C'est Comme Ca

When I last left off, I had written mostly about Camp UNITE. Now I am sitting in my room, writing this blog entry, the Sunday before heading back up country to the Peace Corps training center to be a camp counselor for Camp Espoir.
Sundays are quickly becoming my favorite day for writing blog entries. Everyone is at church, and so I have the entire morning to myself to do as I please. In this regard they feel a little bit like Sundays at home, albeit without the big bacon and eggs Sunday breakfast. Occasionally I have made eggs, though they are a hard find, as they are not available in village (despite my best efforts to promote chicken raising), and transporting eggs, by bicycle, over the five miles of bumpy dirt road from my market to village, can be a tricky task. Still, eggs without the greasy goodness of bacon seem incomplete, and bacon is simply non-existent in this country. The last time I’ve eaten pig of any kind in this country, it was from a bag of picnic bacon sent by a caring and devoted well wisher from the states. To her I am sincerely indebted, and she is all the more dear to me, thanks to the generous and hearty gift.
Fresh bacon, however, is hard to come by in these parts. The people of the south tend not to raise pigs, and though I’ve found no one with a specific food taboo against eating pigs (with the notable exception of course of the entire Muslim community), southerners seem to generally have an aversion to big not shared by their counterparts up north. When I mention how much I enjoy pork, and the various products to be made there from, friends in village look disgusted, and starkly exclaim “Pork is gross, if you eat it, you’ll die”.
While I know that pork is a meat with the potential to make its consumers very sick, and for this reason it has historically been a food tabooed by many cultures, I was very surprised to hear this from a people who will, generally speaking, eat almost any kind of meat. In village, snakes, bush rats, moles and all sorts of rodents found in the field, and even cats and dogs, are considered delicious fair. I know of several volunteers who, upon returning from a vacation out of country to their village, find that their beloved cat or dog, which they had entrusted to the care of a neighbor, has in their absence become that family’s dinner (attachment to pets is not something very well understood in Togolese culture). Meat is a fairly rare item on the menu, and so generally speaking, any meat is good meat.
Interestingly enough, despite this generally open attitude towards a whole plethora of meats that we in the west would generally consider inedible (or at least gross), some Ewe do have very strict food taboos. Though there is no overarching cultural taboo, various clans, villages, and families observe certain dietary restrictions, and if you inquire deeply enough, you’ll normally find an interesting story concerning why this particular group of people refuses to eat a certain animal. One example that our French instructor back in pre-service training gave, was a certain groups taboo against eating bats. Long ago, this group was fleeing from an enemy tribe, and came across a cave along the road. Though they knew that their pursuers would likely scour every inch of land and inspect every available hiding spot, the group was desperate and exhausted, and so decided to take up in a cave along the road. As their pursuers came to the cave, their leader called for a halt, and it was clear that he intended to search the cave. Hope seemed lost for the fleers as their pursuers approached. At the last moment, a flurry of bats spewed out from the mouth of the cave, terrifying the pursuers and forcing their retreat. They assumed that no one could hide in such a cave so infested with swarming bats, and so continued on down the road. Because the bats rescued them, they considered bats to be a friend of the people, and so descendants from this group are forbidden to eat them.
Still, despite the partial truth concerning the dangers of eating pigs, I generally consider my Ewe friend’s aversion to pork to be misguided hyperbole. It also seems like an excuse to point out how gross other groups of people are who do eat pork. Though no one raises pigs down south, up north, they are as common as household guard dogs. I can’t imagine the folks up north would continue the costly practice of pork husbandry if every time they went to eat one, they died (as those with whom I speak in village would have it).
When I tell my objectors how often I enjoy a ham sandwich, or a cut of pork chop back in the states, they roll their eyes saying, “Of course in America you can eat them, but not here. Ici en Afrique, c’est comme ca.” Just look how they will eat anything here, they will add, it’s gross (when I note to them how goats, the local favorite in mammalian fair have exactly the same dietary habits, they are un-phased in their opinion).
This response is the bane of any inquisitive foreigner’s existence. It is the catch-all term to extinguish any further discussion. The interviewed party walks always feeling that it has fully satisfied the curiosity of the inquirer, while the inquirer walks away with no further information gained, only that which, had he not noticed before beginning his inquiry, he likely would have never thought the inquiry necessary in the first place. What is most irritating about this phrase, I suppose, is that though often it used to demonstrate that a foreigner can’t possibly understand the way things work here in Africa, eg. “Perhaps in America AIDS has no cure, but AIDS here in Africa can be cured with the use of traditional medicine, ici en Afrique, c’est comme ca,” just as often it actually is the best response to a given question eg. “Why does it take four hours just to make a withdrawl from the bank?” “Ici en Afrique, c’est comme ca”.
