Bush burning and other Togo Off The Beaten Path Tips

It is common in many parts of West Africa, not just in Togo, for the villagers to burn away part of the undergrowth to encourage the regeneration of new life. This helps in the feeding of wild and domestic animals. We came across huge flames in places, and I did wonder if they ever got out of control. Be careful when walking through the burnt undergrowth, as the ash gets everywhere – my beige trousers were filthy!

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The Baobab Tree. Also popularly known as the Upside-Down-Tree. Some places it is also known as the Monkey Bread Tree. One of the great wonders of Africa, and one of my lasting memories from this continent. It is such a versatile tree, with many uses both for nature and man. The tree is capable of storing huge amounts of water in its trunk – up to 120,000 litres in fact.

Uses for man from the baobab tree include:

Leaves can be eaten as a vegetable
Leaves are also ground to a powder
The dry pulp of the fruit is eaten either as it is or in a porridge
Seeds are used to thicken soups
Seeds are also used to produce vegetable oil
The trunk is used as fuel
The branches and trunk are used to produce fibre

Baobabs are sacred to the animists in Togo and many ethnic groups will only build their home near to or alongside a baobab tree. Sometimes they will bill a shrine at the base of the tree, as in picture 2.

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The papaya (or pawpaw) fruit grows straight from the trunk of the tall papaya tree. The tree originates from Mexico, but is grown all over Togo and West Africa. Although very tasty and popular in the west too, papaya is not at innocuous as it first seems. When unripe, the fruit releases a latex fluid which can cause an allergic reaction to your skin, and the fruit and leaves also contain carpaine, an anthelmintic alkaloid which could be dangerous in high doses. The fruit is also said to have contraceptive and abortifacient capabilities, sometimes used in traditional remedies. The seeds of the papayas are sometimes ground up and used instead of black pepper.

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Sorghum is a cultivated grass grown for grain and is well adapted to growth in hot, arid or semi-arid areas. It is used for food (couscous, flour and porridge mainly), making alcohol (in West Africa sorghum is used to make the local version of Guiness) as well as animal fodder

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Millet is grass-like grain grown throughout Togo for use as food for humans and animals. Millet is separated from the husks by beating it hard and repeatedly with a stick, then washed, toasted and dried. It can then be eaten more or less as it is, just boiled with water (used as an accompaniment to meat in the same way as rice may be used), flour can be made from the grain, as well as beer.

The local brew of choice is the millet beer. Millet and water is fermented over heat for a couple of days then stored for another couple of days in order to get the required strength. The longer it is left the stringer it is. We tasted two beers of different age, and could definitely differentiate between the two different strengths of the brews.

Once the beer is ready to drink, it is sieved through a fine mesh – in this case a packing sack and into a container below. This is to remove any larger particles and make it more potable for drinking. The resulting pulp left inside the sieve is spread out on the ground to dry (see picture five) and then used as fodder for the animals.

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Also known as the manioc, cassava is grown for its large, starch-filled root. It is extensively cultivated as an annual crop throughout Africa, and in every village you can see the ladies pounding the cassava to make fufu – the staple carbohydrate of West Africa. There are many other ways of eating cassava too, including boiled and fried, but the root cannot be eaten raw as it contains substances which convert to cyanide. Flour is made from cassava root too, known as tapioca flour. The white sticks you see here are dried cassava, a very good way of preserving it as cassava is best eaten very fresh and does not travel well.

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Fonio is the smallest of all millet species. Not only nutritious, it is also one of the fastest growing cereals, reaching maturity in six to eight weeks. Fonio is used to make couscous, bread, porridge and beer.

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Allover Togo and other parts of West Africa, yams hold one of the greatest esteem of all the food products and are carefully integrated into the social, cultural, economic and religious aspects of life. A high status is given to this vegetable, and traditional ceremonies still accompany its production. Yam comes in various colours, from white (shown in the picture), through yellow to a fairly bright orange. The white variety is most widely used.

Yam can be used instead of potato, boiled or mashed, and in fact I prefer it to our humble spud.

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