Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Thursday, December 11, 2008
12 Dec - Myeadogo
I leave for Lomé tomorrow morning. I have 2 final meetings scheduled in the afternoon and Inno will meet me in the evening at his frère's house. My flight is Saturday (of course at 4AM, as the rest of the world does not consider Togo when planning international airline plans and there is always one flight per day at some ung-dly hour)
It's as if I closed my eyes, opened them to a riot of color, smiles, pagnes and palms, and then, upon blinking a second time, a month has gone by...
I now live simultaneously in two distinct and comprehensive worlds, separated not only by an ocean but by many immeasurable miles of cultural complexity. One day I will understand the reconciliation of the two, but for now, I will just revel in the beauty of both places and the people that live in each one, and try to imagine how lucky I am to have the chance to inhabit both.
It is not easy.
Stay tuned for the next season of the Yovo Show, when SunPower Afrique moves from inspiration, research and planning, to realisation and execution.
It's as if I closed my eyes, opened them to a riot of color, smiles, pagnes and palms, and then, upon blinking a second time, a month has gone by...
I now live simultaneously in two distinct and comprehensive worlds, separated not only by an ocean but by many immeasurable miles of cultural complexity. One day I will understand the reconciliation of the two, but for now, I will just revel in the beauty of both places and the people that live in each one, and try to imagine how lucky I am to have the chance to inhabit both.
It is not easy.
Stay tuned for the next season of the Yovo Show, when SunPower Afrique moves from inspiration, research and planning, to realisation and execution.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
6 Dec – December Rain
6 Dec – December Rain
The other night, Inno turns to me and says, I have been thinking about something since early this afternoon and I want to talk to you about it. I immediately started racking my brain for my most recent social blunder, or waiting to hear about his second wife and child waiting for him in the North…he must have seen the confusion in my face because he said, no no don’t worry, ce n’est pas mal.
“Have you ever heard of African mysticism?”
I think before responding, a bit surprised that he is bringing this up…yes, I say, I have heard of it, but I have never seen it with my own eyes. Adding a tone of skepticism to my voice I say, do you believe in that stuff? He nods his head from side to side, not saying yes, but not saying no.
“Kira,” he says, “This is Africa. Mysticism is not something to believe in or not believe in. You may not be able to understand this, but I am going to try to tell you anyway…that here, in Africa, it is real.”
Several people have spoken to me about mystics, sorcerers and superstitions during my time spent in Togo. So and so’s brother in law was narcissistic ever since he got that new job, that’s why he died in his sleep one night…so and so’s mother? Oh she was so vain and self-absorbed after winning the lottery, that’s why she was in that accident and died. In all instances, the mysterious deaths are tied to an individual’s success, achievement or improved status in life, and their behavior as a result of the experience.
I have always taken these stories with a grain of salt, knowing that, from my suburban American education and approach towards problem solving, that there is a scientific or rational explanation for nearly everything. However, it is here that I have learned the significance of nearly everything. As our conversation goes on, I learn that it is this element of mysticism, the relationship of cause and effect between one’s behavior, others’ intentions, and good and evil, that Innocent is most interested in speaking to me about.
Benin, less than 100km away, is the voodoo center of West Africa, if not all of Africa. Although I have never been there, an almost fearful reverence for the power of Beninoise voodoo has permeated my perception of the country. Every Beninoise I have met has made some mention of fortune, chance and spirituality, and, while it less prevalent here in Togo, it is a sharp reality for many.
Innocent says, Kira, you know me, I would not place my fortune in the hands of a sage, but have you ever noticed that the reason that Africa doesn’t evolve like the rest of the world is because people are always jealous of each other? No one can be happy for one another when they are better off than their neighbor. Instead, evil brews, and no one advances. (Sidenote: I asked him then, where does economic development and corrupt governance fit it? What about those explanations for poverty and lack of progress? Je ne te refuse pas, he said, those are also justifications for Africa’s problems, but trust me, they are only part of the game.)
Mensah and Akpene have both mentioned this underlying element of jealousy in African society to me as well, from the very beginning – cautioning me to be wary of any trinkets anyone might give me, open drinks or food whose source is unknown. Mensah says they could sabotage my project with some kind of herbal potion in my beverage – I will no longer be able to think clearly about my ideas and SunPower Afrique will fall apart. Akpene says that they could convince me to unknowingly carry around an evil talisman, and when I arrive back in the US, I will forget all about Innocent and how I feel about him. “You can be sitting together, laughing and chatting,” Mensah says, “With your closest friends…but no one is happy. Everyone is hiding something. Everyone is jealous, resentful and plotting. You must always be careful.”
Now –
a) I find this very hard to believe about my dear friends here in Kpalimé, and I think that there is both a level of exaggeration and also a difference between coveting thy Togolese neighbor and coveting thy yovo.
b) One would think that this is quite a precarious environment for someone like me, with a relentless case of verbal diarrhea and lack of self-consciousness. But I have learned quickly and, while maintaining my personality of sincerity and trustfulness, I have indeed changed my level of openness with others about my private life. In many ways I am still as naïve as I used to be, some things about me will never change and I actually grateful for that, but I know now how to be just as observant and direct in my interactions, yet protective. I am not in Kansas anymore.
I ask Innocent how he knows that mysticism is real. He says, “Do you know why I am still here in Togo?” I shake me head and he continues, “If my father was still alive, I would have gone to university in Europe. I would never have met you.”
“My father was a member of the National Assembly. He was moving up in the world. And someone didn’t like it. My father was killed by an evil spirit.” I try not to roll my eyes and ask him how his father died. He tells me that he had an accident – he was walking in the sand by the side of the road, fell down and died. With a raised eyebrow, I ask him how he knows that this was a spell of malice that killed him…Inno insists that there were no rocks, no branches, no weapons in sight – he fell, seemingly out of nowhere, in the middle of a pile of sand, and died. I ask Innocent if he saw it happen and he says no, no one did. I tell him then, Inno, your father must have had a seizure, an aneurism, must have fallen in a position that caused his spine to contort just so, that it killed him. “No,” he refuses, “You will say that and you will think that, but it is not true. You don’t understand.” I will tell you another story, he says.
A frère, in Lomé, married a European woman. He lived with her in Europe and once, came back to Togo with a new car. He drove all around the city, showing off his fancy automobile, swanky clothing and shiny watches, disrespecting his friends and neighbors. That night, he was driving home and went to cross the railroad tracks when his car suddenly stalled. The frère couldn’t re-start the car and when he tried to get out, the doors were all jammed in the locked position. He also couldn’t break open the windows. The train hit his car and the frère died. Final Destination anyone?
I tried for about 10 minutes to explain to him that this was impossible. Perhaps there was an electrical malfunction with the doors’ locks, perhaps he committed suicide. There are several gaps in this story – a) Inno did not see it happen. He claims that he saw the smashed car the next day. b) By the time Innocent would have been old enough to understand or witness such an event, the train system in Togo was gaté.
I don’t buy it. Inno and I argued for a few minutes about the implausibility of his story and in the end, agreed to disagree.
But…
I wonder if the chill I sometimes feel, looking deep into the tall reeds and baobabs of the plains between Aventonou and Kpalimé, is simply some romanticized perception of shadows in the darkness of the African night or if truly, there is a third level of existence – one of ancient spirits and whispered history, bearing both powerful malevolence and incomprehensible compassion – that radiates out of Africa.
Is this third level of existence somehow related to Africans’ intense sensibility of the patterns of the natural world? There is a heightened level of consciousness of weather, seasons and temperature. As if there is a spirit or overlying energy governing us all and the world around us – untouchable and uncontrollable by humans, yet as reliable as the sun rising every day. These are the things one can depend on, because the essence of this force will always exist and will always ensure our existence. There is no room for scientific, biological, yovo explanations for cold fronts, global warming or fluctuating jet streams…
Everyone I know in Togo in a tizzy right now because it is December and it has rained 3 days in a row – Athanase said to me yesterday, staring out at the sky, perplexed, “Il ne pleut pas en decembre. En Decembre c’est l’Harmattan.” It is as simple as that – in December it does not rain. It is the Harmattan Winds. Period.
So I believe, on one hand, that there is a heightened sense of spirituality and general experience here in Africa. I do. I love it here because there is something about this place that does not exist in the states – whether it is the simplicity and openness of the people here, the optimism and resilience that permeates the meaning of life, the complexity of a third level of spiritual existence, or a combination of all of the above, I am still not sure. But it is here, and you can’t find it elsewhere. And you can’t find it here after one week, not even after 3 months…I didn’t truly sense it until this trip, and I won’t claim to fully understand it. No one really does – part of its magnetism and strength is its impalpability…
However, I am still a yovo, I am still Kira Costanza, and although I have been strangely convinced to keep my life as private as possible to prevent someone from slotting any evil intentions towards Innocent (why I somehow believe that is possible I could not tell you,) I still have not heard a story, from anyone, that I truly believe to be the result of mysticism.
Evil spells do not exist, and accidents do happen, even in Africa.
The other night, Inno turns to me and says, I have been thinking about something since early this afternoon and I want to talk to you about it. I immediately started racking my brain for my most recent social blunder, or waiting to hear about his second wife and child waiting for him in the North…he must have seen the confusion in my face because he said, no no don’t worry, ce n’est pas mal.
“Have you ever heard of African mysticism?”
I think before responding, a bit surprised that he is bringing this up…yes, I say, I have heard of it, but I have never seen it with my own eyes. Adding a tone of skepticism to my voice I say, do you believe in that stuff? He nods his head from side to side, not saying yes, but not saying no.
“Kira,” he says, “This is Africa. Mysticism is not something to believe in or not believe in. You may not be able to understand this, but I am going to try to tell you anyway…that here, in Africa, it is real.”
Several people have spoken to me about mystics, sorcerers and superstitions during my time spent in Togo. So and so’s brother in law was narcissistic ever since he got that new job, that’s why he died in his sleep one night…so and so’s mother? Oh she was so vain and self-absorbed after winning the lottery, that’s why she was in that accident and died. In all instances, the mysterious deaths are tied to an individual’s success, achievement or improved status in life, and their behavior as a result of the experience.
I have always taken these stories with a grain of salt, knowing that, from my suburban American education and approach towards problem solving, that there is a scientific or rational explanation for nearly everything. However, it is here that I have learned the significance of nearly everything. As our conversation goes on, I learn that it is this element of mysticism, the relationship of cause and effect between one’s behavior, others’ intentions, and good and evil, that Innocent is most interested in speaking to me about.
Benin, less than 100km away, is the voodoo center of West Africa, if not all of Africa. Although I have never been there, an almost fearful reverence for the power of Beninoise voodoo has permeated my perception of the country. Every Beninoise I have met has made some mention of fortune, chance and spirituality, and, while it less prevalent here in Togo, it is a sharp reality for many.
Innocent says, Kira, you know me, I would not place my fortune in the hands of a sage, but have you ever noticed that the reason that Africa doesn’t evolve like the rest of the world is because people are always jealous of each other? No one can be happy for one another when they are better off than their neighbor. Instead, evil brews, and no one advances. (Sidenote: I asked him then, where does economic development and corrupt governance fit it? What about those explanations for poverty and lack of progress? Je ne te refuse pas, he said, those are also justifications for Africa’s problems, but trust me, they are only part of the game.)
Mensah and Akpene have both mentioned this underlying element of jealousy in African society to me as well, from the very beginning – cautioning me to be wary of any trinkets anyone might give me, open drinks or food whose source is unknown. Mensah says they could sabotage my project with some kind of herbal potion in my beverage – I will no longer be able to think clearly about my ideas and SunPower Afrique will fall apart. Akpene says that they could convince me to unknowingly carry around an evil talisman, and when I arrive back in the US, I will forget all about Innocent and how I feel about him. “You can be sitting together, laughing and chatting,” Mensah says, “With your closest friends…but no one is happy. Everyone is hiding something. Everyone is jealous, resentful and plotting. You must always be careful.”
Now –
a) I find this very hard to believe about my dear friends here in Kpalimé, and I think that there is both a level of exaggeration and also a difference between coveting thy Togolese neighbor and coveting thy yovo.
b) One would think that this is quite a precarious environment for someone like me, with a relentless case of verbal diarrhea and lack of self-consciousness. But I have learned quickly and, while maintaining my personality of sincerity and trustfulness, I have indeed changed my level of openness with others about my private life. In many ways I am still as naïve as I used to be, some things about me will never change and I actually grateful for that, but I know now how to be just as observant and direct in my interactions, yet protective. I am not in Kansas anymore.
I ask Innocent how he knows that mysticism is real. He says, “Do you know why I am still here in Togo?” I shake me head and he continues, “If my father was still alive, I would have gone to university in Europe. I would never have met you.”
“My father was a member of the National Assembly. He was moving up in the world. And someone didn’t like it. My father was killed by an evil spirit.” I try not to roll my eyes and ask him how his father died. He tells me that he had an accident – he was walking in the sand by the side of the road, fell down and died. With a raised eyebrow, I ask him how he knows that this was a spell of malice that killed him…Inno insists that there were no rocks, no branches, no weapons in sight – he fell, seemingly out of nowhere, in the middle of a pile of sand, and died. I ask Innocent if he saw it happen and he says no, no one did. I tell him then, Inno, your father must have had a seizure, an aneurism, must have fallen in a position that caused his spine to contort just so, that it killed him. “No,” he refuses, “You will say that and you will think that, but it is not true. You don’t understand.” I will tell you another story, he says.
A frère, in Lomé, married a European woman. He lived with her in Europe and once, came back to Togo with a new car. He drove all around the city, showing off his fancy automobile, swanky clothing and shiny watches, disrespecting his friends and neighbors. That night, he was driving home and went to cross the railroad tracks when his car suddenly stalled. The frère couldn’t re-start the car and when he tried to get out, the doors were all jammed in the locked position. He also couldn’t break open the windows. The train hit his car and the frère died. Final Destination anyone?
I tried for about 10 minutes to explain to him that this was impossible. Perhaps there was an electrical malfunction with the doors’ locks, perhaps he committed suicide. There are several gaps in this story – a) Inno did not see it happen. He claims that he saw the smashed car the next day. b) By the time Innocent would have been old enough to understand or witness such an event, the train system in Togo was gaté.
I don’t buy it. Inno and I argued for a few minutes about the implausibility of his story and in the end, agreed to disagree.
But…
I wonder if the chill I sometimes feel, looking deep into the tall reeds and baobabs of the plains between Aventonou and Kpalimé, is simply some romanticized perception of shadows in the darkness of the African night or if truly, there is a third level of existence – one of ancient spirits and whispered history, bearing both powerful malevolence and incomprehensible compassion – that radiates out of Africa.
Is this third level of existence somehow related to Africans’ intense sensibility of the patterns of the natural world? There is a heightened level of consciousness of weather, seasons and temperature. As if there is a spirit or overlying energy governing us all and the world around us – untouchable and uncontrollable by humans, yet as reliable as the sun rising every day. These are the things one can depend on, because the essence of this force will always exist and will always ensure our existence. There is no room for scientific, biological, yovo explanations for cold fronts, global warming or fluctuating jet streams…
Everyone I know in Togo in a tizzy right now because it is December and it has rained 3 days in a row – Athanase said to me yesterday, staring out at the sky, perplexed, “Il ne pleut pas en decembre. En Decembre c’est l’Harmattan.” It is as simple as that – in December it does not rain. It is the Harmattan Winds. Period.
So I believe, on one hand, that there is a heightened sense of spirituality and general experience here in Africa. I do. I love it here because there is something about this place that does not exist in the states – whether it is the simplicity and openness of the people here, the optimism and resilience that permeates the meaning of life, the complexity of a third level of spiritual existence, or a combination of all of the above, I am still not sure. But it is here, and you can’t find it elsewhere. And you can’t find it here after one week, not even after 3 months…I didn’t truly sense it until this trip, and I won’t claim to fully understand it. No one really does – part of its magnetism and strength is its impalpability…
However, I am still a yovo, I am still Kira Costanza, and although I have been strangely convinced to keep my life as private as possible to prevent someone from slotting any evil intentions towards Innocent (why I somehow believe that is possible I could not tell you,) I still have not heard a story, from anyone, that I truly believe to be the result of mysticism.
Evil spells do not exist, and accidents do happen, even in Africa.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
SunPower Afrique Update - Synopsis
For all of you that are indeed interested in the evolution of SunPower Afrique but don't have the time to read my rambling blogs (I understand entirely), I hope that this will be of interest to you...
SunPower Afrique is moving forward fantastically in Togo. I have been doing lots of research on materials and our workforce, and have found our team of technicians that will be trained during the pilot installation. They are a great bunch - young, motivated and forward-thinking. I have met community organizers, entrepreneurs and individuals who are interested in being involved and am developing a widespread network on the ground. All the while, I am learning how to keep my cards close to my chest and being very careful not to get taken advantage of - this is a very complex and difficult task and I learn much every day.
I have met with the head of the National Microfinance Committee and the country's renewable energy experts, who have all expressed high levels of support for the project and shared important advice, political and technical, with me. Things are all falling into place...
I have been working out the details of the 'Solar Loan,' which will be offered by FECECAV (and eventually other MFIs) after their solar installation is complete. For me, this is one of the most exciting parts of the project because it truly means the expansion of the use and knowledge of solar in Togo.
I have also been preparing my application to do business in Togo, with the help of my FECECAV colleagues, which we will submit next week tothe Minister of the Interior.
Everyone anxiously awaits the pilot installation and, for those who haven't already, the arrival of Mister Jon, who has become somewhat of a hero in Kpalime and beyond, in the spring of 2009.
I see more and more every day the impact this project is going to have on this country and I continue to fall more and more in love with Togo...
I look forward to sharing more when I return mid-December. Please be in touch and thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for your interest and support.
All my best,
Kira
SunPower Afrique is moving forward fantastically in Togo. I have been doing lots of research on materials and our workforce, and have found our team of technicians that will be trained during the pilot installation. They are a great bunch - young, motivated and forward-thinking. I have met community organizers, entrepreneurs and individuals who are interested in being involved and am developing a widespread network on the ground. All the while, I am learning how to keep my cards close to my chest and being very careful not to get taken advantage of - this is a very complex and difficult task and I learn much every day.
