Sometimes reality hits you in the face whether you’re ready for it or not.

I didn’t take a picture and that’s probably a good thing. I’ll cut to the chase and then flesh out the detail. People eat animals. Sometimes those animals might be what we would consider to be pets.

Here’s what happened. I was walking to the Chinese store for tofu, coming up on the house where the rust-colored dogs hang out, when I noticed two men doing something in the grass between the ditch and the compound wall. One of the men was picking up an animal. He held both front feet in his left hand and the hind feet in his right. The second man was holding a big woven plastic bag just like the one we bought a load of charcoal in.

I immediately identified the animal as a dog and because it was the same color as the dogs who habitually sleep outside that same wall, a scenario developed in my brain. A cherished pet had been struck by a car and was being rescued. Or it was dead and the body was being removed by city employees to wherever road kill dogs go.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the men look my way so I turned and getting a better look, there seemed to be some life in the unfortunate animal. Maybe there was hope for the dog after all. My face reflected my internal narrative with a mixture of sorrow and hope. As I met his gaze, the man swung the dog into the bag and reached down for something else.

I think my look of concern made him smile. Picking up a second dog, this one a black one, he asked in English in a slightly teasing voice, “You like this?”  He held up the dog and its head swung back to reveal a gaping gash where the throat once was. Obviously, the dog’s throat had been cut. Cut the way I’ve seen deer hunters bleed out an animal before butchering. Probably hacked with a machete or “chopped” as they say here.

Confused, I answered “No,” and kept walking, stepping aside to miss a small puddle of drying blood. It was unclear whether he was asking if I liked dogs in general or as pets or did I like dog meat. It was pretty clear these two dogs were headed to someone’s kitchen and it was best that I continue on my way.

A couple of weeks ago our housemate, Jeremy, told me he saw our next door neighbors handling a dead cat in the same way one handles a piece of meat. “Are you sure it wasn’t a dead pet?” I had asked. “No” Jeremy shook his head, “They were treating it like food.” The next week both Bob and Jeremy saw them handling a chicken in the same manner.

To be fair, I’ve often joked that I’d eat roadkill if I were hungry enough and feel better about it than eating factory-farmed meat. I’ve never been squeamish about meat. The neighbors raise chickens for food and the goats in our yard are being raised for breeding with the intention of eating the kids. After we leave Kumasi, Jeremy intends to sell his Nigerian Dwarf goats, Go-At, Aponche and Nwansane, for meat.

My attitude had always been: animal protein is animal protein, no matter how you slice it and I’ve chosen not to partake.

Our vegan diet has taken a hit since moving to Africa. We can’t get Veganaise so we use the mayonnaise made with eggs on sandwiches and in slaw. We eat a lot of beans to make up for the absence of processed garden burgers, soy chick’n nuggets and home made tempeh, and seitan.

Fortunately beans are abundant, soy milk readily available and fresh tofu is delivered daily to the Chinese shop just a few blocks up the street. Peanuts, soy protein nuggets and nutritional yeast (brought in suitcases by visitors to Kumasi) round out the vegan menu. Bean fritters, Kentucky fried tofu, chili, falafel, hummus and fried soy protein figure heavily in our menu.

We all voted against the local margarine “Blue Band” which refused to melt and so I’ve begun buying real butter. Tonight’s meal for example, the Kentucky Fried Tofu meal, will depend heavily on butter for the gravy, mashed potatoes, candied carrots and sauteed mushrooms.

The guys supplement their diet with eggs, tuna and cheese. When we go out to eat, they sometimes order chicken or tilapia. The addition of tuna to the Casa Kumasi pantry created a dilemma for me. I didn’t feel right about buying fish even if I didn’t intend on eating it myself. But it was my job to stock the house and this had become an item to be stocked. In the end, I agreed to add tuna to the list of things I buy and pack home from the store.

Last Saturday Bob and I discovered a new shop in the neighborhood that stocks good cheese, delicious beans, bread, spices, dried fruit and our favorite mayonnaise. We had heard about this unmarked shop on the other side of Melcom Road and Andreas, a German ex-pat who has been living in our neighborhood for over a year knew where it was. He generously invited us to join him while he ran his shopping errands and we happily hopped in.

Andreas’ errands took us out past the abattoir for a case of beer. “Here is the slaughter house,” he said, “I’ve been inside this. It is horrible.” I asked him what was so horrible and he replied, “The attitude. They slaughter animals and how they treat it.” Two stops later we were back at Atinga Junction. “I know you don’t eat meat, but this butcher is very good.” Andreas said, pulling into a tiny shop for a package of ground beef.

We returned home with 101 cedis ($50) worth of food, including three packages of cheese. So now grilled cheese sandwiches are the latest culinary craze around here. I tasted the Swiss and one of the cheddars and was reminded how much I once loved cheese. I have yet to eat a grilled cheese sandwich but I have to admit that today Bob’s sandwiches smelled mighty inviting, even after the trauma of seeing what I saw a couple of hours earlier.

