It has been a little while since my last update, but I will try to bring everyone back up to speed on how life is going in Togo.

If you have ever met a PCV, or RPCV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer), you may have noticed that this person is a) cynical and b) tough. This is because all of those kitchy Peace Corps marketing schemes (think: "Toughest job you'll ever love") are kind of right. I try to keep a positive attitude about the "bad" things that happen here in Togo, and take everything with a very large grain of salt called "patience", but the truth is that this is no cake walk. It seems that there are challenges to be found here in even the simplest of life's tasks.

Et chez vous?
The house has been in pretty good shape, minus another incident where my mouse has had babies under my mattress.

I have really felt much more integrated and accepted in my community after having a friend from the US come visit. Showing him around the village and seeing how excited he was, and how excited my village was to meet him really resparked my love for my village. The people are just great and welcoming, and ultimately they are the ones that make the experience for me. I have been spending most of my nights chasing my host sisters around the village, threatening with "ki-nee ki-nee" (tickling) and then staying up with them for dinner and dancing until we are all too tired to move.

Et la travail?
One of the major components of a PCV's work in village is having one or more homologues that are familiar and respected in your community, and knowledgeable (or maybe just familiar) about the work that you are there to do. If you do not have reliable and motivated homologues, or a motivated community, your work will be very difficult. Unfortunately, I have been riding the latter boat during my time in village and all of my challenges have seemed to stem from this issue. As a result, I'm very sad to say that I cannot report on anything groundbreaking that I have done work-wise. But I have (I hope) made significant progress on identifying new homologues and opportunities for work in my surrounding area. Ideas that have been thrown out include a literacy project (Only about 30-40% of women in Togo are literate, and the women in my village do not speak French, making it very difficult to work with them), a teacher training on life skills, and the creation of a gender equity committee. I've also started working on some national projects with other PCVs, including the Gender and Development (GAD) committee, where I will be the Training Manager and working on promoting the Men as Partners (a training program aimed at men and boys to help them think about how their behaviors affect women, and their communities, hopefully motivating them to improve their behaviors), a regional co-coordinator for Camp ESPOIR (for children affected or infected by HIV/AIDS), and a counselour for Camp UNITE (for students and apprentices, focused on Life Skills).

Et la sante?
I have been relatively healthy, still, despite another skin related issue (this time a fungus on my shoulders, fun!). But unfortunately, I had an incident that I will not describe here this past weekend, and I will be leaving today for Washington, DC to do testing and analysis. This puts me on "MedEvac" status, which means that I need to have my medical issue addressed using facilities that are just not available in Togo. If everything checks out fine, I will return to Togo to finish out my service. I am pretty positive that I will come back, and I am very excited to. Things were just starting to fall into place and I can't wait to come back to get started on them all.