hey everyone!
So who knew I would ever be so excited about yams in my entire life but I just spent this past weekend celebrating yams up in Bassar for the annual Yam Festival. Here in Togo, yam season is upon us and to celebrate the first harvest of yams, the Kara region plays host to an annual festival filled with lots of good food and the traditional fire-dance. This year the official festival (as in the official party that the President was planning on attending; due to the rain however he cancelled at the last minute) was in Bassar so I headed up this past Friday to partake in the celebrations and also to spend some time with my fellow volunteers.
I arrived in Sokodé on Friday morning where I met up with Heather, Golda, Conner, Barrett, Russ and Rachel at the transit house so we could all carpool up together. Since it was the official day of the festival, we had no problem getting a bush-taxi up there. Although it was a much longer ride up there then I thought it was going to be due to our driver who appeared to be in no hurry at all to get up to Bassar, it was nice to spend time with Golda since I didn’t really know her that well and she was one of the few volunteers in my region. We got up to Bassar, dropped Heather off at Taressa’s (since she was staying there with a bunch of people from my stâge and the rest of us were staying with Amy) and headed to Amy’s place. Since Amy’s last few weeks in country overlapped with Taressa’s arrival, Amy ended up moving into another house so Taressa could settle in to her new house; although this would have been a frustrating situation for any volunteer, Amy ended up moving into a spare suite of this HUGE MANSION-type house that belonged to an officer in the Togolese army. The officer was apparently a friend of Tchao, our CHAP APCD, so that’s how Amy found the place. And it was a BEAUTIFUL house. It sat on top of a hill overlooking the entire city and although it was painted in pink, it had marble-tiled floors and this huge open patio that presented a gorgeous view of the surrounding countryside. Although the suite was slightly small for our huge group that was staying there (about 9 people in a one-bedroom suite) we made it work and Amy was an awesome host.
After settling into Amy’s place, Conner, Russ, Amy and I headed out to the “tourist” spot of Bassar: the Bassar Iron Smelters. One of the lesser known tourist spots in Togo, the Smelters are basically a cluster of tall mud furnaces that were used decades ago to melt iron in the region. Even though the smelters weren’t that interesting, the highlight was the trip out to the smelters. The route to the smelters takes you around a hill that overlooks the city of Bassar and it leads to some beautiful panoramic views of the Togolese countryside.
One of the main reasons for coming to Bassar specifically for the yam festival this year was to see the Bassar Fire Dance, a traditional Togolese dance native to the people of the Bassar region. Now I must warn you, although it was an interesting dance, the name inspires much more awe than the actual performance. The dance consisted of a group of dancers wearing foot-long ankle bracelets and skirts made from straw and strips of pagne who danced in a circle around a small bonfire. The “fire” part of the dance basically involved each of the dancers stepping over the bonfire to show their “invincibility” at defeating death by fire. Although the dance was a bit disappointing, it was cool to see my first traditional Togolese dance, and I got some good pictures out of the experience.
Food
Since I’m talking about yams I might as well describe the culinary situation here in Togo. Togolese food is awesome, or at least it’s awesome now that I’ve been eating it for a while and it’s not soo strange anymore. Togolese base their diet upon two staples: a starch and a sauce. The starch can be anything from rice, couscous, macaroni, or fried yams. Three Togolese traditional starches are pâte, fufu and ablo. Pâte and ablo are similar in texture, resembling sticky white paste. Ablo, a small round and flat cake, is made from corn or rice and actually looks and tastes like an idli (South Indian dish). Pâte is also made from corn or rice, can be fermented or unfermented, and resembles a sticky off-white paste. Fufu, which can be made from either manioc or yams, on the other hand resembles play dough and tastes a bit like sticky mashed potatoes. Pâte, fufu and ablo are all eaten with the right hand (NEVER the left hand as that’s the hand you use in the latrine) by tearing off a piece and dipping it in some variety of sauce.
There are many types of sauces popular in Togo: tomato, peanut, gumbo (made from okra), sesame, spinach, etc. and many of these sauces include pieces of vegetables (green beans, spinach, pimento, etc.) and pieces of meat (beef, chicken, pork, fish, etc.). Meat however is usually reserved for special occasions since meat is always expensive. Sauces are always spicy with heat levels anywhere from pleasantly mild to “my-mouth-is-on-fire”. Instead of meat, the vegetarian options include eggs, fried soy (kinda like tofu), and wagash (a dry cheese made by the nomadic Fulani people; tastes like Indian paneer).
