Food Dreams

Since I am counting down to coming home, here are the foods/restaurants I am dreaming about. All my foodie friends, please tell me if any of these have gone downhill and of any new places I haven't been yet. . .
Edo Sushi (Harbor) - lunch combos
Pazo - tonno crudo and foccaccio
Charleston - she-crab soup, foie gras, oysters, shrimp grits
Miss Shirleys - anything with fried oysters and softshells, grits, sweet potato fries
Parents' back yard - crabs, corn on the cob, tomatoes
Holy Frijoles? - chimichanga, chips and salsa
Broadway Market - fried chicken livers & gizzards with hot sauce, soft-shell sandwich
Lexington Market - oysters, clams
Anything Heidi cooks. . .
Grill out on the corner of Bond & Lancaster
Anything from One-Eyed Mike's
Suggestions?

Banks of the Chesapeake

I have always loved a song called "Banks of the Pontchartrain" by Nancy Griffith. One lonely night over a year ago I was laying in my bed in Notse, no electricity, listening to it on my ipod and the lyrics magically changed themselves into something much more personal. With permission, here is my adaptation of the song. It makes me weepy every time I hear it.

I'm goin' back where my garden blooms all year
Where the wintertime speaks softly in the fallin' rain

I'm goin' back to my friends and family there
and we will dance along the banks of the Chesapeake

Oh, I've grown dark beneath the skys of Africa
Where the voices ring like bells in French and Minah
And the heat melts the body all year long

I am alone at night and dream of my own Chesapeake

Chorus:
Take me to the airport...
I am late to catch my eastbound plane
Oh, I'm gonna call my sister Heidi
she will be waiting by the gate when I fly in
I'm gonna fly across the ocean
just to stand beside my Chesapeake again

These old rails shake like thunder through the night
Soon I'll have my family's arms to comfort me
Oh, I can see my sister Heidi by their side
her hair will flow in waves like on the Chesapeake

Take me to the airport...
I am late to catch my eastbound plane
Oh, I'm gonna call my sister Heidi
she will be waiting by the gate when I fly in
I'm gonna fly across the ocean
just to stand beside my Chesapeake again

I'm goin' back where my garden blooms all year
Where the wintertime speaks softly in the fallin' rain
I'm goin' back to my green eyed lover there
and we will dance along the banks of the Chesapeake
yes, we will dance along the banks of the Chesapeake
we will dance along the banks of the Chesapeake
and here comes the plane


I can't wait to be home for fall and winter. I miss you.

And more stuff of late

Gee, so much is going on, too much to say, too public to say it all. I passed the Foreign Service Orals, moved to another part of Lome, the fancy part actually, where things like this happen in the wee hours of Easter barbeques. We didn't even hear the shots.

Togo leader's brother in shootout
A security raid on a house belonging to the brother of the Togolese president left at least two people dead and three others wounded, reports say.
A BBC reporter in Togo says security forces exchanged fire on Sunday night with troops loyal to the president's brother, Kpatcha Gnassingbe.
Following the shootout in a Lome suburb officials accused President Faure Gnassingbe's brother of coup plotting.
He denied the charges and said he was the victim of an assassination attempt.
Prosecutors said five senior military officers had been arrested.
Former Defence Minister Kpatcha Gnassingbe is now under house arrest.
He told the BBC that armed men in military uniform had turned up at his home spraying bullets at his bedroom and the bedrooms of his children during the gun battle, which lasted at least three hours.
President Gnassingbe, who was elected in 2005 during a vote which observers said was flawed, cancelled a foreign trip on Sunday after the shootout.
He became president after the death of his father, Togo's veteran leader Gnassingbe Eyadema in 2005.
(from BBC)
The weirder thing is no one here is talking about it. Like, at all. Ho-hum, just another day.

Oops, one more thing

Did you know that there is a Hari Krishna temple down the road from my house? (Of course you don't, you don't live here, duh) I have never actually gotten the nerve to go and talk to them to simply ask "how in the heck did you people get here??". Then again, I have never heard the chanting or seen the yellow robes, so maybe it is a cover for something. Hmmmmm. . . .
Poll:
Should I go and see what is up? At least take some pictures with some Togolese Hari Krishnas? Let me know if anyone would find that remotely fascinating.

Countdown. . .

Quick post:
I leave for America in 8 days to take the Foreign Service Oral Exam, so consult the ancestors, burn some incense, or pray to your gods to send good fortune my way.
I am nervous as heck!
Peace out.
PS - KB keeps promising me that he will upload all of the pictures from South Africa and various other escapes of late. Hopefully I can post some soon.