But I digress. Though I seriously doubt the considered option of my comrades in village, I refrain from eating pork due to some combination of: it being hard to find in the south, meat in generally being hard to prepare and store in Africa, fear of the off chance that perhaps “ici en Afrique” it actually is “comme ca”. So no bacon and eggs this morning, although I did have some delicious leftover local beans with taco mix from the states (thank you very much Mom and Dad for the generous care-package).
In general, I don’t buy too much meat for many of the reasons listed above. It is hard to find, hard to store, and expensive. At the market, it is hard to tell the quality of the meat. The only way to be sure that the meat is fresh, is to buy the animal and kill it yourself. Then you no only have to kill the animal, but skin it, prepare it, and find a use for all the little bits. When choosing to by “in detail” instead, getting the meat home without spilling meat juice all over your bag and everything else you bought at market that day is another chore. Many of the recipes I know of call for chicken breast, in order to obtain a chicken breast; you must buy an entire chicken. Chicken in particular are considerably smaller than our corn fed birds back home, so no matter what portion you buy, you’ll not get much meat, and since all animals here are free range, the meat is thinner and chewier than what we are used to back home. Finally, the local recipes which, unlike my American ones, are actually catered to the meat available in West Africa, aren’t terribly appealing. The standard recipe involves taking all edible parts, boiling them in water, and then adding them to whatever sauce will go with you fufu or pâte (the staple foods described in a previous entry). In general, I find meat here to be more trouble than its worth (considering your mostly buying bones anyway, which is not always a bad investment considering how few other sources of calcium are available), and too expensive (the 1000 F CFA that will get you a whole chicken could just as easily have fed you for a week on a diet of rice, beans, pâte and peanut sauce). So in general, the bulk of my protein intake comes from sources other than meat.
So tomorrow I’m going to Camp Espoir. Speaking of comestibles, a trip to the Peace Corps training center is always a treat because of the abundance of food there. The Peace Corps chefs, who are well versed in both European and African cuisine, work around the clock to ensure that all staying at the center are kept full and satisfied. Each trip I’ve made to the center, I and my fellow volunteers have done the pre and post stay weigh in at the scale which (I believe in jest) is found in the mess hall. The only time I have failed to gain a considerable amount was my week with Camp UNITE where I dined with adolescent boys (apparently it is a cross-cultural trait of boys 13-20 that they can eat), who actually ate enough to leave the kitchen staff wondering where their usually abundant supply of leftovers and second courses went, while the boys themselves clamoured for more. On this particular week, I actually managed to shed a few pounds at camp. I’m hoping that this week with Espoir, which caters to a generally smaller age group, will prove more plentiful for us counselors.
Weeks at the training center are one of the rare opportunities to find good, well prepared meat. However, given the centers location in the central region of the country, where there is a substantial Fulani population, it is often better to maintain more vegetarian habits to enjoy the African delicacy wagash. The Fulani are a migratory group of cattle keeps originally from Nigera. Wagash is their cheese, which is most similar though not entirely like mozzarella cheese. Often it is deep fried, but prepared anyway it is always delicious. The only thing rarer than a good serving of meat down in the south is one of cheese, and so often I am won over by the vegetarian options up at camp, the protein in which is normally the locally abundant wagash.
Food aside, I am truly looking forward to camp, although I believe I have described the camp itself in some detail in my last entry. It will be interesting to see how it measures up to the academic and very goal oriented Camp UNITE. I’m told this camp is generally more fun for the campers, but since we counselors deal with a much younger age group, it can also be more work for the counselors. Whereas at UNITE it sufficed to tell your campers to meet at the cafeteria at dinner time (as if those boys would miss a meal), at Espoir counselors often have to adopt the primary school method of head counts, and lining up signal file to march to the mess hall together. The potentially more juvenile concerns also include bed wettings and homesickness. Nonetheless it should be an interesting camp. At least this time, instead of the sensitive topic of sexual health and reproduction, I was charged with the more neutral topic of hygene and health. Far fewer would object to instructing children on proper hand washing techniques than they would proper uses of contraceptives. I would love to go on, but as always, my battery-life will not permit. Ici en Afrique, c’est comme ca.