Other traditional Togolese dishes include colico, watchi and beans & gari. Colico, or fried yam/potatoes/sweet potato/manioc, is eaten by dipping it in a spicy piment sauce. Watchi, or beans and rice, is usually eaten with a tomato sauce, some meat, some garlic oil and a piment sauce. Sometimes you can add macaroni to the mix and some green beans. Beans & gari is made by boiling black-eyes beans and covering them in gari (granulated manioc) and a tomato-onion-piment sauce.
Beignets, though not traditional to Togo, have also become a popular snack. Sweet beignets taste a bit like fried doughnuts and they can either be moist or dry. Spicy beignets are usually made from beans and interestingly enough they taste like a vadaa (South Indian dish again).
My favorite Togolese dish hands down would have to be fufu from yams with a peanut sauce and some fried wagash. I don’t know why I like it so much but it just tastes so amazing.
Alcohol
You can’t talk about food and not talk about drinks. I’ve discussed some drinks at random points in this blog but I’ll try and summarize. First let’s talk local drinks: sodabe and tchouk. Sodabe, the preferred drink of southern Togo is basically Togolese moonshine. It kind of tastes like a mix between everclear and tequila. It’s very potent and you drink it as a shot. Speaking from experience, there is a very fine line between taking one shot of sodabe and two shots of sodabe so if you ever come and visit, be warned. Tchouk, the preferred drink of northern Togo is basically a low-alcohol-content sour apple cider. It’s made from millet, you drink it out of a calabash (hollowed out gourd shell), and comes in two varieties: unfermented (sweeter) and fermented (more sour). There is a definite regional difference when it comes to tchouk. I prefer Lhosso tchouk as it has less of a bite compared to Kabyé tchouk but to each his/her own. It’s pretty easy to find tchouk stands all over Togo; they consist of a marché mama sitting under a peyote (gazebo) serving tchouk out of large trashcans. Tchouk stands are great informal places to have random discussions with strangers about anything from politics to the weather. A tchouk stand is a Peace Corps volunteer’s best friend as most informal information exchange, regarding ways to prevent malaria or the importance of sending girls to university, is best done over a few calabashes of tchouk.
Liquor is another story here in Togo. Unless you are in Lomé where most popular alcohols (Captain Morgan’s, Jack Daniels, Smirnoff Vodka, etc.) can be found, your liquor choices are very limited outside the capital. Whisky and Scotch is the liquor of choice and there exists all the levels between from whiskey found in a small plastic sachet sold at the local boutique to handles of Chivas at some of the “higher end” liquor stores. Most whiskey is pretty foul but if it’s liquor you want, it’ll do the job. You can also find sachets of gin at the local boutique although I am yet to find handles of gin anywhere in country. Some of the bigger towns have access to bottles of Malibu and Bailey’s, but without other mixing liquors those two bottles are pretty much useless. Vodka is exclusive to Lomé and Kara.
Wine selection is pretty much shit all the way around. Boxed wine and boxed sangria can be found at any boutique but they are pretty revolting. Bottles do exist and they are usually imported from France but considering that, the imports are shit as well. White wine is unheard off outside Lomé. The severe lack of good wine in country has been pretty frustrating for a wino like me.
This brings us to beer! First let’s cover Bière de Benin or B.B., a bottling company from Benin that produces a wide range of beers to soft drinks. Pils, Lager, Eku and Awooyo are the beers and they are all right. Pils tastes like water and Lager and Eku remind me of a Coors Light. I have many friends who love Awooyo but I can’t stand it and it’s probably my least favorite beer in country. My two beers of choice are Castel, a locally bottled beer (I think, or from Ghana), and Beaufort, the beer with the highest alcohol content. I can’t think of any beers that compare to Castel and Beaufort. Guinness is also found everywhere but it’s bottled in Nigeria so it’s not as good as the original. Draft beer is unheard off, everyone drinks from bottles are roughly equivalent to 2 beers in the US, but the one exception is Cheap Bar in Lomé that is just down the street from Mammy’s and rotates one beer on tap each night.
