A Carb Cuisine

In southern Togo the cuisine staple is pate (sounds like the French word for pasta).  Pate is corn flour prepared with boiling water to make a thick paste.  Bits of this paste are then taken in the hand and dipped into a small amount of sauce.  Without sauce pate can be rather bland but many Togolese seem to love pate.  My sister Mary even said that if she didn’t eat pate she’d die.  She was referring to how filling pate is. 

It is true that pate provides a decent amount of energy as carbohydrates are oft to do, but these carbohydrate meals provide little else.  Roughly 90% of the diet is Togo is carbohydrates.  If pate is not eaten at a meal it’s replaced with another carb, whether it be pasta (called “spaghetti” or “maca”-roni here sine the French word for pasta is the same as pate), rice, bread, or yams (pounded into a stick paste call fou fou).

Another passion for food is oil.  Much of what is eaten here is fried.  Before every dinner I get from my host mother an appetizer of fried yams, plantains, sweet potato, or other root (Taro etc.).  On the street women sell fried dough, fried bananas, fried tofu, and other fried pastries.   

In addition to frying foods oil is used heavily in many of the sauces.  The base of many of the sauces is vegetable oil or even healthier, with much saturated fat, palm oil.  It is rare to eat vegetables and proteins and the sauces tend to be limited to tomatoes, onions, and okra. Thankfully the Peace Corps has explained that we Americans need more veggies and protein than that to be healthy.  In spite of this 85% of my diet is empty carbs.  I have been so lucky as to have a carb trifecta for a meal with fried yams, bread, and pasta, don’t forget the oil poured on top...

My mother also feeds me an incredible amount.  There may be a stereotype that Jewish mothers provide an endless supply of tasty food to her children and guests, but you haven’t met a Togolese woman yet.  You are expected to have third and fourth helpings of everything.  I am given fried treats before each meal and as snacks throughout the day.  I am given a giant bowl of pasta or pate and I’m expected to eat it all and they tease me if I don’t finish.

A lack of food security is something often associated with African nations and malnourished stick-thin children.  But it is often not a lack of food that is the main problem but a lack of quality foods.  Eating carbohydrates and fats alone provides energy but doesn’t provide the nutrients needed to build a strong body or immune system.  Like my sister said, people are under the impression that pate and other carbs are the key to health and productivity in the fields.  But it’s not providing a higher quantity of food, but providing higher quality of food that is important.  Providing high quality foods and educating people about the importance of a diverse diet that also incorporates fruits, vegetables, and proteins is the key to health not just a larger quantity of food.  

A New Home (June 7, 2011)

After our introductory lessons in Lomé we are headed north about 45 mins to our training sites where we’ll be spending the next nine weeks.  SED is being placed in the regional capital of Tsevie (chev-e-ay) and the CHAP volunteers are placed in a farming community Gbatope (bah-toe-pay) 6km away.  I’ve been told that our training sites are foreshadowing our posts in the future.  The SED volunteers are in a city, have electricity, running water and ready access to the internet, market, post office, and other amenities afforded by a big city.  In Gbatope the community only received electricity a few months before we arrived and only a few of us volunteers are living in homes that have electricity (myself not included).  

Here in Gbatope I live with a host family on their farm a little outside of town.  I have five siblings ranging from the age of 18 to 7, Jean is 18, Mary is 16, Adjo is 15, Victorine “Victo” is 11 and Ansin who is 7.  In addition, my father’s sister, his aunt, and a cousin have houses on the compound.   Along with the five children in my immediate family there are four others ages 1.5, 5, 6, and 12.

Joining the fifteen humans there are sheep, ducks, chickens that roam freely, and a donkey.  The donkey is a novelty for the southern region of Maritime.  Donkeys are much more common up north in the Savannes region.  When asking what family I live with people they know it as “the one with the donkey.”  Donkeys are pretty strange animals and the braying adds to the cacophony that’s ever present on the farm.

The main house, where I have a room, is a cement building with three bedrooms, a living room, a washroom, and a front porch that spans the width of the house.  Without electricity or running water, there is an outside kitchen which consists of a palm frond canopy over an earthen stove and a small charcoal stove.  Another small wood building with a tin roof serves as storage for all the kitchen implements and a place to escape the rain during meal times.

Also on the compound are two small two room cement houses with tin roofs and one house made of bricks from the dark red mud found in the area.  I also have a small private walled in bamboo latrine/ shower area outside.  It’s here I get to take bucket showers under the stars while being eaten alive by mosquitoes.

This is where I’ll be calling home while I’m in training.  The Peace Corps places us with host families as a crash course in cultural integration and I’m excited to get to know my family, but with language barriers it can be tough to live with a new family.

First Impressions: Lomé (June 3, 2011)

When we arrived, around 7pm, in the capital it was already dark.  That didn’t keep it from being ridiculously hot.  Coming from the weather of Upstate New York where it hasn’t gotten over 75 degrees, 95 with humidity roughly equivalent to being in a swimming pool feels only slightly oppressive.

