Farming Village Lifestyle in West Africa

by Larry Manire, larry@dbtecs.com.

Imagine trading places for a week with a person like yourself in a small, West African farming village. Would your daily life be very different? Almost completely! Would you miss some of the aspects of western life? Yes, a lot, if you love your electronics, refrigerator, air conditioner, car, large, middle-class house and vast possessions. Would you find some parts of village life to your liking? Yes, if you want to simplify your life. Yes, if like living closer to your relatives and friends, and seeing them and working with them more often, and if you like walking to work, and not watching the clock, and being a little closer to the natural world, don’t need a lot of material possessions and don’t mind hard work.

A lot of Americans who live in such a place for a period of time are surprised to discover they like the lifestyle more than they expected. One such person is my daughter, Kerry Manire. In fact she found the lifestyle compatible with her environmentally oriented training and it is one of the reasons she has extended her two year Peace Corps assignment to a third year. She is a volunteer in the village of Akamé (ah-KAH-me), a very small subsistence farming village of about 350 people of the Ewe (EH-vay) tribe in the southern, plateau region of Togo, West Africa. The village is 5 km north of the town of Notsé, and about 70 km north of Lome (lo-MAY), the capital of Togo on the southern coast.

I recently spent two weeks in Togo visiting Kerry. I left wishing I could replace parts of my frenetic, high-stress, software engineer American lifestyle with some of the better aspects of the village lifestyle she experiences.

The first thing you notice is how few material possessions you actually need to live and to be reasonably comfortable. And, then you are surprised at how well you can get along without our creature comforts like electricity, telephones, running water, machines, refrigeration, flush toilets, fancy electronics and cars. Akamé has none of these. Well, almost none. There are a few small generators used to watch a few tv sets. The local shop keeper often runs his in the evening setting up the tv set in front of the shop for all to watch. The only engine in the village other than a few “motos” (motorcycles) is a large, 125 year old Indian made internal combustion engine attached to a machine by a belt for grinding corn. Each village in the area seems to have one. It is loud, and the whole village can tell when it is running.

Sounds

Otherwise, the sounds you hear in the village are not our typical machine created sounds--they are the sounds of people talking, greeting and laughing, of kids playing, and babies crying. You hear people chopping wood and pounding root vegetables in large wooden morters; you hear dogs barking, chickens clucking, goats bleating and roosters crowing in the day time, as well as at 2 and 3 am! You hear transistor radios, the main means of communication with the outside world other than traveling. On occasion the beating of drums for a curing or other kind of village ceremony resounds through the village. Now and then, the “gong gong” (town crier) walks through the village beating on a metal dish pan and announcing the village news.

The Village

Looking around you see a seemingly random collection of widely spaced mud brick houses with tin or thatched roofs. The spaces in between are bare, packed dirt, well swept each morning, broken by an occasional tree and, in front of most houses, a paillotte (PAI-yote), a low thatched shelter with benches for outdoor activities and a fireplace for cooking. The paillotte’s roof at the edge is low, to keep the rain out--you must bend all the way over at the waist to enter. The fireplaces are like a large hardened mud horseshoe about 10 inches high. The fuel is wood collected from the surrounding “bush”. A few villagers have propane cook stoves.

After dusk the only lights you see are the many cooking fires scattered around, mostly under paillottes. Portable light comes from kerosene hurricane lamps or lamps made of a simple can containing kerosene with a wick. A few people have flashlights but batteries are expensive.

Although much waste is organic from preparing meals, more and more packaging and other man made materials are finding their way into the trash piles. Since there is no trash collection it is simply piled up out of the way in the bush. As the village develops it is becoming more of a problem.

Food

As you would expect in a “subsistence” farming village, you grow most of what you eat. Crops of corn, beans, sweet potatoes, millet, tomatoes, okra, peanuts, cassava, plantain, igname (in-YAHM, a large tuber) and some leafy greens provide most of the meals. Rice, spaghetti, onions and other items from the market supplement what you grow. Dried fish and palm nut oil or juice are used to make a “sauce” with okra, greens or other vegetables added Very occasionally the sauce contains rabbit, chicken, or goat meat but this a luxury for most people. A common breakfast is bouille (BWE), a cereal made from the starchy part of the corn, supplemented with peanuts. A typical noon or evening meal is foo foo, a kneaded dough made from igname, cassava or plantain eaten by dipping it in the sauce. Or the sauce is spooned over a rice and beans meal. Adding locally grown bananas, mangos, pineapples, oranges, and papaya complements the basic ingredients.

