The Village Deli

Relative to the rest of the country, the savannah region is known in Togo for, among other things, its meat. While the south is well known for having abundant fruit, one strong suite of ours is animal husbandry. Our livestock routinely gets shipped down south where it gets a pretty penny. I routinely see bush taxis filling up in my village with guinea fowl. Other times motorcycles leave with crates full of guinea fowl strapped onto the backs of them. Pigs are another staple export of Savanes. I’ve seen moto’s go whizzing by on my road, the drivers pressed up close to their handle bars because they have up to 3 full grown, squealing pigs strapped onto the back, taking up most of the sitting space. Once in Dapaong, bush taxis take them south as extra cargo.

Fortunately for those of us up north, that same meat stays pretty cheap. Of course that’s relative. A live chicken cost $3-4. A goat can cost around $20. It’s still a privilege to eat meat with a meal in village and is by no means present in every meal for the average inhabitant. Nonetheless, we do eat our fare share.

With certain meats the way to go is to buy your animal live and whole and prepare it on the spot. This applies to fish (okay that one doesn’t come in live but it’s one of our biggest sources of protein so I have to mention it), doves, rabbits, chickens, guinea fowl, goats and sheep (increasing respectively in price). However, some of the more costly animals are more often killed by a butcher, brought to market and parceled out on the same day. And thus we come to the subject of this week’s blog; the meat market.

In general, the only day you can get a cut of raw meat in village to bring back to prepare at home is on market day (Beef is one exception, as they are only killed in village sporadically and on random days. Because it’s the most expensive, most steer are herded into Dapaong and slaughtered there). The butchers come in with their meat already cleaned and usually strapped onto the back of a bike. Once there they set up shop and parcel out the raw meat according to the desires of the customer. You can literally go to him, point at the piece of meat you want, tell him how much you want to buy and he cuts you off a slice and bags it in a black plastic baggy. As all other market purchases, he adds a “cadeau” (gift), in this case usually boney or fatty meat (to give your sauce more flavor!), as a gesture to gain or maintain your loyalty to him as your butcher.

On top of their raw meat, they also sell select parts cooked. So if you want a snack after your millet beer you can mosey over to the butcher and request some morsels of meat or innards (can’t waste anything!) dipped in some hot pepper powder to tide you over until the evening.

So what are the meats I can always get fresh in village? Well unfortunately this isn’t a market for Muslims, since they’re all banned for eating in Islamic faith. And for fair warning, two of the three might not agree with an American even if you aren’t Muslim. Anyway, pork is the first and probably the most common. The other two are donkey and dog. The pictures here are of the pig and donkey butchers, who happily abided to pose for us!