From the stairs off the plane we were shepherded through the presidential entrance, surely a place that the majority of people passing through the airport.  From there we were piled into trucks and brought to a hotel where we were sat down in the near darkness of a bamboo courtyard of sand and the Peace Corps nurse went down the row handing each a pill.  This may have been the beginning of our anti-malarial prophylaxis but then again if the pill had been blue instead of beige it may have been the beginning of the matrix.  We took the pill and soon enough we’d wake up to a world outside the Matrix of fast-food restaurants, hybrid cars, and Super Walmarts.

After my assumptions about what a third world country would be, I was pleasantly surprised by my room in the hotel.  I had my own bathroom and pretty close to a normal bed.  While I can’t say exactly what I was expecting; maybe a latrine outside? No running water?  Not electricity and a fan in my room…  One thing I did expect though was the mosquito net I’ll be sleeping under for the next two years.  I can’t help but be reminded of those tent forts you put up over your bed as a kid. 

At 2 am it was still over 90 degrees in my room and even with a fan I spent the night perspiring.  If I thought I had melted as much as I possibly could, I was wrong, when I stepped out into the sun.  During the five minute walk to the Peace Corps bureau, I’m pretty sure I that I started burning after the first two minutes.

The part of the city I got to see on the short walk to the bureau was sandy streets and cement walls.  On first look it was hard to see the difference between commercial establishments and personal homes.  There are a few stands set up selling local foods and some small items.  There are kids everywhere roaming the streets without shoes.

Over the next four days we once again received a few shots in each arm and I continued to melt.  We spent the days learning about Togo and the PC policies, most of all we were cautioned not to go near the beach, which was just a block from the PC main office.  The beach is a hotspot for crime in the city and it is not only at night that people are mugged.  From afar the beach looks like a picturesque tropical paradise, but with a closer look you can see the pipe of raw sewage streaming into the waves.  There won’t be any beach vacationing in Togo for me…

From the beginning (June 2, 2011)

Before heading out to Togo I’ve met up with twenty-two other Peace Corps volunteers in Philadelphia, Pa.  The volunteers will be working in one of two subject areas, CHAP (Community Health and AIDS Prevention) and SED (…I don’t actually know the acronym, but it’s for business development).  These are two out of the four programs that the Peace Corps operates in Togo.  The other two being: GEE (Girls Education and Empowerment) and NRM (Natural Resource Management).

In Philly we met up for last minute preparations; a few vaccinations, more than a few signatures, and a focusing session on what to expect, and what we expect, for our service.  I didn’t know what to expect, with limited information on Togo and only a vague sense of the actual work I’d be doing in this ‘third world country’, all I can do is enjoy my last shower, swim in the soft sheets and let my head sink into the fluffy pillow—for one thing, I know I don’t expect to have a real shower or bed for two years.

The next day after a final bowl of the American classic of Fruit Loops, we are piled onto a bus and sent out ALONE to JFK to catch our flight and begin the well over twenty hour journey to Lomé, Togo.  As an aside, going and communicating to Togo is an expensive affair.  My one way ticket through Paris was well over $2,000 and even the cheapest phone call to Togo is around $0.40 per minute.  This is a stark contrast to other West African countries that border Togo.  Ghana, a country that the capital of Togo (Lomé) literally borders, costs over a thousand dollars less to fly there, phone calls cost 50% less and good old snail mail is cheaper too.  These  things mean limited communication or maybe another piece of the adventure.

A journey over three continents is plenty of time to ponder what I’m thinking traveling a few thousand miles to live in a mud hut, no electricity, no water… that may be part of the allure, just jump right in, but twenty hours can feel like an awfully long time to drop not knowing what you are going to land in. I'm off Togo here I come.

It's only been a little while...

Well, this is embarrassing!  I have been in Togo for nearly 4 months and I have not successfully made a single post to this blog.  Without a computer to type up posts, a foreign keyboard, and limited access to a slow internet connection has proven to be too much of an obstacle for me.  From now on though, with the addition of my own private computer and an internet key, things are going to change. 

While the time line may begin a little distorted, I hope to get up to speed and be more consistent with posts as my service continues.  So, sorry for the long absence, but from here on I’m yours.

On Our Way

We are off.  After a wirlwind staging in Philly we are headed to JFK for a red eye flight to Paris and then on to Lome Togo.

During staging I learned that I will be headed out with a group of 23 volunteers consisting of both health volunteers (CHAP) and business volunteers. They are all exceptional people and after a few ice breaker games I am looking forward to getting to know them better in the coming weeks.

With a scambe for the last few checks of email and phome calls we have piled a few mountans of luggage on to the bus and away we go.

Disclaimer

I wanted to take this time to make it known that the contents of this blog are my own and do not represent the opinions of the Peace Corps or US Government.