Snake Lore

One year into service I had not yet seen one live snake. Sure I’d heard stories of all the deadly snakes we’d probably have the chance to encounter over the course of two years, but I was well over a year in and I hadn’t come across one. The closest I had come was noticing a group of bustling kids near my house one day yelling after “le viper”, which fortunately for that particular snake, managed to escape into the teak forest right next to my house. Still, I hadn’t laid my eyes on it.

Well the past 6 months has put a definitive end to that trend! I finally got my first encounter biking back into village. I was on my normal 15K bike commute, coming back from traveling somewhere, which meant I had a particularly heavy load of baggage strapped over the back wheel of my bike. This afforded a good deal of momentum as I rumbled down the last stretch of dirt road into my village. I hit rocky patch of road that separated the high school on the hill to my right and a little rock mountain off to the left and there in the middle of the road I noticed a snake making for the rocky outcrop from the right, only at the last minute.

Well I strained hard on the breaks to kill my momentum and skidded to a stop within about 3 meters of this little critter, who decided to stop and size me up. I crept back a couple steps slowly but more or less waited for him to start again on his way and sure enough he did. Meanwhile another motorcycle, itself heavily weighed down by a load of grain that forced the driver up against the handle bars, was making its way up the hill. This guy couldn’t afford to lose his momentum and stop or else he had little hope of starting again without falling backwards. So instead he stayed his course despite the snake and indeed it seemed that he took aim at the small snake (maybe half a meter in length and little thicker than a tootsie roll) in his path. I was amazed by this bold move after hearing just how dangerous some of our indigenous reptiles can be. As I feared, he missed as the snake reared up from his advance at the last second, perking its head up in its wobbly fashion within inches of the moving bike. Nonetheless, the man continued on untouched by the young snake (you know they say it’s the small ones that are the most dangerous. They haven’t yet learned to control their venom).

Meanwhile I had drawn the attention of a Fulani woman (Fulani is the ethnicity of wandering cattle herders well known to all of West Africa) that caught up on my heels after I’d stopped and pointed at the little critter in the road. Realizing that I had skipped the pleasantries of normal salutations, her smile vanished when she set her eyes on the snake. Immediately she yelled back to another duo on a bike coming up behind her. This was another Fulani man pedaling into town, balancing along with a younger Moba man who was hitching a ride, seated over the biker’s back wheel.

Right away they sprung into action, dismounting the bike and gathering 2 or 3 large stones each, one making his way to the right of the snake (the snake was now heading quicker than before in a dash towards the outcrop of rocks) and the other hanging to its left. In pursuit on the right the Fulani didn’t hesitate in throwing his stones. One after another, all his stones missed leaving him in need of searching more stones. However, the snake was now intently fixed on this pursuiter.

Lucky for this guy, he wasn’t on his own, or it could have become just a little more precarious. But with the snake staring at this now stoneless first man, the second man was able to get particularly close to the snake from behind. He had already missed once, but this time he couldn’t miss again, and hit home. With the snake immobilized by one blow several other rocks were brought in to finish the job and not 30 seconds later the two were on the bike again and over it. I was startled, but more or less excited by what just happened. I immediately thought that I needed to find the name of this guy to know just what kind of snake I had just dealt with. Had I just stared deadly venom in the eye?

« Est-ce que lui la, il est dangeroux ? ». I asked simply if he was dangerous and in the normal African antics I get the response of « Bwaaa ! Johh! Il est dangeroux! If he bites you it’s over! » I wanted the thing’s name and what I got meant little at the time. “Waaojiemon.” When I broke the work down afterwords I understood. It basically meant “the fearful red snake”. In French, the name I got was “le Crachant Rouge” (the red spitter). The first thing I did upon pulling into my house was to get out my Moba dictionary (a one way Moba to French dictionary designed to help locals learn the French language) and flipped around till I saw the entry I was looking for. This was one of the few entries with a picture and it displayed a prominent adult cobra!

To say the least that makes for a bit of a wake up call! I talked straight away with friends and family about the incident, and they all thought it was more or less comical to hear my incredulous attempts to explain the account in Moba whiling calming my excited nerves over a calabash of Tchakpa. Well I got over it, but it got me curious anyway and let’s just say that now I wear a special ring on my left hand that leaves me immune to snake bites.

Well, I can’t deny that so far the ring has worked. However snake sightings have surged for me since and I’m not just talking about a string of bad snake dreams I had for a couple weeks there. Waaojiemon was one of the two snakes Moba fear the most. I hadn’t yet encountered the other one, the famous viper. For some reason, green mambas don’t seem to make their list of concerning snakes, though I don’t think that’s because their harmless. Wikipedia says their venomous and I don’t want to test their theory. Anyway this picture is one such green mamba that was killed 50 meters from my house. When I saw him and snapped this picture he was writhing in his last moments, himself the victim of a deadly stone. Right as I was getting back from one of my runs and starting to stretch, I heard the commotion of them going after him. This one, was coming out of the same teak forest the viper had disappeared into so many months ago.

