P

Hey guys, everything is well in Togo. Here's a little one-letter blog post to keep the pate boiling and let the rest of the 26-letter alphabet come in nice little 5 letter bundles, just like before.

P: La Pate

Pate is the white bread of Togo. It translates to “the paste” in English, which gives you a pretty good idea of what we’re dealing with here. It consists of corn flour, boiled and whipped until it forms a big semi-solid ball. Pieces of pate are torn off with the hands and rolled into smaller balls, which are dipped in sauces, usually made with okra, oil, or leaves like baobab. Pate is eaten almost every day by most people here. It’s cheap, filling, and can give a semblance of variety when paired with different sauces. Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer much in the way of nutrition. Eating a dish that’s pretty much straight carbs with little protein, and few vitamins or minerals, contributes to the malnutrition one sees throughout Togo. I find it strange that corn has taken such a huge role in nutrition here. Corn isn’t from Africa, it’s from America, and none of the traditional processing and pairing that makes it an effective staple in Mexico, for instance, is done here. In order to make hominy, grits, or dough for tortillas, corn is first cooked with an alkaline substance, like wood ash, to change its chemical structure, make more nutrients available, and improve its flavor. The process is called nixtamalization. Nixtamalized corn, combined with beans, gives you a complete protein, and a reasonably balanced diet to build around. Populations that eat large amounts of unprocessed corn are at risk for deficiency diseases, most specifically pellagra, which is a lack of niacin, a nutrient made available in corn only by processing in this way. Pellegra’s symptoms include diarrhea, skin problems, mental problems from irritability to dementia, and edema. One sees these problems all the time in Togo. There was an epidemic of pellagra in the US American South in the early 1900’s, but we figured out that if we want to eat nothing but corn, which apparently, we do, we need to process it and add necessary vitamins and minerals to it. I don’t know for sure that eating tons of la pate is causing pellagra in Togo. There are way too many way too complicated problems related to nutrition here for me to know that for sure. But I’m pretty sure la pate isn’t helping things, and given how easy it is, traditional nixtamalization seems like kind of a no-brainer here.

K to O

K: Kids

People have way too many kids in Togo. Here’s a quote from a teacher that sort of sums up the situation: “Here, people might have fifteen kids. It’d be good if they would only have five.” When five is an improvement, there’s a long way to go.

L: Latrine/Lome

Latrine: A muggy, mosquito-infested poophole where volunteers do their business.

Lome: The capitol of Togo. A muggy, mosquito-infested poophole where volunteers do their business.

M: Malaria

Malaria is a big problem here. It’s difficult to get people to believe that mosquitoes give them malaria, because they might not speak French, and may have no conception of how a disease works. Their understanding of diseases is mostly symptomatic, and because malaria has the same symptoms as basically every other run of the mill disease, there are all sorts of things that are believed to give you malaria here. Take for instance, eating too many mangoes, being in the sun, or working too hard in the field. All these things can make you feel shitty in much the same way that malaria can, and consequently, are often viewed as the causes of malaria here.

N: Neem Tree

The Neem Tree is an awesome tree that contains a powerful insecticide in its leaves and seeds. It can be used as a pesticide on crops, a preservative on stored grain, and in mosquito repellants. It grows incredibly well here in Togo. Unfortunately, it was brought here from India by German colonialists, and no one here knows any of this. It goes unused despite it’s status in India as a “miracle tree.”

O: Ou bien?

Ou bien is a phrase that means “Or what?” It’s used to signify that you’re asking a question, it’s a sort of verbal tick here like saying “like” over and over again, and it also can be used to ask something like, “Am I right, or am I right?”