Vignettes from Three Months in Togo
A Host of New Experiences As a Peace Corps volunteer, I work every day of the week, every hour of the day, and I don’t have the weekend days of Saturday and Sunday to relax. Those two days, in fact, are some of the busiest I’ve experienced when it comes to my work. Two important jobs I hold as a volunteer are 1) to stay alive and 2) to integrate into my community. With regard to these roles, Saturday and Sunday are invaluable days to me. Saturday was the market day in my training village. Each Saturday after eating lunch with my host family I would visit the market with the other volunteers. We would buy the basic necessities such as soap, peanut butter, toilet paper, and of course the wonderful fabric pagne (and a lot of it) to make new clothes. The market is not like any other grocery shopping experience: the prices are not fixed, the items are not arranged in any type of pattern, and the language spoken is most certainly not English. With that being said, the market is both e...