Now besides one baby black snake (hopefully not a black mamba though I’ll never know) I’d come across on a hike and a python my Ewe host dad held to my face (fortunately, that one don’t bite) last time I was visiting them (along with a chameleon and a bag of scorpions he was planning to turn a penny on in Tsevie), both taking place down south, all my other encounters have been confined to one apparent haven for slithery reptiles. Got any guess where that is? Yeah, that would be the botanical garden I’ve been talking about.

Honestly, how do you wanna have it? The reality is, if we succeed in doing what we want to do we’ll have created a piece of “the bush” within one hectare with a lush array of healthy local plants, especially trees and bushes. Granted the village on its own could be already considered the bush, but between deforestation and bush fires, few habitats remain ideal for animals, and that includes snakes. So I’ll take it as a sign of success that vegetation and hence (for the sake of optimism, I’ll say) “wildlife” (we chased a bush rat just the other day too!) are already coming back in. As long as we clear our paths and stay aware I think I’m fine living in their company. Let’s just stay alert!

The last month I’ve spent a lot of time in this garden, working on tree nurseries, a vegetable garden and a compost system and I’ve got enough encounters to fill one hand. That’s kind of a lot considering how rare it is to see a snake. In three weeks, we’ve stirred up 2 harmless (though I didn’t know it at the time, and hence happily erred of the side of caution in encouraging their execution) meter long garden snakes (depending on you’re taste for snake, “ça c’est la viande ça!” Apparently it’s an edible variety) and 2 half meter guys called “Waalable”. Some people call them vipers. Seconds before my friend collected the hay that had hid the snake, I had grazed that very spot with my hoe. On this second occasion, we burned him on the spot. A week earlier we had elected to feed the first one to the ants. Since two different people killed them, the preference of burial ceremonies varied.

So let me digress even further as you may be wondering about beliefs and superstitions held in respect to these small creatures capable of ending the lives of grown men. You can interpret how you wish! Here’s a taste of what I’ve heard.

When I started asking folks if they might be able to explain to me why I’ve been dreaming of snakes, the response I got (this time not from a even a villager, but an older professional man in the city wearing classes and a blazer) was a question in return. “Do you have a wife and did it bite you?” Okay, admittedly, that might not seem like a response to take seriously. Some may have laughed, potentially uncomfortably, and it would have ended there, but folks got curious beliefs here and elsewhere and at this point I’ve heard enough weird things to keep a straight face in answering that question. I wanted the serious interpretation and didn’t hesitate. “No.” “Oh, well that’s nothing to worry about then.” “And if I did have a wife and was bit?” “Then your wife’s going to be pregnant.” He grinned slightly like someone who knew he knew something you didn’t.

Of course, if you’re bit in real life, the meaning of this is probably more like “Get medicine fast or you might die.” But, traditionally, there’s still a protocol to follow. If you were bit, the first thing you absolutely have to do is kill the snake and cut open its insides. The crucial point is to check and see if the snake’s intestines are there and if they’re there, there’s good news. If you find a healer, you can survive. And the villagers are capable of treating these things with traditional medicine, hence our belief in the project of the botanical garden and its medicinal plants. However, if there are no insides watch out! That means no anti-venom can save you because you’re now dealing with black magic that someone else has sent your way!

Oh and by the way, if you kill a snake, make sure to cut its head off and bury it off to the side. You don’t want to risk the chance you turn your back on the snake you thought to have been dead, but which scurries back into the bushes and returns to haunt you! Sparrow hawks have been known to carry off snake carcasses, but I’ll tell ya, the viper we fed to the snakes wasn’t there the next day when I came back. After all that, call me off my rocker, but I’ll take the piece of mind of burying the head.

(Oh yeah, and I added another cool picture of a dead bat! It's gotta be the same kind that fly out of my latrine every time I use it at night!)

Hubs in Huts

So let’s not elaborate things, Togo isn’t exactly high tech. Tiny pockets of most cities may be considered up to acceptable speed in the minds of an average American. However, most areas are very far "behind". Surprisingly however, cell phone use is widespread, even in the smallest villages. Of course it’s always a question of means whether or not people are able to own a cell phone. Used cell phones can be found for as little at $10 (more complicated knock-off models with MP3s, cameras and such are still only ~$50), but it’s the phone credit that makes things tough. Every call costs about a quarter, and that’s if you’re quick and to the point, definitely not traits of a normal Togolese conversation, especially in village.

So cell phone use looks like nothing in comparison with Western levels, since still most families don’t have a cell phone. Nonetheless, most people at least know someone whose cell phone they could borrow if needed and it wouldn’t be considered unusual for an average villager to own one. Either way, everyone’s familiar with cell phones, and coverage is amazingly good for the circumstances. I’ve been to few corners of Togo that didn’t have at least an elevated location where reception could be found. While electricity and running water continues to evade most villages, cell phone coverage remains an exception.

