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Coleen G. Anderson
Togo
May 2004
View Previous Submission by Coleen Anderson
Return to Togo: the Midpoint
It seemed like I had just arrived here in Togo when, the next thing I knew, seven months had flown by. I am at the mid-point of my research year already, and well over halfway through the period covered by the Fulbright grant. I’ll need to stay on longer after the Fulbright is up to finish my research; that hopefully will take me to Uganda in July, and Cameroon at the end of August, where I’ll remain for about three months before heading back to Texas. Meanwhile, I’ve finished collecting data in Togo, thanks to the help of one of the University of Lomé professors who put me in contact with a French Franciscan monk, who then put me in contact with the catechist of the Catholic Church in Wamé, who then found Ewe speakers to work with me… It’s all about networking here. 
Speaking of networking, I sent a bunch of linguistic books that had been donated by staff and students of the University of Texas-Austin linguistics department over to Togo via the diplomatic pouch last September. A few weeks ago, as I was considering what I needed to take back with me during an upcoming trip to New York, I saw those books literally collecting dust on the shelf and wondered what I’d do with them after all. A couple of hours later I bumped into an Akposo linguist from the University who had come to rummage around in our library. Fresh materials are hard to come by for those wishing to improve their course curriculums. The long and short of it is that she walked away with an armful of texts and a big smile on her face.
Back in November when I was trying to figure out how to use all my “highfalutin electronic recording equipment” -- quite unsuccessfully, I might add -- Dr. Martin Rothenberg, founder of Glottal Enterprises in Syracuse, NY, invited me to come with a language consultant to learn how to use the equipment. Glottal Enterprises specializes in instruments for voice measurement that can be used as a supplement to professional therapy for children and adults with speech disorders. It’s cutting-edge technology for speech therapy applications. Fortuitously, the same technology can be used in the kind of linguistic research that I’m doing. 
So, here I am, thanks to my Fulbright Grant, with Julien Koufedji, an Ikposo speaker, sitting in the lab of Glottal Enterprises. Julien is strapped with electrodes at the level of his glottis and holding the Rothenberg mask to his face. It looks scary but it’s non-intrusive, really. The fun thing is that we’ve discovered something that might be significant in terms of the Ikposo sound system. It will have to be tested on other Akposo speakers once we are back in Togo, of course.
Indeed, in a few short days we will be back in Togo where I will be running around like a chicken with my head cut off getting visas to Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon, preparing for a paper that I will present in Nigeria in August, going to Ghana to collect data, going to Benin to give a demonstration of the hardware and software I have been using in speech analysis, finishing up lectures with my third and fourth year English linguistic students, and beginning to say my goodbyes. I hope that I will find some time to sleep.
Yes, sleep – that elusive buffoon. The good news is that the squatters on the other side of the compound wall have been kicked off the public property because a women’s clinic is going up there. So, while I continue to be jolted out of my dreams by the 4:30 Call to Prayer, I am able to fall asleep again. Every minute between now and July is going to count.
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