I have met with the head of the National Microfinance Committee and the country's renewable energy experts, who have all expressed high levels of support for the project and shared important advice, political and technical, with me. Things are all falling into place...
I have been working out the details of the 'Solar Loan,' which will be offered by FECECAV (and eventually other MFIs) after their solar installation is complete. For me, this is one of the most exciting parts of the project because it truly means the expansion of the use and knowledge of solar in Togo.
I have also been preparing my application to do business in Togo, with the help of my FECECAV colleagues, which we will submit next week tothe Minister of the Interior.
Everyone anxiously awaits the pilot installation and, for those who haven't already, the arrival of Mister Jon, who has become somewhat of a hero in Kpalime and beyond, in the spring of 2009.
I see more and more every day the impact this project is going to have on this country and I continue to fall more and more in love with Togo...
I look forward to sharing more when I return mid-December. Please be in touch and thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for your interest and support.
All my best,
Kira
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
It's Already December??
I am sitting in a sweaty, second floor cyber café in Lomé, surrounded by unemployed Togolese "entrepreneurs," lazily searching internet databases and sending out Nigerian internet scams...they work in pairs, fumbling through English translations, sending messages with subjects such as "Hello...Family (Paste Name Here)" and "Urgent Business Proposal My Dear Friend." I want to tell them that no one reads these things and they should go and at least try to get a job...have I been in Togo too long?
This morning, amidst the usual flurry of 'What-will-you-bring-mes,' I took a taxi from Kpalimé in order to meet with Monsieur Jacques from the National Microfinance Committee. He was pleased with the evolution of the project, as the whole idea of the Solar Loan is new since I presented the dossier to him last Spring. Jacques believes that the project now has a larger vision, that is more sustainable, but, interestingly, he too warned me to proceed slowly and carefully. Jacque's fear is one that I did not consider - that recipient MFIs will start offering solar loans à n'importe qui à n'importe quel termes (to just anyone on any terms) and will start raising the interest rates once they see the interest and potential profitability . I put on my best non-Yovo face and said, but Jacques, if they sign a contract with us that specifies the terms and rates, won't they be obliged to comply? He saw right through my naivete and said with a smile, Kira, I know that you have a bit of Togo in your blood, and you know better than to think that just because someone has signed a contract they will execute it. He agreed with Lare, Daniel and everyone else that SunPower Afriaue must start small and keep everything under a sharp managerial eye.
I have been somewhat frustrated the past few days in Togo...perhaps it is the end of a honeymoon, perhaps it will pass, perhaps I am just moody, but I have been less tolerant and abrupt in my observations since Saturday...it started at church. Having sat through that service and money-mongering so many times, I assumed I could quietly swallow it all again. Not so. This week it was particularly greedy...it was the annual celebration of youth, which meant performances and skits by youth groups, showcasing appropriate, church-condoned behavior. I appreciate peoples' solace and trust in religion here, but the way it seems to blindfold people and dictates everything from how to choose a mate to look at yourself in the mirror, is so short-sighted and limiting. Easy for me to say, having been raised in a family and a country that allowed me to see, look and feel for myself, taught me, in fact, to be curious and ever-questioning. I have developed an acute awareness of when to keep my mouth shut here and realize that there are certain things people simply won't understand - most namely, that I do not believe that Jesus will take care of n'importe quoi for me. But this weekend it was as if something snapped in my brain and the stubborn, indepenant gremlin that always sits on my shoulder won out.
I was so disgusted with the pastor's threats to the congregation, that yes, even if you don't have the means, g-d wants you to give 2000CFA to the church, that I told Maman I was annoyed by it (which I have told her and Daniel before, but more in a teasing way and they just laugh at the silly Yovo) and wanted to leave. She didn't think I was serious, but when I got up and left, she and Daniel followed. They weren't offended because a) they can't understand why I would think that and b) even though everyone knows that most of that money will go into the pastor's pocket, they can't imagine someone actually standing up to it.
Later in the day, still salty from the experience, I went with Innocent to a party for Rogier's new baby. Half an hour into the celebration, a nasty-looking man with a fat belly showed up and jerked his hand for Akpene to get out of her seat. She did and he sat down, scowling. He nudged Inno and snapped something to him, which prompted him to hiss at Alice and motion for her to come over. She came over and the man pointed at the drinks table, not 4 feet away. She quickly poured him a glass of whiskey which he rejected and she came back, mixing some bitters with it. He snatched the glass from her, saying nothing.
Innocent and I have talked about this kind of behavior many times and, while I am not going to divulge the complexity and evolution of our relationship here, I will say that both of us are products of our cultures and upbringings, and Inno's open mind is rare and truly astonishing. We have both changed since we met each other, discovering each others' cultures, personalities, intricacies and difficulties. Both of us have learned the real meaning and significance of compromise, and neither of us doubt that there is much more ahead.
Inno is brave, intelligent and knows what he wants, and he has accepted and applied ideas of equality, shared responsibility and affection with curiosity and grace.
This morning, amidst the usual flurry of 'What-will-you-bring-mes,' I took a taxi from Kpalimé in order to meet with Monsieur Jacques from the National Microfinance Committee. He was pleased with the evolution of the project, as the whole idea of the Solar Loan is new since I presented the dossier to him last Spring. Jacques believes that the project now has a larger vision, that is more sustainable, but, interestingly, he too warned me to proceed slowly and carefully. Jacque's fear is one that I did not consider - that recipient MFIs will start offering solar loans à n'importe qui à n'importe quel termes (to just anyone on any terms) and will start raising the interest rates once they see the interest and potential profitability . I put on my best non-Yovo face and said, but Jacques, if they sign a contract with us that specifies the terms and rates, won't they be obliged to comply? He saw right through my naivete and said with a smile, Kira, I know that you have a bit of Togo in your blood, and you know better than to think that just because someone has signed a contract they will execute it. He agreed with Lare, Daniel and everyone else that SunPower Afriaue must start small and keep everything under a sharp managerial eye.
I have been somewhat frustrated the past few days in Togo...perhaps it is the end of a honeymoon, perhaps it will pass, perhaps I am just moody, but I have been less tolerant and abrupt in my observations since Saturday...it started at church. Having sat through that service and money-mongering so many times, I assumed I could quietly swallow it all again. Not so. This week it was particularly greedy...it was the annual celebration of youth, which meant performances and skits by youth groups, showcasing appropriate, church-condoned behavior. I appreciate peoples' solace and trust in religion here, but the way it seems to blindfold people and dictates everything from how to choose a mate to look at yourself in the mirror, is so short-sighted and limiting. Easy for me to say, having been raised in a family and a country that allowed me to see, look and feel for myself, taught me, in fact, to be curious and ever-questioning. I have developed an acute awareness of when to keep my mouth shut here and realize that there are certain things people simply won't understand - most namely, that I do not believe that Jesus will take care of n'importe quoi for me. But this weekend it was as if something snapped in my brain and the stubborn, indepenant gremlin that always sits on my shoulder won out.
I was so disgusted with the pastor's threats to the congregation, that yes, even if you don't have the means, g-d wants you to give 2000CFA to the church, that I told Maman I was annoyed by it (which I have told her and Daniel before, but more in a teasing way and they just laugh at the silly Yovo) and wanted to leave. She didn't think I was serious, but when I got up and left, she and Daniel followed. They weren't offended because a) they can't understand why I would think that and b) even though everyone knows that most of that money will go into the pastor's pocket, they can't imagine someone actually standing up to it.
Later in the day, still salty from the experience, I went with Innocent to a party for Rogier's new baby. Half an hour into the celebration, a nasty-looking man with a fat belly showed up and jerked his hand for Akpene to get out of her seat. She did and he sat down, scowling. He nudged Inno and snapped something to him, which prompted him to hiss at Alice and motion for her to come over. She came over and the man pointed at the drinks table, not 4 feet away. She quickly poured him a glass of whiskey which he rejected and she came back, mixing some bitters with it. He snatched the glass from her, saying nothing.
Innocent and I have talked about this kind of behavior many times and, while I am not going to divulge the complexity and evolution of our relationship here, I will say that both of us are products of our cultures and upbringings, and Inno's open mind is rare and truly astonishing. We have both changed since we met each other, discovering each others' cultures, personalities, intricacies and difficulties. Both of us have learned the real meaning and significance of compromise, and neither of us doubt that there is much more ahead.
Inno is brave, intelligent and knows what he wants, and he has accepted and applied ideas of equality, shared responsibility and affection with curiosity and grace.
Friday, November 28, 2008
25 Novembre - Lomé Lomé
I am ready to leave at 7am, as promised, and Maman FECECAV is waiting for me. She is headed to Lomé to buy pagnes at the Grand Marché to resell in her boutique and I have a meeting with Monsieur Lare Damessanou, an expert in renewable energy. Before heading out, all I know is that he is the head of an NGO in the North and he has invited me to spend the day with him to hear what he knows and see an installation he has done in a Lomé quartier.
Maman FECECAV and I wait for an hour and a half at the station in Kpalimé, as obviously the car will not depart with less than 14 people inside….finally, after much harassment by the gang of unemployed, twenty-something men that constantly loiter around the ticket window, we have 13 jammed into the 8-seater van and we roll (literally) out of the station. With some pushing and a frustrated jolt, the van starts and off we go. Two hours later we have made the now-familiar trek from Kpalimé to the outer suburbs of Lomé.
I call Lare and he tells me to come to KASEF and look for the Ministry of Teaching. When I repeat the word KASEF on the phone and look at Maman FECECAV quizzically, everyone hushes and I feel even more white than usual. When I hang up and ask what KASEF is, every single person in the van looks at me like I am an alien. Apparently, KASEF is the central government zone that houses all of the ministries.
I immediately feel my heart sink. I thought Mr. Lare was an outsider, the director of an NGO, a maker of change and a signal of the future, not a well-fed minister’s pet project sitting in an air conditioned office. I sigh and decide to go anyway of course, but am a bit disappointed and also confused since I was told that no one in the ministries would be interested in meeting with me alone.
Maman FECECAV helps me to skirt the gauntlet of moto drivers asking me if I need a ride or, alternatively, if I’d like to be their wife, and sets me off towards KASEF. I promise to call her when I arrive. We drive into the cluster of run-down buildings with their crumbling sidewalks and broken-down entryways, air conditioners clanking and dripping from sporadic windows.
Lomé is so interesting in this way, and KASEF is a microcosm of it – it absolutely reeks of what it used to be...”The Pearl of West Africa” all the travel books called it. When the British and the Germans left it, it was a profitable export market and European vacation destination, complete with exotic nightclubs and restaurants and luxurious hotels (no real Africans involved in any of this of course, unless they were servants) – that mysterious allure of colonial Africa that I imagine from time to time, in this totally bizarre and conflicted emotion of both craving and immeasurable disgust. These buildings still exist, the 3 tallest buildings in Lomé are hotels, and the beaches still sparkle, but you can almost hear the white caretakers and business owners hysterically stuffing their bags full of everything they can fit and leaving empty bureaus without so much as a sideways glance at what they were leaving behind, or whom. The new Togolese government, businesses and public who took over these establishments haven’t had the cash to repaint or repair since…
The building I enter, the Ministry of Education is, like most, not centrally air conditioned, only the offices of ministers and other governmental peons, whose offices humm off of open hallways, which are more like crumbling balconies and an occasional broken window. A team of workers are carrying bucketloads of cement up and down the stairs on their heads, sweat dripping down their foreheads in oily beads. They don’t seem to notice la chaleur, as I fan myself with a piece of paper. I think about how stupid I am that I even care about trying not to sweat through my now thoroughly wrinkled shirt…
After I realize that I am in the wrong place, someone leads me through the sand to the Ministry of Education for Primary and Secondary Education. Mr. Lare is standing outside waiting for me, a small, thin man wearing slacks, a collared shirt and, yes, a tie. He also wears glasses, with bifocals, halfway down his nose. He doesn’t push them up, and greets me with a huge smile and solid handshake.
He leads me up some stairs, where I trip on the way up (NEVER FAILS) and about 4 men “come to my rescue.” These well-ironed attachés are much sleazier than any hissing moto driver in Kpalimé, and their lingering handshakes and winks really make my skin crawl. I pretend not to be bothered, plaster on a smile and follow Laré into a large, air-conditioned conference room that is empty except for a large table and a laptop sitting at the far end.
We sit and begin to talk. As we have already exchanged several emails, he knows the basis of why I am here, but I remain cautious. I decide to feel him out – I ask what he is doing here at the ministry, that I thought he was affiliated with an NGO and that I am surprised to find him here. He laughs and tells me not to worry, he has never had and never will have any intentions of working with the government. He explains.
Lare is an electrical engineer, and earned his Masters in Solar Energy in Ghana in 1992 and came back to Togo to start ACDI-Solar, an NGO based in Dapaong (in the far North of Togo.) He has worked in the field ever since. As a result of this experience he has become one of the 3 experts on renewable energy in the country and, due to this knowledge and position, he is now a member of the Togolese Commission for Energy and other governmental working groups on the energy crisis but, importantly, he considers himself a private consultant in all of these capacities. He goes on to tell me that, of the 3 experts on renewable energy in Togo, he is the only one from the private sector. He reiterates this point several times throughout the day, which makes me much more comfortable, and intrigued.
Lare is here at the ministry because he had been summoned the week before by the government to do a presentation on renewable energy for a UNESCO conference. He will be more than happy to share the presentation with me, he says, please give me your USB key.
His manner is very polite but informal, and soon he asks if we can address each other with the friendly “tu” instead of the official “vous.” He says that after 10 minutes you can judge a person’s character. I feel validated that he seems to like me. Mr. Lare is very forthcoming and open, and I soon begin to realize the depth of his expertise, research and life’s work.
Lare and I begin to talk quickly, almost in circles, and have to continue bringing ourselves back to the organization of our conversation. He appreciates this kind of systematization (such an engineer) and tries to drive the conversation around several points, all information he wishes to impart to me. First, he tells me that the biggest problem with the expansion of solar energy here is twofold. One, there is no experience, no techs, no materials. This is a logistical issue that he has found ways around – training his own team, procuring and shipping materials for those who have the means from a partner in Houston, TX.
Importantly, Lare and I agree that under no circumstances do we use Chinese products in solar installations. If there is one thing that needs to be sustainable, he says, it is a solar energy system, and China has proven to us in Africa that their products will be gaté within a few months. I am thrilled that he shares this view, as it has larger implications, in my mind, of the way that the solar industry will develop here in Togo and else where in Africa. China has monopolized the electronics and other cheap import markets, but I’ll be damned if they can do it with solar modules…
Lare also has ideas about training more workers to promote and respond to demand for solar energy usage. I let him know that this is a big part of what we want to do as well and we’d love to collaborate. He said that there might be an opportunity to work together on a training conference he is trying to organize in January/2009 – he even said that, since it will be sponsored by the state, we might be able to get airfare and hotel rooms paid for…this is very interesting, exactly the direction we need to be moving in. I am very happy to see it happening – albeit from one man – and I think that Jon and Ron will be enthusiastic about participating.
Lare explains that the other part of the problem with the expansion of solar is a lack of knowledge, on both the populations part (similiar to what Aminou told me in Kpalimé) and on the part of the government. That is why I am here, he says, to show the government that it is in their interest. But it is an uphill battle, he says, even when I show them the figures.
In many West African countries, such as Mali, Burkina and Senegal, there are solar industries that are beginning to develop. They have already seen the light, so to speak. This is because there are widespread laws in these countries protecting solar – no tax credits or rebate programs of course, but incentives nonetheless. In Togo, this is a very recent phenomenon (our timing couldn’t be better in fact…) The majority of the population does not know that there are laws protecting solar in Togo. My partners at FECEAV didn’t know and I didn’t know either. He says that he is not surprised that I am not aware of this, as the government has done a superb job of keeping it hidden. In 1998, a decree was passed that removed all taxes and other fees on the import of solar panels into the country. This decree was not rendered active and applied until March of 2008, after Lare himself devoted several years to lobbying ministers, making presentations and schmoozing attachés.
He will be happy to make me a photocopy of the decree, he says, because if I go into the archives and records I will not find it. It is active, but it has been removed. Import taxes are a large source of revenue for the Togolese government. He says that if I have this decree, I will have no problem getting my materials through the port hors taxes.
Lare goes on to explain about the Port of Lomé. To my amazement, he tells me that is the most secure port in all of West Africa. If I were to try this in Accra or Lagos, he laughs, you would end up with half of what you started with. He recounts a story of when he went to the port in Lagos to retrieve a shipment and, without anyone stopping him, entered the port, found the container, took what what his and left. No one said a word. The Port of Lomé, he says, is serieux. If you have the decree and your Authorization to Operate in Togo (I am working on that, and it is a good thing I am here in the country to do it, otherwise I would have a hell of a time, it is hard enough while I am here!) you are good to go. You will have no trouble, they will guard your materials in haute securité and the same person who unloads your materials will be responsible for driving the rented truck from Lomé to the materials’ final destination. Excellent.
Throughout our conversation, I mention the names of those I have met or contacted so far in Togo that have worked with solar – Aminou and his professor, Prof. Kossi Napo, Youth Volunteers for the Environment – and Lare knows them all. Not only does he know them all, he has worked with them all and is “frères” with all of them. Apparently the energy community in Togo is very small and it is so fascinating to me that however corrupt and inaccessible the government, etc. seems, I am already in the door and right in the thick of it – due to some internet research, some emails and due diligence.
By the end of the conversation, he still does not push up his glasses. He is full of such idiosyncrasies, and I get used to it.
We discuss constraints of working in Togo, and he warns me not get played. He says Kira, I am Togolese, so I can tell you honestly that people will try to take advantage of you. Be careful. He also says that he can tell that, although I am young, I seem to understand his country and will not be naïve. Don’t forget it, he says. He also advises me to start small, be experimental and allez un peu et un peu (like everything else in Togo.) For durability and success, as well as to protect myself.
Lastly, we talk about collaboration. He is very open, and asks what ideas I have. I say that I’d love to have him as a consultant, as his knowledge of policies, application, and other ins and outs of solar IN TOGO will be invaluable to us. I have actually included this in the budget now (we did not discuss compensation at the time though, as I did not think it prudent) because I think it will be essential and important. It will also be creating sustainability and capacity among Togolese, for Togolese, by Togolese. Lare agreed to help with training, as he has done tons of research and presentations in this regard (I have a copy of the recent one he gave at the UNESCO conference,) any questions about materials or system design and also offered some of his team for labor, if we have work for them to do.
