We wanted this to be somewhat of an authentic dinner, and thanks to packages from our generous mothers, we were able to collect packets of instant stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie filling, etc. to help make such a dinner possible. All that remained was finding a turkey. Now, believe it or not, they actually raise turkeys here – huge, scary ones. With the help of Emily’s host mom, we were able to acquire a sizeable one for 15 mille (about 30 dollars) – which is quite a large sum of money here. I can’t tell you how much it weighed, but I picked it up by its wings (see picture below) while it was still living and it was pretty heavy. We named him Don the Dendon (dendon = turkey in French).
Early Thanksgiving morning, Emily and I along with our friends Drew (another Peace Corps volunteer) and Isaac (a friend of mine from high school who just arrived in Togo and is working for the Clinton Foundation in Lome) went over to her host mother’s house where Don was tied to a piece of wood and waiting for us. Emily and I had decided that we were going to kill him as a team effort, so her host brother held him down while Emily and I grasped the knife together. Well, we went at it, sawing away at the neck but the blade was too dull so we ended up having to switch knives (that poor bird). On the second attempt, we succeeded but were unprepared for the blood that squirted out onto our arms and legs, so I admit we did squeal then. Emily’s host mom teased us for that later. Since we had been explaining the Thanksgiving story to her earlier (we even did a mini skit for her where Drew and Emily p
layed Indians – with turkey feathers in their hair – and Isaac and I played the Pilgrims; see picture below), we simultaneously responded to her saying, “Oh but the first Americans squealed too.”
After boiling some water, Emily’s host dad poured the hot water over the turkey to make the feathers come out easier. The plucking process took a while, but at the end, the turkey looked just like what you’d buy at the supermarket. At that point we threw plucked Don into a cement bag and brought him to the bruschette guy (a vendor of skewered roasted meat) who we’d arranged to have roast our turkey. We brought him prepared stuffing and provided him with the needle things necessary to close the turkey up after stuffing him. He was baffled by the idea of stuffing the turkey, so Drew ended up having to do it for him. Then we left him to his work, but only after having him again reassure us that he’d do a good job. “Oh the turkey will turn out great, I guarantee it,” he said. “I can’t say as much for what you stuffed it with though.”
So we left him to his work and went back to Emily’s house to start the other dishes. Everything went pretty well (with the minor exception of half of one of the uncooked pumpkin pies spilling onto the floor). We started up the charcoal to have an extra “stove” to work with so that everything would be hot by the time we were ready to eat. When we were informed that the turkey was done, we sent Drew back to the road on his bike with a big basin bungee-corded to the back. And thus our roasted turkey came to us wrapped in foil and resting in a metal basin on the back of a bike. Emily de-stuffed him and I “carved” him, which was not the easiest task. We were all quite amused that the bruschette guy had given us the neck and head of the turkey as well. After having fun taking pictures with it, we ended up giving it along with what remained of the cooked carcass to one of Emily’s Togolese friends.
Thanksgiving dinner was absolutely delicious. All in all we had turkey (which turned out amazing), mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, green bean and sausage casserole, corn casserole, salad, cornbread, pumpkin pie, and apple crisp. In going around the table saying what we were thankful for, the first thing we said was, “Thank you to our moms for helping us put this together!” We couldn’t get over how well everything had turned out. There were 5 of us in total (the 4 of us I mentioned before and then Ben, another one of Emily’s closest volunteer neighbors). Originally we had planned for 6, but Emerson (another volunteer neighbor) had unfortunately gotten in a moto accident the day before and had to be sent to Lome for medical care. Thanks to Isaac’s help though, we were able to send her a plate of leftovers the next day. We also made sure to send Emily’s host family a little sampling of all the food to thank them for their help during the turkey butchering process. What was left over after that, we all shared for breakfast the next day – with the exception of the pumpkin pie, which Emily and I greedily finished in bed early in morning while the boys were still sleeping. Early bird gets the worm.
So we had a great Thanksgiving!
Don the Dendon
Weighing the turkey by hand
Emily and I with the killing knife
Emily and I killing the turkey; you can see the blood on the knife below.
The conquerors and our victim
Isaac and Emily's dog, Fenway
Our Thanksgiving skit
Little Indian Drew and Emily's host mom boiling water for plucking the turkey
Pouring hot water over the turkey to facilitate plucking
Plucking
Fenway and one of the pigs in Emily's host family's compound
Me and the plucked turkey
The bruschette guy who roasted our turky; (below) the turkey stitched up after being stuffed with the stuffing
Isaac and Emily cooking
Making mashed potatoes on charcoal
Isaac and the cooked turkey head
Green bean and sausage casserole and scalloped corn on the gas stove
Removing the stuffing from the roasted turkey
Me carving the turkey
Indian Emily and Indian Drew and the turkey head
There weren't enough bowls for everything so we had to put the salad and carved turkey in the laundry basins
(thanks to the self-timer) A picture of all of us
Yum! This was our Thanksgiving food!
