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grets Says: In Togo, blacksmith is not just any old trade; it is a very special trade. Blacksmiths are special, different, extraordinary people, as if they are from a totally different society, and are almost revered like semi-gods. You cannot just set yourself up as a blacksmith, you...
grets Says: Unique to the Kabye people is the tradition of using broken pieces of pottery as ornamentation on the floor of their courtyards. It is basically a single colour mosaic making patterns on the floor. It is very decorative, but the pictures don’t do it justice as it was such...
grets Says: The villagers put on an impromptu dancing show for us when we visited. Initially it was just a couple of women, and I must admit I thought they had just been trying too much of the millet beer, but gradually more and more people joined in, including a couple of musicians,...
grets Says: The Kabye people are a small ethnic minority group of Togo, accounting for about 12% of the population. They are found mainly in the north of the country, in the region around Kara. They are most noted for their agriculture and farming. The last two presidents of Togo came...
grets Says: You would enter the compound through a vestibule, into the main courtyard. Each compound consists of a house for the husband and one for each of his wives, various storage and granary buildings and maybe a kitchen. Picture one shows children playing in the courtyard. Picture...
grets Says: The Kabye people build their houses in a unique style called sokala. It means that each family compound has the walls attached to the next house, thus in effect creating an entire fence around the compound. It is the same principle that we would call link-detached in...
grets Says: 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...
grets Says: 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...
grets Says: 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...
Any home in Lassa Bas village: Millet
grets Says: 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...
Helpfulness
What to buy: The Kabye people are also famed for their pottery. This pot is very traditional to the village and is used in everyday cooking and storing of food. They also make them not just for their own use, but also to sell in the market. Two of our party bought these pots and paid next to nothing for them – just a couple of dollars. I don’t know how easy they would be to transport home, of if they would be suitable for conventional ovens, but they would look very decorative on the mantelpiece at home.
Written Mar 4, 2007
grets Says: Many families in the village would have their own gris-gris in the corner of the house to protect them from evil. Gris-gris is basically a talisman used in animist religions such as voodoo, and in this case it is a collection of stones, herbs, oils, bones, hair, nails, and...
grets Says: The ubiquitous goats are found everywhere – every village has them and every available pieces of land, be it beside the road or between the buildings in the town had one or more goats grazing on it. Goats are one of the oldest domesticated animal species, being kept for...
grets Says: Noah told us the name of this medicinal bush was ESRON - but I have been unable to find any details about it on the net since returning home. He told us it has antibiotic qualities and is used by the locals to treat all manner of diseases.
grets Says: The so called calabash container is named after the calabash tree. It is the fruit or gourd which is used to make the containers so widely used throughout Africa (and other parts of the world), and is one of the earliest cultivated trees in the world grown not for food but...
grets Says: The Baobab tree is sacred to the Kabye people and they will always ensure that they build their village adjacent or near to a baobab tree. They also worship the tree and will build shrines at the base of the trunk, where offerings are placed and sacrifices made. When a new...
Helpfulness
There is no running water in the village, so all the water has to be collected from the nearby well. I say nearby, it is nearly two miles to walk to the well. The walk there isn’t too bad of course; it’s the walk back, carrying the heavy water, which is the hard part. This is a task which is mainly carried out by the women of the village and young teenage girls. The water is usually carried in large metal bowls on their heads. No wonder the women in West Africa have such wonderful postures!
Once they have got the water to the village, it is stored in large earthenware jugs (see photos). The clay in the material the jugs are made up of helps keep the water cool.
The water is then scooped up suing a calabash (see separate tip) for drinking and cooking.
Written Mar 4, 2007
Lassa Bas - a small village near Lassa
We visited a small village called Lassa Bas, where Noah greeted the chief, as is customary, and hired a local lad to be our guide to the village. Our main aim with the trip to Togo was to meet...
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