Savanes is supposed to be more desert-like, more sparsely vegetated than the south more dust and dry heat. Yet it struck me as greener than my post in Plateaux and reminded me more of my home back in the U.S. There may be less brush and small shrubs and trees, but the landscape is studded with plenty of trees, large trees. In Kara huge baobabs tower over the fields of yam hills. Even around Dapaong, the trees are much bigger than what I see around Atakpame. They command attention and gave me the impression of a greener landscape than I'm used to in the more densely populated south. And up north there are mountains! Okay, in all fairness they can probably only be called hills, driving through Kara felt like going over Smuggler's Notch. Vermont roads have the edge on Togo's National Route, although in the case of many of Vermont's back roads, just barely. I was struck most by the dust in Savanes - especially during Harmattan, it coats your clothes and skin within minutes with a thick layer of red grime. Red earth is piled high on the sides of the National Route and gusts across the landscape.
I visited my friend Amelia in her village near Dapaong. Her village is set into a big hill and represents the Peace Corps rural idyll much more than my post. The houses were more spread out in comparison with my post, with fields and residences more seamlessly integrated in a patchwork of earthen homes, trees and rows of bare ground that must have once contained corn. Again, I'm right near the National Route and thus live in a more densely populated section of Plateaux. But all the houses are clustered together in my village, and I have to walk forty minutes out of my village to reach open space. And even then, houses give way to fields, fields and more fields.
Amelia's house is the only cement structure in view, a big rectangle sticking off the side of the hill. Compounds up north are closed in by tiny earthen huts with thatched roofs and earthen walls instead of the concrete walls more common down south. And she is certainly more isolated. I mean it took us forty minutes to walk from her marché, where the motos dropped us off, to her house on the far side of the village.
Her marché, which we visited the next day, is a small cluster of thatched awnings that offer tchakpa, tchakpa and more tchakpa. There was one woman with some dried piment peppers and another with bean beignets. But that was it. That week no one had brought bread from Dapaong, so there wasn't even bread. I was feeling pretty fortunate by then for the tomatoes and okra available every day in my village and for the comparative bounty at my Wednesday marché.
Amelia's host family brews tchakpa, and one of the girls brought a big 'ole calabash full to her door early Sunday morning. At 6:30. The tchakpa in Amelia's village was more fermented and not as sweet as the tchakpa I make with the Majorette at post. It was delicious. When my neighbors had heard I was heading up north for Christmas, they advised me to drink "vrai tchakpa" (real tchakpa) and to eat pentard. The other northern speciality, pintaudes (guinea fowl), can be found down south but are much more plentiful in Savanes. And when Amelia's host family served us fried pintaude for dinner, I could not have been happier. No bread at the marche, but tchakpa and fried pintaude aplenty. Not so tough a life...
