It healed almost instantaneously. But my village takes good care of me. And I got to spend a day with my brother ❤️
As I stood at the riverbank and watched the kids play, my mind went back to special moments in my life I had forgotten.
Going to Living Treasures with my mom. Taking our camp kids on long nature walks. Buying my grandma an elephant figurine after my dad passed. Standing on the pool deck and watching the kids swim. “Mr. Dan! Mr. Dan! Look! I can do a flip underwater!”
Everything in my life has led me to this point. It just took an elephant for me to realize it. 🇹🇬❤️
togodaniel 