From 1985 to 1987 I served in the Peace Corps in Togo, West Africa, teaching people to build wood-conserving cookstoves and rain catchment cisterns. They say the Peace Corps is “the toughest job you’ll ever love,” and that was certainly my experience—it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and one of the highlights of my life. Here is my story of what it was like to be a “yovo”—a foreigner, a stranger, and a white person—in a small village in northern Togo in the mid-1980s.