Tastes & Trysts

When I lived in Kaboli, Sunday was a day for relaxation. This ideal was taken seriously by the Christians and Muslims of Kaboli. Yet, divisions remained. Importantly, first instance, Muslims do not eat pork.

On most Sundays, I met my friends after mass at a house in the Djama neighborhood. There, we sat under a canopy of mango trees, drank Tchouk, and ate grilled pork. The pork was first boiled, then roasted slowly on the grill, and finally served with some piment (ground red pepper) and sliced red onions. I would try to arrive early so I could claim the meatiest piece—though I still appreciated the juices from a nice chunk of fat cooked along with the meat. A great addition to this little feast was a side order of gari (grated, dried cassave). The gari was cooked in the juices leftover from boiling the pork along with onions, tomatoes, piment, and condiment (ground garlic plus local herbs and spices).

These Sunday afternoons in Djama were not only a great opportunity to get some delicious protein; they were also a great opportunity meet with the people of my community. Friends and acquaintances often encouraged me to talk about life in America. It was especially a nice time to meet with my Togolese counterparts in a more informal setting. Building strong professional relationships in Togo often depends on these friendly, non-work-related meetings.

Yet, Muslims don't eat pork. So I missed my Muslim friends on these Sundays unless they could afford to ask the chef to cook a chicken. On my home, after an afternoon under the mango trees, I tried to make an effort to visit my friend at the bush taxi station.

My friend is the secretary at the bush taxi station; therefore we call him Secrétaire. He is Muslim. He is young, tall and thin. When he was a child, he was trafficked to Nigeria. He worked for a few years on a farm and, for some reason, always threatens that he will return someday. Working as the secretary of the bush taxi station does not pay well. He works long hours, manning his post from the wee morning hours when the first customers begin to arrive until the night car departs for Lomé around midnight.

On Sundays, however, the bush taxi drivers like to steal away from the hustle and bussel, and Secretaire gets a rare break. He invited me to join them at their hide-away one Sunday afternoon. He was concerned, though, because I could not take a motorcycle and he did not have a bike. So we decided to risk the afternoon heat and walk there. We made an appointment to meet at the station at one o'clock in the afternoon.

At one o'clock, Secrétaire still had some business with the car to Tchamba. I was smart and brought a book. At two o'clock, he was finally free. He bought some grilled lamb. Then we set off down the road to Goubi.

We reached the edge of town and kept walking. Eventually we turned down a path that led a few kilometers into the bush. We passed fields of corn, manioc and beans. We passed groves of cashew trees, teak, and finally, we ended our lengthy jaunt in a grove of palm trees. A straw shack and cook stove stood there, but the place was otherwise deserted.

Then, two farmers emerged. They were not the field's owner. However, they had brought a bunch of nuts with them, though I count not identify the variety of nut. They were Kabiye and did not speak Kaboli, but we muddled through with French and they offered us some nuts. They reminded me of chestnuts—large and meaty.

The Kabiye farmers also had several little crabs, which they had caught in their fields and tied up. I reminisced of the crabs from the Chesapeake Bay and missed home. So my friend kindly bought two of the crabs for me to cook at my house.

Soon the field's owner arrived with his wife and two sons. They immediately started to go through the motions for maintaining their production of palm wine. As some of the drivers from the taxi station show up for their day off, they joined in.

At first, everyone was leery of the white stranger—me. So I cracked a joke though and everyone loosened up. I then showed an interest in their production of palm wine.

The farmer bounded a bunch of sticks together and lit one end so that it began to smolder. After checking the container sitting underneath a fallen palm tree to see if any palm juice has collected, we used bamboo straws and the lit sticks to smoke out the tree trunk—sterilizing it as it continues to produce palm wine. Once coming across an older trunk that no longer produced juice, we chipped away at the trunk and dug up fat, squirming maggots.

As the men continued to collect palm wine, the farmer's wife started a fire in the outdoor stove and began to cook the maggots. No oil was added. They quickly shrank in the pan and cooked up crisply in their own fats.