So that’s pretty much it for me. We ate great fufu and colico from yams at the AIDS association that Amy and Taressa work with on both days. Nothing else too exciting happened in Bassar aside from the fire dance. A group of us headed back to Sokodé to hang out and chill and then Marcus and I headed back to Sotouboua on Sunday for another exciting week at post…
Pilaba,
- Nikhil
So who knew I would ever be so excited about yams in my entire life but I just spent this past weekend celebrating yams up in Bassar for the annual Yam Festival. Here in Togo, yam season is upon us and to celebrate the first harvest of yams, the Kara region plays host to an annual festival filled with lots of good food and the traditional fire-dance. This year the official festival (as in the official party that the President was planning on attending; due to the rain however he cancelled at the last minute) was in Bassar so I headed up this past Friday to partake in the celebrations and also to spend some time with my fellow volunteers.
I arrived in Sokodé on Friday morning where I met up with Heather, Golda, Conner, Barrett, Russ and Rachel at the transit house so we could all carpool up together. Since it was the official day of the festival, we had no problem getting a bush-taxi up there. Although it was a much longer ride up there then I thought it was going to be due to our driver who appeared to be in no hurry at all to get up to Bassar, it was nice to spend time with Golda since I didn’t really know her that well and she was one of the few volunteers in my region. We got up to Bassar, dropped Heather off at Taressa’s (since she was staying there with a bunch of people from my stâge and the rest of us were staying with Amy) and headed to Amy’s place. Since Amy’s last few weeks in country overlapped with Taressa’s arrival, Amy ended up moving into another house so Taressa could settle in to her new house; although this would have been a frustrating situation for any volunteer, Amy ended up moving into a spare suite of this HUGE MANSION-type house that belonged to an officer in the Togolese army. The officer was apparently a friend of Tchao, our CHAP APCD, so that’s how Amy found the place. And it was a BEAUTIFUL house. It sat on top of a hill overlooking the entire city and although it was painted in pink, it had marble-tiled floors and this huge open patio that presented a gorgeous view of the surrounding countryside. Although the suite was slightly small for our huge group that was staying there (about 9 people in a one-bedroom suite) we made it work and Amy was an awesome host.
After settling into Amy’s place, Conner, Russ, Amy and I headed out to the “tourist” spot of Bassar: the Bassar Iron Smelters. One of the lesser known tourist spots in Togo, the Smelters are basically a cluster of tall mud furnaces that were used decades ago to melt iron in the region. Even though the smelters weren’t that interesting, the highlight was the trip out to the smelters. The route to the smelters takes you around a hill that overlooks the city of Bassar and it leads to some beautiful panoramic views of the Togolese countryside.
One of the main reasons for coming to Bassar specifically for the yam festival this year was to see the Bassar Fire Dance, a traditional Togolese dance native to the people of the Bassar region. Now I must warn you, although it was an interesting dance, the name inspires much more awe than the actual performance. The dance consisted of a group of dancers wearing foot-long ankle bracelets and skirts made from straw and strips of pagne who danced in a circle around a small bonfire. The “fire” part of the dance basically involved each of the dancers stepping over the bonfire to show their “invincibility” at defeating death by fire. Although the dance was a bit disappointing, it was cool to see my first traditional Togolese dance, and I got some good pictures out of the experience.
Food
Since I’m talking about yams I might as well describe the culinary situation here in Togo. Togolese food is awesome, or at least it’s awesome now that I’ve been eating it for a while and it’s not soo strange anymore. Togolese base their diet upon two staples: a starch and a sauce. The starch can be anything from rice, couscous, macaroni, or fried yams. Three Togolese traditional starches are pâte, fufu and ablo. Pâte and ablo are similar in texture, resembling sticky white paste. Ablo, a small round and flat cake, is made from corn or rice and actually looks and tastes like an idli (South Indian dish). Pâte is also made from corn or rice, can be fermented or unfermented, and resembles a sticky off-white paste. Fufu, which can be made from either manioc or yams, on the other hand resembles play dough and tastes a bit like sticky mashed potatoes. Pâte, fufu and ablo are all eaten with the right hand (NEVER the left hand as that’s the hand you use in the latrine) by tearing off a piece and dipping it in some variety of sauce.
There are many types of sauces popular in Togo: tomato, peanut, gumbo (made from okra), sesame, spinach, etc. and many of these sauces include pieces of vegetables (green beans, spinach, pimento, etc.) and pieces of meat (beef, chicken, pork, fish, etc.). Meat however is usually reserved for special occasions since meat is always expensive. Sauces are always spicy with heat levels anywhere from pleasantly mild to “my-mouth-is-on-fire”. Instead of meat, the vegetarian options include eggs, fried soy (kinda like tofu), and wagash (a dry cheese made by the nomadic Fulani people; tastes like Indian paneer).
