Future Farmer of...Africa??

For all of you who knew me back at EHS and may have scoffed when I became a member of the FFA, I have news for you…never did I ever think those Ag classes would come in handy, but, in fact, FFA (for me) no longer stands for Future Farmers of America. I have decided to change it to Future Farmers of Africa. That is right; I’ve been hittin the fields, and let me tell you, I have a whole new appreciation for farming, especially farming in Senegal.
For the past month and a half, my normal solitary early morning run has been interrupted by throngs of “Medinanaabe” going to work in the fields. The rains have ended and the once flooded area past the bridge (the waalo) is being transformed into millet fields. As I run to keep up an exercise routine, I encounter people exercising as well: carrying their tools, water, and whatever else they may need, the 5km walk to their fields where they will spend the day. I’m greeted and most people call out to me,
“Come help in the fields!!”
“Come on!! Help plant!”
And while I know they are mostly kidding, I have a guilty feeling they are not. I think that they think I am unable to work in their fields, or that I am “above” working in the fields. And it is not just the strangers in the road; even my host family teases me,
“Salimata, tomorrow we are going to the fields. You’re going to plant. Early morning! No stopping till lunch!”
But when I respond with,
“Okay! I want to go!!”
they just laugh and say
“A waawaa” (you can’t) or,
“So Allah jaabi,” (if Allah agrees).
So last week when they told me I was going, I told them I would go and made it certain that they knew I was serious. I wanted to see what it was like, help my house plant their fields, and participate in what everyone else in my town was doing. I woke up early, went running, and as I came back, the charet was leaving me, so I ran after them and jumped on the horse drawn cart. We had passed up those walking and those already in the fields working away and 5km out we stopped at our fields.
Now…my house has three fields. The boys had already gotten the land ready to plant, which is when the women help out. We started in, quickly forming an “assembly line.” Bending, swinging, planting, bending, straightening…Heading it was a boy with a hoe to create a divot. Next, a girl with a long stick with a point at the end that she stabs into the ground to form a hole (Loude). Next (the hardest job of all! The job any idiot, or Toubab, can do!) came Salimata, to bend and drop 4 or 5 seeds into that hole (Awde). And finally someone to put dirt in the holes that I had just dropped seeds. There were four girls in total, and 6 boys, so we rotated every two lines. I had tried to “loude” but my arm strength and hand and eye coordination slowed us down, so I resigned to putting the seeds. Time passed quickly considering the actual pace of our work. Between the singing of the man in the nearby field, water breaks and the never ending jokes of my sister, Ramata, line after line we planted the millet by hand, and by the time we ended, we had only finished about 3/4ths of one plot. I couldn’t believe the amount of work that goes into farming here, and how slow it seems to take! They asked me,
“Salimata, do people plant fields in your country?”
And I felt guilty replying,
“Yes, but we have machines that do the planting, and fewer people have fields, but their fields are larger.”
I looked around at the fields, and the households out to farm; literally doing back breaking work, so that they will have millet for the next year. I saw it as exhausting: sun on your back, bending, straightening, line after line. But I found it cool to be a part of it. I felt a part of my community and my home. It was time well spent with my host brothers and sisters. And it was nice to yell across the fields to neighbors when they greeted me
“AH! Salimata Touak! You came to work in the fields today!!”
I felt it has given me a little bond with people, and I plan to go back out when the harvest comes to give my family a hand, and because you reap what you sow, and the seeds I have planted of millet and friendship, will be bountiful.