A Togo Thanksgiving

This was the second thanksgiving I have spent abroad. I was in Italy for the first. While I had had a good time, I remember thinking that it didn’t feel like thanksgiving, and I was scared that I would have the same feeling here in Togo.

I’m not sure if I’ve explained this before, but PC Togo groups volunteers into clusters, for safety and also for sanity. I’m part of the Dapaong cluster, which is the biggest in country with eleven PCVs. The Savannes region is the furthest north (thus furthest from Lomé, i.e. admin and availability of Western food) and mainly rural, so they try to keep the volunteers close together and it creates a sort of family. I’m really grateful to be a part of this great group of people. Well, most PVCs went to a big thanksgiving party in the Centrale region, but us Dapaongers decided to throw our own fête.

We arranged to have the dinner at a hotel. Hotel Campement is one of the nicest and most Western hotel/restaurants in Dapaong. I had actually been there the week before for my birthday. (My birthday, btw, was great! I bought a Roman candle and we set it off that night, but I found out after the fact that fireworks are actually illegal in Togo. Oops!) The chicken cordon bleu is absolutely mouth watering. Based on this experience, I knew the food was going to be good. The hotel prepared servings of French onion soup, mashed potatoes and green beans for everyone. Two Volunteers (one of which recently COSed and had already left Togo) received packages from their moms full of thanksgiving dinner essentials, such as stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie filling and even themed napkins!

The PC Togo Country Director decided to make the trip of north to fête with us. Her name is Carolina and I give her major props because the trek from Lomé to Dapaong is no easy feat. We had tried to find turkeys locally but had some difficulties so she brought two with her. They had put the turkeys in cages and loaded them on top of the car. As they were driving down the Route, they heard a big thump and stopped the car. One of the turkeys, probably knowing his fate, had escaped from his cage and jumped off the car. Yes, the turkey committed suicide. Not wanting to waste the meat, they loaded the dead turkey into the car and kept it on ice for the last 8 or so hours of the journey. (I have no idea where they found the ice and must have had the AC on full blast the whole way to keep it from melting.) Knowing that we were expecting to cook two turkeys, they stopped along the way and found another turkey. We ended up cooking the suicide turkey so we had three turkeys for twenty people. It was probably the freshest turkey I have ever eaten and completely void of any hormones.

The suicide turkey

In unrelated recent news, I got a puppy! I had wanted one for a while but wanted to wait until I was more settled in at post. I’d been searching the last few weeks and finally found one that seemed healthy. It’s a boy and I’d guess that he’s probably around 6 or 7 weeks, although I was told he was two months old. I named him Achu (like the sound when you sneeze) and so far he’s been very well behaved. He whined to be let out of my house, went outside and then exited the compound before pooping. Who knew Togolese dogs came potty trained?

yes, I know I have dirty feet...

Le Marché

“A lot of money changed hands on Fridays, but more than anything else the market was Lavié’s weekly social occasion: a sort of shopping center, bar, restaurant, pool hall, and ladies’ club packed under one cluster of grass roofs.” – George Packer, The Village of Waiting, 1982

Every sizeable village has a marché. The size of the village usually determines the size of the marché, as well as its frequency. Most dedicate two days for the marché (one is normally larger than the other), chosen to correlate with the surrounding villages. For example, Tandjoaré’s marché days are Wednesday and Saturday, attendance, however, on Saturdays is pitiful. I can visit Bombouka’s marché on Tuesdays and Fridays. It’s a larger town located directly on the Route Nationale where I can find bread and mail letters. Or I can bike 10 minutes west (return trip is 30 minutes uphill…) on Mondays and Thursdays to enjoy Bogou’s marché. Nano is another large village about an hour bike ride away whose days are Sunday and Thursday.

It’s not only the day of the week that you visit the marché that is important, but also the time. Some tend to be more bustling during the morning while others don’t really get going until 14-15:00. I have found the atmosphere to be a little too rowdy after 17:00, as there are likely to be people who have spent the entire day at the marché drinking tchakpa (“chauk-puh”–a fermented millet drink I will talk more about in a later post). If one wants to purchase any type of animal, they must go around 7:00. I went last Saturday at this time to look for a puppy and the area was crowded with men and boys selling chickens, guinea fowls, pigs and goats. I did find a boy selling two puppies, but they were too young to leave their mother so I passed on them.

Marchés usually consist of a collection of stalls built with trees and a thatched grass roof. Sometimes, in the larger villages and towns, there will be covered cement structures with numbers designating each spot. Every person who takes a permanent spot for the day must pay for the spot. I’m not positive on the price, but I think it’s a couple hundred francs–less than a dollar. Controlled by the local governing body, this process is overseen by one person who goes from stall to stall to collect the day’s fee. To avoid this, many women walk around the marché selling stuff that they carry on top of their heads.