Before we know it it is past noon. We look at the clock and at each other, laughing at the fact that we just talked nonstop for almost 3 hours, and decide to go and get something to eat.
We take motos to a place that he knows. The cafeteria we go to is obviously frequented by the privileged type, which is I’m sure why he brought me there. Lare says that he likes it because it is a “natural” environment, which means that the entire place is shaded by a huge mango tree. He appreciates nature, he says, not just renewable energy but all things about the environment. This is true, as later in the day he lets me know about some of his previous work experience with environmental protection NGOS, forestation initiatives, water sanitation, etc.
The environment inside the cafeteria is hushed, a stark contrast to the noise of the street outside. The ground is covered with thick sand, which sticks in between my sweaty toes as I amble towards a table draped in the typical, self-adhesive, white and yellow ‘Flag Bière’ tablecloth. The place is filled with men in suits, eating fufu with knives and forks. Quel comedie.
Everyone stares at me and flashes their best smile, wink and Western mannerisms. I try not to be grossed out and remember where I come from in Kpalimé. At the table next to us, a partner of FECECAV’s, a man who works for the bank BRS Togo, is sitting. This man, Takougnadi, repeatedly asked me to marry him when I was last here in Togo, although he has a wife already and is one of the sleaziest I have met here. He is a classic case – a man of ostentatious presentation, overcompensating for a culture he no longer understands because he has rejected it so shamefully. Every time I have seen him he has been in a suit and tie, his large belly protruding, flashing imposter designer watches and leering at me with ravenous eyes. Seeing him cutting his fufu with a knife and bringing it delicately to his open mouth with a fork was almost enough to make me turn around and leave the place.
I try to ignore him, but he buys Lare and I a round of drinks. Lare appears somewhat embarrassed, as it was he who brought me to lunch (in this culture, that makes sense.) I feel badly and tell Lare that while I appreciated the gesture (although I didn’t at all) I would have preferred him to buy it for me. He seems satisfied and we continue chatting while we order our fufu. He starts telling me about the difference between the North, where he is from, and the South. He says that development has all but stalled here in South, while in the North, it is just beginning. The number of NGOs are in the thousands in any given village, while here in the South, the ancient NGOs aren’t as numerous and don’t do anything anymore – they used to, but now they’ve plateau-ed. Interesting, and I see it. I have decided that my next mission in Togo is to visit and get to know the North of the country, it is something that I have been missing.
When our food comes, I ask to wash my hands. Lare is pleased that I prefer to eat with my hands, and the BRS man is, I think, caught in between being put off and charmed. I hope it is the former, and I wouldn’t be surprised. I can’t imagine eating fufu with a fork, that is utterly ridiculous…
Finally, Takougnadi leaves and Lare and I finish our meal and discussion in peace. When we go to pay, we discover that Takougnadi has paid for our entire meal. I am furious, but Lare shrugs it off and announces that we are going to go into the field, to look at an installation he has completed in Lomé. It is almost 25km away, he says, so we will take a taxi. Lomé is incredibly spread out, so it doesn’t surprise me. The drive is fascinating. I see a part of Lomé I have never before experienced – La Zone Industrielle.
We drive past the Port of Lomé, quite impressive looking, and I admire it in the wake of what Laré has told me about it. The air gets thicker and we are soon in the midst of huge camions, none older than 1989 I can guarantee you. They are ancient and powerful trucks, their rusted hoods strapped on with bungee cords, filthy laborers perched on top of bags of cement and piping, all lurching along, spewing out dense clouds of black exhaust. They are loud and unruly and, although they wouldn’t pass emissions in any state I can imagine, they get the job done. I wait for one to spontaneously collapse into a pile of black steel and oily gears, instantly killing everything in its wake.
We pass the FanMilk factory – Togo’s most famous and profitable export. It is here, inside the cracking white and blue walls that West Africa’s favorite frozen cocktails are manufactured. We pass CimenTogo, a sprawling and devastating junkyard of dust and gray film, which I imagine coating the inside my lungs. While the factory grounds are huge and impressive, the exterior transport belts and storage facilities are rusted and prehistoric and the grounds are all but deserted…Lare tells me that, despite this semblance of an industrial sector, the state cannot meet the demands of students graduating every year from university. Unemployment is more than 33% (this does not include the majority of the population that subsists on petit commerce, rendering the unemployment rate more in the area of 70-80%.)
The air is so heavy with dust, exhaust and pollution my lungs start to burn. We pass the refinery, where Shell has all but monopolized petrol sales in Togo. We pass the factory where beauty products, such as lotions and hair serums, are manufactured. I assure Lare that there will always be a market for these items.
Bizarrely enough, there are also large fields in the middle of the industrial zone, hooked up to sprinkler systems and tended to by women doubled over in the pounding sun. It looks like a plantation…
As we come out of the cloud of smog, we pass a hotel that has installed a windmill! Lare points it out, or I would have missed it for sure.
Soon, the clanking and bustling ceases to a dull roar and we enter a sandy, quiet neighborhood called Kpogan – Agodeka. It is so quiet after being in the Industrial Zone and I don’t see many people. The houses are enormous and protected by tall walls and in some cases barbed wire. Lare tells me that we are approaching the house where he installed a 4kW PV System, for a Togolese man who lives in France with his family. He lives at this house for a few months out of the year. Lare points out other homes and tells me where their occupants live full-time – Germany, Ghana, the United States. No wonder I don’t see any people…
We approach a beautiful, newly constructed home surrounded by tall, tan walls topped with fuchsia bougainvillea. We greet the woman selling cookies on the street and the team of carpenters making doors and enter the home’s gate, greeted by a friendly caretaker. This home is stunning – it is all light tan, white and brown, with a small, well manicured lawn and garden and a sparkling swimming pool. It is not too large in fact, relatively, and I love it. For the first time, I see a place I could see myself living in Lomé. I want to build a house like this – but then I think, do I want to become a stereotype? The expat who lives in her gorgeous home in a rich quarter of Lomé 3 months out of the year? How could I ever be that person? But there is so much to balance, I could never leave my life and my family and live in Togo full time, but I am more and more beginning to feel that there may be a compromise…
We enter the house, mostly empty with new tile, a new fridge and washing machine and new wooden furniture. The design of the house is open and welcoming, and a nice breeze flows through it, from the ocean which is only a few kilometers away. We go up to the 2nd floor and out onto the large balcony, where there is an outdoor shed with a large black cable running from it to the roof – the conduit from the solar modules to the inverter and batteries.
Lare opens the shed and begins to show me the details of his installation. He has done a fantastic job and I immediately see the difference between his expertise and Aminou’s experiments. Lare explains why he has used each size cable, each component. I won’t bore you with the details, but I am impressed. I furiously write everything down in my notebook, considerations that only he, a solar energy technician several degrees away from the equator, would know.
Soon, we go up a rickety wooden ladder and gingerly climb across the synthetic roofing – designed to deflect heat, sent from France – to see the 200W Schuco modules mounted flatly on aluminum racks. They are neatly installed and Lare wipes the dust off of them so that I can take photos. I am so happy to see such a professional installation.
There are many similarities between Lare and Aminou, despite the gap in experience and expertise (which Lare took a certain pride in pointing out, haha, he is human after all.) Both men feel privileged to have worked with people who have the knowledge and the means to install solar here. Both understand the lack of connaissance and sensibilisation about solar in Togo and agree that it is the largest obstacle to its expansion. Lare has done presentations, tried to sell large businesses on solar with financial arguments comparing the price of a generator and a PV system, but people just aren’t ready to take the leap. I am confident that together we can take them there…
The last note I will make to you about this day, for those of you still reading this blog (Mom, Rhoda,) is that taking a moto ride in Lomé at rush hour is one of the most hilarious, frightening things I have ever done. As I have written before, there are no such things are traffic laws or violations in practice in Lomé –if they exist in theory I don’t know about them, and apparently nor do any taxi drivers. Traffic lights are more often than not ignored, traffic patterns changing as a result of pushy station wagons taking advantage of a lull in the line of traffic coming from the opposite direction (and by a lull, I mean a space of more than 10 feet between one vehicle and the next.) Occasionally a police man will stand in the middle of an intersection, randomly waving a flashlight at the ground in one direction or the other, while talking on his cellphone. I have never seen a police man over about 25-28 years of age. Motos are 3-5 thick across each lane, following within 1 inch of each others’ back tires – this is not an exaggeration. You are so close to the people riding next to you that spontaneous conversation is common and you must hold your belongings close to your chest. The snaking train of motos continuously accelerates, brakes and winds in and around each other and in between cars, cutting each other off, narrowly missing each other and often catching a rearview mirror or protruding elbow.
No one wears helmets or even holds on.
Maman FECECAV and I wait for an hour and a half at the station in Kpalimé, as obviously the car will not depart with less than 14 people inside….finally, after much harassment by the gang of unemployed, twenty-something men that constantly loiter around the ticket window, we have 13 jammed into the 8-seater van and we roll (literally) out of the station. With some pushing and a frustrated jolt, the van starts and off we go. Two hours later we have made the now-familiar trek from Kpalimé to the outer suburbs of Lomé.
I call Lare and he tells me to come to KASEF and look for the Ministry of Teaching. When I repeat the word KASEF on the phone and look at Maman FECECAV quizzically, everyone hushes and I feel even more white than usual. When I hang up and ask what KASEF is, every single person in the van looks at me like I am an alien. Apparently, KASEF is the central government zone that houses all of the ministries.
I immediately feel my heart sink. I thought Mr. Lare was an outsider, the director of an NGO, a maker of change and a signal of the future, not a well-fed minister’s pet project sitting in an air conditioned office. I sigh and decide to go anyway of course, but am a bit disappointed and also confused since I was told that no one in the ministries would be interested in meeting with me alone.
Maman FECECAV helps me to skirt the gauntlet of moto drivers asking me if I need a ride or, alternatively, if I’d like to be their wife, and sets me off towards KASEF. I promise to call her when I arrive. We drive into the cluster of run-down buildings with their crumbling sidewalks and broken-down entryways, air conditioners clanking and dripping from sporadic windows.
Lomé is so interesting in this way, and KASEF is a microcosm of it – it absolutely reeks of what it used to be...”The Pearl of West Africa” all the travel books called it. When the British and the Germans left it, it was a profitable export market and European vacation destination, complete with exotic nightclubs and restaurants and luxurious hotels (no real Africans involved in any of this of course, unless they were servants) – that mysterious allure of colonial Africa that I imagine from time to time, in this totally bizarre and conflicted emotion of both craving and immeasurable disgust. These buildings still exist, the 3 tallest buildings in Lomé are hotels, and the beaches still sparkle, but you can almost hear the white caretakers and business owners hysterically stuffing their bags full of everything they can fit and leaving empty bureaus without so much as a sideways glance at what they were leaving behind, or whom. The new Togolese government, businesses and public who took over these establishments haven’t had the cash to repaint or repair since…
The building I enter, the Ministry of Education is, like most, not centrally air conditioned, only the offices of ministers and other governmental peons, whose offices humm off of open hallways, which are more like crumbling balconies and an occasional broken window. A team of workers are carrying bucketloads of cement up and down the stairs on their heads, sweat dripping down their foreheads in oily beads. They don’t seem to notice la chaleur, as I fan myself with a piece of paper. I think about how stupid I am that I even care about trying not to sweat through my now thoroughly wrinkled shirt…
After I realize that I am in the wrong place, someone leads me through the sand to the Ministry of Education for Primary and Secondary Education. Mr. Lare is standing outside waiting for me, a small, thin man wearing slacks, a collared shirt and, yes, a tie. He also wears glasses, with bifocals, halfway down his nose. He doesn’t push them up, and greets me with a huge smile and solid handshake.
He leads me up some stairs, where I trip on the way up (NEVER FAILS) and about 4 men “come to my rescue.” These well-ironed attachés are much sleazier than any hissing moto driver in Kpalimé, and their lingering handshakes and winks really make my skin crawl. I pretend not to be bothered, plaster on a smile and follow Laré into a large, air-conditioned conference room that is empty except for a large table and a laptop sitting at the far end.
We sit and begin to talk. As we have already exchanged several emails, he knows the basis of why I am here, but I remain cautious. I decide to feel him out – I ask what he is doing here at the ministry, that I thought he was affiliated with an NGO and that I am surprised to find him here. He laughs and tells me not to worry, he has never had and never will have any intentions of working with the government. He explains.
Lare is an electrical engineer, and earned his Masters in Solar Energy in Ghana in 1992 and came back to Togo to start ACDI-Solar, an NGO based in Dapaong (in the far North of Togo.) He has worked in the field ever since. As a result of this experience he has become one of the 3 experts on renewable energy in the country and, due to this knowledge and position, he is now a member of the Togolese Commission for Energy and other governmental working groups on the energy crisis but, importantly, he considers himself a private consultant in all of these capacities. He goes on to tell me that, of the 3 experts on renewable energy in Togo, he is the only one from the private sector. He reiterates this point several times throughout the day, which makes me much more comfortable, and intrigued.
Lare is here at the ministry because he had been summoned the week before by the government to do a presentation on renewable energy for a UNESCO conference. He will be more than happy to share the presentation with me, he says, please give me your USB key.
His manner is very polite but informal, and soon he asks if we can address each other with the friendly “tu” instead of the official “vous.” He says that after 10 minutes you can judge a person’s character. I feel validated that he seems to like me. Mr. Lare is very forthcoming and open, and I soon begin to realize the depth of his expertise, research and life’s work.
Lare and I begin to talk quickly, almost in circles, and have to continue bringing ourselves back to the organization of our conversation. He appreciates this kind of systematization (such an engineer) and tries to drive the conversation around several points, all information he wishes to impart to me. First, he tells me that the biggest problem with the expansion of solar energy here is twofold. One, there is no experience, no techs, no materials. This is a logistical issue that he has found ways around – training his own team, procuring and shipping materials for those who have the means from a partner in Houston, TX.
Importantly, Lare and I agree that under no circumstances do we use Chinese products in solar installations. If there is one thing that needs to be sustainable, he says, it is a solar energy system, and China has proven to us in Africa that their products will be gaté within a few months. I am thrilled that he shares this view, as it has larger implications, in my mind, of the way that the solar industry will develop here in Togo and else where in Africa. China has monopolized the electronics and other cheap import markets, but I’ll be damned if they can do it with solar modules…
Lare also has ideas about training more workers to promote and respond to demand for solar energy usage. I let him know that this is a big part of what we want to do as well and we’d love to collaborate. He said that there might be an opportunity to work together on a training conference he is trying to organize in January/2009 – he even said that, since it will be sponsored by the state, we might be able to get airfare and hotel rooms paid for…this is very interesting, exactly the direction we need to be moving in. I am very happy to see it happening – albeit from one man – and I think that Jon and Ron will be enthusiastic about participating.
Lare explains that the other part of the problem with the expansion of solar is a lack of knowledge, on both the populations part (similiar to what Aminou told me in Kpalimé) and on the part of the government. That is why I am here, he says, to show the government that it is in their interest. But it is an uphill battle, he says, even when I show them the figures.
In many West African countries, such as Mali, Burkina and Senegal, there are solar industries that are beginning to develop. They have already seen the light, so to speak. This is because there are widespread laws in these countries protecting solar – no tax credits or rebate programs of course, but incentives nonetheless. In Togo, this is a very recent phenomenon (our timing couldn’t be better in fact…) The majority of the population does not know that there are laws protecting solar in Togo. My partners at FECEAV didn’t know and I didn’t know either. He says that he is not surprised that I am not aware of this, as the government has done a superb job of keeping it hidden. In 1998, a decree was passed that removed all taxes and other fees on the import of solar panels into the country. This decree was not rendered active and applied until March of 2008, after Lare himself devoted several years to lobbying ministers, making presentations and schmoozing attachés.
He will be happy to make me a photocopy of the decree, he says, because if I go into the archives and records I will not find it. It is active, but it has been removed. Import taxes are a large source of revenue for the Togolese government. He says that if I have this decree, I will have no problem getting my materials through the port hors taxes.
Lare goes on to explain about the Port of Lomé. To my amazement, he tells me that is the most secure port in all of West Africa. If I were to try this in Accra or Lagos, he laughs, you would end up with half of what you started with. He recounts a story of when he went to the port in Lagos to retrieve a shipment and, without anyone stopping him, entered the port, found the container, took what what his and left. No one said a word. The Port of Lomé, he says, is serieux. If you have the decree and your Authorization to Operate in Togo (I am working on that, and it is a good thing I am here in the country to do it, otherwise I would have a hell of a time, it is hard enough while I am here!) you are good to go. You will have no trouble, they will guard your materials in haute securité and the same person who unloads your materials will be responsible for driving the rented truck from Lomé to the materials’ final destination. Excellent.
Throughout our conversation, I mention the names of those I have met or contacted so far in Togo that have worked with solar – Aminou and his professor, Prof. Kossi Napo, Youth Volunteers for the Environment – and Lare knows them all. Not only does he know them all, he has worked with them all and is “frères” with all of them. Apparently the energy community in Togo is very small and it is so fascinating to me that however corrupt and inaccessible the government, etc. seems, I am already in the door and right in the thick of it – due to some internet research, some emails and due diligence.
By the end of the conversation, he still does not push up his glasses. He is full of such idiosyncrasies, and I get used to it.
We discuss constraints of working in Togo, and he warns me not get played. He says Kira, I am Togolese, so I can tell you honestly that people will try to take advantage of you. Be careful. He also says that he can tell that, although I am young, I seem to understand his country and will not be naïve. Don’t forget it, he says. He also advises me to start small, be experimental and allez un peu et un peu (like everything else in Togo.) For durability and success, as well as to protect myself.
Lastly, we talk about collaboration. He is very open, and asks what ideas I have. I say that I’d love to have him as a consultant, as his knowledge of policies, application, and other ins and outs of solar IN TOGO will be invaluable to us. I have actually included this in the budget now (we did not discuss compensation at the time though, as I did not think it prudent) because I think it will be essential and important. It will also be creating sustainability and capacity among Togolese, for Togolese, by Togolese. Lare agreed to help with training, as he has done tons of research and presentations in this regard (I have a copy of the recent one he gave at the UNESCO conference,) any questions about materials or system design and also offered some of his team for labor, if we have work for them to do.
