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News from the Keweenaw Peninsula January 10, 2007  Text © 2007 Michele Anderson and Amber Kenny. Photos © 2005 and 2006 Amber Kenny. Reprinted with permission.

MTU Master's International Peace Corps Volunteer returns after service in Togo

By Michele Anderson

HOUGHTON -- As a Peace Corps Volunteer in Michigan Tech's Master's International in Forestry program, Amber Lily Kenny of Houghton, a graduate of the University of Michigan in environmental policy and anthropology, did not expect she'd spend most of her first year in Africa helping Togolese farmers raise bush rats. Amber took over the project begun by the Peace Corps volunteer she replaced in the remote West African village of Agodokpe in Francophone Togo. The farmers raise these animals in order to increase the protein in their own diet and to sell the meat for profit. 

"It's a really good project and very useful for the farmers involved," Amber said.

Peace Corps Volunteer Amber Lily Kenny of Houghton enjoys a Togolese dish of fufu and bush rat sauce. (Photo © 2005 Amber Kenny)

Bush rat is an expensive meat in Togo and a delicacy served both at home and at village festivals. The success of her bush rat project helped Amber gain the farmers' respect, and she soon began the project related to her forestry studies at Michigan Tech: a community-initiated forest preserve which she designed and implemented in a remote region of southern Togo which has no real forests.

Bush rats from Amber Kenny's Peace Corps project are eaten as a delicacy in Togo. The project helped the local village economy. (Photo © 2005 Amber Kenny)

"I proposed planting trees people could use in the short and long term," Amber noted. "The fruit trees would produce in four years, while species such as teak could be used in 20 years and long-term timber species (such as African mahogany) would be available in 40 to 60 years."

Amber's idea was to have the community participate in establishing income-generating plantations for economic gain as well as planting trees for their intrinsic value.

"I really wanted to have a forest -- trees for the sake of trees," Amber explained. "When I pitched the idea to the village chief, he was immediately supportive. He said, 'Of course you have my support. We need a place to preserve the land for our children.'" 

Amber explains a tree project to her friend, Holly Martin, also of Houghton, who came to visit. Working with Amber on the project is her counterpart, Benoît Adza (standing next to Holly) a farmer who acted as a volunteer liaison between Amber and the community. (Photo © 2006 Amber Kenny)

The wealthiest man in the village donated a hectare of land, and Amber obtained funds through a Peace Corps grant program for seedlings for this forest. The men cleared the land, the women transported water and the children transported the seedlings.

"Everyone in the village was part of it," Amber said with pride.

Another one of Amber's projects was her farm team, an agricultural club for secondary students. She taught them techniques such as bio-intensive gardening and agroforestry -- including trees in agricultural systems to help enrich the soil and prevent erosion.

Teenagers from Peace Corps Volunteer Amber Kenny's agricultural club work in their bio-intensive garden. (Photo © 2005 Amber Kenny)

Amber also held awareness training sessions for village teenagers to discuss such issues as the importance of going to school (the local practice of child trafficking may prevent or delay some children's schooling), AIDS prevention and other health concerns.

Amber noted her smaller projects helped her determine which local people she could depend on for big projects. Communication was essential: Amber conducted all her work in French or in Ewe, the local language. She also had the help of her counterpart, Benoît Adza, a farmer who acted as a volunteer liaison between Amber and the community.

Carrying items on their heads in the traditional way, young women from Peace Corps Volunteer Amber Kenny's environmental club return from working in their garden. (Photo © 2005 Amber Kenny)

In her two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer, Amber's projects involved five villages totaling a population of about 2,000 people within a radius of nine kilometers (about five miles) -- with a bicycle as her chief means of transportation.

"The Peace Corps Director, Gaddi Vasquez, came to my village," Amber noted. "It can take three to six hours to get there (from the capital, Lomé) depending on road conditions. He was shocked at the lack of transportation for volunteers in remote places. He changed the rule so PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) could ride on motorcycles as passengers only."

Amber's village was in an area where the closest electricity was 35 km away. It had no running water.

"It's one of the more remote Peace Corps posts in Togo," she said.

