You've got mail.

Greetings all! I've received quite a few questions on how one

can/should send packages to me in Togo. In all honestly, I've dragged

my feet a bit because I don't feel like I really "need" anything from

the states, and I would also people rather donate to the numerous

Peace Corps projects happening all over the world that could use

funding (including my own projects, eventually…) See link:

That being said, here is a list** of some things I feel would be

"nice" to have (in no particular order):

• Magazines (Newsweek, Time, Vanity Fair, People, Popular Science,
• Vogue France, GQ, Alcalde, etc.)
• Cotton t-shirts (size medium, V or crew neck) I like Gap brand!
• Pants (Jeans, khakis, linen, etc.) 32/32, standard or slim fit
• Trail Mix/Ajil/Plain Almonds
• Chicken/Tuna/Beef/Bacon Packets (in water, not oil)
• Cat toys, medicine, flea collars
• Crystal Light Packets (any flavor)
• New Media (Movies [DVDs/Flashdrives], Music, Books)
• Printed Pictures
• Greeting Cards/Letters
• Condiments (small packets or bottles. i.g, soy sauce, salsa, BBQ sauce, honey, relish, etc.)
• Cologne samples (YSL "L'Homme" preferred.)
• News Paper Clippings
• Dried Meats
• Tea Mixes (Sadaf, Green, Pomegranate, etc.)
• Dried Fruits
• Parmesan Cheese Powder
• Anything "quickdry" (underwear, towels, shirts, socks, etc.)
• Peanut M&Ms
• Hair Products (shampoo/conditioner, serum, wax, etc.)
• Cetaphil Soap Bars (Antibacterial version)
• Artisan Italian Soup Mixes
• Granola Bars
• Electric hair trimmer (battery powered would be best!)
• Cake Mixes ("Anything that just requires Milk, Eggs, or Oil added.")

** This list of items are merely suggestions, you can send anything

you want; The weirder the better! I recently received a self-therapy

checklist and it's actually pretty neat!

 

Now, let's discuss ways to send things to Togo! There are few ways to

do it, from what I've seen other volunteers receive. International

flat rate shipping via USPS is the most common way people receive

mail. UPS and DHL are costly and inefficient. USPS offers different

flat rate envelopes and boxes, the latter being much more expensive.

Also, any "box" that comes to our P.O. boxes at the post office cost

us about $2 to retrieve. It's not much, but it's easily avoidable by

sending the smaller "medium size" flat rate envelopes. These envelopes

can be filled with most things, and they only cost in-between $13 -

$18 USD to mail to Togo. The medium flat rate envelopes can hold

2-4lbs. The boxes come in various sizes as well, but can cost almost

three times as much. For example, my mother has sent me a few medium

sized flat rate boxes, each at around $45 USD each, and they each

weighed around 16-20lbs. In all honesty, I think after the standard

shipping boxes you can mail almost any size package to this country,

it just costs A LOT!

 

Letters and other documents can be sent quite cheaply as well at

around $2-8 USD. If all you are sending is magazines/letters, you can

ask the postal worker to mail it as "media mail," which often times

reduces the rate of postage. This only works for packages containing

ONLY media.

 

Again, my address is:
 
Ryan Omide Aghabozorg PCV

Corps de la Paix

B.P. 224, Sokodé

TOGO (West Africa)

 

The most important thing is that you write "Corps de la Paix" under my

name and also clearly write TOGO on the package. On more than one

occasion packages have gone to TONGA in Australia only to make it back

to Togo months after the person originally sent it. Also, I should

mention that I don't really know much about buying insurance for the

package. I've heard that it costs extra money when the package passes

through customs in Lomé, but I'm not entirely sure. When in doubt, do

not insure the package. I know that is disheartening and slightly

counterintuitive, but I've only heard of a few cases of packages being

lost or stolen in transit. It is common, however, for packages to be

opened upon arrival for inspection. More times than not, packages it

make it – eventually.

 

Here are some more general tips for mailing things to Togo:

•All liquids need to be made COMPLETELY spill proof. If something in

the packages leaks, the chances that I will never get it rise

astronomically.