Before we know it it is past noon. We look at the clock and at each other, laughing at the fact that we just talked nonstop for almost 3 hours, and decide to go and get something to eat.
We take motos to a place that he knows. The cafeteria we go to is obviously frequented by the privileged type, which is I’m sure why he brought me there. Lare says that he likes it because it is a “natural” environment, which means that the entire place is shaded by a huge mango tree. He appreciates nature, he says, not just renewable energy but all things about the environment. This is true, as later in the day he lets me know about some of his previous work experience with environmental protection NGOS, forestation initiatives, water sanitation, etc.
The environment inside the cafeteria is hushed, a stark contrast to the noise of the street outside. The ground is covered with thick sand, which sticks in between my sweaty toes as I amble towards a table draped in the typical, self-adhesive, white and yellow ‘Flag Bière’ tablecloth. The place is filled with men in suits, eating fufu with knives and forks. Quel comedie.
Everyone stares at me and flashes their best smile, wink and Western mannerisms. I try not to be grossed out and remember where I come from in Kpalimé. At the table next to us, a partner of FECECAV’s, a man who works for the bank BRS Togo, is sitting. This man, Takougnadi, repeatedly asked me to marry him when I was last here in Togo, although he has a wife already and is one of the sleaziest I have met here. He is a classic case – a man of ostentatious presentation, overcompensating for a culture he no longer understands because he has rejected it so shamefully. Every time I have seen him he has been in a suit and tie, his large belly protruding, flashing imposter designer watches and leering at me with ravenous eyes. Seeing him cutting his fufu with a knife and bringing it delicately to his open mouth with a fork was almost enough to make me turn around and leave the place.
I try to ignore him, but he buys Lare and I a round of drinks. Lare appears somewhat embarrassed, as it was he who brought me to lunch (in this culture, that makes sense.) I feel badly and tell Lare that while I appreciated the gesture (although I didn’t at all) I would have preferred him to buy it for me. He seems satisfied and we continue chatting while we order our fufu. He starts telling me about the difference between the North, where he is from, and the South. He says that development has all but stalled here in South, while in the North, it is just beginning. The number of NGOs are in the thousands in any given village, while here in the South, the ancient NGOs aren’t as numerous and don’t do anything anymore – they used to, but now they’ve plateau-ed. Interesting, and I see it. I have decided that my next mission in Togo is to visit and get to know the North of the country, it is something that I have been missing.
When our food comes, I ask to wash my hands. Lare is pleased that I prefer to eat with my hands, and the BRS man is, I think, caught in between being put off and charmed. I hope it is the former, and I wouldn’t be surprised. I can’t imagine eating fufu with a fork, that is utterly ridiculous…
Finally, Takougnadi leaves and Lare and I finish our meal and discussion in peace. When we go to pay, we discover that Takougnadi has paid for our entire meal. I am furious, but Lare shrugs it off and announces that we are going to go into the field, to look at an installation he has completed in Lomé. It is almost 25km away, he says, so we will take a taxi. Lomé is incredibly spread out, so it doesn’t surprise me. The drive is fascinating. I see a part of Lomé I have never before experienced – La Zone Industrielle.
We drive past the Port of Lomé, quite impressive looking, and I admire it in the wake of what Laré has told me about it. The air gets thicker and we are soon in the midst of huge camions, none older than 1989 I can guarantee you. They are ancient and powerful trucks, their rusted hoods strapped on with bungee cords, filthy laborers perched on top of bags of cement and piping, all lurching along, spewing out dense clouds of black exhaust. They are loud and unruly and, although they wouldn’t pass emissions in any state I can imagine, they get the job done. I wait for one to spontaneously collapse into a pile of black steel and oily gears, instantly killing everything in its wake.
We pass the FanMilk factory – Togo’s most famous and profitable export. It is here, inside the cracking white and blue walls that West Africa’s favorite frozen cocktails are manufactured. We pass CimenTogo, a sprawling and devastating junkyard of dust and gray film, which I imagine coating the inside my lungs. While the factory grounds are huge and impressive, the exterior transport belts and storage facilities are rusted and prehistoric and the grounds are all but deserted…Lare tells me that, despite this semblance of an industrial sector, the state cannot meet the demands of students graduating every year from university. Unemployment is more than 33% (this does not include the majority of the population that subsists on petit commerce, rendering the unemployment rate more in the area of 70-80%.)
The air is so heavy with dust, exhaust and pollution my lungs start to burn. We pass the refinery, where Shell has all but monopolized petrol sales in Togo. We pass the factory where beauty products, such as lotions and hair serums, are manufactured. I assure Lare that there will always be a market for these items.
Bizarrely enough, there are also large fields in the middle of the industrial zone, hooked up to sprinkler systems and tended to by women doubled over in the pounding sun. It looks like a plantation…
As we come out of the cloud of smog, we pass a hotel that has installed a windmill! Lare points it out, or I would have missed it for sure.
Soon, the clanking and bustling ceases to a dull roar and we enter a sandy, quiet neighborhood called Kpogan – Agodeka. It is so quiet after being in the Industrial Zone and I don’t see many people. The houses are enormous and protected by tall walls and in some cases barbed wire. Lare tells me that we are approaching the house where he installed a 4kW PV System, for a Togolese man who lives in France with his family. He lives at this house for a few months out of the year. Lare points out other homes and tells me where their occupants live full-time – Germany, Ghana, the United States. No wonder I don’t see any people…
We approach a beautiful, newly constructed home surrounded by tall, tan walls topped with fuchsia bougainvillea. We greet the woman selling cookies on the street and the team of carpenters making doors and enter the home’s gate, greeted by a friendly caretaker. This home is stunning – it is all light tan, white and brown, with a small, well manicured lawn and garden and a sparkling swimming pool. It is not too large in fact, relatively, and I love it. For the first time, I see a place I could see myself living in Lomé. I want to build a house like this – but then I think, do I want to become a stereotype? The expat who lives in her gorgeous home in a rich quarter of Lomé 3 months out of the year? How could I ever be that person? But there is so much to balance, I could never leave my life and my family and live in Togo full time, but I am more and more beginning to feel that there may be a compromise…
We enter the house, mostly empty with new tile, a new fridge and washing machine and new wooden furniture. The design of the house is open and welcoming, and a nice breeze flows through it, from the ocean which is only a few kilometers away. We go up to the 2nd floor and out onto the large balcony, where there is an outdoor shed with a large black cable running from it to the roof – the conduit from the solar modules to the inverter and batteries.
Lare opens the shed and begins to show me the details of his installation. He has done a fantastic job and I immediately see the difference between his expertise and Aminou’s experiments. Lare explains why he has used each size cable, each component. I won’t bore you with the details, but I am impressed. I furiously write everything down in my notebook, considerations that only he, a solar energy technician several degrees away from the equator, would know.
Soon, we go up a rickety wooden ladder and gingerly climb across the synthetic roofing – designed to deflect heat, sent from France – to see the 200W Schuco modules mounted flatly on aluminum racks. They are neatly installed and Lare wipes the dust off of them so that I can take photos. I am so happy to see such a professional installation.
There are many similarities between Lare and Aminou, despite the gap in experience and expertise (which Lare took a certain pride in pointing out, haha, he is human after all.) Both men feel privileged to have worked with people who have the knowledge and the means to install solar here. Both understand the lack of connaissance and sensibilisation about solar in Togo and agree that it is the largest obstacle to its expansion. Lare has done presentations, tried to sell large businesses on solar with financial arguments comparing the price of a generator and a PV system, but people just aren’t ready to take the leap. I am confident that together we can take them there…
The last note I will make to you about this day, for those of you still reading this blog (Mom, Rhoda,) is that taking a moto ride in Lomé at rush hour is one of the most hilarious, frightening things I have ever done. As I have written before, there are no such things are traffic laws or violations in practice in Lomé –if they exist in theory I don’t know about them, and apparently nor do any taxi drivers. Traffic lights are more often than not ignored, traffic patterns changing as a result of pushy station wagons taking advantage of a lull in the line of traffic coming from the opposite direction (and by a lull, I mean a space of more than 10 feet between one vehicle and the next.) Occasionally a police man will stand in the middle of an intersection, randomly waving a flashlight at the ground in one direction or the other, while talking on his cellphone. I have never seen a police man over about 25-28 years of age. Motos are 3-5 thick across each lane, following within 1 inch of each others’ back tires – this is not an exaggeration. You are so close to the people riding next to you that spontaneous conversation is common and you must hold your belongings close to your chest. The snaking train of motos continuously accelerates, brakes and winds in and around each other and in between cars, cutting each other off, narrowly missing each other and often catching a rearview mirror or protruding elbow.
No one wears helmets or even holds on.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
22 Novembre - Aminou
So I know I said that this blog would be shorter, but I have to record this stuff...it's as much for me as for all of you. Please don't me mad, I am just a woman of many words...c'est moi :)
Peruse at your will. Thanks for following.
* * * *
I am sitting in Chantal’s house (the batik lady in Kpalimé) when she mentions to me, as a sort of sidenote, that she knows someone who has worked with solar energy in the region. I mentioned your name to him, she says, and he was very excited. I will call him right now, she continues, give me your phone, I have no credit. Wondering why she hadn’t brought this up sooner, I pass my cellphone to her, she makes the call quickly in Ewe and, hanging up with a grin says, he will be here in 5 minutes.
Not 2 minutes later, Aminou appears. Entering with a semi-bow and a quiet ‘Yo,’ a Rastafarian knit cap covering a mass of grubby dreadlocks, he puts down a heavy canvas backpack, filled with g-d knows what. The first thing I notice are his kind, sparkling eyes and, after a few moments, I realize how indicative they are of both his tranquil nature and relentless curiosity.
We chat for about 15 minutes and I learn that he has installed 3-4 solar PV systems in the Kpalimé area with a team of young apprentices, he is a state-registered electrician and, both in spite of these qualifications and despite his appearance, he is not a Rasta Man.
I explain the bare bones of my project and, thrilled to have found each other yet equally cautious, we agree to meet on Saturday morning so that he can show me some of his work.
Megan (my friend in PC with whom I am working on Chantal’s marketing – VERY nice girl, actually the first PC volunteer I’ve met here with best intentions and gracious participation in Togolese society) lends me her digital camera for the morning and Aminou picks me up at Petit Suisse. His moto sputters out onto the road, an ancient blue Jincheng covered with rust and in desperate need a quick tightening of its clanking chain before we set out. He says that today we must be prudent.
We go first to a site in Kpalimé, where his young team grins at me and introduce themselves – Elli, Pappa, Komi and Koffi. They have been told that there is a yovo here that wants to train them further on solar energy and are timid yet brimming with excitement. We go inside and I check out his work in a newly constructed building, the future home of the Directeur of a water-purification NGO in Kpalimé. He has done all the wiring inside and out (to my inexperienced eye, it all looks clean and well installed, but it will take Jon and Ron’s careful examination of photos to make this determination…) and is now waiting for the patron to buy solar modules and other materials for him to install. He tells me that everything is ready, but he does not know how to or where to get the solar materials he needs. He explains that this is the gap in his experience – procurement and system design. For the installations he has completed, the client has always sent the materials to the site for him to install. He looks me in the eye and says that he knows he has a lot to learn and that he wants to be trained. He knows that there are missing links in his knowledge. This admission gives me an instant signal that he is who I have been looking for and jumpstarts a certain level of trust –he wants to learn and apply.
After photographing his work and asking a lot of questions we continue on to another site. Here, he has installed conduits and wiring and again, waits for the client, returning soon from Europe, to send modules, an inverter and other materials for him to install. He shows me where the panels will go. It is an area of about 15 feet squared. Approximately 4 200W modules will power the entire house…
I take a sample of the wiring he uses, ‘cuivre en qualité,’ he says, from Senegal. He explains with a shake of his head and a click of his tongue that you can’t find quality materials in Togo. Ca ne va pas.
Soon, we leave Kpalimé to visit a complete installation that he has done in the village of Agou-Akplolo, about 15 kilometers away, down a dusty, rocky road. I am entirely unsure if the Jincheng is going to make it (little do I know, this is nothing compared to what I will see on Monday...)
As we sputter down the road towards Lomé, Aminou tells me more about himself. First, he thanks me for not judging him by his appearance. He explains that he is accepted in Kpalimé by neither the Rasta community, as he does not approve of their reputation and behavior, nor the rest of the community, because they think he is a Rasta Man. He quietly states that he does not have many friends in Kpalimé, that his friends are his family and his work. People don’t know him, but he knows well who he is, and what he is capable of. At first I feel slightly sorry for him, but soon realise I see that he is not trying to make me feel guilty, he is gently presenting to me his strength, resilience and commitment to his work.
He tells me that no one believes that he, with his hair and alternative views about spirituality, is a state-certified electrician who was trained at L’Ecole National Polytechnique by the country’s finest professors and engineers. After that, no one can fathom that he has his own business and a team of apprentices that work for him. He tells me that there was a man in Lomé who, through the grapevine, heard of his good work. This man also heard that he was a Rasta. The man didn’t believe it, and commissioned him to come to Lomé to work at his home, just to see if the myth was true. Aminou proudly tells me that he and his team completed the work in about a week, to the entire quartier’s astonishment.
Aminou continues, telling me about how he once knew a Canadian girl who came to Kpalimé. She wanted to marry him and bring him to Canada for solar training. He tells me (and I can sense a degree of pain in his voice) how he turned her down, because he has a wife that loves him, and that he does not want to come to Canada. He wants the training to come to him so that he can apply it here in Togo. When he recounts this story, I almost fall off of the moto and try, with difficulty, to keep my mouth shut in order to hold back my excitement.
I learn that Aminou’s work ethic is comprised of 2 elements – the physical and the spiritual. Unlike most here, he does not believe that ‘dieu va faire tout’ (G-d will take care of everything.) It takes faith but it also takes hard work. I am instantly interested in his spiritual side…he has extensive knowledge of plants and traditional medicine, which I encourage him to write down because, he explains, the connaissance is entwined only in ancient stories, locked up in the heads of wise old men…I ask him what will happen when they die? He says that the passing on of knowledge is an almost sacred responsibility, not to be taken lightly. Importantly, this relates to his electrical work, as he holds an unwavering commitment to his apprentices, to share his understanding with those who wish to learn from him. He explains that he needs to learn from “me and my team” so that he may expand his solar connaissance in order to work better, spread the use of solar and impart this experience to the next generation.
It is just incredible how things are falling into place, how I have found the perfect person. Jon is going to go through the roof when he hears who I have found…Aminou is already out of his mind excited to meet Mister Jon, especially when I told him that Jon too has long hair :)
Aminou tells me that we are going to visit an installation that he completed with one of his professors, Mr. Notawu, for ‘un vieux sage’ (a wise old man) in Agou-Akplolo. This ‘sage’ is married to a European woman, spent a lot of his life in Portugal and sent from Europe the materials to install a 400W (not 4000W, 400W) solar electric system on his Togolese villa. The ‘sage’ used to use a generator but, as it made too much noise in the tiny village and he had seen solar in Portugal, he switched over. Aminou says that he has been so lucky to work with ‘les gens qui me comprennent’ (people who understand me,) as no one in Togo knows about solar energy and it is a shame.
We stop once, after Aminou shouts something in Ewe to a woman along the side of the road. He slows down and tells me to hop off, he will be right back. He walks over to the woman, who I now notice is struggling to place an enormous silver bowl filled firewood on her head, while a baby strapped to her back wails and slips down her pagne. He helps her to readjust the baby and place the bowl on her head, smiling and greeting her quickly in Ewe. When he comes back he tells me that, not to be egoïste, but he wants me to know that it’s not just anyone who would have stopped to help her, with a yovo on his moto. She was astonished.
We arrive in Agou-Akplolo amidst yovo-yovo-bonsoir-shreiking children and women waving exuberantly from their posts in the tiny marché – the typical yovo greeting in tiny villages. We pull up to a white, walled-in compound and a friendly old woman in a pagne and ripped, collared tank top, nearly translucent from being washed so many times, opens the front gate. She welcomes us and, of course, brings chairs outside, sits us down and offers us a drink. After we have taken our sips of water (cold and refreshing from the solar-powered refrigerator!) we go through the introductions and Aminou explains that I am an American (he lets me know that he understands that it is very important that people know I am not European, for which I am incredibly grateful) who works with solar energy and we have come to inspect his installation. She claps her hands and with a smile, tells us to go ahead, all is working well.
Aminou says that if he had done a bad job, she wouldn’t let him back in. He installed this system in 2004 and there have been no problems with it. I am reassured. He explains that no one besides him is allowed to touch any of the equipment because another electrician might flip a wrong switch and ruin the entire system. He says that, unfortunately, another electrician may do this on purpose, to generate more work for himself…I am not surprised.
I check out the installation. Two, 200W modules mounted on an iron frame, power the entire villa. The villa is not small, but, as in most cases, demands only enough electricity for a few radios, fans and TVs, a fridge and lighting. Simplicity and rationality in consumption. A beautiful thing. There is a 1000W inverter and 2 deep-cycle batteries. All sent from Europe, Aminou explains, you can’t find these materials in Togo. There is a controller before the inverter as well, that I don’t recognize. I take a photo.
I notice that Aminou has installed an entirely new system of wiring, switches, light bulbs, etc. for the solar system. All of these have been installed next to or above the former switches and wires, which he explains were for the generator. I wonder why he was unable to connect the solar system to the existing electrical service…perhaps there is a reason, but perhaps he just didn’t know. I didn’t ask him right away because I didn’t want to offend him, but if it is true that he simply did not know, I hope that these are the kinds of gaps in efficiency and knowledge that we will be able to fill.
Before leaving, we are led to a school around the corner that has a few solar modules mounted on the roof. The old woman explains that UNESCO and a team of French installers placed them there a few years ago but that the system is no longer working. I ask why and if locals were a part of the installation and she says yes, there were Togolese involved but, ‘Oho,’ I do not know why it is broken. This is important information, as I have now seen several solar systems in Togo that were installed by foreigners, worked for a while and are now gaté (broken.)
