Update from Togo!

Hello everyone!  Hope all is well in the states!

Things have been going great in Togo.  I've been busy in village with several projects.  Now I'm in Lome working on editing Farm to Market, a quarterly newsletter for PC Togo and other PC countries.  All volunteers and staff members can write articles about what they are doing in village.  Myself and three others, one from the NRM program and two from SED, Small Enterprise Development are also working on the newsletter.  It's really fun being in Lome, my first time in six months!  There are a lot of great places to eat and fast internet!  Money goes fast though with so many goodies (mainly some decent cheese) to buy.  I've had a chance to upload a whole bunch of photos on picasa, the google form of webshots.  You should be able to find them under my email, kkoralesky@gmail.com

In village I've been working on a few projects. We recently planted around 100 Moringa trees at the middle school.  This was part of a sensibilisation about reforestation we did for the community with the environmental club.  We presented a few participatory activities about the importance of trees and about all the wonderful amazing properties of Moringa.  (Moringa is this really fast growing, edible nutritious tree, google it!) Later, the club presented a sketch about deforestation, so everyone got to laugh a little too.  About 100 people came, mostly students, but for the most part people were pretty receptive to the new ideas.  Apart from some people trying to steal trees at the end, the day was a success!

My work with the womens groupement has also been going well.  We've made mango jam several times, recently made pommade (a thick body cream ) together which the women really like.  It's easy to do, and you only need vegetable oil, soap and candles.  We also hed several PACA, Participatory Assessment for Community Action, sessions which helped us to pinpoint some needs of the community.  I really enjoyed doing this, all the women participated and were eager to discuss both positive and negative aspects of the community.  We found out that children often suffer from diarrheal diseases, so in an upcoming session we will be making liquid soap and talking about the importance of hand washing- with soap!  Additionally, women were concerned about a lack of edile leaves for making sauce.  The reason why was because the insects came and routinely ate all the leaves.  So, to address this problem we are making some natural pesticides using things like garilc, neem leaves (neem is tree whose leaves and seed can be used as a natural pesticide) piment (spicy peppers) and soap.  All these resources can be found in our village, which makes making them easier and more accessible.

Well, that's all for now!  Time to work on Farm to Market.  I hope you enjoy the picturesm check them out!  Until next time, hope you are enjoying summer!

Making pommade!