We all settled down together with a calabash of palm wine to a pot-luck lunch of nuts, maggots, fresh roasted mice, and lamb. My new friends were happy to see me taste a bit of everything. It was all very tasty. Each bite imparted a smoky, woodsy flavor. However, I could not get the idea of eating maggots out of my head and stopped after three. The lamb needed a little bit more flavor, but luckily some onion and piment was kept underneath a rock for such gourmet emergencies.

That night, I steamed the crabs with some salt and piment. They were not as meaty as the ones from the Chesapeake Bay, but it was enough for nostalgia's sake.

I'll never forget these Sundays in Kaboli. The food was always interesting, if not delicious. I also made new friends and learned a little of life in Togo.

Café Kuma: A Togolese Brand

Café Kuma is a cooperative of nine coffee growers from Kuma Dunyo, who transform green coffee beans into their own brand of roasted coffee. Each member manages their own coffee plantation, including Robusta and Arabica varietals. They are trained to apply organic and shade-grown cultivation methods. They store their coffee bean harvests collectively and then work together to transform their beans into a marketable product.

Kuma Dunyo is a mountain village, 20 kilometers northwest of Kpalimé, Togo. Coffee has been grown in this region since the late 19th century on small family plantations. Yet, present consumption in Togo is primarily imported instant coffee. Few Togolese nationals take the pains to roast the beans that they grow in their backyard; and purchasing high-quality roasted coffee is expensive. Likewise, visitors to Togo also have few opportunities to drink a freshly brewed cup of uniquely Togolese coffee, even though coffee is major export of Togo.

Five years ago, a Peace Corps Volunteer posted in the Kuma mountains organized a training workshop on roasting green coffee beans. The Volunteer wanted to introduce the idea of adding value to an already abundant agricultural product by transforming it into a finished product. Some of the participants were inspired to form Café Kuma, led by Egan Kodzo, an exceptionally motived entrepreneur amongst them. In 2004, Café Kuma cooperative began by roasting over 500 kilograms of green coffee beans for sale under their own brand.

In subsequents years, Café Kuma worked to increase production, improve the quality of their finished product, expand markets and improve their organisation. Peace Corps Volunteers from the Small Enterprise Development Program continued to work with them after the departure of their first Volunteer. The Volunteers advised them on marketing, organizational development, packaging and distribution.

Though the members of Café Kuma have appreciated the help of Peace Corps Volunteers over the years, they are anxious to prove that they can stand on their own. Therefore, I am working with them to strengthen their organisational structure; develop a stream-lined production with quality-control; and begin strategic planning.

Café Kuma currently roasts their beans over wood-burning fires, using hand-operated, locally-designed contraptions similar to stove-top popcorn poppers. Using this roasting methods, it is difficult to produce even roasting. Though Café Kuma does not intend to completely abandon this artisanal method for roasting, we are also planning to invest in equipment for roasting that will meet a Café Kuma standard from batch to batch.

This is a crucial year for Café Kuma. To ensure steady production and future growth, they would like to expand and solidify their presence in regional markets. One idea is to introduce a new product—packaging their roasted and ground coffee into tea-bags of single-serving sizes. If this can be done at a reasonable cost, this new product could be marketed to common cafeterias and general stores as an alternative to imported instant coffees.

Additionally, Café Kuma's proximity to Kpalimé, a major tourist destination of Togo, has encouraged them to promote their production site as an ecologically-friendly tourist spot. Visitors to Togo like to hike the mountains of Kuma to scope verdant vistas of Togo and Ghana and become encircled by a variety of butterflies. Café Kuma is always happy to host visitors at their headquarters, which has a bedroom and latrine, and offer them a tour of their coffee plantations. And Fidèle—Kodzo's wife and fellow cooperative member—is a wonderful cook!
In the long-run, Café Kuma dreams to ship their product to American and European markets. In the meantime, please visit www.cafekuma.com for more information about their coffee production and visiting the Kpalimé area.

My Villa in Kpalimé

I really appreciated my former house in Kaboli. The three rooms with an adjoining court yard and latrine was the right amount of space for a single girl to sleep, exercise, bathe, cook, work and relax, while living alone in a foreign land. By moving to Kpalimé, however, my comfortable living in Togo has moved to excess.