•Writing phrases like "God Bless", "Allah Akbar", "Dieu Vous Blessez,"

etc. increases the chances of a packages safe delivery. I've also

heard that using red ink makes things look more "official" and less

likely to be intercepted/opened. Religious symbols are also a nice

touch.

•Sending flash drives or anything super valuable is often difficult

because packages do get opened and people definitely take things that

look valuable. Your best bet is to hide it in something inconspicuous.

For example, one of my friend's mother used to send her $100 bills in

tampon boxes. She would carefully open the tampon, remove the filler,

replace it with the cash, glue the package closed and place it back in

the original box. I'm not saying that is the best way to do things,

but being creative helps. When in doubt, think like a secret agent. Ha

ha! :P

Happy New Years!

Greetings everyone from Badou, Togo! I know it has been almost two
months since I posted a blog post, but as part of my new years
resolution, I am writing more. My goal is just to write, not
necessarily blogs or letters, just writing (that being said, hopefully
you can expect more blogs and letters from me about my life.) Today is
the last day of my holiday "mini-vacation" and tomorrow I will be
going back to my post in Sokodé. I spent the Christmas holiday in
Lomé, the capital of Togo with my friends Becky and Martin hanging out
and enjoying the small luxuries the capital city had to offer. Lomé is
a difficult place to be in for many reasons (it's polluted, expensive,
and slightly dangerous) but it is the only place in Togo where you can
experience small tastes of home.

On Christmas day my boss invited all the volunteers to his house for a
Hawaiian-themed Christmas party with a bunch of other ex-pats and
embassy workers. Becky and I were the only two volunteers that showed
up, but I still had a blast. I drank alcohol out of a pineapple for
the first time in my life (it was so delicious!), ate a roasted pig,
and gorged myself on ice cream and brownies. All-in-all, it was a good
Christmas (did I mention it was a pool party? Yes, yes it was.)

For the next two days Becky, Martin, and I spent our days hanging out
at the beach and eating dinner at good restaurants. The only "good"
beach in Togo is a private beach called Coco Beach. It is kind of hard
to get too since you have to drive through the over-crowded port of
Lomé, but once you're there it's like another world. We swam in a
clean pool and frolicked on the semi-clean beach – it was a nice break
from the torrid humidity of Lomé. In the evenings, we sampled the best
cuisine Lomé has to offer, which isn't much per say, but there is some
good Lebanese food to be found, as well as decent pizza. Another perk
of being in Lomé is using the internet! Our Peace Corps office has a
volunteer lounge with a bunch of books and wifi! I mean, we are
talking about dial-up/slow DSL speeds, but none-the-less I was able to
skype with my mom and brother and some other friends. It was so great
to see them after 7 months!

The next day, I went with my friend Kate to visit our friend Veronica
in her village of Kovié. I really like visiting my friends in small
villages because it gives me the chance to experience that side of
this Peace Corps experience. Hanging out in village has it perks, but
my favorite part is that people are actually somewhat interested in
who you are and where you come from. At my post, in Sokodé, I'm always
just "another yovo (foreigner)" which is partly due to the fact that
there are a lot of other white people running around the city. Well,
not a lot, but enough. And also, living in a city means that people
don't feel the same sense of large community as you do in village.
Anyways, it was just fun to hang out and walk around the village
scaring little kids and practicing local languages. The best part is
though when walking around a village and realizing that this is your
job, just to be there. I have a pretty awesome job. Oh, Veronica, Kate
and myself also played a really cool game called "Settelers of Katan!"
I am slightly obsessed with it now. I also hear there is a travel
sized edition? *hint hint*

After two days in Kovié, Veronica and I headed up to Badou to visit
our friend Vanessa. Badou is a small city nestled in the mountains of
the plateau region of Togo. They export a lot of the countries coffee
and cocoa from this region and it's just a beautiful place to be. On
the last day of the year, we hiked up to seek the Akola falls, which
was just breath taking. I realized that it had been quite some time
since I simply marveled at something…and boy, did I marvel. The
45-minute hike itself to the falls was quite nice because it was
through a tropical jungle littered with birds and butterflies. I was
really hoping to see a monkey, but our guide said that they had been
poached away from the area almost 20 years ago. We ended up spending
the entire afternoon hanging out in the falls, taking pictures, eating
lunch, and chatting with our guide. It was one of the best days I've
had in Togo thus far.