The size of the village also alludes to the variety of things one can find at its marché. Tandjoaré, despite its political advantage of being the prefectural capital, is a small village (I’ve been told pop. 5,000) and thus has little variety. Over 50% of the vendors are selling tchakpa. Then there’s the food section, which in my village I can usually find pâte, koliko (fried strips of yam eaten with a tomato sauce, similar to French fries…), beignets (fried bean dough balls), and kalma (kind of like a bean tamale, dipped in a pepper sauce). Mini boutiques are scattered throughout selling the basics such as various condiments, pasta, cans of tomato paste and small bags of beans and rice. Women also sell produce, such as corn, onions, tomatoes, okra, etc… As per Togolese culture, one is given a cadeau (or gift) when purchasing these items. I base how many onions I buy on the idea that they will cadeau me one or two extra ones. Every marché also has a meat section. Au village, the men nail the leg of an animal to a post and carve off sections of meat as it’s ordered. Let’s just say that I try to avoid walking through this area… The meat section is generally the only place where you will see men selling stuff. Women control the majority of the marché.

The last main sector of the marché is dead yovo. What is this, you ask? Well, it’s the Togolese equivalent of a mall–where they buy all of their Western style clothes. Why is it called that? The idea is that no living white person would ever give up clothes as nice as the ones found there unless they were dead. My first experience buying dead yovo came last week in Lomé. A group of us went to a marché in the capital where all the clothes come after leaving the ships in the port. We hoped this meant that there would be a good selection. I ended up buying three shirts for 1,500cfa (approximately $3, bartered down from 3,000cfa), one of which is from H&M and I have the exact shirt and color hanging in my closet back home and had actually wished that I had brought it to Togo. The amount of clothes (and shoes and bags and belts and underwear) was overwhelming and I was ready to leave after an hour, but au village, dead yovo stands are smaller and much easier to navigate.

Side note: My fellow stage Savanners and I want to make bingo cards with various Togolese fashions in each square. Togolese fashion ranges from President Obama’s and Togo President Faure’s face plastered on a t-shirt to crocs to silk pajamas.

An interesting note: The further en brousse one gets (in the countryside), the more isolated a village is. This creates an internal economy, where the same money is exchanged on a daily basis. One woman today buys tomatoes from her friend and the next day the friend visits the women’s tchakpa stand a buys a calabash from her. Thus, the money becomes very worn and dirty–but then, Peace Corps volunteers enter these villages with their new, crisp banknotes and break the cycle!

If you get a chance...

The first big project that I'll be working on is a Women's Wellness and Empowerment Conference. It's a national event, 2nd annual, that brings together all four sectors of Peace Corps Togo to put on a conference for 30 women in our region. Please, if you have the time, take a look at the link and donate if you can. I'll write more about my involvement as it gets closer, but let me know if you have any questions about it.

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=693-389

Out of Village

I just got back to village after almost two weeks away. We had IST (In Service Training) in Pagala. PC has a training center there and it will be the first of many trips for me, especially if I participate in the summer camps that are held there also. It’s located in the middle of the country so it’s easy to get to, but our savannes group was still the last to arrive. I’ll spare you the details of training but I will say that it was very inspiring and I’m excited to apply what I’ve learned in my village. Our whole stage was also together again for the first time since we swore in as Volunteers. At the end of a week we had a Halloween party. The other two girls in savannes and me dressed up as the three hyenas from The Lion King. Other costumes at the party included Mario and Luigi, Peanut Butter and Jelly, Ghadaffi (does anyone know the real spelling of his name?) and his ghost, pirates, a crayon and black swan. Many people used clothes that they found in village marches, also known as dead yovo because the Togolese think that the only way white people would get rid of their clothes would be if they died.

After IST, our savannes crew headed to Atakpame for the post visit party for the new stagiaires. They arrived in Togo back in September and will swear in as volunteers Nov. 17 and I will officially become a sophomore! I met the 5 new people coming to my region and they all seem really cool. Then my friend and I headed to Kpalime. Other than Lomé, it has the highest concentration of foreigners that I’ve seen so far in Togo. It’s also one of Togo’s only tourist destinations, meaning there are nicer hotels, restaurants and tours geared towards travelers. I got to take a hot shower and felt clean for the first time since I’ve been in Togo. The scenery reminded me a lot of Costa Rica. We hopped on the back of motos and when up the mountain. From the top you could see miles in all directions and I got my first glimpse of Ghana. We also explored a small village on the crest of the mountain and saw some gorgeous drawings by local artists using colors made from nature. It was a nice escape from Togo but after a couple days I was ready to get back to my small, quiet village where life is cheaper and people don’t try to rip me off.

I just finished my first three months at post. That means… I’m allowed to have visitors now! Anyone who wants to come visit, start planning your trip now! Email me if you have questions. Also, I’ve been trying to have a theme to each of my posts but let me know if there is anything specific that you have been wondering about that I haven’t touched on yet.