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| a monstrous peanut pile |
First of all, Happy New Year to all! Second of all, if you're not interested in the process of peanut harvesting in Sub-Saharan Africa, I'm sorry to say that this blog post is not for you.
In Ngar Gueye, the months of November and December were consumed by field work. Devoured by it. I'm talking ten hour days seven days a week. I'm talking about an entire village mobilizing to complete the harvest - ages five to sixty-five. I'm talking about no lunch breaks, no naps, no social visits, no nothing. My village is nestled right in the middle of the so-called peanut basin of Senegal and what a labor intensive crop they are! I thought the harvest process was fascinating, maybe just because I was living in the middle of it or because it provides enough cash to sustain my entire community until next harvest time. Whatever the reason, I was interested enough to participate and gather intimate knowledge about the harvest. What exactly are the steps that get peanuts from the ground to the market? I thought you'd never ask!
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| an even more monstrous peanut pile |
Previously I'd posted photos of peanut plants getting plowed by metal plows drawn by horses. (So many P's in that sentence!) After the plants are uprooted, women and children (and me) walk through the fields gathering the plants into small piles. After a few weeks in the sun, the plants get crusty and hard and men return to the fields to pile them on top of charettes, transporting them into even bigger piles. At this point, the peanuts are all still connected to the rest of the plant, hanging out in big monster piles.
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| separating peanuts from the rest |
Up until now, each family is more or less responsible for their own fields. But once the peanut piles have reached maximum size, men work together with whittled sticks to beat them until the peanuts are more or less separated from their stalks. Once the piles have been beaten to satisfaction, women return to the fields to separate the peanut pods from the rest. In my opinion, this is the most fun step of the process (fun for me because I could quit when my shoulders ached aka after thirty minutes or so). Women use the wind of cool season to blow the stalks away while the heavier peanuts fall straight down into a pile. After trying my hand at it, I quickly realized why every woman in my village has seriously defined arm and shoulder muscles. Once the peanuts are separated, they are bagged into ten kilo plastic sacks and transported to the nearest town to be sold.
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| final step: no peanut left behind |
But the fun's not over! My family has a strict no peanut left behind policy when it comes to the harvest, resulting in the most tedious and least glamorous step of the process: peanut hunting. It's a task that I was encouraged to spend hours upon hours participating in, which I was somewhat willing to do until my host mother sustained a scorpion bite in the sand. Then I started a mural instead. Anyway, peanut hunting is just what it sounds like: sifting through every patch of sand in the field to gather runaway peanuts until they've all been collected. And voilà - harvest complete!
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| new fences for all |
There was a mad dash to finish the harvest by December 22nd, the date of a huuuuuuuuge holiday for the Mouride Brotherhood of Islam in Senegal. The holiday is called Maggal and entails a pilgrimage to the holy city of Touba. I was invited by my family, but wary of the crowds I headed to Dakar instead to celebrate the joint birthday of my friend Katie Curtis and my wonderful beautiful amazing mother! I stuck around for Christmas with my fellow volunteers and went north to St. Louis for a spectacular New Year's Eve. I am returning to village today, inchallah, to hear about how my family passed the holiday season and get back into the hang of things.
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| baobab fruit |
The harvest was an exciting, exhausting, and educational time. I enjoyed the knowledge I gained but was challenged by the busyness of my fellow villagers. It made health work a fringe activity and my house a quiet and lonely place. Now that harvest season is over, we're flush with peanuts to sell, millet stalks to make new fences, bissap flowers for next Ramadan, and a huge pile of fruit from our baobab trees. The pods dangle in a Seussical way from the trees until boys knock them down. The fuzzy durable pods are filled with a white chalky substance with a faintly citrusy flavor. A great treat to have stored in my backyard! Well, back to village with me - hope y'all enjoyed your peanut harvest tutorial.
