Tick, tick, tick...

5 days till I leave for Staging (Stateside Peace Corps orientation) in Philadelphia… tick, tick, tick.

I leave for Togo, West Africa, in a little over a week, where I will be serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I will be in the Community Health Expansion and AIDS Prevention (CHAP) working as a Health and AIDS Prevention Extension Agent. I wonder everyday, and will probably continue to wonder, how my International Relations and History degree has prepared me for this. For now, my primary duties are to health services management improvement, community health promotion, heath education, and youth education on population issues and AIDS/STI prevention. Hopefully I will be able to also start a small side project working with young women. For the next three months I will be in Pre-Service Training (PST), which includes lots of language classes and job training, and in December will officially be swore in as a Peace Corps Volunteer!

Below is a little information about Togo. I won’t know where my post is until November, so for now I’m learning as much as I can about the whole country.

Please please please keep me updated on your lives. Write, email, smoke signal… anything. I can promise now that I will respond to every postmarked letter! Ask any of my age old pen pals, I am good at the letter writing deal. Hopefully my next post won’t be too far away, and from Togo!

TOGO

Population: 5.1 million (UN, 2005)

Capital: Lome

Area: 56,785 sq km (21,925 sq miles)

Major languages: French (official), local languages

Major religions: Indigenous beliefs, Christianity, Islam

Life expectancy: 52 years (men), 56 years (women) (UN)

Monetary unit: 1 CFA (Communaute Financiere Africaine) franc = 100 centimes

Main exports: Cocoa, phosphates, coffee, cotton

GNI per capita: US $350 (World Bank, 2006)

AT-A-GLANCE

Politics: President Faure Gnassingbe succeeded his father in a manner condemned internationally. Opposition-government reconciliation talks are under way, but progress appears slow

Economy: Togo is among the world's poorest countries. Isolation has further aggravated its weak economy

International: Togo faces international pressure to hold credible parliamentary elections and improve its human rights record. Thousands who fled 2005 election violence remain in Benin