Here are some pictures from my recent trip to Togo, West Africa. I had served there as a Peace Corps volunteer working in Girls’ Education and Empowerment from 2009 to 2011, and I returned to my village in the north of the country this summer to visit my friends and contacts. I’ve written journal-style updates…
Tag: travel
The Grand Ball of Europe
Le Grand Bal de l’Europe, the Grand Ball of Europe commonly known as “Gennetines,” is a folk dance festival held each summer at a farm outside of Moulins, France, about a 2 ½ hour train ride south of Paris. It features traditional dance forms, known as balfolk, from various regions of France and Europe, plus…
Return to Galápagos
The Galápagos Islands of Ecuador were my first international travel experience at the impressionable age of 19. Feeling stuck and discontent in the Ivory Tower, and with a burning itch to see what else was out there, I headed to the Galápagos as a volunteer ESL teacher with the program WorldTeach the summer after my…
Living History in Death Valley
I recently uncovered a video of one of the living history tours I led in Scotty’s Castle in Death Valley in 2002 during my time with the Student Conservation Association and had it digitized. I was acting as a made-up character from the year 1939.
GlobeSong 2: Tu Ase Turpa Ikavi
The second episode of my new YouTube series, GlobeSongs, is out. I’m discussing and singing the Georgian folk song, “Tu Ase Turpa Ikavi,” also known as “Satrpialo.” Enjoy, and let me know if you have any feedback on how to improve the series.
“Enough Stuff” Music Video
My daughter and I revisited the song “Enough Stuff” from my 2013 Who Are My People? album to try out more video editing and as an early celebration of Earth Day. I wrote the song in 2011 while serving as a Peace Corps Response volunteer in Benin, West Africa, and it was originally entitled “Waste”…
Notes on Democracy
Current national and world events have me looking at some of my writing from Azerbaijan and Togo in a new light. At the time, 2006–8 and 2009–11, I was serving, through the Peace Corps, as a representative of the great United States of America. I personally wasn’t sure the U.S. was all that great, but…
Ever Wanted to Join the Peace Corps? Now You Can—from Home!
For the first time in its history, Peace Corps has evacuated all volunteers from their posts and is temporarily suspending operations. On one hand, this is terrible, as it interrupts projects, severs relationships, and makes the greed, irrationality, and xenophobia of the Trump administration the face of America instead of open-minded and well-meaning volunteers. On…
Visiting a Catholic Mass in Togo
When I first arrived in Togo in September 2009 to begin my Peace Corps service in that country as a Girls’ Education and Empowerment volunteer, the other trainees and I stayed in Tsévié, a town twenty miles north of the capital, Lomé. Unlike the Northern, Lamba town of Kanté that would become my home for…
Setting a Match to our Own Garbage
While living in Togo, I had to learn what to do with garbage. There was no garbage pickup—of course in a place with no electricity or running water I hadn’t expected that—but somehow I was still surprised to learn that what I needed to to with any garbage I produced was go out into the…