And thus how we come to have little radio shacks, like the one shown in the bottom picture. After all, in a village without electricity, how do you maintain your cell phones and other choice electronic devices (usually limited to radios or perhaps flashlights)? On market day, you can find certain individuals hanging out to do just that, like this guy in his shack. He can pull off simple circuit repairs (note soldering tools in fore), sell you phone credit and colorful phone covers and runs a generator almost explicitly to charge phones (there’s also one other guy who has a solar panel and can charge phones any day of the week as long as it’s not raining). Just yesterday this man fixed my solar lamp which had fallen and broken. In the U.S., we might have thrown it away, but besides having a blemish, it now works again!

The other high tech feature of my village is the video club (see top picture). This is another feature that generally is reserved for market days only. But two days a week, a friend of mine cranks up his own generator, plugs in a TV and his dish, and charges an entrance fee to anyone wanting to watch music videos, soccer games or movies from rows of benches. He pays a subscription for about 6 channels with the dish (unfortunately, not including last years World Cup which they blacked out for him and everyone else who wanted to watch the tournament in village!), but over the course of the year he can turn a small profit anyway.

Other than that, that’s about it for technology in village. A handful of folks occasionally crank up generators to refrigerate frozen fish or beer and soda (other bars bring ice to village every day from the city in Dapaong), and the health dispensary has a solar panel to run a small fridge for certain medicines. There are 2 or 3 gas run grinding mills for making flour and most households own a radio and a couple flashlights, all run on cheap batteries. That’s it!

Out on the Town Moba Style!

Welcome folks to the Tchakpa market! Long overdue, today you get the mini tour of the most significant part of a distinctly Moba market! It’s like the Old Port, St. Catherine’s St. or Bourbon St. of my village/county. Bar hoppin’ ain’t easy in Togo, but if you equate a bar with a tchakpa stand, you’ll think Bourbon St. ain’t so special once you’ve been to my market. Two days a week (Tuesdays and Fridays) over 40 women set up shop in my village to sell their local brew, from 8 a.m on until the drink’s done!

Of course tasting all 40 brews isn’t possible. Generally, everyone has their go to stands; women they can count on to come to market nine times out of ten with a successful brew. Traditionally, tchakpa is sold in simple round huts like pictured in the second picture. These are found everywhere, from remote villages, to pit stop markets along the roads, to the city of Dapaong, you can find such a “vrai cabaret” with the thatch roof, and circular mud or cement bench, which surrounds the marché mama selling the drink. You even find other women selling their drink under shady trees. In our market, some women post up in the more modern and industrial looking market stands made of concrete and tin roofing. Such is the case with my personal favorite stand that I’m pictured in above. I’ve never tasted a bad tchakpa with this women, and just like a favorite bar the people there make the atmosphere. I can count on meeting the same rough group of friends coming through this stand at some point in the day, to yuck it up over a pitcher of beer.

And just like home, you can indeed get pitchers, costing about 40 cents. Instead of coming out of tapped kegs, these drafts come to market in oversized plastic buckets, charged on the heads of women. Amazingly, some of these women will walk their drink with the help of their daughters and girl friends several kilometers in this fashion, and there’s usually 3 or 4 of these brimming buckets. Imagine going to the effort of carrying 4 kegs on your head 4 kilometers to run your bar. That’s on top of 4 or 5 days of labor just to make the drink beforehand. Once in the market, you have to keep track of running tabs in crowded, raucus stands of imbibing villagers. Just look at the pose of the marché mama in this picture. She can’t even take time out to pose for the picture because she has to serve the next thirsty farmer!

Believe it or not, tchakpa is made with little more than sorgum/millet and yeast. (The yeast is recycled from whoever you know that made tchakpa yesterday. With tchakpa, the fermenting yeast constantly rests in the bottom of the drink. Don’t drink it or you’ll be in trouble, but it can be taken and added to a non-alcoholic tchakpa to ferment it over night). The seeds of sorgum and/or millet are partially germinated, ground into a flour, and then brewed in water over 2 days in giant cauldrons. The only other ingredient is smashed gumbo stalks, which contain a coagulant that can help clear the consistency of the drink before it’s filtered through a sack.

When it’s ready it’s delicious and the Moba drink it like water! The tradition is, when you enter a tchakpa stand you’re entitled to taste the brew for free. That way, you know that the brew wasn’t botched (which happens, especially with some of the less experienced women) in case you were planning on ordering a lot! If it is bad, you can pay a courtesy 25 CFA, about a nickel, gulp it down or give it away and be on your way to the next stand. Otherwise, order up for you and your friends and settle in. Be sure to pour a taste out for the ancestors (it’d be rude not to tell them you were drinking without them) and hang out. You drink out of a traditional calabash that you hold in your hands. If you plan on being a while, sometimes the women have little drink holders made of rebar to set your calabash on, like in this picture. Others even have wooden caps to cover the drink to keep thirsty teams of flies out of your drink! Now enjoy your drink until only the mucky yeast is left and then plop it on the ground to try and make a nice “clack” sound. Other’s throw it out in a straight line instead, perfected like a tobacco chewers spit from years of habit. One way or the other, the ancestors will know the drink’s now done and you can be on your way. That is unless you’re sucked into entering another one of the 39 bustling suds shacks on your way out!