YOVO: Experiences of West Africa

by Kiana Frick

Kiana, a 17-year-old from Long Island, NY, spent 6 weeks living with an African family and helping at an orphanage in Togo, Africa. She blogged her experiences. Her book is relatively short: 25 pages. All money received will be donated to African orphanages.

Her experiences -- and Africa -- come alive. It's an amazing report, and frankly, everyone should read it. She describes beauty, misery, joy, problems, learning and growing, frustrations, understanding.

"If I can help here, great. But if all I take from this experience is understanding... that’s still great. I will bring an ounce of understanding home to an America which is really very ignorant about this place. People know there is poverty. But also there is generosity, there are political problems, there is culture, there are jokes, there is a different way of interacting and viewing the world."

Her book is available at Smashwords for $1.99.

Yovo, yovo, bon soir, ca va bien? Merci. [White person, white person, good day. How are you? Thank you.] Togolese Children’s Chant

The following is the start (or an excerpt) from each section.

Next Stop: Togo!

Togo is a small country in West Africa. I will work at the Mercy Children's Home. It has no address. (There are no addresses and very few street names.)

Not in Kansas Anymore

New York, Long Island, Montpellier -- anywhere I have been in my life -- is nothing like here. I feel like I have learned more about life in two days here than I have in my entire life.

Sick and Culture Shock

Culture shock is having to mentally prepare yourself to walk down to the street. It's when there is nothing at all that comes close to resembling anything you know. It's when walking up to a shop to buy a bottle of water is a daunting task. It’s when "rush hour" includes a moto driver with four (live) goats strapped on the back. How did he even do that?

To Understand

Last week there was a strike and the children did not have school on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. The teachers were striking because the government was not paying the whole salary that they were supposed to. Instead of paying, the government announced the next Monday morning that there simply would not be school. It’s unclear how long this will last.

I can’t imagine this kind of thing ever happening between our government and public schools. But if it did, I can imagine how excited the eight-year-old would be and how the 15-year-olds would say “sweet” and watch TV all day. Here, the kids are very sad. They like school (even though their schools have NOTHING close to the conditions of our amazing US schools) and some are protesting.

Kpalimé

Imagine the car-racing video games where you swerve to get around other cars. Where cows cross the road in front of you, where there are no rules, and where you try not to crash and die. Okay, that’s all real in the African bush, traveling to Kpalimé and back.

...The waterfall itself was magical.

Where Your Clothes Go

When I ride a motorcycle and the driver’s T-shirt says “Jim’s Pizza”, I can’t help but be amazed.

That shirt was probably made in a sweatshop in Asia, ordered online by Jim, a pizzeria owner in a small town in Iowa. Teenager Matthew wore it for 2 summers at his part-time job, then left it in his closet when he went off to school. Mom cleans out his stuff a couple months later and donates all his clothes to a thrift shop. The thrift shop takes out the nicer brand name items but knows it won’t sell a T-shirt with a pizza shop name on it, so they sell it in bulk for pennies on the pound to some international company.

I don’t really know the shipping, but somehow it ends up in a market here. My motodriver buys it -- a great, cool, yellow-and-red shirt, with English words -- and wears it for the next three years. Then it is has holes and stains, so he gives it to an orphanage. After years there, being worn by child after child, it is eventually turned into rags.

Grand Marché

Can you imagine, at the intersection of Nichols Road and 25A (or pick a large multi-lane intersection) that, when the cars and motos stop for a red light, 20 people descend in among the cars to try to sell, through the windows, everything from papaya on a stick to wallets to brooms. No, of course you can’t imagine that at your local first-world intersection, because that’s dangerous and just weird. But this is Africa and that is the intersection closest to my house. (Intersections with stoplights -- rather than just lots of “stop for me” honking -- are rare.)

Church: Togo Style

I took up an invitation from the girls at my orphanage to attend church with them. If my goal here is to experience another culture, gain understanding about another way of life, and forge international relations, I could not have made a better choice of how to spend the day.

Frustrations Francais

It’s funny, sometimes, learning French in Africa. Not only is the style different but there are word gaps. For instance the book my teacher uses is a very old French picture book with cartoon pictures of little white boys and girls playing, getting gifts, being mischievous, etc. When we talk about the pictures in order to increase my vocabulary, we often run into words that neither of us knows. My teacher has grown up in Togo, next to the equator. Why would he know the word for mantle, toboggan, or sleet?

My Joy, My Kids

...And I play and play with the smallest child, who is not old enough for school. We practice counting numbers together with the bad pieces of rice, or we play “ou est Assan?” (his version of hide and seek). On a very special day I bring a balloon for him to toss around, squealing in laughter, until it pops and I have to explain that it is finished, I cannot blow up the little fragments of plastic into a new balloon. His little voice giggling “tata, tata kiana” (Aunt Kiana) and the image of him running to me arms open will be with me the rest of my life.

A Cold Glass of Milk Would Be Nice Right Now

Togo is teaching me flexibility and patience. It’s a daily requirement, and to be honest, I think I have gotten a lot better at it. But not quite good enough to handle a day like today...

Togo Stuff

I'm ready to be home... but I'm also not ready to leave, because I am finally just figuring it all out. On my first day here, I remember just staring out windows: the window of my bedroom as soon as I woke up, the window of the car as we drove around town on my introduction... just staring and staring, trying to comprehend that I was really, truly here -- in this place so foreign, exotic, and intimidating. I never imagined that after one month I would be as comfortable as I am walking in the streets, waving to children who scream “yovo, yovo!”, negotiating taxi prices, and eating fufu....

Home

The first few days back, my emotions were a roller coaster. There was an initial "high" to being home. A peaceful, air-conditioned, quiet car ride in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Long Island Expressway; jumping into my bed; going to the fully stocked and gigantic grocery store; showing off my hair. But it wore off fast. It got very difficult to talk about Africa. What do you say when you have been gone for four months, been all over the world, changed as a person, seen a million things, met amazing people, and lived another life?

...And I became a "downer" in more than one conversation. Poverty isn't a fun topic...

Life here felt (and continues to feel) so strange. Hollow in some way. While I call Africa "another world," it felt in many ways much more real of a world. As if there was more purpose there, more to life, more vibrancy. I have decided this difference is a result of two things...