You have to carry all your drinking water from “the pump” which is a foot operated device about a quarter of a mile from the village near a very small stream. The water is carried, mainly by the women, in plastic jugs or large metal basins on their heads. Local streams, when they are flowing, supply water also.

Transportation

Since there are no cars or trucks in the village there is no need for roads. A complex web of foot trails radiates from the village through the bush to the neighboring fields. Except for the small village “boutique” which sells bare necessities, all shopping is done in Notsé or other towns. How do you get there? By bicycle, if you have one. By walking. By hiring the moto driver who lives in the village, or, most often, by walking to the highway and catching a “taxi brousse”. Bush taxis are the transportation system of rural Togo and are everywhere. The goal of the bush taxi driver is to see how many people (and animals) he can pack into his large, usually quite broken down, Toyota van, pickup or car. In addition the roof racks carry immense amounts of cargo and you wonder how they avoid tipping over from being so top heavy. But they always get you where you want to go--especially to a larger, neighboring town on market day.

The Markets

Ah, the market--a colorful, bustling bazaar on one day each week--where anything and everything is sold by hundreds of vendors in chaotically organized stalls and shelters. The produce sellers are mostly in one area. In other areas they sell clothes and flip flops, kitchenware and hardware. The cloth sellers line their stalls with bolts of beautiful pagne (PAN-yay) material. You pick out the pattern you like, buy a meter or two and take it to the tailor to make a shirt or other garment. You can get a meal any time from one of the many food vendors, and then take it easy drinking tchook (CHOOK), a mild millet beer in a paillotte with your friends. In a large market there are dozens of tchook bars and you will usually visit the same one each time to drink and socialize with the same friends.

Making a Living

You see some of your fellow villagers, mostly women, at the market selling things they have grown or made. Selling at the market is just one of the many ways that your fellow villagers have of making money. No single method ever brings in enough. Just about everyone in Akamé farms a plot of land to produce their own food as well products to sell. But one man is also a mason, another a carpenter, two are taxi drivers, and three are teachers. There is a tailor, a drummer and office worker and a shopkeeper, the only one in the village. The chief owns rental property in another town. Some adults work for pay on other people’s farms and children are often hired out to other families for domestic labor. Many villagers sell products like kerosene, peanuts, onions, or fish out of their houses. The women cook and sell breakfast, bake bread, raise chickens and goats, braid hair, collect firewood, make and sell charcoal, brew tchook (millet beer), and make “red oil” for cooking by boiling palm nuts.

These activities consume most of the rainy season from May to October. The dry season

is the time to build houses, make baskets for the cotton harvest, hunt and make Sodabi, the local alcoholic drink distilled from palm wine.

Regardless of the season, virtually all of your income is needed to supply the household and buy food that you can’t grow. Buying toys or other non-essential goods is hard to justify and when the poor rains produce scant harvests everyone lives on the edge of uncertainty.

Possessions

Compared to the average American, you have very few material possessions. But they are enough to handle the basics of living. In your house you have your clothes, some pots and pans, plates, spoons, cups, bottles, metal basins or plastic jugs for carrying water, a table, a few chairs and a hay filled mattress, a mosquito net, some mats, a flashlight, an old bicycle and a small transistor radio. For farming you have a “coop coop” (machete) and a short-handle hoe for turning the soil, planting and weeding. In addition to your house, you own a plot of land to farm, and some chickens and goats.

Family

If you’re a woman, the money you make goes to supplement the money your husband provides for your household and children. If you’re married to a well-to-do man, he is likely to have two or three other wives. He lives in his own house, and provides a house for each wife and their children and helps (or is supposed to help) with the household expenses. If you’re like most mothers in the village you have about six children. The men who have only one wife often live together with her and their children until he can afford to build a separate house. In either case, there is a lot of work to do to manage the household and the children do much of it.

A Kid’s Day

If you’re a kid you get to play like all kids, but you also do a lot of work. Your typical day, if you’re in elementary school, goes like this: get up at about 4 or 4:30 am. Carry water from the pump, sweep in and around the house, wash the dishes, study, take a shower and go to school by 6:30 or 7 am. Help sweep the school yard, then attend class.. (By the way, being able to go to school is a luxury in the village. Many families cannot afford to send their children.) Break for “recreation time” at about 9 am. Go home to eat breakfast or buy breakfast from one of the village women. Back to school at 9:30 for more class, then go home at noon. Make your own lunch because your mother’s working the fields, play, take a nap, or hang out for a while. On Monday, Tuesday and sometimes Thursday go back to class from 2:30 to 5 pm, on other days work in the fields. In the evening, carry more water from the pump, do other chores and if you’re a boy go play soccer with the other boys. Girls help mother with dinner. You’re usually in bed by 9 pm unless there’s a full moon. Then it’s fun to play with your friends in the moonlight around the village.

