By Miranda Wolford. Embracing a new type of beer culture, quite different than the one characteristic of American colleges.
“Beer culture is toxic.”
Lessons learned from the animated AlcoholEdu course come back from the depths of my first semester at Duke to haunt me. Back then, I considered myself to be one of the more upstanding participants in this Duke-mandated course. I watched the videos, calculated my BMI, and even took an occasional note or two. Yet, here I am, pondering the effectiveness of such a course as I sip my first beer of the day in a Togolese beer hut. Adding further insult, it is ten o’clock in the morning; in the northern Togolese village of Farendé, the day has only just begun.
At least one piece of advice from AlcoholEdu is followed in the beer huts here: nobody drinks alone. Glancing around the clay-built circle, I count at least five familiar faces of men I’ve seen frequent this very spot, the same time each day. The cracks in their hands still colored in with terra-cotta mud, this beer hut is their first stop after a morning spent toiling in the fields. There must be some underlying irony in this daily ritual: cultivating grains in the early hours of the morning, then consuming fermented grains immediately thereafter. But alas, beer seems to be the oil that keeps this subsistence economy chugging along.
The matriarchs join the men in the circle, while the younger girls scurry around the outside circumference of the hut, fetching more buckets of beer to continue the supply line. One worn orange bucket marks the center of the hut, manned by a girl charged with distributing the hollowed-out calabashes of beer. My calabash — perched in my right hand, per Kabiyé tradition — contains a sort of warm, sour concoction of fermented sorghum grain. Imagine a fizz-less, bitter version of your favorite Whole Foods kombucha — sans refrigeration and a $5 price tag — and you have sorghum beer. Guinness, Heineken, and Natty Light have no place in this beer culture; craft brews only.
Sipping slowly in between broken French conversations with some of the elders, I’ve managed to deplete my calabash to the point of half-full. The attentively hawk-eyed girl in the center takes the perspective of cup half-empty, and immediately replenishes my beer. I sit complacently, not confident enough to disrupt the flow with a rejection of beer, helplessly watching as both the fizz of my drink and my blood alcohol content rise. Increasingly impassioned and jovial conversations in a mix of French and Kabiyé signal the rise in everyone else’s blood alcohol content as well. I wonder if the phrase “It’s five o’clock somewhere!” translates in West African culture, or perhaps even the term “binge-drinking?”
But far from toxic, this beer culture is deeply ingrained in the overarching Kabiyé set of traditions, viewed as a means of relaying gratitude and unity in small communities such as Farendé in which this beer hut stands. In an economy seemingly untouched by the clutches of capitalism, beer is the quickest form of cash available. If someone works your fields in the morning? Forget an hourly wage — a calabash of beer is a satisfactory equivalent for payment. New to town? Beer also serves as the welcoming committee. Simply bored in the midst of a particularly slow and sunny Togolese afternoon? The beer huts always have an open seat and an outstretched hand. Providing even more than an open seat, insider sources within the teenage population of Farendé indicate that the beer huts are the happening spot for the occasional late night rendezvous. Only two weeks into my time in Togo, and I am quite proud of my grasp on the local gossip.
However, I speak of this new breed of beer culture, drastically different from the one of shotgunning and head-pounding beers I’ve come to know well at Duke (and the merits of which can be discussed at another point in time), as a mere observer. I don’t know if it is the beer or the companionship or even the atmosphere that culminates in bustling beer huts day after day. Even with the overwhelming number of ways to reject a drink that AlcoholEdu taught me, I still don’t even know how to properly (and confidently) turn down a calabash. I guess they didn’t cover “How to Reject Beer from a Village Elder and Not Offend” in that video lesson. My point is that there is a unique nuance to the beer culture of Farendé that takes far more than just two weeks to even scratch the surface of. There’s the artistry — which women make the best beer, how to differentiate better from best, the intricate process of fermentation and creation. There’s the rhythm — what times are beer o’clock, who goes when, when you discuss politics versus football. And of course, there’s the value system — how to value beer in a subsistence economy, when to employ it as a form of gratitude, when to know if you should pay for your calabash or simply accept the gift. With two weeks under my belt, I already thirst for more.
The sun cradled high in the sky signals to me that I must return to my homestead for lunch. Several others in the circle depart for the same reason, and the flow of beer slows to a momentary halt. Some make plans to return after an intermission for lunch, and I am asked if I will do the same. I meagerly muster up an excuse — I have work to do this afternoon at the Centre-Sociale. They nod in acceptance. As I climb out of the beer hut and back into the real world, the girl in the center waves and says, “À demain!”
Until tomorrow!