Duke Diary Dispatch: In Togo, Connecting With Your Food

Though the sounds are the same—roosters calling, sheep bleating, pigs oinking—this is far from the big red American farmhouse with a quilt adorning the side. This is an open-air mud brick homestead surrounded by corn and yam fields, mountains, and free-roaming animals. (The animals have pens but usually are not confined to them; they have no natural predators here.)

I feel thoroughly safe waking up in this place among the animals. Last week, I had a terrifying nightmare in which I experienced 2 mass shootings: one in class, with people I knew, and one in a holiday market-Walmart hybrid, where a good friend died in my arms, a bullet that I dodged pierced the heart of another friend behind me (all Duke students), and I took down the gunman in a knife fight. It all felt incredibly real; in the nightmare, I had no clue that it was all a dream.

I woke up with a start, and, noticing my surroundings, bathed in the heaviest sense of relief that I can remember feeling in a long time. Lying on my straw mattress on the floor and listening to the dogs barking and sheep bleating outside, I felt deeply safe and grateful to be in Togo as opposed to the U.S.

I walked outside and took in the view: the mountains, the fields, the animals, the people going about their day; and felt further conviction in my feeling of gratitude and place.  

The animals here lead much happier lives than those in the U.S. and I’m sure deaths too, though I still feel uncomfortable watching them here. In the States we are very disconnected from our food; here, I’ve watched the slaughter of animals that were later served to me in a meal. One recent Sunday morning, for example, one of my sisters sawed the necks of two guinea hens, plucked them, and cooked them, telling me that someone had ordered a dish.

 I watched, as I believe it’s important to know where one’s food comes from and confront the oftentimes-uncomfortable reality of it; afterwards, we sorted black-eyed peas together. They had grown them and were sorting between ones suitable for human consumption versus animal feed. During this domestic task, my sisters and I exchanged vocabulary; I taught a few words of Chinese and they Kabiyé. 

Later that day, at lunch with my professor, fellow Duke students, and important officials of the region, we were served guinea hens in broth with vegetables; with the memory of the birds’ necks fresh in my mind, I did not partake. It turns out that the hens were those my family had prepared.  

That was, however, a special meal. My normal homestead lunches and dinners rarely include meat, usually opting for bits of tofu, wagashi (a West African cheese made by the Fulani people), and sardines, as well as a few slices of the best mangoes I’ve ever eaten for dessert. The tofu, or fromage de soja (“soy cheese”) as it’s known here, is a local staple, perhaps more than meat. Sold around every corner at the market and even peddled on non-market days, it’s not something I expected to see on this trip. As a mostly plant-based eater in the U.S. and someone who grew up eating traditional Chinese food, tofu is something I consume a lot, and eating it here has been a comforting continuity.

It’s been presented in myriad ways: smoked, in tomato-pepper broth, fried as a snack, or boiled in sauce. The smoked tofu sounds like an appetizer you’d find on the menu at a hip Durham restaurant, but in fact Justine made it by suspending fresh tofu over an extinguished fire, and it has been in all my lunches and dinners the past two days.

Its smoky flavor and tough, chewy texture could place it on the shelf of a Whole Foods as a trendy new alt-jerky snack—which could be a suitable entrepreneurial project for our DukeEngage microfinance loan program or Togolese immigrants.

I eat separately from my family, as is customary here.

Because daily life is so family-oriented and tight-knit, regular meals are typically eaten alone, as opposed to the formal family dinners replete with conversation customary in the US.

But just like at home, after dinner, my family retreats to their big room to watch TV: Indian soap operas dubbed in French. I don’t watch with them, but it’s a comforting, familiar end to my day.

Instead, as I do at Duke, I journal, sometimes call my family, and fall asleep.