This is my greatest fear. Like the farm equipment that was sent here by Europeans, broke down and are unfixable. Even though the mechanics here seem to me to be literal magicians, the necessary parts are manufactured in Austria. Like the tanks sent to Darfur by the UN, which sat at the port in Dakar for nearly a year, because no one in NY followed up on import-export permitting. Like so many unsuccessful development projects that don’t build capacity, that don’t train people to operate and troubleshoot, that just don’t go far enough…in my opinion, however well-intentioned, this is just not helpful. And we’re not going to let it happen.
Peruse at your will. Thanks for following.
* * * *
I am sitting in Chantal’s house (the batik lady in Kpalimé) when she mentions to me, as a sort of sidenote, that she knows someone who has worked with solar energy in the region. I mentioned your name to him, she says, and he was very excited. I will call him right now, she continues, give me your phone, I have no credit. Wondering why she hadn’t brought this up sooner, I pass my cellphone to her, she makes the call quickly in Ewe and, hanging up with a grin says, he will be here in 5 minutes.
Not 2 minutes later, Aminou appears. Entering with a semi-bow and a quiet ‘Yo,’ a Rastafarian knit cap covering a mass of grubby dreadlocks, he puts down a heavy canvas backpack, filled with g-d knows what. The first thing I notice are his kind, sparkling eyes and, after a few moments, I realize how indicative they are of both his tranquil nature and relentless curiosity.
We chat for about 15 minutes and I learn that he has installed 3-4 solar PV systems in the Kpalimé area with a team of young apprentices, he is a state-registered electrician and, both in spite of these qualifications and despite his appearance, he is not a Rasta Man.
I explain the bare bones of my project and, thrilled to have found each other yet equally cautious, we agree to meet on Saturday morning so that he can show me some of his work.
Megan (my friend in PC with whom I am working on Chantal’s marketing – VERY nice girl, actually the first PC volunteer I’ve met here with best intentions and gracious participation in Togolese society) lends me her digital camera for the morning and Aminou picks me up at Petit Suisse. His moto sputters out onto the road, an ancient blue Jincheng covered with rust and in desperate need a quick tightening of its clanking chain before we set out. He says that today we must be prudent.
We go first to a site in Kpalimé, where his young team grins at me and introduce themselves – Elli, Pappa, Komi and Koffi. They have been told that there is a yovo here that wants to train them further on solar energy and are timid yet brimming with excitement. We go inside and I check out his work in a newly constructed building, the future home of the Directeur of a water-purification NGO in Kpalimé. He has done all the wiring inside and out (to my inexperienced eye, it all looks clean and well installed, but it will take Jon and Ron’s careful examination of photos to make this determination…) and is now waiting for the patron to buy solar modules and other materials for him to install. He tells me that everything is ready, but he does not know how to or where to get the solar materials he needs. He explains that this is the gap in his experience – procurement and system design. For the installations he has completed, the client has always sent the materials to the site for him to install. He looks me in the eye and says that he knows he has a lot to learn and that he wants to be trained. He knows that there are missing links in his knowledge. This admission gives me an instant signal that he is who I have been looking for and jumpstarts a certain level of trust –he wants to learn and apply.
After photographing his work and asking a lot of questions we continue on to another site. Here, he has installed conduits and wiring and again, waits for the client, returning soon from Europe, to send modules, an inverter and other materials for him to install. He shows me where the panels will go. It is an area of about 15 feet squared. Approximately 4 200W modules will power the entire house…
I take a sample of the wiring he uses, ‘cuivre en qualité,’ he says, from Senegal. He explains with a shake of his head and a click of his tongue that you can’t find quality materials in Togo. Ca ne va pas.
Soon, we leave Kpalimé to visit a complete installation that he has done in the village of Agou-Akplolo, about 15 kilometers away, down a dusty, rocky road. I am entirely unsure if the Jincheng is going to make it (little do I know, this is nothing compared to what I will see on Monday...)
As we sputter down the road towards Lomé, Aminou tells me more about himself. First, he thanks me for not judging him by his appearance. He explains that he is accepted in Kpalimé by neither the Rasta community, as he does not approve of their reputation and behavior, nor the rest of the community, because they think he is a Rasta Man. He quietly states that he does not have many friends in Kpalimé, that his friends are his family and his work. People don’t know him, but he knows well who he is, and what he is capable of. At first I feel slightly sorry for him, but soon realise I see that he is not trying to make me feel guilty, he is gently presenting to me his strength, resilience and commitment to his work.
He tells me that no one believes that he, with his hair and alternative views about spirituality, is a state-certified electrician who was trained at L’Ecole National Polytechnique by the country’s finest professors and engineers. After that, no one can fathom that he has his own business and a team of apprentices that work for him. He tells me that there was a man in Lomé who, through the grapevine, heard of his good work. This man also heard that he was a Rasta. The man didn’t believe it, and commissioned him to come to Lomé to work at his home, just to see if the myth was true. Aminou proudly tells me that he and his team completed the work in about a week, to the entire quartier’s astonishment.
Aminou continues, telling me about how he once knew a Canadian girl who came to Kpalimé. She wanted to marry him and bring him to Canada for solar training. He tells me (and I can sense a degree of pain in his voice) how he turned her down, because he has a wife that loves him, and that he does not want to come to Canada. He wants the training to come to him so that he can apply it here in Togo. When he recounts this story, I almost fall off of the moto and try, with difficulty, to keep my mouth shut in order to hold back my excitement.
I learn that Aminou’s work ethic is comprised of 2 elements – the physical and the spiritual. Unlike most here, he does not believe that ‘dieu va faire tout’ (G-d will take care of everything.) It takes faith but it also takes hard work. I am instantly interested in his spiritual side…he has extensive knowledge of plants and traditional medicine, which I encourage him to write down because, he explains, the connaissance is entwined only in ancient stories, locked up in the heads of wise old men…I ask him what will happen when they die? He says that the passing on of knowledge is an almost sacred responsibility, not to be taken lightly. Importantly, this relates to his electrical work, as he holds an unwavering commitment to his apprentices, to share his understanding with those who wish to learn from him. He explains that he needs to learn from “me and my team” so that he may expand his solar connaissance in order to work better, spread the use of solar and impart this experience to the next generation.
It is just incredible how things are falling into place, how I have found the perfect person. Jon is going to go through the roof when he hears who I have found…Aminou is already out of his mind excited to meet Mister Jon, especially when I told him that Jon too has long hair :)
Aminou tells me that we are going to visit an installation that he completed with one of his professors, Mr. Notawu, for ‘un vieux sage’ (a wise old man) in Agou-Akplolo. This ‘sage’ is married to a European woman, spent a lot of his life in Portugal and sent from Europe the materials to install a 400W (not 4000W, 400W) solar electric system on his Togolese villa. The ‘sage’ used to use a generator but, as it made too much noise in the tiny village and he had seen solar in Portugal, he switched over. Aminou says that he has been so lucky to work with ‘les gens qui me comprennent’ (people who understand me,) as no one in Togo knows about solar energy and it is a shame.
We stop once, after Aminou shouts something in Ewe to a woman along the side of the road. He slows down and tells me to hop off, he will be right back. He walks over to the woman, who I now notice is struggling to place an enormous silver bowl filled firewood on her head, while a baby strapped to her back wails and slips down her pagne. He helps her to readjust the baby and place the bowl on her head, smiling and greeting her quickly in Ewe. When he comes back he tells me that, not to be egoïste, but he wants me to know that it’s not just anyone who would have stopped to help her, with a yovo on his moto. She was astonished.
We arrive in Agou-Akplolo amidst yovo-yovo-bonsoir-shreiking children and women waving exuberantly from their posts in the tiny marché – the typical yovo greeting in tiny villages. We pull up to a white, walled-in compound and a friendly old woman in a pagne and ripped, collared tank top, nearly translucent from being washed so many times, opens the front gate. She welcomes us and, of course, brings chairs outside, sits us down and offers us a drink. After we have taken our sips of water (cold and refreshing from the solar-powered refrigerator!) we go through the introductions and Aminou explains that I am an American (he lets me know that he understands that it is very important that people know I am not European, for which I am incredibly grateful) who works with solar energy and we have come to inspect his installation. She claps her hands and with a smile, tells us to go ahead, all is working well.
Aminou says that if he had done a bad job, she wouldn’t let him back in. He installed this system in 2004 and there have been no problems with it. I am reassured. He explains that no one besides him is allowed to touch any of the equipment because another electrician might flip a wrong switch and ruin the entire system. He says that, unfortunately, another electrician may do this on purpose, to generate more work for himself…I am not surprised.
I check out the installation. Two, 200W modules mounted on an iron frame, power the entire villa. The villa is not small, but, as in most cases, demands only enough electricity for a few radios, fans and TVs, a fridge and lighting. Simplicity and rationality in consumption. A beautiful thing. There is a 1000W inverter and 2 deep-cycle batteries. All sent from Europe, Aminou explains, you can’t find these materials in Togo. There is a controller before the inverter as well, that I don’t recognize. I take a photo.
I notice that Aminou has installed an entirely new system of wiring, switches, light bulbs, etc. for the solar system. All of these have been installed next to or above the former switches and wires, which he explains were for the generator. I wonder why he was unable to connect the solar system to the existing electrical service…perhaps there is a reason, but perhaps he just didn’t know. I didn’t ask him right away because I didn’t want to offend him, but if it is true that he simply did not know, I hope that these are the kinds of gaps in efficiency and knowledge that we will be able to fill.
Before leaving, we are led to a school around the corner that has a few solar modules mounted on the roof. The old woman explains that UNESCO and a team of French installers placed them there a few years ago but that the system is no longer working. I ask why and if locals were a part of the installation and she says yes, there were Togolese involved but, ‘Oho,’ I do not know why it is broken. This is important information, as I have now seen several solar systems in Togo that were installed by foreigners, worked for a while and are now gaté (broken.)
This is my greatest fear. Like the farm equipment that was sent here by Europeans, broke down and are unfixable. Even though the mechanics here seem to me to be literal magicians, the necessary parts are manufactured in Austria. Like the tanks sent to Darfur by the UN, which sat at the port in Dakar for nearly a year, because no one in NY followed up on import-export permitting. Like so many unsuccessful development projects that don’t build capacity, that don’t train people to operate and troubleshoot, that just don’t go far enough…in my opinion, however well-intentioned, this is just not helpful. And we’re not going to let it happen.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Aminou, LARE and Too Much Too Say!
So much has been going on in the past week I haven't even had the time to write a proper blog...I take notes everyday and one of these days will have the energy to sit down and type it all out. I am learning so much about Togo's solar commmunity and have been making some major inroads. I am currently in sweaty, dusty Lomé, having spent the entire day at the Ministry of Education with one of the country's 3 (yes, three) renewable energy experts.
Doors are starting to open and the possibilities are becoming real and endless...it is interesting how small the world and government are in a place like togo...for all of its corruption and formality, the "solar energy sector" is tiny and the man I am with, LARE Damessanou, is very forhthcoming, motivated and helpful. There are still many many questions to be answered, dots to connect and cards to be held close to the chest, but I think I am finally getting somewhere.
I have been visiting existing installations in the country and, most importantly, think that I have found my team...Aminou, an electrician in Kpalimé with kind eyes who has been judged harshly by his community and excelled all the same, and his team of young apprentices, have dabbled in solar and are ready to learn and apply.
I am once again nestled in close with friends in Kpalimé and feel at one with the squeaking of the Fanmilk man, the familiar smells of burning garbage and licorice smelling soap, and, of course, the second season of the Yovo Show.
Much more to come...you can always count on me to elaborate.
Myeadogo -
K
Doors are starting to open and the possibilities are becoming real and endless...it is interesting how small the world and government are in a place like togo...for all of its corruption and formality, the "solar energy sector" is tiny and the man I am with, LARE Damessanou, is very forhthcoming, motivated and helpful. There are still many many questions to be answered, dots to connect and cards to be held close to the chest, but I think I am finally getting somewhere.
I have been visiting existing installations in the country and, most importantly, think that I have found my team...Aminou, an electrician in Kpalimé with kind eyes who has been judged harshly by his community and excelled all the same, and his team of young apprentices, have dabbled in solar and are ready to learn and apply.
I am once again nestled in close with friends in Kpalimé and feel at one with the squeaking of the Fanmilk man, the familiar smells of burning garbage and licorice smelling soap, and, of course, the second season of the Yovo Show.
Much more to come...you can always count on me to elaborate.
Myeadogo -
K
Thursday, November 20, 2008
20 Novembre – Les Changements
Just like last time, it has taken me a day or so (or 4) to adjust to la vie Togolaise. The early mornings, raucous Ewe and constant drone of sputtering motos, the crying babies, hungry chickens and grinning school children.
My friends here at FECECAV and in Kpalimé are beside themselves with happiness to see me. I have been nearly bowled over several times (and I am not exaggerating) by an exuberant collectrice and an ecstatic Grace (Daniel’s, the CEO of FECECAV, daughter, whose love for me warms my heart as much here in her village as it does from more than 5000 miles away.
On one hand, nothing here has changed. This is the vicious cycle of poverty, this is the burden of slow and cumbersome economic development (or, more accurately, the lack thereof.) This is the developing world. I have so much to be grateful for in Philadelphia and I never forget it.
On the other hand, small things have changed, and I have noticed them all – to everyone’s surprise, for some reason. There are new curtains in someone’s home, they have acquired a TV set or a cupboard, where once was a pile of dishes and an empty wall. There are new placemats at Petit Suisse, and a new sign out front to try to draw in more business. FECECAV has a new money-transfer partner and a “permanent” internet connection. In every office, wires and computer equipment have been tidied up and there is a large table in the once empty grand salon. Avocado and mango season has ended, and now is the time for oranges and plantains.
All of these little things are more grandiose and worthy of note than any skyscraper I have seen being built in New York City. Life evolves, life keeps going, no matter the circumstances. And everyone here still smiles and asks if I have slept well, how is everyone in America, and thank you, yes, we are still doing well here in Togo. We hope that your hero Barack Obama will bring change to Africa. I lie and say, yes, he will.
Everyone also asks the same question – what have you brought for me?
I have noticed the transience of human life. In my absence, certain people who were a large part of my day are no longer here. Daniel’s mother, who offered me a toothless ‘Allafia’ every morning has returned to her village in the North, where she will most likely stay until she dies (this is what I was told when I asked where she was.) Esse, one of the cassieres at FECECAV has joined her husband in the states. Rogier has had a baby girl and Kofficho has lost one. Perhaps most striking is the absence of Felize, Mensah’s son and the constant smiling and naughty presence at Petit Suisse. He decided that he wanted to try yet another profession and, upon leaving Petit Suisse, has left not an address, not a number, not a word as to his whereabouts. Mensah said he was seen down by Hotel Cristal, and shakes his head saying he had a good thing going here and whatever happens to him is the fault of his wicked nature. I can’t stop thinking that if my little brother suddenly disappeared….
The rainy season has mostly ended and the Harmattan is coming. L’harmattan are the sandy winds that sweep down from the Sahara in December and January. They dominate the sky and the climate, leaving a dusty film on everything in sight and stinging the skin. Although l’harmattan has not yet arrived in full force, already I can feel the grit in my teeth as I ride on Inno’s moto, my light gray shirt quickly turning a reddish tan from the dust in the air. The taxi-moto drivers now all wear makeshift masks over their mouths, so as not to breathe in all of the dust.
In regard to my trip and my SunPower Afrique work, I have unfortuately been told that I cannot attend many of the meetings and complete much of my the work I had hoped for by myself. Mister Jon needs to be in attendance. You can imagine my disappointment and discomfort…culture, diplomacy and bureaucracy never cease to amaze and confound me. So my plan has changed a bit, and I will be here for about 2 weeks instead of the month – but there is still some work to be done.
First of all, I am helping Athanase write Kiva descriptions while I am here, as I can post them on the site directly in English, which means that the loans get funded more quickly. I am happy to help while I am here.
I will meet with my contact at the Togolese NGO ACDI-Solar, who turns out to be the most knowledgeable person about renewable energy that I have met here in Togo. I hope to find out where they buy their solar modules and batteries, who installs them, who trains these installers, what problems they have encountered, etc. This information will be invaluable. No need to reinvent the wheel. It will be of course a preliminary conversation, because I am only a white woman, and we will continue our plans and our discussion in January or February when Mister Jon, my patron, returns with me.
I will also meet with a young man who runs an NGO called Youth for the Environment and with Jacques at the National Microfinance Committee to present my materials so that he sees the evolution of the project. I am working on translating all of my documents into French right now, so that I may leave them with the appropriate people in anticipation of Jon’s arrival.
I am also going to complete my research on material availability and pricing (bamboo, batteries, etc.) and our workforce. I have realized that the workforce piece will be the easiest. There is no work here and many able, intelligent and innovative mechanics, electricians and carpenters.
And I am spending much time with ma cherie Innocent, who is as wonderful as I left him, if not more so.
I will write again soon, about my meetings, and will see you all back in the US around the end of the month. I try not to be discouraged and anxious, as people here still love my project, but I know I can’t do it alone. I’m not sure who I was kidding :) This time for some reason has also been a bit more difficult for me logistically – my new cellphone didn’t work here so it took a few days to get a new one so that I could call home, my bank card didn’t work and it took 3 expensive calls to Commerce Bank in Maryland to sort it out, and now my camera seems to be broken…Annoying, stupid little things that of course are completely negligible but make me uneasy. Cava mieux maintenant, but I look forward to seeing my Mom and Everest sitting in our living room again soon.
My friends here at FECECAV and in Kpalimé are beside themselves with happiness to see me. I have been nearly bowled over several times (and I am not exaggerating) by an exuberant collectrice and an ecstatic Grace (Daniel’s, the CEO of FECECAV, daughter, whose love for me warms my heart as much here in her village as it does from more than 5000 miles away.
On one hand, nothing here has changed. This is the vicious cycle of poverty, this is the burden of slow and cumbersome economic development (or, more accurately, the lack thereof.) This is the developing world. I have so much to be grateful for in Philadelphia and I never forget it.
