Christina in Burkina... IN TOGO!: October 2009

15 October 2009

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Lomé

I doubted my decision to do a third year in Togo. Why did I not just do it in the capital of Burkina? Ouagadougou is a cool city with great restaurants, a vibrant expat community, several movie theaters and a flowing rotation of fun volunteers/ people whom I already know... So I thought, as I sleepily watched the Togolese countryside roll by, WHY am I here?

Upon arrival to Togo's capital, Lomé, I felt a bit better. Peace Corps chauffeured me across town to catch the end of a beach party and a small group of volunteers took me out for a sloppy dinner of cheeseburgers and fries. Better...

I was struck during my first few weeks in Togo by the look of its infrastructure, as compared to Burkina. Togo has cement buildings, tourist hotels and abundant signs indicating former development projects. Burkina volunteers go to Togo on vacation to visit the beach, climb a mountain, chase butterflies and eat "awesome" street food.

But Peace Corps Volunteers love to compete about who's got it tough, tougher and the toughest. When I left Ouaga, Burkina volunteers wished me - good luck in paradise. When I arrived in Lomé, Togo volunteers stared at me - what are you doing here? Togo volunteers go to Ouaga for vacation.

In Togo the buildings are crumbling, the hotels are empty and the signs planted by the European Union are faded and old. There are noticeably more expats in Ouaga than in Lomé. In my first month in Togo I heard more stories about corruption and bribes than I witnessed in my first few months in Burkina. I was asked for a bribe when getting on the plane to America at the beginning of October. Où est mon cadeau?

Togo looks as if it was developing fast at some point, maybe 30 years ago... While traveling in Burkina I'd see expanses of mud houses and mud-brick walls sheltered with straw-thatched roofs. In Togo I see rocks and ruins speckled with trash. Discarded, black, plastic bags abound in BOTH country-sides. Maybe it is the relative abundance of rain in Togo that encourages people to avoid mud-houses. Or maybe there was money invested at some point that was not sustainable.

I heard recently that the seaport of Lomé is the deepest in West Africa. (Fact check?)* As you know, Burkina Faso is landlocked and dependent on appropriate weather to sustain its agriculture-based economy. In September more than 150,000 Burkinabé (10% of the total population) were left homeless after the Ouaga-based floods.

But enough comparing mangoes to bananas and let's return to my initial concern upon arrival to Togo - WHY am I here? Well, I came to continue working to promote girls. Togo was the first Peace Corps country to launch the Girls' Education and Empowerment program in 1999. Burkina launched their program in 2005. In Burkina, my former village will be the first community to have had three consecutive girls' education volunteers working in their community. In Togo, I am living in a small city where I am the first full-time girls' education volunteer.**

In Togo I am reaching big - actually I am hoping to train an ambitious 82 resource people including superintendents, high school principals, vice principals and teachers to affect positive behavior change in youth via "Life Skills" lessons on safe and healthy living. These partners will launch youth clubs in five high schools and one guild aiming to directly reach almost 2,000 students or apprentices and indirectly affect the community at large. If you are interested in more information, post on the blog and I will send you an email. My counterparts and I have set a fundraising goal of $5,007 to execute this year-long, pilot project. If our work is successful, my Togolese counterparts hope to expand the project to more high schools in the region. If you are interested in contributing to this work - click here and know you are awesome.

So, to answer my question, I came to Togo to do the same kind of work but at a higher level. I came to attempt another year of Peace Corps work that was sustainable. The first goal of Peace Corps is to help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women. I know I made a positive impact on my community in Burkina Faso but how much of our work will they carry on without me? Very little to none. Here in Togo I am reaching big and aiming to train resource people to design, organize and implement their own project that they would sustain and scale up in the future if possible. Thinking bigger! Wish me luck.

*From an Associate Peace Corps Director/friend - "That's right Lome is the deepest port in West Africa. The trouble is that if you ship to Togo, and you offload to Togo, you stuff ends up in Togo. And Togo doesn't have the infrastructure to get stuff elsewhere (regionally). It is (probably) the largest used car lot in the world because cars can leave one at a time, but a container of cheese? That risks rotting waiting in front of a broken bridge en route to Ouaga. Which, tragically happened last year leaving me without cheese."

** Volunteers from other sectors have lead girls-related activities in my site, Tsévié, as secondary projects.

***Right now I am in America but in Tsévié I have access to the internet every day. Keep in touch and I will try my best to do the same on this blog.

Facts & Figures on Girls' Ed

Out-of-school children

• There are 115 million children out of school – the majority of them, 62 million, are girls – and 77 million children not enrolled in school. The difference represents the millions of children who are enrolling in but not attending school.

• Children from the poorest household are three times less likely to be in school than their counterparts in the richest households.

Gender parity

• There are now 94 girls in primary school for every 100 boys, up from 92 in 1999.

• Of the 181 countries with 2004 data available, two thirds have achieved gender parity in primary education.

• The gender gap remains particularly large in Afghanistan (44 girls in school for every 100 boys), the Central African Republic, Chad, Niger, Pakistan and Yemen.

Illiteracy

• There are 781 million illiterate adults, two thirds of them women, worldwide.

Early childhood

• Children whose mothers have no education are more than twice as likely to be out of school as children whose mothers have some education

• In developing countries, 75 per cent of the children not in primary school have uneducated mothers

• One additional year of schooling for 1,000 women helps prevent two maternal deaths.

• Early childhood care and education establishes a solid foundation for learning and makes both girls and boys ready to attend school at the right age. It also improves parents’ and caregivers’ readiness to send their children to school by equipping them with deeper knowledge and skills.

• More girls can attend and complete school if other children they need to care for are receiving early childhood care and education; this is particularly crucial for children affected by HIV and AIDS.

HIV and AIDS

• If all children received a complete primary education, around 700,000 cases of HIV in young adults could be prevented each year.

• Women represent 62 per cent of the 15- to 24-year-olds living with HIV and AIDS globally

• The burden of AIDS care falls especially heavily on women, and can limit educational and economic opportunities for women and girls.

• Higher education levels for girls are associated with a reduced risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

• 15.2 million children under age 18 have lost one or both parents to AIDS; 12 million of these children live in sub- Saharan Africa.

Violence

• Girls between 13 and 18 years old constitute the largest group exploited in the commercial sex industry. It is estimated that around 500,000 girls below 18 are victims

of trafficking each year.

• Female genital mutilation/cutting affects 130 million girls and women globally and places 2 million at risk annually.

• In some cultures, the preference for boy children results in prenatal sex selection and infanticide of girls. In India, there are 933 Indian women for every 1,000 men,

reflecting 40 million ‘missing’ women.

Emergencies

• More than 80 per cent of the world’s 35 million refugees and displaced people are women and children.

• Emergencies put women at risk of extreme sexual violence and abuse. In Rwanda, 2,000 women, many of whom were survivors of rape, tested positive for HIV during the five years following the 1994 genocide.

In addition to its benefits for girls and women, education is a uniquely positive force with a wide-ranging impact on society and human development. Educated girls can better protect themselves against HIV, trafficking and abuse, and are more likely to grow up to have healthier families and send their children to school.

From United Nations Girls' Education Initiative