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The following is an excerpt from a letter we recently received from Alaffia. We hope your read about the good work Alaffia is doing in Togo, made a reality by your purchases of their shea butter products in our body care section.
Dear Friends of Alaffia,
It is my hope that this recap of my
recent visit to Togo finds you and your family in good health.
I also would like to wish you a happy new year. It has been a week
now since Rose, our girls and I returned from a six-week visit with
our cooperative in Togo, and I still find myself disoriented and
having difficulties adjusting to speaking and writing in English….
This return has been one of the most emotionally difficult ones as
well. I cannot stop seeing the faces of the disadvantaged people that
I encountered and those that our efforts have touched. In the
following paragraphs, I would like to share with you some highlights
of the activities that Rose and I participated in during the past six
weeks.
New Coconut Cooperative
We
spend our first ten days in southern Togo, where we are building a
new coconut cooperative and forming a collective of women to work at
the new cooperative. It brought great memories to me of when I
started our Sokodé shea butter cooperative eight years ago. I
remember the doubt in the women’s eyes, and I saw similar
uncertainty in the new coconut collective members. We believe
that in the months to come, this doubt will be transformed to pride
and empowerment as it has for the women of the shea butter
cooperative. Our new coconut cooperative will officially open the
first week of March and will provide work for over 200 women.
We then headed north to Sokodé,
where we spend most of the remaining time with the shea butter
cooperative and community project areas. Here are some highlights of
our activities in and around Sokodé:
Additional Cooperative
Members – Shea Butter Cooperative
There is not a day that
goes by that there are not a dozen women waiting at our cooperative
door, asking to be added to the cooperative. Every day that we
walk from our house to the cooperative is emotional and frustrating
for me… having women my mother’s age begging me for an
opportunity at the cooperative. And every day, I have to explain that
the cooperative has a recruitment process, and of all these women,
the cooperative can only add what we can afford. This year, we
held a registration day for women interested in joining the
cooperative. This day was heartbreaking; while several hundred women
came to us to express interest in joining, we will only be able to
add 47 women this year.
New Alaffia School Inauguration
- Kouloumi
For the first time, Alaffia has commissioned and
constructed a secondary school. We built this school in
Kouloumi, a village located 40 kilometers from our cooperative.
Although Kouloumi is located on a main road, and has a population of
3,000, there is no electricity or running water. While the Togo
government provided Kouloumi with a secondary school director and
teachers, it did not provide them with a school. Six years ago, the
villagers constructed a simple building to hold the classes, but it
did not have walls or a good roofing system, and when it rained, the
water poured into the school, and students were often sent home.
Also, because the school is on the outskirts of the village, snakes
and other animals constantly entered the building, causing
interruptions and making learning difficult. For the past three
years, Alaffia has been providing Kouloumi with desks, and during our
2010 visit to the school, their headmaster, Mr. Ganiyou, asked for
help building a school in order to reduce the dropout rate and
improve the learning experience for his students. Although
Alaffia had not undertaken such a large project for one village
before, I replied that I would do everything I could to build
Kouloumi a school. Construction began in March 2011, and was
fully completed by Dec 15. The inauguration day was emotional,
where the village chief, government representatives and students all
expressed their joy and many words of thanks.
New Excision Community Project
- Kabou
For many years, I have lived with an unpleasant image
in my mind of witnessing my older half-sister undergoing excision
(female circumcision) when I was six years old. At the time I
was asked to bring bowls of warm water back and forth from the
kitchen to the room where the excision was taking place. Ever since,
there is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of the pain my
sister must have gone through. Fast forward to December 2010, when my
youngest sister, Ibada, was finalizing her midwife studies. She
was stationed at a small clinic in Kabou, about 85 kilometers from
Sokodé, and told me the most difficult part of her training in Kabou
was delivering babies from women who have under gone excision.