On the other hand, small things have changed, and I have noticed them all – to everyone’s surprise, for some reason. There are new curtains in someone’s home, they have acquired a TV set or a cupboard, where once was a pile of dishes and an empty wall. There are new placemats at Petit Suisse, and a new sign out front to try to draw in more business. FECECAV has a new money-transfer partner and a “permanent” internet connection. In every office, wires and computer equipment have been tidied up and there is a large table in the once empty grand salon. Avocado and mango season has ended, and now is the time for oranges and plantains.
All of these little things are more grandiose and worthy of note than any skyscraper I have seen being built in New York City. Life evolves, life keeps going, no matter the circumstances. And everyone here still smiles and asks if I have slept well, how is everyone in America, and thank you, yes, we are still doing well here in Togo. We hope that your hero Barack Obama will bring change to Africa. I lie and say, yes, he will.
Everyone also asks the same question – what have you brought for me?
I have noticed the transience of human life. In my absence, certain people who were a large part of my day are no longer here. Daniel’s mother, who offered me a toothless ‘Allafia’ every morning has returned to her village in the North, where she will most likely stay until she dies (this is what I was told when I asked where she was.) Esse, one of the cassieres at FECECAV has joined her husband in the states. Rogier has had a baby girl and Kofficho has lost one. Perhaps most striking is the absence of Felize, Mensah’s son and the constant smiling and naughty presence at Petit Suisse. He decided that he wanted to try yet another profession and, upon leaving Petit Suisse, has left not an address, not a number, not a word as to his whereabouts. Mensah said he was seen down by Hotel Cristal, and shakes his head saying he had a good thing going here and whatever happens to him is the fault of his wicked nature. I can’t stop thinking that if my little brother suddenly disappeared….
The rainy season has mostly ended and the Harmattan is coming. L’harmattan are the sandy winds that sweep down from the Sahara in December and January. They dominate the sky and the climate, leaving a dusty film on everything in sight and stinging the skin. Although l’harmattan has not yet arrived in full force, already I can feel the grit in my teeth as I ride on Inno’s moto, my light gray shirt quickly turning a reddish tan from the dust in the air. The taxi-moto drivers now all wear makeshift masks over their mouths, so as not to breathe in all of the dust.
In regard to my trip and my SunPower Afrique work, I have unfortuately been told that I cannot attend many of the meetings and complete much of my the work I had hoped for by myself. Mister Jon needs to be in attendance. You can imagine my disappointment and discomfort…culture, diplomacy and bureaucracy never cease to amaze and confound me. So my plan has changed a bit, and I will be here for about 2 weeks instead of the month – but there is still some work to be done.
First of all, I am helping Athanase write Kiva descriptions while I am here, as I can post them on the site directly in English, which means that the loans get funded more quickly. I am happy to help while I am here.
I will meet with my contact at the Togolese NGO ACDI-Solar, who turns out to be the most knowledgeable person about renewable energy that I have met here in Togo. I hope to find out where they buy their solar modules and batteries, who installs them, who trains these installers, what problems they have encountered, etc. This information will be invaluable. No need to reinvent the wheel. It will be of course a preliminary conversation, because I am only a white woman, and we will continue our plans and our discussion in January or February when Mister Jon, my patron, returns with me.
I will also meet with a young man who runs an NGO called Youth for the Environment and with Jacques at the National Microfinance Committee to present my materials so that he sees the evolution of the project. I am working on translating all of my documents into French right now, so that I may leave them with the appropriate people in anticipation of Jon’s arrival.
I am also going to complete my research on material availability and pricing (bamboo, batteries, etc.) and our workforce. I have realized that the workforce piece will be the easiest. There is no work here and many able, intelligent and innovative mechanics, electricians and carpenters.
And I am spending much time with ma cherie Innocent, who is as wonderful as I left him, if not more so.
I will write again soon, about my meetings, and will see you all back in the US around the end of the month. I try not to be discouraged and anxious, as people here still love my project, but I know I can’t do it alone. I’m not sure who I was kidding :) This time for some reason has also been a bit more difficult for me logistically – my new cellphone didn’t work here so it took a few days to get a new one so that I could call home, my bank card didn’t work and it took 3 expensive calls to Commerce Bank in Maryland to sort it out, and now my camera seems to be broken…Annoying, stupid little things that of course are completely negligible but make me uneasy. Cava mieux maintenant, but I look forward to seeing my Mom and Everest sitting in our living room again soon.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Togo Round 2!
At the request of nearly EVERYONE I know, I will ensure that this round of blogging is significantly less verbose than last time :)
I am in NY and leave from JFK tonight at 7pm and arrive in Lome on Saturday morning, after a full day layover in Cassablanca. Inno will be waiting for me. I can't wait to be back.
I have meetings scheduled with government officials to learn more about Togolese policy towards solar energy and import/export, NGOs and MFIs to forge potential partnerships and of course, plenty of time scheduled to work at FECECAV, my home base.
In my new spirit of conciseness, I will leave it here, and see you all in a month! Next message from Kpalime.
GO SOLAR.
K
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
15 Mai – Lavie
Although I have driven through it countless times, I have never actually stopped in Lavie for more than 10 minutes…yesterday morning Jules picked me up and, camera in hand, we went to take pictures of his clients for Kiva postings. As soon as I picked up a bit of Kiva work again (unofficially of course, in my personal capacity) the frustrated observations came rolling back, even more starkly in one of the poorest villages I have seen yet in Togo.
Jules’ work as Chef of the Lavie caisse, of whichhe is incredibly proud, centers around providing tiny loans in the villages between Kpalimé and Adéta – Kpimé-Seva, known for its spectacular cascade, Lavie itself, where old men lounge under an enormous mango tree and petit-commerce somehow manages to eke out some meager existence and Akata, a sandy village that I swear has as many goats as it does people, all roaming about aimlessly…Jules beams when he shouts backwind to me on his moto, “Ici, c’est mon travail! Ils m’ont besoin!” (Here, this is my work! They need me!)
These are the bona fide African poor. In these villages a trip to Kpalimé is an annual and costly excursion…whose inhabitants sometimes never leave their dusty compounds and dismal mango stands except to forage in the bush for firewood, or to fill silver bowls with water at the pump and slowly slosh it back to their yards. Thus far, these villages are the only place in Togo that I felt a bit discouraged for these people. It was mostly in their reaction to me…the children were a more delighted, yovo-shreiking, giggling bunch than I have ever encountered…they literally followed me around the village in an ecstatic gaggle of jumbled ewe and toothy grins, squealing yovo! yovo! yovo! yovo! in unison until an old man (the most feared and revered member of these traditional communities) austerely cut off their parade and they tore themselves away from me in a somewhat-bashful-somewhat-frustrated retreat. While I was happy to snap their photo like a good yovo and wave and smile back at them, the fact that the only white people they ever see are those that speed by them in a commotion of dust and loud honking on their way to the next “tourist attraction” is incredibly sad. Everyone’s smiles were as wide and sincere as ever, but the lack of economic opportunity and stagnancy of their poverty was completely devastating…
There are exceptions of course. There are those that make the weekly trek into Kpalimé or Adéta to hawk goods at the marché rather than doze by the side of the road in hope that the occasional passerby might want to buy a tiny sack of arachides for 100CFA. There is also a man who has created a palm-roofed “factory” with 5 apprentices that, with their hands and bare feet, weave unique pagnes out of coarse thread (their weaving contraptions are fascinating.) But for the most part, these rural villages are static, sluggish and often forgotten. Their inhabitants are the poorest of the poor and, ironically but not surprisingly, are least able to benefit from microcredit – Kiva credit? Forget about it.
FECECAV has a tiny office in Lavie, an outpost of CECAV Avenir, with 2 employees, 2 rooms, 2 fans, and Jules at its helm. He is one of the most organized and proactive branch managers I have seen in action here and regrettably works on a computer that is so old and slow it can’t connect to a digital camera and a keyboard that is more often than not out of commission. As it is one of the smaller caisses, sort of by default and as a result of limited resources (not that I am justifying this by any means,) FECECAV doesn’t see upgrading his equipment as a priority. CECAV Avenir-Lavie does not generate as much revenue as other branches because of its own small size and, more importantly, the small size of its loans, which obviously yield less interest.
The petits crédits disbursed by CECAV Avenir-Lavie are a consequence of the type of people taking out these loans…the poorest clients who embody the real, intended impact of microfinance – a true MICRO loan, a starting point of a credit of $50 or less, for a client with everything to lose and no where to begin, destined to succeed little by little by little. I was struck by the genuine character of microfinance in Jules’ villages again and again, as he introduced me to clients who started out with loans as small as 10,000CFA ($25) and, after successfully paying it back, have now taken out $50 loans.
Tragically, these loans are the least desirable and profitable for an MFI, as it takes 50 of these miniature loans to accrue the same amount of interest as 2-3 larger loans – which would be given to someone with a larger capital guarantee or entrepreneurial experience. But don’t we have a social mission to try to also reach the poorest of the working poor? At the same time, how can it be worth it to an overstretched MFI working in a developing country to support clients that yield less of a profit in the short term? I see all sides of the equation and am unconvinced of a moral reconciliation of, on one hand, the immediacy of needs, cash-flow and entrepreneurship, and on the other, the long-term ethical benefits of exhaustedly providing tiny loans to the most desperate of the poor.
Additionally, and this is the point that upsets me, these loans are destined never to appear on the Kiva site. While FECECAV can sometimes justify privileging higher-interest loans, rich Americans cannot…
A major flaw in Kiva’s methodology is that they encourage (not necessarily intentionally) MFI to pass over these authentic micro-credits, because a) it is far too much work to post that many loans on the site (the current workload is painful enough) and b) the 0% interest rate will bring a larger monetary benefit to the MFI on a big loan. While financially this is a good thing for the MFI, it misses the ethical point of reaching the poorest of the poor. Which is Kiva aiming for? If it is the former, the social mission is greatly diminished – why not just give loans directly to the MFI, rather than make them do all of this work chasing down clients, taking photos, writing descriptions, and buying internet time? If you really want to give people a chance to “loan to the working poor,” you must make it possible to reach ALL of the working poor, the POOREST of the working poor, not just those that are most convenient…
I thought about whether it is ok to say that these results come about simply “by default” or can be seen as “unintended consequences…” In my opinion, this is insupportable – if you’re going to do something, do it right. While well intentioned, yet another attempt at eradicating poverty misses the most dire candidates (and in this case, encourages FECECAV to overlook them as well…I saw this with my own eyes when I told Daniel that I wanted to post ten 25,000CFA loans from Lavie. He waved me away saying it wasn’t worth it. After much persuasion he allowed me to do it, but 2 hours and 3,000CFA of internet time later, we had entered 10 new loans and hadn’t made a dent in the monthly limit…)
Unfortunately, the Kiva policies and processes that I tried to train people on in my first month here (when I was officially working as a fellow) have all but dissipated…it is incredibly difficult to maintain procedures and organized processes here, as a result of the constant need for improvisation. Kiva work becomes an even mightier task every time there is unreliable electricity and internet, a client isn’t available for a photograph because their uncle died and they are in Lomé for the week (let alone the fact that the loan officer took the time and energy to research his dossier to make sure it is in accord with nit-picky policies, and to go find the client in the first place – this is not as easy as you might think,) or a certain computer or won’t read a particular USB key or digital camera. The inventiveness and flexibility with technological equipment and information sharing I see here on a daily basis blows my mind. It’s the reality, it’s the only thing that works right now and it makes Kiva’s meticulous policies and procedures seem utterly absurd on the ground.
The thing that does seem to be working is the spreadsheet I made with all of the required information for a Kiva posting. It is very simple, can be filled out on the computer or by hand and encourages the loan officers to sit down with the photos they have taken as well as the dossiers for those clients and fill it out, simultaneously verifying the information. There is a box to list the number of the photo from the camera itself, in order to identify the client here in Kpalimé if the individual branches cannot download and rename the photos themselves. The process of downloading and renaming photos and bringing them to Kpalimé along with word documents of client dossiers generated directly from PERFECT is a long way off…that formula is truly another ball game and, while it is a fantastic and sustainable vision, relies too much on technology and a level of “orderliness” that just does not exist here. For the moment (until we bring them solar energy!!) if FECECAV can use the simplified documents and abridged version of the process that I have emphasized and re-emphasized and re-emphasized, to generate $31,000 from the site every month, I think we will all be happy.
I do worry about FECECAV’s success with Kiva in my absence…as much as I have tried to be hands off this month, I have largely managed the information gathering process, delegated business-description-writing tasks, re-sized photos and even helped with a few postings. I waited until about the 5th of the month to see if anyone was going to jumpstart the process for May and, when no one did, I got the ball rolling. If I hadn’t, there is a chance that they may have lost out this month, which is by far the worst outcome and I could never live with myself if, in the name of “independence and sustainability,” I didn’t help out. However, what is going to happen for the rest of the summer when I am not here?
Early on, it became apparent that there is no individual here in Kpalimé that can be solely responsible for managing and carrying out Kiva work – there is just no one with that kind of time. I have decided that I am going to continue to help them for the next few months from afar, to ease the transition into autonomous Kiva-ing. I can’t leave them in the lurch and will try to continue to remind Daniel at the end of each month to get people collecting info for the next month and am happy to also personally post some loans with my speedy internet connection in the States. This is what friends and partners are for, and I maintain my mission to help FECECAV in whatever capacity I can.
* * *
Later in the afternoon I had a rendezvous with the director of an NGO (who spotted me at FECECAV one day and asked to chat) whose insurmountable mission is to orient the mentality of Togo’s youth towards the idea that democracy and transparency, peace and equality, and education are fundamental human rights, indigenous to Africa, that must be restored. His intentions are honorable, and after initially balking at his idealism (shocking I know, coming from me of all people) I was won over by his ingenuity and optimism. He organizes “training camps” for Togolese youth to discuss, impart and educate on the values his NGO promotes. The first two camps were funded by a private Togolese benefactor. The third, based around the theme of “Good Citizenship,” is only partially funded and he obviously was hoping that I could help him out. I explained that I am starting my own project and am really stretched to the fundraising limit right now, but that I would try to find some contacts for him.
Every day another man asks me with pleading eyes if I can find someone in my country to sponsor his daughters. Every day another of my friends in Kpalimé suggests some scheme to export mangos or peanuts to sell at their inflated price in New York. With all of my heart and capacity, I want to help everyone here and it is hard to realize that one person can’t do it all, no matter how much hope rests on me. Eventually that will kill me…however, there is no reason I can’t occasionally help raise $1000 for a particularly impressive cause, send packages of clothes and toys a few times a year to kids in Kpalimé, help FECECAV when they need help with Kiva and launch SunPower Afrique…all at the same time…right?
Jules’ work as Chef of the Lavie caisse, of whichhe is incredibly proud, centers around providing tiny loans in the villages between Kpalimé and Adéta – Kpimé-Seva, known for its spectacular cascade, Lavie itself, where old men lounge under an enormous mango tree and petit-commerce somehow manages to eke out some meager existence and Akata, a sandy village that I swear has as many goats as it does people, all roaming about aimlessly…Jules beams when he shouts backwind to me on his moto, “Ici, c’est mon travail! Ils m’ont besoin!” (Here, this is my work! They need me!)
These are the bona fide African poor. In these villages a trip to Kpalimé is an annual and costly excursion…whose inhabitants sometimes never leave their dusty compounds and dismal mango stands except to forage in the bush for firewood, or to fill silver bowls with water at the pump and slowly slosh it back to their yards. Thus far, these villages are the only place in Togo that I felt a bit discouraged for these people. It was mostly in their reaction to me…the children were a more delighted, yovo-shreiking, giggling bunch than I have ever encountered…they literally followed me around the village in an ecstatic gaggle of jumbled ewe and toothy grins, squealing yovo! yovo! yovo! yovo! in unison until an old man (the most feared and revered member of these traditional communities) austerely cut off their parade and they tore themselves away from me in a somewhat-bashful-somewhat-frustrated retreat. While I was happy to snap their photo like a good yovo and wave and smile back at them, the fact that the only white people they ever see are those that speed by them in a commotion of dust and loud honking on their way to the next “tourist attraction” is incredibly sad. Everyone’s smiles were as wide and sincere as ever, but the lack of economic opportunity and stagnancy of their poverty was completely devastating…
There are exceptions of course. There are those that make the weekly trek into Kpalimé or Adéta to hawk goods at the marché rather than doze by the side of the road in hope that the occasional passerby might want to buy a tiny sack of arachides for 100CFA. There is also a man who has created a palm-roofed “factory” with 5 apprentices that, with their hands and bare feet, weave unique pagnes out of coarse thread (their weaving contraptions are fascinating.) But for the most part, these rural villages are static, sluggish and often forgotten. Their inhabitants are the poorest of the poor and, ironically but not surprisingly, are least able to benefit from microcredit – Kiva credit? Forget about it.
FECECAV has a tiny office in Lavie, an outpost of CECAV Avenir, with 2 employees, 2 rooms, 2 fans, and Jules at its helm. He is one of the most organized and proactive branch managers I have seen in action here and regrettably works on a computer that is so old and slow it can’t connect to a digital camera and a keyboard that is more often than not out of commission. As it is one of the smaller caisses, sort of by default and as a result of limited resources (not that I am justifying this by any means,) FECECAV doesn’t see upgrading his equipment as a priority. CECAV Avenir-Lavie does not generate as much revenue as other branches because of its own small size and, more importantly, the small size of its loans, which obviously yield less interest.
The petits crédits disbursed by CECAV Avenir-Lavie are a consequence of the type of people taking out these loans…the poorest clients who embody the real, intended impact of microfinance – a true MICRO loan, a starting point of a credit of $50 or less, for a client with everything to lose and no where to begin, destined to succeed little by little by little. I was struck by the genuine character of microfinance in Jules’ villages again and again, as he introduced me to clients who started out with loans as small as 10,000CFA ($25) and, after successfully paying it back, have now taken out $50 loans.
Tragically, these loans are the least desirable and profitable for an MFI, as it takes 50 of these miniature loans to accrue the same amount of interest as 2-3 larger loans – which would be given to someone with a larger capital guarantee or entrepreneurial experience. But don’t we have a social mission to try to also reach the poorest of the working poor? At the same time, how can it be worth it to an overstretched MFI working in a developing country to support clients that yield less of a profit in the short term? I see all sides of the equation and am unconvinced of a moral reconciliation of, on one hand, the immediacy of needs, cash-flow and entrepreneurship, and on the other, the long-term ethical benefits of exhaustedly providing tiny loans to the most desperate of the poor.