I realize there’s a lot of wiggle room between grilled cheese and dog meat. But my nonchalant attitude towards meat has been shaken by the haunting image of a black dog with a hacked throat. When I arrived home, the goats gathered around like pets and I felt a pang of sorrow knowing that they may one day end up on someone’s dinner plate.

All of this comes down to one realization – we all have to make our own decisions about what’s right for us. Some of us eat fish but not meat. Meat but not beef. Beef but only grass-fed beef. Eggs in mayonnaise but not fried in a pan. Butter but not cheese. Cheese but not a whole sandwich of melted cheese, bread grilled in butter (horrors!)

Only I can decide where to draw the line.

 Bob tries out our keys in our new Post Office Box in Adum and Camille shows off her new dress, paper towels and can opener.

The first order of business was a visit to the Post Office to mail a couple of cards to the States. When we found out we could get a P O Box and begin receiving mail, we went for it! The kind lady at the window sent us around the corner to room 12 on the second floor to purchase the necessary paper work. I was happy to remember that I had a photo of Bob in my wallet and between that and his North Carolina drivers license we had the necessary documentation.

Then we went back downstairs to pay our box fee and receive our number. “What do you want to bet our new number has a seven in it?” I said and was disappointed when the clerk announced our number as 16595. Moments later, when I was writing down our new address though, she corrected me saying it was 16597. Yay! And then we went back upstairs to room 12 to pick up our keys. Finally, we walked around until we found the box itself and tried both keys in it. Worked like a charm.

So drop us a postcard and we’ll mail you one back with a fancy Ghanian stamp on it.

Our new mailing address is:

P O Box KS 16597
Kumasi, Ghana
West Africa

Next, we stopped at Saarnak Vegetarian Food and Health Shop as recommended by awesome vegan Abenaa when she took us horseback riding at Lake Bosumtwi last week. We shared a plate of the best jollof rice we’ve had here yet. And then we bought some fancy vegan groceries for the house, including soy protein nuggets, sunflower seeds and pepitos.

Out on the street, I spotted can openers on display and stopped to buy one and a bottle opener as well. We also checked out the Okopu Trading Post where we found Kahlua and paper towels but no measuring cup. We walked around the corner to Ebenezer’s Health Food Shop and picked up honey, peanut butter and coconut oil, buying some avocados and cucumbers at a produce stand along the way. And we looked at clothing but didn’t find anything that was quite as awesome as the dress I bought yesterday.

We arrived home with full bags and bellies and big smiles on our faces. Life is good when you find what you want!

It’s been awhile since we’ve made tempeh or seitan cutlets so we’ve been cheating with processed foods. Mostly because Bob has been working 50 hours a week between his full time job and his volunteer work at Chatham Marketplace.

Quorn chick’n patties are delicous but made of  mycoprotien and egg whites and a pinch of whey protein concentrate and buttermilk powder. So, they are not hardly vegan and we’ll be looking into vegan patties next trip to the store. As well as looking for time to make some breaded cutlets!

Roasted tofurky and root vegetables, mashed potatoes, golden gravy and the ubiquitous greens. This time of year we eat greens at every meal.

Here’s what we had to eat tonight: twigs and berries.

Jason and Haruka’s incredibly sweet and nutty Koshihikari rice, freshly harvested greens with radicchio from Matt and Jenn’s Dickinson College Farm, pan-fried quorm “chicken” patties topped with Mae Ploy sweet chili sauce. The only things keeping this meal from being vegan is the rehydrated egg white, whey protein concentrate and buttermilk powder in the quorn patties.

Vegans don’t eat Kentucky Fried Chicken! Regardless of how many buckets they may have consumed in a previous life.

But wait, it was okay! The little sign on the sample table said that the woman smiling behind the electric fry pan was cooking tofu. Bob picked up a fork and pierced the crispy coating on a succulent bite of fried tofu. “You better have some,” he said, handing me the fork.

So I did. And handed him the fork so he could have another taste. We passed the fork back and forth for a little while before asking for the recipe, then passed it back and forth a few more times. After that, we went and bought four pounds of tofu, some local greens, stocked up on canned tomatos and picked up the twenty-five pound bag of soybeans that had brought us to town in the first place.

We were hardly able to contain our excitement in the check out line. We were hungry from cleaning stalls and itching to get home and fry us up some tofu! Which we did, and it was fabulous. We steamed up some kale, boiled some noodles, made gravy from the pan drippings and stuffed ourselves.

About six hours later, we fished the leftovers out of the refrigerator and chowed down again. Honestly, this stuff tasted like cold Kentucky Fried Chicken. We were so impressed, we added the recipe to our Website here.