My “Villa” in Kpalimé has three bedrooms, one bathroom with running water, a storage closet, a kitchen, and a large front room with space for a desk, living room, library and breakfast nook. Outside my kitchen door there is spigot with running water. Within the walls of my small compound, my landlord lives with his family and runs his tailor shop. This means that I am not completely isolated and it makes me feel more secure. There is also a well, which the landlord allows the neighborhood to access.

Outside my front door is a terrace, where I've started an herb garden. And the walls of the compound are lined with various trees and flowers, including a bush with white flowers that come into bloom every so often and fills my house with a honeysuckle fragrance.

I am not completely selfish though and, in fact, the house can feel rather lonely at times. So I keep my house open to people that I work with for meetings and other activities. For instance, the coffee co-op that I work will use the space and electricity to help them bag their roasted beans while we search for a sustainable alternative. Further, Peace Corps Volunteers are grouped in “clusters” and keep my house open to my cluster-mates for when they need to be in town for banking, shopping, or other work.

The Big Move: Kaboli to Kpalimé

After swearing in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer, you are assigned a post for two years of service. I was assigned to the village of Kaboli. During my first year in Kaboli, I initiated many projects—working with savings groups, potential entrepreneurs and small business owners. For instance, I successfully started three continuing Village Savings & Loan groups. However, many of these initiatives ended in disappointment or had stalled indefinitely. The butcher shop—a construction project that was initiated by my predecessor—still has no foundation.

So when one of my fellow volunteers decided to leave early and asked me if I would like to replace her in Kpalimé, I seized the opportunity. In Kpalimé, she worked with a cooperative of coffee growers that sought larger profits through selling roasted coffee instead of simply exporting the raw green beans. My friend was a bit anxious because she did not want to abandon the group at a crucial time. They had gained a significant presence in the market, but now was the time to strengthen their foundation and expand their market.

I had made many good friends in Kaboli and I enjoyed my year of service there. However, I wanted to work more with entrepreneurs and I wasn't getting that experience in Kaboli. I asked my Country Director if I could transfer and I moved to Kpalimé at the end of October.

The heavy flooding that Togo suffered in August severely impacted its infrastructure in the south. The bridges supporting the only national highway were swept away, and trucks were forced to take a detour on the road from Atakpame to Kpalimé and then Kpalimé to Lomé. These roads were not maintained to handle such traffic and deteriorated further. The trip from Kaboli included the road from Atakpamé to Kpalimé. Fortunately, my friends from Kaboli offered to help me move. So we packed all my stuff into a van, then piled more on top, and we left Kaboli at 7:30 am.

Around lunchtime the engine started overheating. We stopped periodically to turn off the engine and poor water on the radiator. I wished that I had known the word for coolant in French, but I'm not sure if it would have been available even if my driver knew what it was.

Finally, around 8pm and only 35 kilometers from our destination, the engine gave out and we could go no further until the radiator was replaced the following morning. We stopped right outside a small village—where there were no hotels.

My friends from Kaboli were almost as weary as I was of this small Ewe village – as they were from a completely different ethnic group and did not speak the language. Yet somehow we managed to scrounge enough food to satisfy any hunger pangs for the night. We then set some mats out on the side of the road and sat under the stars as I shared with them pictures from America on my laptop.

Though my friends said that the breakdown was a bad omen and that I was meant to stay in Kaboli, I thought of it more as a good opportunity for me to spend some time with my friends before finally moving to Kpalimé.

The driver's cousin who lived in Kpalimé brought a new radiator the next morning. We finally arrived in Kpalimé at noon and I settled in to start my second year as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

Got Some Holiday Spirit Leftover? Help Golda build a school in Togo

While living in an already economically depressed part of the world, the Togolese may not have been hit as hard by the economic downtown seizing the world's markets today—but their need is persistent. Struggling to meet their most basic diet and sanitation needs, many Togolese parents still recognize the need to educate their children—as a means to a better life.