Additionally, and this is the point that upsets me, these loans are destined never to appear on the Kiva site. While FECECAV can sometimes justify privileging higher-interest loans, rich Americans cannot…
A major flaw in Kiva’s methodology is that they encourage (not necessarily intentionally) MFI to pass over these authentic micro-credits, because a) it is far too much work to post that many loans on the site (the current workload is painful enough) and b) the 0% interest rate will bring a larger monetary benefit to the MFI on a big loan. While financially this is a good thing for the MFI, it misses the ethical point of reaching the poorest of the poor. Which is Kiva aiming for? If it is the former, the social mission is greatly diminished – why not just give loans directly to the MFI, rather than make them do all of this work chasing down clients, taking photos, writing descriptions, and buying internet time? If you really want to give people a chance to “loan to the working poor,” you must make it possible to reach ALL of the working poor, the POOREST of the working poor, not just those that are most convenient…
I thought about whether it is ok to say that these results come about simply “by default” or can be seen as “unintended consequences…” In my opinion, this is insupportable – if you’re going to do something, do it right. While well intentioned, yet another attempt at eradicating poverty misses the most dire candidates (and in this case, encourages FECECAV to overlook them as well…I saw this with my own eyes when I told Daniel that I wanted to post ten 25,000CFA loans from Lavie. He waved me away saying it wasn’t worth it. After much persuasion he allowed me to do it, but 2 hours and 3,000CFA of internet time later, we had entered 10 new loans and hadn’t made a dent in the monthly limit…)
Unfortunately, the Kiva policies and processes that I tried to train people on in my first month here (when I was officially working as a fellow) have all but dissipated…it is incredibly difficult to maintain procedures and organized processes here, as a result of the constant need for improvisation. Kiva work becomes an even mightier task every time there is unreliable electricity and internet, a client isn’t available for a photograph because their uncle died and they are in Lomé for the week (let alone the fact that the loan officer took the time and energy to research his dossier to make sure it is in accord with nit-picky policies, and to go find the client in the first place – this is not as easy as you might think,) or a certain computer or won’t read a particular USB key or digital camera. The inventiveness and flexibility with technological equipment and information sharing I see here on a daily basis blows my mind. It’s the reality, it’s the only thing that works right now and it makes Kiva’s meticulous policies and procedures seem utterly absurd on the ground.
The thing that does seem to be working is the spreadsheet I made with all of the required information for a Kiva posting. It is very simple, can be filled out on the computer or by hand and encourages the loan officers to sit down with the photos they have taken as well as the dossiers for those clients and fill it out, simultaneously verifying the information. There is a box to list the number of the photo from the camera itself, in order to identify the client here in Kpalimé if the individual branches cannot download and rename the photos themselves. The process of downloading and renaming photos and bringing them to Kpalimé along with word documents of client dossiers generated directly from PERFECT is a long way off…that formula is truly another ball game and, while it is a fantastic and sustainable vision, relies too much on technology and a level of “orderliness” that just does not exist here. For the moment (until we bring them solar energy!!) if FECECAV can use the simplified documents and abridged version of the process that I have emphasized and re-emphasized and re-emphasized, to generate $31,000 from the site every month, I think we will all be happy.
I do worry about FECECAV’s success with Kiva in my absence…as much as I have tried to be hands off this month, I have largely managed the information gathering process, delegated business-description-writing tasks, re-sized photos and even helped with a few postings. I waited until about the 5th of the month to see if anyone was going to jumpstart the process for May and, when no one did, I got the ball rolling. If I hadn’t, there is a chance that they may have lost out this month, which is by far the worst outcome and I could never live with myself if, in the name of “independence and sustainability,” I didn’t help out. However, what is going to happen for the rest of the summer when I am not here?
Early on, it became apparent that there is no individual here in Kpalimé that can be solely responsible for managing and carrying out Kiva work – there is just no one with that kind of time. I have decided that I am going to continue to help them for the next few months from afar, to ease the transition into autonomous Kiva-ing. I can’t leave them in the lurch and will try to continue to remind Daniel at the end of each month to get people collecting info for the next month and am happy to also personally post some loans with my speedy internet connection in the States. This is what friends and partners are for, and I maintain my mission to help FECECAV in whatever capacity I can.
* * *
Later in the afternoon I had a rendezvous with the director of an NGO (who spotted me at FECECAV one day and asked to chat) whose insurmountable mission is to orient the mentality of Togo’s youth towards the idea that democracy and transparency, peace and equality, and education are fundamental human rights, indigenous to Africa, that must be restored. His intentions are honorable, and after initially balking at his idealism (shocking I know, coming from me of all people) I was won over by his ingenuity and optimism. He organizes “training camps” for Togolese youth to discuss, impart and educate on the values his NGO promotes. The first two camps were funded by a private Togolese benefactor. The third, based around the theme of “Good Citizenship,” is only partially funded and he obviously was hoping that I could help him out. I explained that I am starting my own project and am really stretched to the fundraising limit right now, but that I would try to find some contacts for him.
Every day another man asks me with pleading eyes if I can find someone in my country to sponsor his daughters. Every day another of my friends in Kpalimé suggests some scheme to export mangos or peanuts to sell at their inflated price in New York. With all of my heart and capacity, I want to help everyone here and it is hard to realize that one person can’t do it all, no matter how much hope rests on me. Eventually that will kill me…however, there is no reason I can’t occasionally help raise $1000 for a particularly impressive cause, send packages of clothes and toys a few times a year to kids in Kpalimé, help FECECAV when they need help with Kiva and launch SunPower Afrique…all at the same time…right?
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
13 Mai – Mister Jon, the CNM and SunPower Afrique
After an hour of struggling with 3 malfunctioning computers and 2 printers that were out of ink, I finally managed to frustratedly print my dossier to take to Lomé. We were meeting with the Exec. Dir. of the Comite Nationale de Microfinance (National Commitee for Microfinance, hereafter referred to as the CNM) in 2 hours, and it takes 3 hours to drive to the capital from Kpalimé…no one else seemed to mind, so I jumped into the car and silently fumed at the office equipment and lack of timeliness. For the first time in a while my patience wore thin…but after about 5 minutes of Togolese air blowing in my face on the route nationale, I was over it. But still nervous.
Our meeting with the CNM was an integral part of getting SunPower Afrique off the ground, and before going in I was surprised at how edgy I was… I wasn’t sure whether to expect some stuffy minister to blow me off, a friendly minister to smile at my idealism and tell me it will never work or somewhere in between. Instead, the reaction of the Director was more positive than I could have ever hoped for, and I am so excited right now I can barely put it into words…
We pulled up only a few minutes late (thank goodness for Yao’s blaring horn) to a freshly painted white and blue compound. PNUD (United Nations Development Program, UNDP, in French) was painted right next to “Strategie Nationale de Microfinance” which came as a total surprise to me…I soon figured out why…
Inside the walls were a series of immaculate blue and white cottages, each with at least 2 air conditioning units humming outside. We were ushered into one of the cottages and I was immediately greeted by a slam of frigid air that I have not felt anywhere on this continent since my arrival – not in the airport, not in any hotel, even in Accra…the sweaty clamminess that I have not been able to shake for 2 and half months evaporated into thin air and I literally almost cried out in surprise…so this is where all the money UNDP sends to Togo’s microfinance institutions goes – yet another fantastic example of how little accountability international organizations (particularly the UN) have for the allocation of their funding. But it’s ok, member states and secretariat directors can sleep at night with clear consciences, knowing that they have sent loads of money to that poor, tiny West African country…its not their problem that they’re turning their back to corruption and reinforcing state complicity in the cycle of poverty, right?
Jacques, the Director of PASNAM, the committee in charge of implementing the Strategie Nationale and a state organ of the CNM, shook our hands with a smile and asked us to wait for him in his office. We walked across the courtyard again into a larger room that was full of tables and chairs in a classroom-style configuration. When Jacques came in a few minutes later we settled ourselves in the center of the room and began to chat.
Jacques was incredibly friendly and while we of course had to indulge in the usual formalities, greetings, etc. it was much less forced and superfluous than normal procedures…I am not sure if this was because of Jacques, who was laid back and pleasant, because of my and Dad’s style or because Daniel mostly kept his mouth shut. Daniel actually let me do most of the talking, and once I got started, my usual confidence and verbosity took over and I had to remind myself to let others get a word in edgewise.
I explained our project and our vision, and Jacques was incredibly enthusiastic to it (and to the fact that I was an American that spoke such good French, haha.) Moreso than I had ever thought was possible. I truly thought that he would be more skeptical – of another yovo coming in with an idea for an NGO and an optimistic picture for Togo’s development – unconvinced of our sincerity first of all, but moreso of the mere viability of another development project. But this is the difference with our project for the introduction of solar energy on a large scale in Togo – it just makes sense. After seeing the numbers, talking about job creation and economic growth…his enthusiasm grew.
Dad’s expertise and practical mentality towards the efficiency of solar energy and conservation are invaluable and spectacular. I tend to be ambiguous and vague in my idealism, and he has totally grounded me and the vision of this project. In addition, he has brought some essential points to my concept paper in regard to long-term changes to Togo’s economy through the creation of jobs along the supply chain and training a workforce to install and maintain the photovoltaic systems. Just having him next to me this morning made me feel so much more comfortable and credible – I have a real expert here at my side. I have felt this way at each caisse we have visited too. He knows exactly what to measure, where to look (and when to look under it) and which questions to ask (in English and then I translate.) He is impressive and I could not do this without him.
Dad interjected here and there throughout the meeting to make sure I was emphasizing certain points (mainly the creation of jobs and the long-term environmental, financial and societal benefits of jumpstarting a solar economy) and I highlighted my enthusiasm for Togo, our experience with solar in the states and certain points in the dossier. At the end of our meeting, Jacques was beaming. He said that we have truly come to Togo at the perfect time and with the perfect project, and that he is going to immediately talk to Fedy, the president of both the CNM, APIM and FUCEC (not sure how I feel about the fact that he is president of all three…)
This is really going to happen…
If we look at this project like a piece of dry, unyielding land here in Togo that must, for the sake of the health and needs of my family, yield a mountain of fruit, the precious seeds were planted today…the seeds that I pored over, obsessed about, examined and re-examined for the past month or longer…I have burnt my field to the ground, commenced to weed it and scour it, pulling out all the rocks and roots, raking and hoeing the soil with a machete to prepare it for planting…researching crop rotations, insecticides and agricultural products…and today the seeds were dropped in and fingers crossed. There is a long, long, difficult way to go. But there is no turning back now, and I must pray for rain and tend my crops with diligence and care. Or my field will be lost, and my livelihood with it…
Over the past week and a half, together with Yao and various CECAV employees, Dad and I visited nearly all of the FECECAV caisses. We measured awnings and interior spaces, counted lightbulbs and projected numbers of computers, fans and printers, recorded roof types and south-facing facades. With the data we collected, we are now ready to build a business plan with real numbers and real timelines.
We exhausted ourselves, which I didn’t realize until we had managed to get Dad across the border into Ghana (which is no easy feat and, after two nightmarish border crossings, if I ever see one of those chartreuse Ghanaian government uniforms again I am going to scream and run in the other direction) and I came back to Petit Suisse and noticed that Dad wasn’t sitting on the front porch in the plastic chair chatting with Saf, or dozing with a book in his lap. I didn’t know exactly what to do with myself, until I realized how tired I was…
It was amazing having Dad here, despite the difficult moments in which I realized that no matter how close someone is to me and how badly I want them to understand, my personal experience and emotional attachment to this place is something I will never be able to explain.
We Costanzas are just not normal yovos, and I have always known where I got it from. Dad’s eccentricity was vibrant and animated here, where he quickly made friends with everyone due to his openness and amusing nature. Nana was with us every minute, every breath, every smile, every step in the gritty, red earth. There is also now an abundance of SunPower Builders hats and t-shirts being worn with pride around Kpalimé :)
My friend Hypo says that now I can “put FECECAV in my pocket,” which he said was not merely because I have seen so many of its offices, but because I care about it so much, have seen its strengths and weaknesses inside and out and have truly integrated myself into it …the thought of leaving here in 3 weeks makes my stomach churn. If I thought my adjustment in coming here was difficult, I don’t know what I am going to do when I come back…the only reassurance I can find is in knowing that my sejour with Togo is far from over.
An invigorated sense of community, love and geography has descended into my mind, creating a spectacular ruckus before ultimately resolving itself. The bond I have formed with the people and atmosphere of this place has stimulated and motivated my very existence. My life and future have been forever changed, and I am genuinely bilingual now, in more ways than pure language acquisition...if any of that makes a bit of sense…haha…
All my love,
K
Our meeting with the CNM was an integral part of getting SunPower Afrique off the ground, and before going in I was surprised at how edgy I was… I wasn’t sure whether to expect some stuffy minister to blow me off, a friendly minister to smile at my idealism and tell me it will never work or somewhere in between. Instead, the reaction of the Director was more positive than I could have ever hoped for, and I am so excited right now I can barely put it into words…
We pulled up only a few minutes late (thank goodness for Yao’s blaring horn) to a freshly painted white and blue compound. PNUD (United Nations Development Program, UNDP, in French) was painted right next to “Strategie Nationale de Microfinance” which came as a total surprise to me…I soon figured out why…
Inside the walls were a series of immaculate blue and white cottages, each with at least 2 air conditioning units humming outside. We were ushered into one of the cottages and I was immediately greeted by a slam of frigid air that I have not felt anywhere on this continent since my arrival – not in the airport, not in any hotel, even in Accra…the sweaty clamminess that I have not been able to shake for 2 and half months evaporated into thin air and I literally almost cried out in surprise…so this is where all the money UNDP sends to Togo’s microfinance institutions goes – yet another fantastic example of how little accountability international organizations (particularly the UN) have for the allocation of their funding. But it’s ok, member states and secretariat directors can sleep at night with clear consciences, knowing that they have sent loads of money to that poor, tiny West African country…its not their problem that they’re turning their back to corruption and reinforcing state complicity in the cycle of poverty, right?
Jacques, the Director of PASNAM, the committee in charge of implementing the Strategie Nationale and a state organ of the CNM, shook our hands with a smile and asked us to wait for him in his office. We walked across the courtyard again into a larger room that was full of tables and chairs in a classroom-style configuration. When Jacques came in a few minutes later we settled ourselves in the center of the room and began to chat.
Jacques was incredibly friendly and while we of course had to indulge in the usual formalities, greetings, etc. it was much less forced and superfluous than normal procedures…I am not sure if this was because of Jacques, who was laid back and pleasant, because of my and Dad’s style or because Daniel mostly kept his mouth shut. Daniel actually let me do most of the talking, and once I got started, my usual confidence and verbosity took over and I had to remind myself to let others get a word in edgewise.
I explained our project and our vision, and Jacques was incredibly enthusiastic to it (and to the fact that I was an American that spoke such good French, haha.) Moreso than I had ever thought was possible. I truly thought that he would be more skeptical – of another yovo coming in with an idea for an NGO and an optimistic picture for Togo’s development – unconvinced of our sincerity first of all, but moreso of the mere viability of another development project. But this is the difference with our project for the introduction of solar energy on a large scale in Togo – it just makes sense. After seeing the numbers, talking about job creation and economic growth…his enthusiasm grew.
Dad’s expertise and practical mentality towards the efficiency of solar energy and conservation are invaluable and spectacular. I tend to be ambiguous and vague in my idealism, and he has totally grounded me and the vision of this project. In addition, he has brought some essential points to my concept paper in regard to long-term changes to Togo’s economy through the creation of jobs along the supply chain and training a workforce to install and maintain the photovoltaic systems. Just having him next to me this morning made me feel so much more comfortable and credible – I have a real expert here at my side. I have felt this way at each caisse we have visited too. He knows exactly what to measure, where to look (and when to look under it) and which questions to ask (in English and then I translate.) He is impressive and I could not do this without him.
Dad interjected here and there throughout the meeting to make sure I was emphasizing certain points (mainly the creation of jobs and the long-term environmental, financial and societal benefits of jumpstarting a solar economy) and I highlighted my enthusiasm for Togo, our experience with solar in the states and certain points in the dossier. At the end of our meeting, Jacques was beaming. He said that we have truly come to Togo at the perfect time and with the perfect project, and that he is going to immediately talk to Fedy, the president of both the CNM, APIM and FUCEC (not sure how I feel about the fact that he is president of all three…)
This is really going to happen…
If we look at this project like a piece of dry, unyielding land here in Togo that must, for the sake of the health and needs of my family, yield a mountain of fruit, the precious seeds were planted today…the seeds that I pored over, obsessed about, examined and re-examined for the past month or longer…I have burnt my field to the ground, commenced to weed it and scour it, pulling out all the rocks and roots, raking and hoeing the soil with a machete to prepare it for planting…researching crop rotations, insecticides and agricultural products…and today the seeds were dropped in and fingers crossed. There is a long, long, difficult way to go. But there is no turning back now, and I must pray for rain and tend my crops with diligence and care. Or my field will be lost, and my livelihood with it…
Over the past week and a half, together with Yao and various CECAV employees, Dad and I visited nearly all of the FECECAV caisses. We measured awnings and interior spaces, counted lightbulbs and projected numbers of computers, fans and printers, recorded roof types and south-facing facades. With the data we collected, we are now ready to build a business plan with real numbers and real timelines.
We exhausted ourselves, which I didn’t realize until we had managed to get Dad across the border into Ghana (which is no easy feat and, after two nightmarish border crossings, if I ever see one of those chartreuse Ghanaian government uniforms again I am going to scream and run in the other direction) and I came back to Petit Suisse and noticed that Dad wasn’t sitting on the front porch in the plastic chair chatting with Saf, or dozing with a book in his lap. I didn’t know exactly what to do with myself, until I realized how tired I was…
It was amazing having Dad here, despite the difficult moments in which I realized that no matter how close someone is to me and how badly I want them to understand, my personal experience and emotional attachment to this place is something I will never be able to explain.
