Bonsoir!!!

Now that I have finally succeeded in reaching this website again (much more difficult than other websites for whatever reason), I've decided to dispense with my dry updates of what I'm doing (especially since that hasn't changed that much since my last posting) and will instead focus on my brilliant observations about Togo, starting with the tradition of greetings here.

People here are very tied to going through a series of traditional greetings, which are usually done in whatever local language they speak but are also done in French when speaking with either foreigners or those who speak a different tribal/local language.

I and my fellow trainees first noticed this when we got to our training site and no matter what time of day it was, we were often greeted by complete strangers with "Bonsoir," which really means good evening but is used anytime after noon or even earlier depending on the French skill of the person speaking (instead of "bonjour," which one would normally say throughout most of the day). This is often followed by "bonne arriveé," which is I guess the opposite of "bon voyage" and basically means welcome, but after almost 4 months in Sokodé, I still get it. Since obviously I'm not from Togo, I must have just arrived, so therefore people still say this. Because people are quite friendly and I'm in a big city, my walk to work or downtown can involve saying "bonsoir" not only to the 10 or so people I pass every day on my walk but 20 or more strangers I might happen to walk by, which is very odd coming from a fairly big city in the U.S. where you'd be considered crazy or a possible criminal if you started saying hello to every random stranger you passed by on your walk to the store or the metro or wherever.

Another less appealing part of the greetings one gets is to be called white, either in French: sometimes the gramatically incorrect "le blanc" (that's for a man), the correct but annoying "la blanche" or in a local language: "anasara" here in Sokodé or "yovo" in other parts of the country, like our training site. The yovo greeting even had its own song, mostly sung by children, which was "yovo, yovo, bonsoir, donnez-moi de l'argent, MERCI!!!!" or, white person hello, give me money, thanks (hey, at least they say thanks). And here I also get "anasara, yovo, yovo," which I guess is like white, white, white, the point of which I really don't understand but I hear it a lot from kids. I've been trying to stop this by telling people, either in my very basic Cotokoli (the local language here) or French that my name is not white, it's Rachel, and I've had some success. Some Togolese tell me the reason you get called white is people (children generally) want to talk to you and don't know your name so they just call you white person. So I'm hoping my strategy works. Or I just ignore it if I'm too lazy to tell each and every person who calls me that (and it can be a lot in any given day) not to do so.

The greetings here in Cotokoli are much more elaborate and entertaining. Generally one starts with either hello or welcome, and there are different welcomes depending on whether you're local (noday) or have made a long journey (gabtay). This can be repeated numerous times, and the response is Ya, like the German yes. So it could go something like: "gabtay," "ya," "gabtay," "ya," etc. up to five or six repeats of this. Then there are quite a few questions about how various things are, including your "effort," your work, your house, your family, your spouse, your kids, the market (since many people sell things they've grown or made at local markets), etc., etc. Each time you're asked this, you say, fine, which is "a la feeah." After all of these greetings, sometimes people then just go back and forth with these sort of grunts like "eh" quite a few times, which to me is just hilarious, since I don't really get what it means or when people know when to stop going "eh," "eh," "eh," back and forth. I finally asked one of my Cotokoli teachers what this was about and she said it was an effort to match the rhythms of traditional dances. But it's still totally alien to me, though quite fascinating to watch.

Well, that's about it on the greetings. I'm supposed to be going to Lomé in a little over a week at the Peace Corps office supposedly has great new computers that one can easily use to post photos so I promise to try posting so pictures the next time I update this. That also means I have to remember to take pictures of lots of things I've been lazy about photographing, like my house, Sokodé, the various places I've been working, etc. Hopefully this visit to Lomé will motivate me to do that.

Until then, as they say in Sokodé, belahbihtahsah, or bonsoir, or bye bye (yes, they say that here too).....