A Man’s Day

If your a man you’re up about 4 or 4:30 am. You hang out for a while, greeting your neighbors and relatives, buy breakfast or eat breakfast with your wife around 7 or 8 am and then walk to your fields for a long day of tilling, planting, weeding, or harvesting. If your fields don’t need attention you do the other work that supplements your farming income. During the heat of the afternoon you often take a nap. Back by 6 pm to have dinner alone or with a wife and her kids. Then it’s conversation with the neighbors, listening to the radio, and other pastimes. If you’re younger you’re likely playing soccer in the village soccer field. Soccer is really the only sport in the village and is immensely popular. You’re likely to be in bed between 10 and 12 pm.

A Woman’s Day

Needless to say, like most parts of the world, if you’re a woman, and especially a mother, you work hard and long. Up a 4 am you sweep the house and yard and carry water from the pump unless you have children who can do it. Then cook breakfast and the sauce for the day. In addition to doing the laundry, collecting firewood and other household chores, you hoe and chop in the fields, do other supplemental work all day and grab a nap when you can. In the evening it’s time to fix dinner, carry more water and do other household chores, take a bucket shower and retire between 10 and 12 pm.

Religion

Most villagers don’t work on Sundays. Attending the local Catholic or Pentacostal Church and other activities provides a welcome break from the week of work and a chance to socialize. For some villagers that follow animist traditions, the day of rest of Thursday. While many villagers are church goers virtually all believe in some variation of traditional religion and especially in “gri gri”, the power of “magic” and spirits that can make you sick, or cure you or influence a persons behavior. Since any kind of health care is a real luxury, many resort to a local “fetisher” or curer when sick.

Community

When you live in a village like Akamé you live in a true community of people. You notice that people work together and help each other a lot especially other family members. Even the way your friends greet you reveals a keen interest in your welfare. Say you encounter a friend you haven’t seen for a while. In the Ewe language (phonetically written) the conversation always starts with an exchange like this:

Friend: “Endi” (Good morning).

You: “Endi”

Friend: “Pah mah toe” (How are the people of your house?)

You: : ”Olay” (They are there; they are fine.)

Friend: “Eso bee doe” (How does the work go? How are things?)

You: “Doe jo” (Okay)

And, if you did something for them yesterday:

Friend: “Ee ko be lo” (Thank you for your help yesterday.)

You: “Yo” (You’re welcome)

When joining a group of friends, even if you saw them yesterday, you shake hands with everyone. And the handshake is a hearty one ending in a typical West African snap of the middle fingers against each other. The stronger the friendship the stronger the snap!

Of course if you like a lot of privacy you many not like living in the village. As they say about all small towns: the best thing is that everyone knows everyone; the worst thing is that everyone knows everyone. You spend a lot of time navigating relationships. There often are jealousies and gossiping, but in a village where most people just barely make it financially, being able to help each other in lean times probably outweighs the drawbacks of togetherness.

Elders and Ancestors

In an Ewe village, as in other patriarchical cultures in the world, the eldest men make the decisions affecting the village. They organize and participate in the ceremonial life, settle disputes and represent the village. They are descended from a long line of ancestors who are recognized and respected regularly in your daily life. For example you drop by a friends house to pay a visit; you’re sitting on the bench out front chatting, and after a while he brings out a shot glass and the sodabi. He pours himself a glass, and then pours a little of it from the glass on the ground for the ancestors, before downing it. Many customs and traditions recognize the role of your ancestors in your family and life.

The Rhythm of Life

So life in the village is centered around people and relationships rather than to material goods. There is a rhythm to the days, and months and seasons that is comforting and dependable and regularly involves people. You are rarely lonely.

Will you be bored? Not exactly. There’s always plenty of hard work to do, stories to tell, family events to attend and soccer to watch. Is it exciting? Well, not like living in a big American city. It all depends on what kind of life you want to lead. If you could combine the best aspects of West African village life with the best parts of American city life and have enough money to be comfortable, you’ll probably be happiest. Let me know if you do. I’ll join you!