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!