Harvest Season

This year I had the opportunity to harvest coos (millet), rice, sorghum, peanuts and beans. Ha, I say opportunity- but really it’s like saying I had the opportunity to clean the bathroom, or do the dishes… But it was actually really great. I feel like I’ve contributed to my family food bowl in a meaningful way.

First came the bean harvest. I think I mentioned that I urged Chinese to plant a bean field in the field behind the compound. Before I went to America I bought the beans for him to plant, and in October they were ready to harvest. I spent mornings and afternoons filling buckets with beans. The freshly picked pods dried in the sun until they could be shelled. With the family we probably picked 5 or 6 rice bags of beans. Of course, after you shell them they take up a lot less space, but I think we are still eating beans we grew. It adds protein to the diet that we didn’t have a year ago, and I’m going to encourage Chinese to plant them again next year.

Corn was harvested at the same time beans were, but I didn’t help pick corn. I’ve done that before, and I just couldn’t get into the corn here. I miss sweet corn too much, and am a bit of a corn snob it turns out. But the family did grow a small field of corn, or tobaňo.

We spent one day harvesting sorghum. This was a new grain to me, but it’s very tasty. (I didn’t take a picture of it, sorry.) Like coos, it grows several meters tall and the seed heads are cut off. Chinese, Amadou the Fula, Samba and I harvested sorghum and brought back 4 large bundles (maybe half pecks?) and put them on the roof to dry.

About two weeks later the coos was ready. To harvest coos we break the stalks at the base. After a row of stalks is broken we work back up the row cutting the heads off and piling them. We move up and down the field in rows cutting coos. To transport the coos we make a large bundle and tie it with locally made rope. Two bundles are joined together and tied for transport. Then you carry it back to village on your head if you don’t have a donkey cart. One bundle will feed our compound for about 5 days if we only eat coos. After it dries Fatou pounds it off the stalk and winnows it. It is then pounded again to remove the hulls. (Same with sorghum.) For every nine bundles harvested, one must be given to charity. I think Chinese harvested about 20 or 22 bundles from both his coos fields.

And rice! Funeh and I went to Chinese’s sister’s village 3 k away to help harvest rice. I had really no idea what to expect. All I brought was my knife and a hat.

We went with Maladou (the sister) down to her rice field- a marsh tucked along a small depression shaded by tall palm trees. ‘Are you going to take off your shoes? I think you are afraid (not brave) of the mud!’ Maladou asks as she leaves her shoes on the dry bank and steps into the rice. Now I have gone barefoot before in this country- I did all the groundnut weeding with no shoes- but this is something else. Who knows what lurks in that water- leeches, snakes, grody algae and slimy things!? On the other hand, I can’t really step in with my shoes on- they’ll get stuck and ruined, and I’m not very useful harvesting rice from the bank…

So leaving my shoes, I gingerly step into the water and immediately squish in. I am brave of the mud. I can do this. It’s time to harvest rice.

After a while you get used to it, and ignore the fact that there could be yucky things in the water. I think I got pretty good at harvesting, picking the ripe seed heads from the unripe and cutting them quickly. Maladou grew a few different varieties of rice including NeRICA, the rice that Peace Corps and other aid agencies are pushing.

We carried the rice back in the afternoon, and I’m pretty sure Maladou gave me half of what we harvested to take back to the family. There’s my rice harvest, a whole days work for about 6 cups of rice and a day spent working with my ‘extended’ family.