Picking Corn

June is harvest month here in Iringa, so today Anette and I put our hands to good use by picking corn, a first for both of us. Planted by hand just before the December rains, the corn matured in March but has since turned brittle brown and yellow. I had been wondering why people hadn’t harvested the ears before now, so this week I asked the woman who bakes our bread and lives on a good-sized shamba next to my school. She told me that for making ugali, the Tanzanian staple food, it’s best to wait until the corn has dried before you pick it. When she told me that she was going to start her harvest this weekend, I asked if we could lend a hand.

This morning when we arrived she was already out picking corn, so her seven year-old son led us through the rows of stalks to the far end of the shamba where a group of people were working, talking and laughing together. A sister and some other relatives had come into town for the harvest, and they were all happy (if a bit surprised at seeing wazungu - white people - in the shamba) to have two extra pairs of hands to help out.

Picking corn is not nearly as difficult as the preparation for planting corn, so we learned quickly. We were each given a small, flat stick and shown how to use it to cut open the dry leaves encasing the ears of corn. After opening the leaves all we had to do was twist the ear until it came off, then toss it into one of several piles scattered among the rows. Within five minutes we had learned the Kiswahili words for stalk and row, and we kept smiling at each other thinking how good it felt to have the sun on our necks and our hands busy with something other than a laptop.

We chatted with those nearest to us as we worked our way down one row and up the next, exchanging information about farming methods in our respective cultures. Everyone was shocked to hear that we harvest most of our corn by machine in America; they understood how tractors could prepare the land and do the planting, but to do the harvesting, too?! “What a life!” they exclaimed.

After about an hour and a half, our friend recognized that our pace had slowed considerably, so she invited us to take a break when we came to the end of our row. As we walked back to her house she showed us bean, pumpkin and potato plants growing happily at random throughout the cornfield. For the next couple of hours we sat and talked with her while waiting for the midday meal.

During this time, of course, the others continued their work in the field. The housegirl (Tanzanian term for domestic help) stopped picking corn so that she could prepare our food, and immediately after serving us she traipsed back out into the shamba (not having eaten) to help the others bring in the day’s harvest. So as we sat comfortably drinking our tea and digesting our meal, the others were walking back to the house with 50 to 70 kilo bags of corn on their heads.

I’ve accepted that I’ll never be able to carry heavy things on my head, and that most African women are stronger than I’ll ever be, but my hope is that by simply pitching in we at least gain a bit more respect from the locals. We also become familiar with the details and the cycles of life in Tanzania. For example, we’ve enjoyed eating ugali with our hands ever since we came here, but today we learned about the whole process of how it goes from the stalk to our stomachs.

When the heavy bags of corn are brought to the house, they are beaten with sticks to break the kernels off the ears. A pesticide is then applied to keep the insects away and the bags are brought periodically to the local mill, where it costs 800 Tanzanian Shillings, or about 75 cents, to grind a 20 Liter bucket of kernels into flour. The flour is then taken as needed for ugali, which is made by boiling the flour slowly until it all sticks together and forms the distinctive big white ball that accompanies almost every meal here. Fittingly, we left the shamba with an invitation to eat the ugali that will be made from the corn we picked today.

One Last Field Trip

On Friday I took twelve of my middle school students to Ruaha National Park for the culmination of our semester-long research project on Ruaha ecosystems. As on all field trips I’ve led, I was quite nervous before and during the trip but tried my best not to show it to the kids. Not until we were a few minutes from home yesterday did I relax and think to myself, “Wow, we made it!”

On previous field trips I’ve never had to worry about my students getting eaten by lions, but nonetheless, there is always an element of anxiety when removing students from the confines of the schoolyard and becoming surrogate parent to a group of teenagers. Despite the headaches of planning and permission slips, these trips are highlights of the school year for both students and teachers. For example, all I remember about 8th grade is that we went to Williamsburg and several romances blossomed and wilted all in the same weekend. Oh, I also remember it was the year I started doing poorly in math.

As a teacher at Berkeley High, my first field trip was a short outing to see “Calivera,” an exhibition of Mexicali Day of the Dead altars. As my 6th period class descended the escalators of the Berkeley BART station to ride the train a few stops south to the Oakland Museum, I was convinced that they were going to rebel and escape to San Francisco, leaving me to call their parents and send out various search parties. To my relief, the only student who went missing showed up later with a good explanation.

On May Day 2007, a colleague and I carried out our ambitious and slightly crazy idea of taking all 60 of our freshmen to an immigrant rights rally in San Francisco. Amazingly no one got lost, and we had an incredible day that included a walking tour of the Mission District murals, which tell the story of the Latino experience from the pre-Colombian era to the present day. What my students probably remember most is chasing each other around Mission Dolores Park before the rally.

When I came to Tanzania to teach in a small international school I imagined peace and quiet - a welcome change from the craziness of American public schools. I didn’t think my field trips would be as adventurous, but it turns out that bringing 12 students 120 kilometers over a very rocky road and sleeping overnight in the bush is just as challenging as taking 60 kids to and from SF on the BART.

Food, for example, is a minor detail of American field trips because we can buy it everywhere. But in Tanzania, there’s no stopping at Subway or McDonald’s. My boss and I had to go the Iringa market to buy 5 kilos of rice, 3 kilos of peas, 3 kilos of potatoes and assorted veggies and fruit so that the students would have food on the trip. When we arrived at our campsite, I had to use my not-yet-there Swahili to arrange for a “mama” to cook our food, and of course we haggled for a quarter of an hour over the price. But these are the details and differences that make Tanzania so endearing.

With the food arranged, my mind stopped running through all the possible scenarios of what could go wrong, and as we set out on our afternoon game drive I focused in on the faces of my students as they waited for their first glimpse of Africa’s famous animals. Surprisingly, four of my students had never been to Ruaha (or any other national park) so I was excited to share in their first experience of this incredible wilderness. “Look, the giraffe is eating an acacia tree!” exclaimed one of my students. “Yes!” I thought to myself, “they’ve actually understood my lessons on species interaction and food chains.”

On our first drive we saw elephants, buffalo, impala, zebra, hippos and crocs, but the highlight was coming around a corner and meeting two huge bull giraffes standing with their bodies pressed against each other, heads side by side. I’d never seen this before, and I wondered what they were doing. All of the sudden they both stumbled and the bushes shook, and I thought they were being attacked by a pride of lions. In the next instant, one giraffe quickly swiveled his head and swung it like a hammer, smashing it into the neck of his rival.

The sound of the impact was frightful, and we all sat with our mouths open and hearts beating fast, awestruck witnesses to a rarely seen behavior. Fatigued by their efforts, the two bulls stood breathing heavily for about half a minute, and then they began again. Their necks were elastic as pulled toffee, but their skulls pounded against their bodies with thunderous force. It was a moment none of us will soon forget – we were 10 feet away.

Our only “complaint” as we went to bed was that we hadn’t seen any cats, but as luck would have it we heard that distinctive roar close to our camp as dawn broke, and sure enough we encountered a pride of 20 lions on our early morning drive. As my students can now attest, there is nothing quite like seeing your first lion.

When we pulled into the school driveway yesterday, I felt a great sense of relief. The students were exhausted from the excitement and the long, dusty ride back home, and so was I. Reflecting on all the field trips I’ve taken in the past few years, I realize that all the planning, logistics and temporary parenthood have been well worth it.