A trashcan of tchouk, which costs about 4.500 CFA (or about $9), is approximately 1.5 feet high with an approximate diameter of 1 foot meaning the trashcan contains approximate 11.78 cubic feet of alcohol. That’s a lot of alcohol.
This past Saturday, my cluster (the 5 volunteers who use Sotouboua as a central location) and the Pagala cluster (a neighboring cluster of 6 volunteers about 50km south) attempted to finish off a trashcan at our first annual Sotouboua/Pagala mixer. It’s fitting that I use the term mixer since my cluster is 4 guys and 1 girl and their cluster is 5 girls and 1 guy so it’s very much like a mixer between a fraternity and sorority (wow, I miss Greek life…).
Anyways, the mixer was fun. The Pagala cluster came up to Sotouboua this past Friday and we hung out, ate bean burgers and pasta salad and drank lots of tchouk. It was great to hang out with them because although we have friends in each others cluster, they use Atakpame as their regional capital and we used to use Sokode as our regional capital so we rarely see each other. This might change though since Atakpame still has a transit house and is not that far from Sotouboua so our cluster can easily get there to do work/bank/shop/hang with volunteers. Regardless, it was a great party and hopefully this tradition will continue for years to come.
Oh and as for the tchouk, although a trashcan seems like not much of a challenge at first glance, as we started drinking calabash after calabash, we realized what a herculean task we had in front of us (particularly since several of us were mixing beers into the equation). The next morning, we found out that we barely finished ¼ of the bin! (it was sort of reminiscent of the never ending bowl in the middle of the island Dumbledore had to drink in Harry Potter book 6…). Since we didn’t want to return an almost full trashcan, Marcus, Sam and I attempted to finish off the rest of the trashcan on Saturday. We made it to about the end before realizing that our throats were too burned from the acid levels in the tchouk to finish. We returned the bin with about a little less than a 1/5th remaining. Not bad for two days work…
This past Saturday, my cluster (the 5 volunteers who use Sotouboua as a central location) and the Pagala cluster (a neighboring cluster of 6 volunteers about 50km south) attempted to finish off a trashcan at our first annual Sotouboua/Pagala mixer. It’s fitting that I use the term mixer since my cluster is 4 guys and 1 girl and their cluster is 5 girls and 1 guy so it’s very much like a mixer between a fraternity and sorority (wow, I miss Greek life…).
Anyways, the mixer was fun. The Pagala cluster came up to Sotouboua this past Friday and we hung out, ate bean burgers and pasta salad and drank lots of tchouk. It was great to hang out with them because although we have friends in each others cluster, they use Atakpame as their regional capital and we used to use Sokode as our regional capital so we rarely see each other. This might change though since Atakpame still has a transit house and is not that far from Sotouboua so our cluster can easily get there to do work/bank/shop/hang with volunteers. Regardless, it was a great party and hopefully this tradition will continue for years to come.
Oh and as for the tchouk, although a trashcan seems like not much of a challenge at first glance, as we started drinking calabash after calabash, we realized what a herculean task we had in front of us (particularly since several of us were mixing beers into the equation). The next morning, we found out that we barely finished ¼ of the bin! (it was sort of reminiscent of the never ending bowl in the middle of the island Dumbledore had to drink in Harry Potter book 6…). Since we didn’t want to return an almost full trashcan, Marcus, Sam and I attempted to finish off the rest of the trashcan on Saturday. We made it to about the end before realizing that our throats were too burned from the acid levels in the tchouk to finish. We returned the bin with about a little less than a 1/5th remaining. Not bad for two days work…
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