The rest of our time in Badou was spent fêting, and by fêting, I MEAN
fêting (side note: fêter means to party in French.) In order to greet
the new year properly, we made a fabulous dinner of bean burgers and
pineapple upside down cake, cracked open a nice box of wine, and
listened to some good music. This was my first New Years away from
home and I would definitely consider it a success. The best part is
though, that for the Togolese, the party continues for at least 3
days. We were invited for so many lunches and dinners and
"just-because" meals I've already lost count. All I can say with
absolute certainty is that I am going to need a dietary vacation after
3 days full of starch and carbs. *blegh* Togolese food is growing on
me though, fufu especially. While it has a funny name, fufu is a
typical West African style dish of pounded ingame, manioc, taro, or
potato with a spicy tomato based sauce. There are many variations of
the sauce with some being based on okra, sesame, or just simply palm
oil, and the protein involved can vary as well. I think my favorite
dish in this country is ingame (kinda like a sweet potato) fufu with
spicy peanut sauce and wagash. Wagash is probably also one of my
favorite things here. It is a fermented cheese made from cow's milk
that vaguely resembles mozzarella. My friend Lizzy learned how to make
it from her Fulani friends (the Fulani are a nomadic tribe that live
throughout West Africa. They are colorful and obviously have a rich
cultural makeup, but they are often stigmatized in Togolese society
for "harboring" diseases and not learning the official language.)
Anyway, wagash is delicious, even though it has a funny name.

Tomorrow I will be heading back to Sokodé, after being gone for a week
and half. I miss my cat and my house and my volunteer friends in my
cluster, which in my opinion is a good sign. I consider Sokodé to be
home now and while it took me quite some time to feel comfortable
there, I finally do. I feel confident that this will be a defining
year for me both personally and in terms of my career. I am going back
to some solid partnerships (well, at least I hope they are solid) that
I've developed over the past 5 months with various NGOs in Togo. ATBEF
(L'Association Togolaise pour le Bien-être Familiale aka Planned
Parenthood) is going to be my primary work partner with whom I will
continue doing presentations and workshops on various health topics. I
also hope to be trained on how to do HIV/AIDS counseling for youth who
come in to do testing. Espoir Vie Togo (EVT) is another NGO who I will
hopefully work with to plan my regions Camp Espoir, of which I am the
national programming intern. Camp Espoir is an American sleep-away
camp for Togolese children infected and affected by HIV/AIDS and EVT
is my primary counterpart for work with this population. Other
projects I am starting up include a health club with some middle
school students at the school my old site mate Katy Kientz built as
well as a weekly life skills class for a group of vocational students
(apprentices) who work for tailors and hairdressers. In January we
also have a Peace Corps training called "Project Development and
Management" which means that all the volunteers from my training class
will get another chance to get together, hang out, swap stories, and
maybe learn a thing or two in the process. This training will also be
held with a Togolese counterpart of our choice. I am bringing my
official homologue from the Red Cross because I think both of us are
still a little unsure of what it means to work together. The Red Cross
Togo is a massive organization with solid funding and staffing, so I
am still trying to figure out what the best way is to work with them.
All in all January promises to be a great month! I am excited to see
what this year will bring!

I've also resolved to read more this year since the massive amount of
down time in the Peace Corps lends itself well towards becoming a
well-read individual, something which I have yet to fully capitalize
on. I am currently finishing up the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo series
and I am starting Reading Lolita in Tehran, (something I have always
wanted to read) The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and
Mountains Beyond Mountains. I'm not sure if these are pre-requisite
books to becoming a "well-read" individual, but it's a start.  I'm
always open to suggestions!

I hope everyone has enjoyed their holiday season and with a New Year
upon us I am continually reminded of the importance of not only our
daily choices but also our attitude towards the outcomes based on our
choices. I am living in Africa and enjoying (almost) every second of
it, and while everything happens for a reason, I am so happy with my
decision to come here. (That is my story and I am sticking to it, ha
ha! Please feel free to remind me when I complain about how hot it is
here, or the lack of infrastructure, etc.) I want to wish everyone
back home a Happy New Years and I love you all very much!

Love love.