Afele was founded by a group of primarily Kabiye farmers who came from the northern Togo in search of more fertile land. Within the past two decades, they settled in the outskirts of Kaboli and have worked hard to develop their community. Since the closest primary school is six kilometers away, in Kaboli, they collect funds each year to hire a teacher and maintain essential school supplies. This expense leaves little money to build a proper school building and classes are currently held under a flimsy straw structure.

My fellow volunteer, Golda Calonge, is posted in Afele. During my first year of Peace Corps service, I was posted in Kaboli. As we could easily bike to one and another's post, Golda and I frequently worked together. I felt as welcomed in Afele as I did in Kaboli. Therefore, I have a strong and personal interest to help Golda and the people of Afele to raise funds and build a primary school.

When the economic system is based on subsistence farming, the typical Togolese family has limited funds to spend on clothing or schooling for their children. This economic situation often forces a family to choose between sending a son or a daughter to school. More often, the decision process favors the son. Sadly, this also contributes to child trafficking. Children with little education have limited views of their future. Traffickers then take advantage of their situation and convince the children to follow them as the only means to earn more money. The Washington Post recently featured Togo in an article about child trafficking.

The new school would not only benefit the small village of Afele, but also the children of even smaller villages surrounding Afele. So if you have some holiday spirit leftover and are willing to contribute a little bit of money to a concrete cause, I invite you to visit this webpage and learn more about Golda's project, www.peacecorps.gov/contribute You will see the project listed under “Togo” and “Golda Calonge” or project no. 693-332. You can also participate in the cause through Facebook: “Help Golda & Peace Corps Build a School in Africa”

The people of this village are very ambitious and working hard for the future of their children. They would appreciate any of your attention—whether it be money or taking the time to pass on their dream to others.

Thank You & Happy Holidays

Yam Festivals

Before colonists brought corn and cassava from the Americas, West Africa had ignames or yams. But these ain't no sweet potatoes, which are only very distantly related to the true yam. These yams are ENORMOUS tubers (can grow to 2.5 meters in length and weigh up to 150 pounds) that are dug up, peeled, boiled, and pounded into the traditional dish fufu. Fufu is to Togolese cuisine as pasta is to Italian cuisine. It resembles a sticky mound of mashed potatoes and is accompanied by a variety of sauces: okra, groundnut, sesame, tomato etc. Yams are also stewed or deep-fried to make koliko (similar to French fries). Togo is one of the world's top 5 producers of yams.

The season to harvest new yams begins at the end of rainy season, typically between August and September. As the traditional staple food of West Africa, the first harvest of yams is accompanied by a large festival. Representative of Togo's plethora of ethnic groups, each region or village will organize it's own yam festival. Yet, certain festivals are more renowned. For instance, Bassar is well known for its fire-dancing ceremony.

Scheduling the festivities often depends on the weather, so the dates can only be confirmed a few weeks in advance. For this reason, I was unable to attend the Bassar festival. However, I have attended two others.

In 2007, while I was attending Peace Corps training, I lived with an Ewe family in southern Togo. Their village tradition featured the dance of the Panther. First, the young men of the village enter the Sacred Forest and cover themselves in mud. Then, one of the young men invokes the spirit of the Panther.

After the “Panther” paraded through the town, we all danced under the sacred trees—jumping up and down and shouting what sounded like “Cherry! Cherry!” I never caught the meaning of this chant, but it was a good time and was followed by freshly pounded fufu.

The following year, I was living at my post, Kaboli. The people living in this area are descendants from the Yoruba tribe; so the festivities included stilt walking and dancing that resembles a form of African martial arts. During the official ceremony, I felt honored when I was named in the prayers for good tidings over the next two years.

Training Twist : Getting the most out of your meetings

Peace Corps Togo manages the publication of the newsletter Farm to Market. This newsletter co-edited by two volunteers from the Small Enterprise Development program (my program) and two volunteers from the Natural Resource Management program. As farming is the primary economic activity for a majority of Togolese families, this publication focuses on interplay between business and agriculture. Each year a new team of editors is selected as the old team finish serving their second year of service and leave Togo. I was selected to serve as one of the new co-editors in June 2008.