The pain these women go through to birth their children is
indescribable, and unfortunately, they make up the majority of women
who die during childbirth. At the time of our
discussion, I told Ibada that we would launch a new project aimed at
aiding these women during pregnancy and childbirth and also a
community education program to reduce excision all together.
Last month, Ibada joined Alaffia as our new Community Projects
Coordinator, and we began this project.
We spent a week
getting preliminary authorization from the Togolese health officials
in the region. Even though the practice is still widespread in some
of Togo's nomadic communities, as far as the Togo government is
concerned, excision no longer occurs. We obtained authorization
for Alaffia to take charge of full medical care for 300 excised
pregnant women during 2012. This means that Alaffia will not
only pay for all medical cost if there are complications, but will
also coordinate between the women and the clinic so that
transportation is available to bring the women to larger hospitals if
complicated surgeries are needed.
This project will be
one of the most sensitive and difficult that we have ever taken on,
as it is a very socially sensitive and medically challenging topic.
According to Mamatou Kegbao, the Head Midwife of Kabou, 1 in every 10
women who come to her clinic for maternal care has undergone
excision, but most women who have undergone this procedure do not
ever come to the clinic. This compounds this issue, since it means
Alaffia will have to visit their homes to encourage them to come to
the clinic for care and delivery. As challenging as this will
be, I believe if Alaffia truly stands for women's empowerment, then
we must do everything necessary to prevent unnecessary suffering of
these mothers in central Togo.
During our visit to the
Kabou clinic, we also distributed some basic medical supplies, and we
are planning to make another shipment to them by July. One of
the most disturbing things that Ms. Kegbao brought to our attention
was that the clinic has very limited surgical and birthing supplies.
Therefore if there are two women giving birth at the same time, the
second one may have to wait while the equipment is sterilized.
Therefore, they have to make the difficult decision of losing a baby
by forcing the mother to wait or risk exposing the mother and child
to HIV by using unsterilized equipment. This is not a decision that
any person should have to make.
Distributing Bicycles and
Desks
The bikes that we shipped last fall arrived in Togo
during our visit, and I spent a great deal of time clearing the
container through Togolese customs. In the end, we spent over $7,000
on customs duties and fees, a.k.a. bribery, despite the fact that
they are intended for students free of charge to aid with their
education. After the bikes were cleared and arrived in Sokodé,
Rose and I participated in bicycle distributions in four villages.
The village of Kpalafoulassi stood out as it is a struggling
community made up of subsistence farmers. The nearest secondary
school is 7 km from Kpalafoulassi, and high school students (above
grade 11) must go 17 km. Regardless of these difficulties,
Kpalafoulassi manages to send an impressive number of students to
higher grades.
Furthermore, while
Kpalafoulassi does have a primary school, it only has three
classrooms for its six classes. And, since the Togo government
pays for only two teachers, the villagers pay for a third "volunteer"
teacher. This volunteer teacher, Mr. Planane Djannou, was
being paid only $11 a month to teach two grades. Since this is
obviously not a living wage, Mr. Djannou had to supplement his income
by farming – even during the school year. As part of our
education projects, Alaffia has decided to sponsor this teacher by
paying his full salary, $76 each month, for one year. In return, Mr.
Djannou will devote his whole time to teaching.
Community Project Goals &
Pledges for 2012
Conclusion
It is very sad for me
to see conditions worsening for poor people worldwide each year.
Even in Togo, we see increasing environmental degradation, economic
dominance by only a few people, political elitism, and increasing
population. I often ask myself if I can do enough. But after seeing
the few lives that our efforts touch, I feel even stronger that the
fight for social and economic justice for all disadvantaged people
must continue at all costs. It is a struggle that your support will
make feasible in the end. I am forever humble and grateful to be able
to give my life to such a cause, as the only way for my children and
their children to have peaceful lives on this earth is to care about
human life today.
Once again, thank you and have a
peaceful 2012,
Olowo-n’djo
Olowo-n’djo Tchala
Founder & Managing Director
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