We Costanzas are just not normal yovos, and I have always known where I got it from. Dad’s eccentricity was vibrant and animated here, where he quickly made friends with everyone due to his openness and amusing nature. Nana was with us every minute, every breath, every smile, every step in the gritty, red earth. There is also now an abundance of SunPower Builders hats and t-shirts being worn with pride around Kpalimé :)
My friend Hypo says that now I can “put FECECAV in my pocket,” which he said was not merely because I have seen so many of its offices, but because I care about it so much, have seen its strengths and weaknesses inside and out and have truly integrated myself into it …the thought of leaving here in 3 weeks makes my stomach churn. If I thought my adjustment in coming here was difficult, I don’t know what I am going to do when I come back…the only reassurance I can find is in knowing that my sejour with Togo is far from over.
An invigorated sense of community, love and geography has descended into my mind, creating a spectacular ruckus before ultimately resolving itself. The bond I have formed with the people and atmosphere of this place has stimulated and motivated my very existence. My life and future have been forever changed, and I am genuinely bilingual now, in more ways than pure language acquisition...if any of that makes a bit of sense…haha…
All my love,
K
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
22 Avril - Français à la Togolais
My French is completely different than it was when I arrived here…language is a fascinating thing. My mom noticed it the first time she heard me say Merci to someone on the street while we were talking on the phone, about 2 weeks after my arrival. She gasped, saying Kira! Did you just roll the “r” in Merci?!
I quickly realized that no one could understand me when I swallowed and hacked out my Parisian/Quebecoise sounding R’s and rounded out the ends of my biens and bonjours. Much worse, people thought I was French! This is one of the biggest insults I can receive here, which I also quickly realized…when people find out I am American and not French (or Belgian or Swiss or another French-speaking, European country) they are thrilled. They are also always shocked that I speak French, which makes total sense, considering that Americans aren’t the world’s most renowned for embracing foreign cultures, particularly languages (must we remember Pat’s Steaks…)
The hesitation-bordering-on-full-out-disdain surrounding Les Françaises is partially due to the horrific legacy of colonialism, but more (as with most European countries) a result of their utter lack of effective development assistance and general interaction with modern Togo. However (and I have really heard this kind of praise from so many people here) when people start to go on and on about how wonderful Amerique is and all we do for Africa I can help but wonder…Don’t they remember slavery?! It really shows the desperation and trusting optimism for anyone who is here to help them…which makes me a bit sad, but at the same time does make me a bit more confident in the real impact of my country’s work around the world. IPA and my work at the UN jaded me a bit about the US’s contributions to the World Food Programme, USAID, African Development Banks, and the most well known international NGOs, which, for all of their shortcomings and disastrous faults, are there, when everyone else is gone, to care for the world’s most desperate populations. Sure, China provides instant gratification in the form of sandelettes and shiny cellphones, but at what cost? And what about sustainability? If there is no cost-benefit analysis that exists in their favor, there is no way they will go on. And most European countries can’t say that they have done either!
I’d like to think that what makes us different is our attitude, and that Americans, like me, have grown up in a culture of diversity and globalization, as opposed to the rampant xenophobia and racism that clouds so much of Europe’s much more recent past…but really, what about the lynchings that still go on in the Southern US? What about the silent and appalling segregation of our urban centers and schools? What about the fact that our economy would collapse in a day if it weren’t for illegal immigrants and Texans and (even East Coast Republicans!) still want to build a 20-foot-high wall to keep those damned Mexicans out…so maybe it is just some of us. But here in Togo, I have seen the impact of a few, and it makes me a little bit more content.
But back to our discussion of language, a much less loaded topic…or is it…
Influenced by Ewe, Kabye and other indigenous languages, Togolese French just sounds so cool (I know that isn’t so eloquently put, but I have no better words for it.) The West African accent, which I have completely taken on, is characterized mostly by the rolling of the “r’s” and by the tonal nuances taken from Ewe. Conversation is highlighted by woops and high-pitched sighs that signify excitement, surprise or frustration and a distinctive clicking in the back of the throat to express annoyance or anger (which is often substituted for a lip smack that sounds like it has been sucked back into the mouth.) When you are laughing too hard you draw out the 2 syllables “ah-WO!” while grabbing your burning abs.
The usage of French here very much reflects West African lifestyle and culture, manifested in commonly used phrases and slang. European/Conventional French sounds totally out of place here and I half recoil/half giggle when yovos use adjectives like “sympa” (nice) and “super!” and verb phrases like “faire le footing” (to go for a run.)
I have created a little dictionary below, of the most common ones, and I hope you all get as much of a kick out of it as I did making it :)
(the things I sometimes resort to when I have nothing to do and no electricity, haha…)
1. Ça va aller/ Ça ira
Literal translation: It is going to go/it will go
Meaning: This too shall pass; It will be ok
Usage: To provide comfort, strength and optimism through adversity; Any time from a cut on your finger, to a lack of rain, to a death in the family or a bad bout of palu, to generally feeling frustrated or disappointed; often used in conjunction with “Du Courage” (see below) This phrase is listed as number 1 for a reason, I hear it 800 times a day. I really see this phrase as a microcosm of life and reality in Togo – shit happens, but we’ll get through it, we always do. It is both beautiful and tragic.
2. Ou bien?
Literal translation: Or good/well
Meaning: Right? Don’t you agree?
Usage: Posed as a question and similar to the Canadian “eh,” this useful little phrase is often added to the end of a sentence to gauge consensus and others’ opinions of what you have just said. It is also used in reverse, as a response if you really agree with someone (“I know, right!?”) Robert, le Directeur d’Audit et Controle, is a big fan of throwing an “ou bien” at the end of his biggest points during trainings and presentations, to make sure that everyone understands his statement and/or is paying attention. People often use this phrase with me when saying (sometimes with a big grin, sometimes in utter seriousness,) “You’re going to leave that laptop with me when you leave! Ou bien?”
3. Il faut aller et revenir (Ewe : MaheMAva)
Literal translation: You must go and return
Meaning: Go so that you can come back!
Usage: Whenever anyone leaves in the morning, goes out to run and errand or is in a hurry to get somewhere. I put this one in Ewe too because it was one of the most important phrases I learned here. It is a striking testament to how people enjoy each others’ company and wish them well, so that they can return safely home (which is also sad, because life is hard, and simply making it through the day and coming home to your family can sometimes be difficult.) Daniel’s wife always says this to me in the morning when I scurry past the boutique, trying to get to work on time amidst the flurry of greetings.
4. Du courage
Literal translation: Of courage
Meaning: Be strong! You’ll get through it.
Usage: Often employed as a little joke when people complain unnecessarily about the heat or a mosquito bite (usually directed at me…haha,) “Du Courage” is similar to “ça va aller,” but is used more specifically to express understanding of suffering and to provide, literally, courage, strength and endurance. This is used to encourage someone with a tough job (aka a woman who has to walk 5 miles into town every day from her village with a huge bucket of tomatoes on her head, a baby tied to her back and 2 toddlers trailing behind her,) whose child is sick or whose entire livelihood has just been destroyed in a bush fire.
5. On es là?/Tu es là ?
Literal translation : One is/You are there ?
Meaning: Are you ok? Is everything good?
Usage: Anytime someone looks confused, troubled, tired or otherwise spacey; often used when it is particularly hot, the electricity has been out for hours, or someone has made a long trip. This phrase is also a good example of the West African use of “on” (one,) which is more often than not used in place of “je” (I) or “tu” (you.) I have started doing this a lot too – instead of saying “Je vais manger” (I am going to eat,) I’ll say “On va manger” (One will eat.) As I said, language is a fascinating thing…
6. Doucement
Literal translation: Carefully
Meaning: Be careful/Go carefully
Usage: Whenever someone revs their moto too agressively, trips, bumps into their desk or falls and breaks their leg (note that there is no discerning between the pains involved with these things…one of the peace corps girls went on about this angrily, saying how it drives her crazy that when she is in pain from stubbing her toe the Togolese will simply say, “Oh hunny, doucement!”) I think it is hilarious. Needless to say, people say this to me numerous times a day, in my graceful state, tripping over cords and tree roots, knocking over chairs and struggling with the FECECAV gate. I’m sure you’ll all love this, and I will never live it down, but due to my constant poise and elegance, Athanase has taken to calling me “Gracia.”
7. Bonsoir
Literal translation: Good evening
Meaning: Good “afternoon”
Usage: Anytime after 11am. In Kpalimé, if it is possible that you have already eaten your midday repas or have just said Bonjour too many times already, it is perfectly legitimate to start saying Bonsoir. I was initially very confused by this phenomenon, but now have started doing it myself, shocking every European I meet, greeting them with a Bonsoir! at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. The Togolese nature of this trend is also apparent in its use in the children’s song, “Yovo yovo bonsoir! Cava bien? Merci!” that they chant in a sing-songy, nursery rhyme type melody anytime I walk past – even if it is 8am.
The Ewe that I have learned is a testament to not only how we quickly learn “useful phrases” in other languages (just like the little guides found in Barnes and Noble,) but also to what these phrases are in Ewe and what it says about the culture here. Meeting someone, seeing someone for the first time in the morning and saying goodbye for the evening are long-winded, As I have already mentioned (in reference to the African businessmen,) conversations are characterized by incredibly long introductions – “Good morning Director, how are you? Did you sleep well? And you health? How was the voyage?” (I now know how to say all of these things, as well as their responses, and absolutely love the looks on peoples’ faces when I am able to have a petit conversation with them in Ewe.)
This definitely says something about Togolese relationships, in that people do care about each other in a different way here – can you see anyone on the subway in New York, even if I knew them well, asking me every morning how I slept the night before? On a different note, it also indicates the fact that everyone cultivates relationships in a careful and calculated manner. Everyone knows everything about everyone else and often wants or expects something from everyone else (often because no one has very much…)
I have really enjoyed being immersed such a captivating linguistic environment, and am really going to miss it…I am sure that when I come back I am going to be surprised by something and let out a swooping ah-WO! and everyone is going to look at me like I am a martian…
I quickly realized that no one could understand me when I swallowed and hacked out my Parisian/Quebecoise sounding R’s and rounded out the ends of my biens and bonjours. Much worse, people thought I was French! This is one of the biggest insults I can receive here, which I also quickly realized…when people find out I am American and not French (or Belgian or Swiss or another French-speaking, European country) they are thrilled. They are also always shocked that I speak French, which makes total sense, considering that Americans aren’t the world’s most renowned for embracing foreign cultures, particularly languages (must we remember Pat’s Steaks…)
The hesitation-bordering-on-full-out-disdain surrounding Les Françaises is partially due to the horrific legacy of colonialism, but more (as with most European countries) a result of their utter lack of effective development assistance and general interaction with modern Togo. However (and I have really heard this kind of praise from so many people here) when people start to go on and on about how wonderful Amerique is and all we do for Africa I can help but wonder…Don’t they remember slavery?! It really shows the desperation and trusting optimism for anyone who is here to help them…which makes me a bit sad, but at the same time does make me a bit more confident in the real impact of my country’s work around the world. IPA and my work at the UN jaded me a bit about the US’s contributions to the World Food Programme, USAID, African Development Banks, and the most well known international NGOs, which, for all of their shortcomings and disastrous faults, are there, when everyone else is gone, to care for the world’s most desperate populations. Sure, China provides instant gratification in the form of sandelettes and shiny cellphones, but at what cost? And what about sustainability? If there is no cost-benefit analysis that exists in their favor, there is no way they will go on. And most European countries can’t say that they have done either!
I’d like to think that what makes us different is our attitude, and that Americans, like me, have grown up in a culture of diversity and globalization, as opposed to the rampant xenophobia and racism that clouds so much of Europe’s much more recent past…but really, what about the lynchings that still go on in the Southern US? What about the silent and appalling segregation of our urban centers and schools? What about the fact that our economy would collapse in a day if it weren’t for illegal immigrants and Texans and (even East Coast Republicans!) still want to build a 20-foot-high wall to keep those damned Mexicans out…so maybe it is just some of us. But here in Togo, I have seen the impact of a few, and it makes me a little bit more content.
But back to our discussion of language, a much less loaded topic…or is it…
Influenced by Ewe, Kabye and other indigenous languages, Togolese French just sounds so cool (I know that isn’t so eloquently put, but I have no better words for it.) The West African accent, which I have completely taken on, is characterized mostly by the rolling of the “r’s” and by the tonal nuances taken from Ewe. Conversation is highlighted by woops and high-pitched sighs that signify excitement, surprise or frustration and a distinctive clicking in the back of the throat to express annoyance or anger (which is often substituted for a lip smack that sounds like it has been sucked back into the mouth.) When you are laughing too hard you draw out the 2 syllables “ah-WO!” while grabbing your burning abs.
The usage of French here very much reflects West African lifestyle and culture, manifested in commonly used phrases and slang. European/Conventional French sounds totally out of place here and I half recoil/half giggle when yovos use adjectives like “sympa” (nice) and “super!” and verb phrases like “faire le footing” (to go for a run.)
I have created a little dictionary below, of the most common ones, and I hope you all get as much of a kick out of it as I did making it :)
(the things I sometimes resort to when I have nothing to do and no electricity, haha…)
1. Ça va aller/ Ça ira
Literal translation: It is going to go/it will go
Meaning: This too shall pass; It will be ok
Usage: To provide comfort, strength and optimism through adversity; Any time from a cut on your finger, to a lack of rain, to a death in the family or a bad bout of palu, to generally feeling frustrated or disappointed; often used in conjunction with “Du Courage” (see below) This phrase is listed as number 1 for a reason, I hear it 800 times a day. I really see this phrase as a microcosm of life and reality in Togo – shit happens, but we’ll get through it, we always do. It is both beautiful and tragic.
2. Ou bien?
Literal translation: Or good/well
Meaning: Right? Don’t you agree?
Usage: Posed as a question and similar to the Canadian “eh,” this useful little phrase is often added to the end of a sentence to gauge consensus and others’ opinions of what you have just said. It is also used in reverse, as a response if you really agree with someone (“I know, right!?”) Robert, le Directeur d’Audit et Controle, is a big fan of throwing an “ou bien” at the end of his biggest points during trainings and presentations, to make sure that everyone understands his statement and/or is paying attention. People often use this phrase with me when saying (sometimes with a big grin, sometimes in utter seriousness,) “You’re going to leave that laptop with me when you leave! Ou bien?”
3. Il faut aller et revenir (Ewe : MaheMAva)
Literal translation: You must go and return
Meaning: Go so that you can come back!
Usage: Whenever anyone leaves in the morning, goes out to run and errand or is in a hurry to get somewhere. I put this one in Ewe too because it was one of the most important phrases I learned here. It is a striking testament to how people enjoy each others’ company and wish them well, so that they can return safely home (which is also sad, because life is hard, and simply making it through the day and coming home to your family can sometimes be difficult.) Daniel’s wife always says this to me in the morning when I scurry past the boutique, trying to get to work on time amidst the flurry of greetings.
4. Du courage
Literal translation: Of courage
Meaning: Be strong! You’ll get through it.
Usage: Often employed as a little joke when people complain unnecessarily about the heat or a mosquito bite (usually directed at me…haha,) “Du Courage” is similar to “ça va aller,” but is used more specifically to express understanding of suffering and to provide, literally, courage, strength and endurance. This is used to encourage someone with a tough job (aka a woman who has to walk 5 miles into town every day from her village with a huge bucket of tomatoes on her head, a baby tied to her back and 2 toddlers trailing behind her,) whose child is sick or whose entire livelihood has just been destroyed in a bush fire.
5. On es là?/Tu es là ?
Literal translation : One is/You are there ?
Meaning: Are you ok? Is everything good?
Usage: Anytime someone looks confused, troubled, tired or otherwise spacey; often used when it is particularly hot, the electricity has been out for hours, or someone has made a long trip. This phrase is also a good example of the West African use of “on” (one,) which is more often than not used in place of “je” (I) or “tu” (you.) I have started doing this a lot too – instead of saying “Je vais manger” (I am going to eat,) I’ll say “On va manger” (One will eat.) As I said, language is a fascinating thing…
6. Doucement
Literal translation: Carefully
Meaning: Be careful/Go carefully
Usage: Whenever someone revs their moto too agressively, trips, bumps into their desk or falls and breaks their leg (note that there is no discerning between the pains involved with these things…one of the peace corps girls went on about this angrily, saying how it drives her crazy that when she is in pain from stubbing her toe the Togolese will simply say, “Oh hunny, doucement!”) I think it is hilarious. Needless to say, people say this to me numerous times a day, in my graceful state, tripping over cords and tree roots, knocking over chairs and struggling with the FECECAV gate. I’m sure you’ll all love this, and I will never live it down, but due to my constant poise and elegance, Athanase has taken to calling me “Gracia.”
7. Bonsoir
Literal translation: Good evening
Meaning: Good “afternoon”
Usage: Anytime after 11am. In Kpalimé, if it is possible that you have already eaten your midday repas or have just said Bonjour too many times already, it is perfectly legitimate to start saying Bonsoir. I was initially very confused by this phenomenon, but now have started doing it myself, shocking every European I meet, greeting them with a Bonsoir! at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. The Togolese nature of this trend is also apparent in its use in the children’s song, “Yovo yovo bonsoir! Cava bien? Merci!” that they chant in a sing-songy, nursery rhyme type melody anytime I walk past – even if it is 8am.
The Ewe that I have learned is a testament to not only how we quickly learn “useful phrases” in other languages (just like the little guides found in Barnes and Noble,) but also to what these phrases are in Ewe and what it says about the culture here. Meeting someone, seeing someone for the first time in the morning and saying goodbye for the evening are long-winded, As I have already mentioned (in reference to the African businessmen,) conversations are characterized by incredibly long introductions – “Good morning Director, how are you? Did you sleep well? And you health? How was the voyage?” (I now know how to say all of these things, as well as their responses, and absolutely love the looks on peoples’ faces when I am able to have a petit conversation with them in Ewe.)
This definitely says something about Togolese relationships, in that people do care about each other in a different way here – can you see anyone on the subway in New York, even if I knew them well, asking me every morning how I slept the night before? On a different note, it also indicates the fact that everyone cultivates relationships in a careful and calculated manner. Everyone knows everything about everyone else and often wants or expects something from everyone else (often because no one has very much…)
I have really enjoyed being immersed such a captivating linguistic environment, and am really going to miss it…I am sure that when I come back I am going to be surprised by something and let out a swooping ah-WO! and everyone is going to look at me like I am a martian…
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