November 19th- Peanuts!

One of the things that has most enchanted me so far with my internship has been the opportunity to harvest peanuts. Peanut production in Senegambia is one of the major vestiges of the colonial era and the chance to see the process in action made me really excited. Yes, I am the world's biggest nerd. I also love agriculture, so that is pretty exciting too.

The colonial powers used taxes as a way to draw the Senegalese into the cash economy and peanuts often became the answer to the problem of how to make money in the first place. The French encouraged peanut production because at the time peanut oil was used to make fine soaps. During the colonial era, peanuts were exported raw from Senegal for very cheap prices and then transformed into finished products in France that the French could then sell for high prices. It was a really nice system to make the French a lot of money. And Senegalese peasants needed to grow something of value to get the cash to pay taxes. So wasn't that a nice little system.

The point is that peanut cultivation is a really important part of Senegal's culture and history. Mafay- a rich peanut sauce- is one of my favorite foods in the village. In fact, peanuts are now used in many Senegalese dishes and most families (including mine here) have a field where they grow a combination of millet, peanuts, bissap, and other crops. I am astounded at the diversity that one little plot can contain. After spending my life in the Midwest, where monocultures are rampant, it is really nice to see an agricultural scheme utilizing a little more diversity. But yes, peanuts. I was bumming about not getting to visit the Gambia until I realized that getting to harvest peanuts in the Sine-Saloum River Delta is probably a lot cooler experience to report upon.

It is so cool to be able to see every step in the cultivation of the food I eat here. Admittedly, the family eats rice imported from Vietnam with lunch almost every day, but the cous cous (it's Senegalese cous cous- or cere- which means it's millet based) we eat for dinner was all grown in Mbam and processed in my backyard. All the vegetables and fish and meat that we eat come from the gardens, nets, and yards of men and women in nearby houses. Watching the women pound millet is one thing that will never cease to amaze me. I have tried to do it, and it takes a phenomenal amount of strength. They literally shake the ground with their efforts. It takes a lot of time and energy to make this local production work. People are never truly idle. The women almost always have a pestle or some food item in hand and the boys are constantly chopping millet for horses or wood for fires or reeds for palisades. Peanuts, I have learned, are a truly tedious food. There are so many steps to make them ready for eating. In the fields, a horse with a plow turns the plants. The harvesters (that's me!) follow the horse, dusting off the plants, and placing them in piles all over the field. They then sit to dry for a day or two before we stack them in pagnes and carry them home on the charette. Once home, everyone sits around with the plants, pulling the peanuts off the stems individually and placing them in buckets. But even then, we have to remove the shells before they can be eaten. Sometimes they are burned in a pile of brush before the shells are taken off and we eat them, fresh roasted from the ground, but other times we take off the shells and leave the peanuts out to dry in the sun. After all that, they are finally ready to be used in our food. It takes so much time. Particularly cumbersome are the steps where one has to individually remove and deshell the nuts. What a pain. It also really hurts my fingers cracking open all the shells.

It sounds like I'm complaining but in reality I'm having the time of my life! It's still sort of novel for me to be doing the tasks that I'm sure become menial after awhile. Life in the brush is work, as Binta is so fond of telling me. After living here for a month, I can see it is true. It takes so much time to make everything work. Water must be carried from the wells (I have learned to walk with a 10-20 kg bucket full of water on my head!), food brought from the fields and boutiques and markets, fires built and wood chopped. I understand why everyone takes a siesta almost everyday. I feel so worthless; my skills are regularly surpassed by the four and eight year olds living in the house. But I guess that's to be expected. My family here has hosted many toubabs and so I figure they understand if I fail a little bit.