Peace Corps assignment takes Maggie Fleming to Togo
Caption: Pittsburg State University and St. Mary's-Colgan High School graduate Maggie Fleming, shown with a family in Togo, finds herself half a world away from home. As a Peace Corps volunteer, the 25-year-old Fleming recently spent Christmas away from home - and her own family - for the first time.
Read and comment on this story from the Pittsburg Morning Sun on Peace Corps Volunteer Maggie Fleming who is serving in Togo where she spends most of her time teaching about personal hygiene to children, many of whom are already HIV positive. Maggie Fleming's mission with the Peace Corps is to help improve the quality of life through education on healthier living. "She's what's called CHAPS - Community Health and AIDS Prevention," her father explained.She lives with a local midwife who provides most of the medical care in the village. Read the story at:
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Far from home for the holidays
Peace Corps assignment takes Fleming to Africa
By Olive L. Sullivan Morning Sun Staff Writer
This holiday marked Maggie Fleming's first-ever Christmas away from home - a long way away from her home in Weir, nearly half a world away.
Fleming, 25 and a Pittsburg State University graduate, is serving for the next two years in the Peace Corps in the West African country of Togo. She spent Christmas Eve, her three-month anniversary in the country, with friends in Atakpame. Atakpame is the regional capital for the central area of this equatorial coastal country; Fleming is living in the village of Akaba about 30 miles away.
"You really have to look to find her village," said mom Peggy Fleming, a social studies teacher at St. Mary's Elementary School in Pittsburg. The village has about 2,500 people living there. It is more than 10 miles to the nearest phone, and Maggie has to come all the way into Atakpame to find a computer so she can send e-mail home.
"We had never heard of Togo," Peggy said. "When she volunteered, she said, 'Just send me wherever you want to send me.' "
Peggy and husband District Court Judge Robert Fleming described the Peace Corps application process, which takes several months and involves a number of interviews. Bob said, "Now that she's there, I can see that they want people who are going to stay."
Of the 39 people who arrived in Togo with Fleming, five have already given up and headed home.
Fleming herself says in letters back home that life in Togo isn't what she had pictured.
She is a person who has always wanted to serve others. She wrote, "Maybe I imagined swinging into a village, educating and saving the village and moving on to the next. The humorous side to my rather 'naive expectation' is that I am the one being educated here."
Her education isn't just trying to learn the local dialect, or brushing up on her student French, which is the official language.
She is learning how to treat water before using it, to prepare food in very primitive conditions, to live without running water or electricity. She told her parents she sleeps on the concrete floor because it's cooler.
"I'm sure that this is an eye-opening experience, and would be for anyone who had the opportunity to live there," Bob commented.
Maggie Fleming's mission with the Peace Corps is to help improve the quality of life through education on healthier living.
"She's what's called CHAPS - Community Health and AIDS Prevention," her father explained.
That means she spends most of her time teaching about personal hygiene to children, many of whom are already HIV positive. She lives with a local midwife who provides most of the medical care in the village.
Peggy Fleming said she isn't worried about her daughter's safety in a region of political upheaval. She's worried about survival.
"I'm more concerned about her catching some horrible disease," she explained. "Snakes and snake bites and all those horrible things we don't have to worry about."
Peggy said that health care is so primitive the Togolese have to worry about diseases Americans have never heard of, or, like polio, haven't had to deal with for a long time.
The average life expectancy is 50, Bob said. The society is still primarily male-dominated, and men can take several wives. Because it's a status symbol to have many children, the wives tend to die young. Polygamy is also one reason for the rapid spread of AIDS and HIV.
The Peace Corps is trying to change those traditional attitudes a little at a time. The Corps has been in Togo for 40 years, celebrating that anniversary about the time Maggie Fleming and her group arrived. The goal is to change things peacefully, through education that changes the underlying behavior. One example is to convince men it's not just having a lot of children that's important, but having healthy children. Maybe it's better to have fewer children who are healthier.
"It's just a way of life, and she's trying to help them learn they don't have to just deal with it. There's a better way of life," Peggy said.
Maggie Fleming told her parents in a recent e-mail that she misses being home for Christmas. "We're in the middle of a blizzard, and she's sweating," her mother commented.
Maggie also has two dogs that are spending her tour of duty with her parents, and she has twice become a godmother since leaving the United States. She was an empty place at the Fleming family table this year as her three brothers and parents gathered.
But the young Peace Corps volunteer also thanks God she has the opportunity to be with new friends from the Peace Corps and from her adopted village in Togo, a place where she can make a difference.
She has tentative plans to come home next Christmas, and her term of service will end at Christmas 2004. Meanwhile, her parents hope to visit her in Togo, and she will have an opportunity to travel by early spring.
"She's given us a lot to be proud of over the years," her father said. "This is just kind of typical Maggie."
Staff Writer Olive Sullivan can be reached at osullivan@sunnetworks.net, or at 231-2600, Ext. 134. More about the Peace Corps in Togo
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This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; PCVs in the Field; COS - Togo; Special Interests - AIDS Prevention