Other traditional Togolese dishes include colico, watchi and beans & gari. Colico, or fried yam/potatoes/sweet potato/manioc, is eaten by dipping it in a spicy piment sauce. Watchi, or beans and rice, is usually eaten with a tomato sauce, some meat, some garlic oil and a piment sauce. Sometimes you can add macaroni to the mix and some green beans. Beans & gari is made by boiling black-eyes beans and covering them in gari (granulated manioc) and a tomato-onion-piment sauce.
Beignets, though not traditional to Togo, have also become a popular snack. Sweet beignets taste a bit like fried doughnuts and they can either be moist or dry. Spicy beignets are usually made from beans and interestingly enough they taste like a vadaa (South Indian dish again).
My favorite Togolese dish hands down would have to be fufu from yams with a peanut sauce and some fried wagash. I don’t know why I like it so much but it just tastes so amazing.
Alcohol
You can’t talk about food and not talk about drinks. I’ve discussed some drinks at random points in this blog but I’ll try and summarize. First let’s talk local drinks: sodabe and tchouk. Sodabe, the preferred drink of southern Togo is basically Togolese moonshine. It kind of tastes like a mix between everclear and tequila. It’s very potent and you drink it as a shot. Speaking from experience, there is a very fine line between taking one shot of sodabe and two shots of sodabe so if you ever come and visit, be warned. Tchouk, the preferred drink of northern Togo is basically a low-alcohol-content sour apple cider. It’s made from millet, you drink it out of a calabash (hollowed out gourd shell), and comes in two varieties: unfermented (sweeter) and fermented (more sour). There is a definite regional difference when it comes to tchouk. I prefer Lhosso tchouk as it has less of a bite compared to Kabyé tchouk but to each his/her own. It’s pretty easy to find tchouk stands all over Togo; they consist of a marché mama sitting under a peyote (gazebo) serving tchouk out of large trashcans. Tchouk stands are great informal places to have random discussions with strangers about anything from politics to the weather. A tchouk stand is a Peace Corps volunteer’s best friend as most informal information exchange, regarding ways to prevent malaria or the importance of sending girls to university, is best done over a few calabashes of tchouk.
Liquor is another story here in Togo. Unless you are in Lomé where most popular alcohols (Captain Morgan’s, Jack Daniels, Smirnoff Vodka, etc.) can be found, your liquor choices are very limited outside the capital. Whisky and Scotch is the liquor of choice and there exists all the levels between from whiskey found in a small plastic sachet sold at the local boutique to handles of Chivas at some of the “higher end” liquor stores. Most whiskey is pretty foul but if it’s liquor you want, it’ll do the job. You can also find sachets of gin at the local boutique although I am yet to find handles of gin anywhere in country. Some of the bigger towns have access to bottles of Malibu and Bailey’s, but without other mixing liquors those two bottles are pretty much useless. Vodka is exclusive to Lomé and Kara.
Wine selection is pretty much shit all the way around. Boxed wine and boxed sangria can be found at any boutique but they are pretty revolting. Bottles do exist and they are usually imported from France but considering that, the imports are shit as well. White wine is unheard off outside Lomé. The severe lack of good wine in country has been pretty frustrating for a wino like me.
This brings us to beer! First let’s cover Bière de Benin or B.B., a bottling company from Benin that produces a wide range of beers to soft drinks. Pils, Lager, Eku and Awooyo are the beers and they are all right. Pils tastes like water and Lager and Eku remind me of a Coors Light. I have many friends who love Awooyo but I can’t stand it and it’s probably my least favorite beer in country. My two beers of choice are Castel, a locally bottled beer (I think, or from Ghana), and Beaufort, the beer with the highest alcohol content. I can’t think of any beers that compare to Castel and Beaufort. Guinness is also found everywhere but it’s bottled in Nigeria so it’s not as good as the original. Draft beer is unheard off, everyone drinks from bottles are roughly equivalent to 2 beers in the US, but the one exception is Cheap Bar in Lomé that is just down the street from Mammy’s and rotates one beer on tap each night.
So that’s pretty much it for me. We ate great fufu and colico from yams at the AIDS association that Amy and Taressa work with on both days. Nothing else too exciting happened in Bassar aside from the fire dance. A group of us headed back to Sokodé to hang out and chill and then Marcus and I headed back to Sotouboua on Sunday for another exciting week at post…
Pilaba,
- Nikhil