Below is an article originally published in the March 2008 issue. I co-wrote this article with a fellow volunteer, Golda Calonge, before being selected as a co-editor.

When meeting groupements for the first time, one challenge that a Volunteer must meet is facing the initial expectations of the groupement's members. At the outset, members are looking for something immediate or concrete: "What is this person going to give me - today - so that I can improve the quality of my life?" The Volunteer, on the other hand, does notcome to these meetings with readymade solutions for all of the members' problems. At thefirst meeting, we're still learning what those problems are before we're able to offer any useful advice.

So when the two of us set out to start meeting with the groupements in our area, wewere fortunate to discover a very useful method for interacting with the groupement members. By fusing training into our meeting, both the expectations of the Volunteer and the groupement were met.

Angela works in Kaboli as a SED Volunteer, and Golda works as an NRM Volunteer in the village of Afele, which is located about six kilometers outside of Kaboli. As both our programs encourage us to work with groupements, we decided to work together and start meeting with groupements in our area. One Sunday, Golda invited Angela to meet one of her women's groupements in Afele. Meeting the NRM program objective to raise awareness about the benefits of moringa, Golda opened the meeting by training the women on how to use moringa seeds in order to make water potable. As the water is required to restone hour so the moringa seeds can work their magic, Angela used this break in the demonstration to inquire about how the groupement works and to discuss how they would like to improve it.

We began the meeting by getting the women physically involved. In order to clean water using moringa seeds, someone has to pound the seeds, mix the seeds with a bottle of clean water to create a solution, and stir it into the dirty water which needs to be treated. Although a single person could have done all those things, we asked for volunteers in the groupement to help us, which got them actively learning about moringa and potable water.

Their active participation continued well into the meeting portion of our day. By the time Angela started her dialogue with the groupement, Golda had piqued their interest and focused their attention. Before Angela could even ask her first question, Sinatou, the groupement's president, expressed her enthusiasm by immediately askingwhat type of loan they should apply for at the local microfinance institution.Encouraged by Sinatou's honesty and eagerness to improve their groupement, Angela explained that before we could know the best way to advise them, we needed some fundamental information about how they operated. Angela deftly redirected the conversation by working questions into her answers, such as: "How many people are in your groupement?" "What kinds of activities do you take part in together?" "Do you meet regularly?" "Are there otherofficers?" and "Do you have bylaws?"

Though the discussion was largely dominated by Sinatou and Golda's counterpart, Ernest, who was translating, one or two other women would intermittently pose questions about how we could help them. Interweaving a training session into the groupement meeting encouraged members who did not speak French or hold a leadership position to ask questions about atangible subject that they felt more comfortable with. This gave each member ownership of the meeting.

For our part, we were able to ascertain the general framework of the groupement's structure and to discuss the members' ambitions to improve it. Sinatou talked about how the women organized their credit system and how their enterprise is primarily based on selling and storing grains. This signaled to us that we should investigate local lending optionsand different methods of grain storage in preparation for future meetings. Another member spoke out and showed her interest in soy processing and animal husbandry. Upon hearing this, we asked them if they would like to have another meeting that would include asession on soy milk production and a further discussion of the issues they had presented to us that day. The answer was a resounding "yes." Just like the end of any good time you have with people you'd like to get to know better, all we needed was the promise of a second date.

By the time we had wrapped up our discussion, the dirt from the moringatreated water had sunk to the bottom of our bucket and was ready to be filtered. We had addressed a communityproblem while gaining a better perspective of how to help one particular groupement help themselves. After their meeting, people from outside the women's groupement, including men, approached us on how they could plant moringa and where they could find seeds. By introducing a new practice, community members had something tangible to take home with them, even if they were not part of the groupement.

Instead of coming to a groupement meeting with the intention of purely extracting information about how they operate, the inclusion of an interactive and interesting information session created an environment for a mutual exchange of ideas. This provided an open forum for everyone involved to learn fromeach other.