August 21, 2005: Headlines: COS - Togo: AIDS: HIV: Philadelphia Inquirer: Bryan Cimorelli is leaving for his second year in Togo, which has been devastated by AIDS

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Togo: Peace Corps Togo : The Peace Corps in Togo: August 21, 2005: Headlines: COS - Togo: AIDS: HIV: Philadelphia Inquirer: Bryan Cimorelli is leaving for his second year in Togo, which has been devastated by AIDS

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Bryan Cimorelli is leaving for his second year in Togo, which has been devastated by AIDS

Bryan Cimorelli is leaving for his second year in Togo, which has been devastated by AIDS

Cimorelli joined the Peace Corps in June 2004. After a trip to Cameroon in his junior year at Franklin and Marshall College, "I fell in love with the African culture," he said.

Bryan Cimorelli is leaving for his second year in Togo, which has been devastated by AIDS

An African journey of discovery
A Peace Corps volunteer is leaving for his second year in Togo, which has been devastated by AIDS.

By Julie Shaw
Philadelphia Inquirer
August 21, 2005

All 45 orphans invited to the camp had one or two parents who died of AIDS. On this night, Peace Corps volunteers in Togo, West Africa, wanted to see whether they would share their stories.

They lit candles. A Togolese man who lost his parents to AIDS as a child spoke first. Then they waited.

People in Togo don't talk openly about AIDS, said Bryan Cimorelli, 26, of Havertown, one of the volunteers.

A half-hour later, one girl broke the AIDS silence, telling everyone how the disease had killed her parents. This prompted an avalanche of stories. It was a tearful night.

Cimorelli joined the Peace Corps in June 2004. After a trip to Cameroon in his junior year at Franklin and Marshall College, "I fell in love with the African culture," he said.

Togo is a nation a bit smaller in size than West Virginia, yet nearly three times larger in population, with 5.6 million people. Like the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, it suffers from AIDS.

Cimorelli came home to Havertown for three weeks this month to visit family and friends. In his second week, he came down with a fever of 103.8 degrees.

Malaria, a doctor said.

Cimorelli had stopped taking his preventive pills for malaria. So he spent part of his vacation sick in bed.

He will soon return to Togo for his second year of service.

In Togo, he lives in the rural village of Nadoba, in the De La Kara region. His house is a compound with a concrete wall. Inside, he has four stand-alone rooms, made of concrete, mud and crumbled brick. His shower and latrine are outside. There's no running water. Only recently did the village get electricity.

He doesn't sleep in the bedroom - "it's too hot," he said - but on a cot made of "woven string material" on the roof of a room that had housed goats.

He wakes up about 5 a.m. to roosters crowing and goats bleating. When he opens his door, he walks into a cornfield.

A small-business volunteer, he is assigned to a savings-and-loan cooperative. He also wants to train local guides to show tourists the mud-tower houses, called tatas, that have made the Koutammakou land in the De La Kara region a UNESCO World Heritage site.

He speaks French with the locals and has been learning his village's language, Ditammari.

In February, the country erupted into chaos after its longtime dictator died of a heart attack and the military raised his son to power, in what was seen as a coup. More violence ensued after the son, bowing to international pressure, stepped down and then won in an April election, which the opposition claimed was tainted.

Cimorelli wasn't affected by the violence, but as he wrote in his blog, some volunteers were frightened after the election: "They were trapped in their houses, with gunfire outside and the military literally occupying the towns."

Cimorelli keeps the blog and e-mails family and friends from an Internet cafe in the town of Kara, a four-hour bike ride from Nadoba. His parents, Alan and Joanne Cimorelli, are grateful that they can call him in Nadoba on his cell phone - the village just installed a cell-phone tower - or on a public phone.

"From a parent's perspective, he's devoting two years of his life" to something wonderful, Joanne Cimorelli said. "On the other hand, it's scary to be a mom. There's a lot of trepidation about whether he'll be safe or well in health."

"I'll be fine," replied Bryan, sitting on their living room couch, after being diagnosed with malaria.

When his mother left the living room, he shared how he also has gotten sick in Togo from parasites and amoebas.

"That's sort of the way of life," he said. "Just don't tell my parents."





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Story Source: Philadelphia Inquirer

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Togo; AIDS; HIV

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