The remoteness didn't prevent Amber's sister Emily, 22, from visiting Amber in the village last summer.  After graduating from the University of Michigan, Emily Kenny began studying at the Michigan State University School of Medicine this past fall. Amber writes about Emily’s visit in an email she sent to friends in early September 2006. Below is an excerpt from Amber's letter:

Emily comes to village

By Amber Kenny

I tend to plow on through and do things without necessarily thinking them through while Em is methodical and plans (I suspect this why I have broken five bones in my life and she has zero). So of course little frustrations arose -- me waiting on Emily’s slowness and Emily putting up with my not explaining everything thoroughly.

Luckily we have the same sense of humor and got to share some interesting village experiences together. Oh yeah, one more difference between us. Emily is seriously, deathly, and hysterically afraid of spiders. On the first day in village I was surprised at how fast Em adapted to village life -- bucket showers, latrine, 50 screaming children trying to touch you. However, when Emily first entered the kitchen she immediately screamed and ran out. On the wall there was a small/medium spider. She refused to enter until I "eradicate the pestilence."

Emily Kenny learns to pound fufu during her visit to her sister Amber in Togo. (Photo © 2006 Amber Kenny)

After I disposed of the spider, Emily and I ate a delicious dinner of corn and boiled peanuts from my friend's field (the corn is one step up from feed corn, but I love the stuff). While we're eating a chicken starts furiously squawking in the distance. Emily asks half jokingly, "My God, are they killing that chicken?!" "Squawk squawk squaaaa" -- The chicken is silenced mid-squawk. As our very similar brown eyes (hers just a titch more green) look at each other’s reactions, I see I don’t need to answer that question. I hold back the unnecessary comment of, "at least it wasn’t a pig, that’s much worse"; and we continue eating in silence.

2 a.m. rolls around and I can’t sleep (I’m already an insomniac and the malaria prophylaxis exacerbates the problem). Emily is profoundly, disgustingly sound asleep. I decide if I can’t sleep then she shouldn’t either. I wake her up, and she unhappily decides to use the latrine. Once back in the house, she calmly announces, "Amber, there is a very large spider on the wall" and then doesn’t move. I, fed up with her arachnophobia, exclaim, "Oh honestly, Emily, you don’t even know what the big spiders here look like!!… Emily?" Complete silence. I look at Emily -- she is inanimate. I approach the wall, and my sister screams as if her soul is being sucked out and runs outside. I look and see the biggest spider I have ever seen in Togo, possibly in my life. I won’t write about the commotion that followed, but after an intense battle I managed to kill the evil eight-legged creature. Emily came back inside, but the adrenaline was running so high we couldn’t fall back to sleep for two hours. We were both insomniacs after that.

Later in the week I help Emily conduct a health study (my genius little sister is in med school right now) on a disease known locally as "Kuku." Most young children here have swollen bellies due to malnutrition and worms. Sometimes when they develop a fever and a really swollen stomach, it becomes kuku. The traditional cure is to eat a ground-up root called, "monkeys eat it to get fat," cut the stomach in a pattern of scars and then rub a mélange of egg white, kitchen roof soot, and a white onion on the cuts.

Children from Amber Kenny's village in Togo pose for a photo. (Photo © 2006 Amber Kenny)

Amber's research, future plans

Amber Kenny is now back in Houghton finishing her Master's Degree in forestry at Michigan Tech.

"I'm organizing data and researching the subject of costs and benefits of growing teak, a timber species, versus growing subsistence crops, for the small landowner."

Blair Orr, MTU professor of Forest Economics and coordinator of International Programs in the School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, is happy with Amber's Peace Corps work.

"Togo is one of the poorest countries in the world and a tough place to live and work," Orr said. "Amber really did a great job, not only in the work she accomplished in the village but in her personal commitment to the community. The person-to-person contact is an important aspect of Peace Corps, letting people from different cultures learn about each other. Once you start to understand a culture it also makes it easier to work with people on development projects that are really appropriate for their community." 

After finishing her thesis, Amber hopes to go to Washington, D.C., as a step toward returning to West Africa to work in another aspect of international development.

"I liked being in Peace Corps because I was a really good volunteer," Amber said. "It was an amazing experience, but it was designed as a two-year program of service. There comes a point where you outgrow the job and want to do more."

Amber says being a Peace Corps Volunteer helps a person in learning to adapt to difficult situations and in developing self-confidence.

"You really learn about your own capabilities," Amber notes. "You can really change things. You're not going to change the whole country, but you can better the lives of individuals."

Go to Page 2 to read about some of Amber's experiences with cultural differences.