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.