Drew and his drumstick
Apple crisp and pumpkin pie(s) for dessert
Leftovers for breakfast
Random extra picture: Drew and a Togolese child who was subjected to a permanent markerI also wanted to briefly write about a week trip I took up to the northern region of Togo. Togo is made up of 5 regions which all relatively differ in climate and geography. From the south to the north, there’s Maritime, then Plateaux, Centrale, Kara, and Savannes. To give you some perspective, I live in the northeastern corner of Plateaux, and for this trip, I went and visited 3 volunteer friends of mine who live in villages in the northeastern corner of Kara region. This time of year is called Harmattan and is characterized by dusty winds that blow down from the Sahara desert. The northern regions of Togo logically suffer more from these dry, dusty winds than does my region, for example, and that was one of the first things I noticed in going up there. My skin and lips were always chapped and I found myself suffering from a dry cough while I was up there. By the end of the day, my skin was also just covered in dust. The general terrain was also fascinatingly different; it was much rockier and there was less vegetation.
First I visited Taylor, one of my friends from my stage. Taylor does a lot of work with an AIDS organization in her village, which is more a large town and big truck-stop for vehicles going north. It was interesting talking with her about her work just because, even though we’re both volunteers in the health domain, due to the absence of similar resources in my village, I don’t have the opportunity to work a lot with AIDS. Her experience as a volunteer is thus very different than mine in that she encounters a lot more death, which is obviously very difficult. Just the previous week, in fact, she had lost her best friend in village to AIDS, a tragedy which she was still recovering from while I was there.
On a more positive swing, Taylor has a very motivated Togolese counterpart with whom she works who created a huge community garden and employs local orphans to work the garden, using the profits from the sale of the produce that grows to pay for their school fees (which they otherwise have difficulty finding the money to pay for). What a great sustainable project! I enjoyed roaming around the huge garden and seeing plants from which produce like pineapple and ginger grow – things I’d never seen before.
After Taylor, I went and visited Karen, who was in the stage that came in 3 months after mine. Karen’s village is actually a World Heritage site, as it is home to the Batammariba tribe, who are renowned for the unique architectural structure of their huts, which are called la takienta, or more familiarly, the tata’s. I enjoyed touring some of the tata’s (which you’re able to do if you pay a fee to the families who live there) and learning about them with the help of one of her friends who served as a guide. I wanted to share some of the fascinating things I learned:
The architecture of the tata’s is original and elaborate and corresponds perfectly with the culture and belief s of its inhabitants. Nothing is accidental; everything either has a function or symbolic value. For example, the tata represents a male-female duality separated by the east-west axis. The southern part is the sacred side of the man, and the northern side is that of the woman. This appropriation of sides is significant when it comes to grain storage; certain grains, like millet, sorghum, and rice have masculine connotations and are therefore stored on the southern side of the house, while the grains with female connotations (beans and peanuts, etc.) are stored on the northern side.
The front of the tata is always oriented towards the west to protect it from the dominant rains and Harmattan winds, and also in order to face the “village paradise” of Kuye (the Batammariba are animist, and their beliefs are cultish and centered around ancestors who are believed to rise up to the level of the creator God, Kuye, incarnated by the sun). Sustaining relationships with dead ancestors is absolutely essential to the Batammariba, which they accomplish by sacrificing to the fetishes which are located in large number both outside and inside their houses.
The tata’s are constructed primarily with wood, straw, sand, and clay. If they need to be renovated, renovations are done during dry season (for obvious reasons). The upper terrace is the principal part of the house; it is where grains are stored, where one cooks, and where one sleeps (the “room” on the top of the house where they sleep is more of a low-roofed cave). The ground floor houses more ancestor fetishes and has designated space for the different animals (cows, sheep, chicken, and guinea fowl – all under one roof!), as well as access to a turret where there is a covered kitchen in the event of rain . There is only one door to the house, which was historically designed as a defensive feature. It was all really fascinating to learn about - especially because the historical traditions of the Batammariba tribe are carried on today by the descendants of the original families.
After Karen, I went and visited Brittany, another friend from my stage, although we unfortunately didn’t get to spend enough time together for me to see her work. We did continue on south together to meet up with a bunch of volunteers at our friend Nikhil’s house though. Nikhil's parents, who were in Togo for a few days, had arranged to make Indian food for any volunteers who could come visit. So we were treated to delicious vegetarian Indian food along with some other treats brought from the States – like truffles, which arrived in a completely melted state, but which we thoroughly enjoyed nonetheless with the use of spoons. It was a fun trip!
The arid north
Taylor in her counterpart's garden next to the ginger plants
They found and killed a snake while we were there.
Me and Taylor at the garden entrance
Karen walking through the fields in her village
Inside one of the Tata's; that's our guide in the kitchen area.
Going up onto the roof of a Tata
Me looking into a grain storage area (the grains are pictured below)
The sleeping "cave"
A Tata from a distance 
Karen and I on the top of a Tata
I was trying to get a shot of cockroaches in one of my co-volunteer's latrines but I took this in the morning when there weren't that many; the night before, they were coating the walls and crawling all over the latrine lid. Yum!
Melted truffles from America!
Nikhil's family cooking dinner
All of us spoiled volunteers eating delicious Indian food
1 comment:
Wow Kristina! Thanks for the fascinating info and all the pics from your travels and of the now famous (or infamous??) turkey killing. :) You are having the experience of a lifetime! We miss you!!! Love, Mom
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