Tales from Togo. Short stories and experiences of the daily madness encountered during my two month stay in West Africa.
Bokki - My Goat. A Love Story Which Is Probably Going To End In Tears

The Mountaintop Village
The village Illico in the Plateaux Region of the westafrican country Togo is only accessible by motorbike. Or “zem” how they are called here. After a two-hour drive on a more or less tarred road from the country’s capital Lomé, we arrive in the town of Atakpamé. By the outskirts of the city we swop from the backseats of our pickup truck to the mototaxis. Let the fun begin.
We have been riding mototaxis in Togo for just over a month now. You get used to it. Hold on to the handrail in the back with one hand if there are any speed bumps or traffic lights ahead, otherwise just kind of try to lower your center of gravity, put your feet on the little handles on either side and try not to fall off. Quite simple when you are driving in the city and the roads are level. (Also, always mount and step down the bike from the left, the exhaust in on the right side and from personal experience I can tell you that it is very hot.)
Back to our story. How we came to live with a goat.
The dirtroad up to Illico is long and steep, half washed away by many seasons of rain, muddy and full of potholes. For an hour we bounce up the mountain, following the line of red earth, ever closer to the village whose name translates to “on top of the mountain”. And how right they were to name it that. We reach the top of the mountain after a drive through lush forests and green fields. We are welcomed by the village’s population and a slight drizzle is starting to set in. The air is fresh and clean, we are far away from the pollution of the city. The surrounding hills are covered in clouds and the fog hangs heavy in the treetops.

The Goat And The Moped
We are here on a work assignment. We want to learn more about how people live in these remotes areas of Togo, how to help to increase their economic output to hopefully make them less dependent on development aid in the long run. We get to talk to the village chief, a proud man with a big smile, the school director and many other people. The amount of information is overwhelming, the translating is sometimes difficult for me but nonetheless or especially because of this, it is a very enriching experience.
After our talks we are meant to leave and go back down to town. Before that we are invited for lunch at the chief’s house. In his round open reception-hut in the middle of the compound we are served local food and palm schnaps called Sorabi. We eat with our hands, no words needed when it comes to food and drinks.
The slight drizzle that had accompanied us through the day has turned into a heavy rain shower. There is no way we can leave now, we are stuck. We stay and chat and dance and eat some more and after two hours of involuntary but very enjoyable stay in Illico the sky starts to clear up and we leave as soon as possible. To our surprise the people of Illico are starting to bring us gifts for our departure. Next to a massive bag of the biggest and most delicious looking Avocados I have ever seen plus two big bunches of bananas, they also give us a goat.
A he-goat to be precise.
The sun is starting to set and all our gifts are strapped on to the motorbike that carried me up the mountain. The goat’s legs get tied together and it iswrapped around the driver’s waist. It is alive but stops wriggling after a short while, seems to have accepted its fate. We start driving and reach our car down in the valley in the dark after an hour of manoeuvring through the darkness, down the mountain and through the rain. We only get off the road once and don’t even fall off.

The goat gets loaded in the back of the truck together with the bananas and avocados and we are heading back to the city. On the drive it starts to eat some of the bananas, which we are more than happy to share.
Back in Lomé
So now we have a goat. We call him Bokki, an abbreviation of the swiss-german word for he-goat “Geissbock”. Bokki lives in our office building now, during the day he is tied up outside and we feed him leaves from the mango tree that grows in the courtyard of the garage next door. The kids in our neighbourhood feed him the insides of the empty coconuts and he loves the shells of fresh peanuts.
He is intelligent, calls us when we walk past and is very gentle. But none of those things are going stop him from ending up on the BBQ. He was given to us as a gift and he will be the highlight of the final feast before we leave Togo to go back to Europe. I am trying not to get too attached to him, but as you can tell by the fact that I just wrote a whole story about him, I already am.

This story originally appeared in a shorter form and in german on the blog of the NGO “Managers without borders” which I wasworking for on this assignment in Togo.