PETA in Togo

Jim & friends,

I am so glad you brought up PETA because it remnds me of a story here that I otherwise might not have remembered to tell. In the village/town in which I used to live, Notse, I worked with a nice and sensitive man named Sylvan for an AIDS-awareness and cultural preservation youth group as well as his orphan-support NGO.

Sylvan had a regular job at the prefect's (local mayor, sort of) office and also had a peanut field which he cultivated himself and got single mothers to help harvest and they could keep half of what they harvested. He is a good and thoughtful man, anxious to help those less fortunate than he. He is also much more broad-minded than most Togolese I have had the pleasure to meet.

One day I invited Sylvan over for lunch -- a stew with rice, ginger, cabbage, carrots, and. . . chicken. Sylvan informed me that he was a vegetarian. I started laughing. First of all, I was blown away that he would even know that people in world WERE vegetarians, and secondly (and most importantly), this in a country where most people don't ever even SEE meat, and not for religious or moral reasons, but because they simply can not afford it. The diet consists of completely empty carbs in the form of a manioc-type tuber and cooked down okra and lots and lots of spicy peppers.

I asked Sylvan why in the world he would even dream of becoming a vegetarian. Well, somehow, somewhere he had watched a PETA DVD explaining the horrific process of animal farming and butchering -- in the western world. Here (and probably in a majority of the rest of the world), ALL chickens, goats, sheep, and cows are "free-range". Even in the capitol. Goats and chickens and sheep wander the streets. Somehow they know to which compund to return at night and all people know which animal belongs to whom. When it comes time for an animal to be killed, it is done with ceremony and a blood offering is given to the ancestors in the ground. I have killed chickens and pintades myself -- it is the only way to get fresh meat.

Even the smallest child knows the animal that dinner came from (not that a child would ever get meat anyway, or women either, for that matter) and that child probably also gutted, plucked, etc. happily fighting over the feet or some other delicacy.

I explained to Sylvan that in the West people buy their meat in plastic packages in the grocery store. No one has any contact or hand in the raising of that animal, and certainly not in the killing of it. It is not respected as a life-form, it is simply a commodity you pick up at the store when you stop in to grab your Lucky Charms.

Sylvan was not a wealthy or frivolous man. Honestly, though a full-grown man and strong, he needed the protein. Yeah, he ate his peanuts, but people here that aren't eating meat aren't exactly up to date on getting the right proportion of legumes and rice or whatever to make up the missing protein. I convinced him to drop the silly vegetarianism idea and if he was really concerned about his soul regarding animal treatment he should get people to stop throwing stones at dogs and start a rabies vaccination and spay and neuter campaign.

In summation, animal welfare concern with regard to killing for consumption and sacrifice is just plain silly here. When an animal is sacrificed, it is quickly killed with an expert slash across the throat and it's departing spirit is asked to send a message to the ancestors. It is thanked for it's assistance and for the sustenance it will soon provide. A sacrificed animal is eaten, whether by the preist conducting the sacrifice or by the person requesting the sacrifice.

I know in the United States and other little pockets of the western world where there are still vestiges of voodoo, organizations like PETA cry foul about animal cruelty, but in all honesty, to sacrifice an animal and then eat it is much less cruel than buying a chicken breast in the store.

All that being said, I am a carnivore. I eat foie gras and veal and lamb and sweetbreads and every other politically incorrect meat that has the poor judgement to wander my way.

I hope this message didn't come off as being aggressive, but I thought the Sylvan/PETA story was germane. I thought it truly was one of the most hilarious things I had ever heard here. And as for how that video even GOT here. . .

This was taken 4th of July 2007, a month after arriving in country. We made fried chicken for our celebration.

Killing the chicken for the 4th of July

"Free-range" sheep in NotseGratuitous picture of doing the hokey-pokey with kids in Badou

To Voodoo or not to Voodoo. . .

So I have been considering going to a feticheur and paying for a voodoo ceremony and a chicken to sacrifice, etc. etc. to give me a better chance to pass the Orals and beyond. I figure you only live in Togo once (OK, maybe not. I feel like I have been reincarnated here like 8 times already) and it will make a good story later on in life. I love learning about voodoo, so I figure I ought to put my money where my mouth is, you know?
The only concern is: once you do a ceremony and make a sacrifice, are you further beholden to the voodoo gods and therefore vulnerable in the future or can you go on your merry way?
Thoughts?