How’s it goin’ everybody? It’s gotta be about spring time there right? I’ve gotten some letters and emails lately that have been fun to read. I appreciated them all!
Just got back from a quick trip down to Lomé. First trip back down to the coast since I swore in. I guess it’s about four months into service now for me, which in a way is tough to believe. That means it’s been over half a year living out of the States and away from home! Wow!
It was a fairly smooth trip considering how much one normally dreads the voyage down country. Each way we were able to make it between Dapaong and Lomé in under 12 hours (good time believe it or not). While in the past volunteers have generally relied on bush taxis to make the trip down we now have the advantage of what we call “the post bus”. It’s amazing, basically a charter bus labeled the “Golden Dragon” that runs up and down the country daily carrying the post and dozens of passengers with it. Honestly it’s a little bit of a bizarre experience, cruising past the underdeveloped Togolese countryside in the giant air conditioned bus. The loud horn blairs constantly like a semi-truck horn, warning goats, pigs, steer, sheep, loaded bush taxis, over charged semi trucks and cyclists of it’s presence as it attempts the impossible task of running a prompt bus schedule in an otherwise clock-impaired country. It almost made me feel like I was at home and like the world outside wasn’t real. While I was buckled in and enjoying the AC I almost thought for a second that sights such as a full grown cow strapped on a motorcycle with a flatboard, a goat tied by his neck but otherwise left to stand on top of a moving bush taxi or a taxi apprentice mounting the roof of a moving taxi to check the baggage on top were somehow odd. But those thoughts didn’t last long. At this point we just laugh when we see these things and don’t really consider them as being all that bizarre. Good ‘ole Togo, it’s a different world. It makes me think that when I do come home I’m likely to have a pretty off center understanding of what is normal. Try not to make fun of me for it when that moment comes!
Thought I’d talk some more about food this time. I know I’ve talked some about the staple foods here, but I don’t think I described them well enough for people to really visualize it well. This time I tried to add some pictures for you. A lot of life here revolves around food. Most of the daily activities go into its production. As people work the land with their hands they eat amazingly large quantities of these staple foods as their bodies fuel up in search of relatively scarce nutrients. I sometimes joke that people eat pate and fufu just so they have something to put in the belly here, because other than that the unfortunate truth is that the food really isn’t very nourishing. Nonetheless, it can be made very tasty with the right sauce and a Maggi cube.
In my part of the country the most common food is what we call “la pâte” (ou bien en Moba on dit “saab”). It’s derived from Maiz and normally processed in a moulin. This is the [second] picture that hopefully uploaded well. It’s a machine that takes any food that needs processing and turns it into either a paste or flour so that it’s edible. Many things are put through these engine powered machines. You find them even in the smaller villages. In an otherwise traditional village you’ll see one hut, usually in the marché, that has an exhaust pipe coming out of the roof puffing black smoke as it chugs along grinding whatever food. That food can be anything from millet to make the flour for their beer, to peanuts to make peanut butter or peanut oil, to soja to make the flour that makes tofu or to maiz to make the flour that makes pâte. In the case of maiz, from the flour you then labor over a cauldron of hot water, mixing the flour in with a wooden spatula. Tough work but a piece of cake for the women who prepare it here. They’ll work the mass till they have the texture they want, constantly using their bare hands to whisk stray pâte off the brim of the scalding cauldron. Finally they dip a bowl into the cauldron and pull out the steaming mass and leave it to cool and solidify. They eat it hot and if I’m eating with them I usually have to take it slower that them, trying not to show them that my fingers can’t withstand the heat of the pâte like them. Like most other foods, pâte is a finger food. Grab a hunk from the mold, dip it in the sauce and devour it!
The [first] picture is us making fufu in my family compound. For us, fufu is more of a novelty since the yams that make it are expensive here. However, at this point I’m just as fond of it as my family, so as a treat I usually bring back four or five yams whenever I’m far enough south to find a good deal. It’s enough to make a family feast and simple enough to make. You only have to peal, cut and boil the yams before you put them in the mortar and pound them with a pestle, at times adding water and turning the developing mass with your hands almost like a wet pizza dough. To make it faster, people will take two pestles and alternate strokes, like my two sisters are doing in the picture here. This too is a finger food that is dipped in any variety of sauces.
Just as a side note, I found out after I took this picture that we aren’t supposed to pound fufu at night since it can upset certain spirits. The fear is that if a bad spirit hears this he may poison the food, but if it’s only a good spirit it’s okay. So by exposing yourself to the spirits at night like that you take a risk! It’s true that most people here now have taken on the religions that we can identify with in the States, being Christianity/Catholicism and Islam. My family for example is Muslim. Nonetheless, almost everyone, including my family, retains some level of animist belief (or at least fear of the “grisgris”/sorcery of animism). Although we did break from tradition to pound the fufu after dark in this case, don’t worry for me. My brother sacrificed a chicken just for good measure!
