Working for Peanuts

I’ve emerged from 17 days stay in Chayili village – a village where only on person speaks English and everyone’s livelihood is centered around farming. Since I took a ton of pictures and couldn't possible capture everything in words, I've included numerous photos dispersed through-out this post. Enjoy!

The 17 days I spent in Chayili seemed timeless – partly because time has a different meaning in a place where calendars and watches are irrelevant. But I emerge with stronger hands from working on the farm, darker skin from being out in the sun and a bigger heart to work with people in Northern Ghana – my heart goes out to many of the family members I stayed with – a household that was created from a former chief and thus was quite large with the chiefs wives, children and their wives and children. I got to know and love everyone in the house.

Photo above: Too many to name! Some are wives and children of the head of the household, others are wives of the head of household’s children.

I set out to this village to basically immerse myself in rural life in Northern Ghana – my objectives were to learn the local language, and to forge a strong understanding of rural life and farming as a livelihood. It was an incredible experience, now that I’m back in Tamale with electricity, paved roads and vibrant commerce I can truly appreciate the experience – having an understanding of rural life is incredibly important since that is the context which my partner organisation (the Ministry of Food and Agriculture) works.

Photo above: First impressions of Chayili

Life in a village was just as romantic as I pictured – the strong sense of community that exists, the thatch roof huts, cooking with metal pots over a fire and enjoying food fresh from the farm. But this romantic view was quickly dashed when I started to partake in the work. Carrying water, cooking, cleaning, farming all require muscle strength and stamina that after 17 days I was only just starting to develop (my back and neck still ache!). I have tremendous respect for my friends in Chayili who work hard everyday and still made time and effort to teach me and let me contribute to their work – however incompetent I may be at it!

Working hard (and enjoying it!) pounding maize (corn) into flour with a friend.

My visit was well-timed to learn firsthand about farming in northern Ghana. It is the end of the rainy season which marks the beginning of the harvest. Peanuts or groundnuts as they’re known in Ghana, were the crop of choice for Chayili – they were just ready to be harvested, and I was able to participate in this amazing experience. I was able to spend a couple of days harvesting groundnuts with the men in my family. In the picture below, you can see we had quite a crew! I understand the motivation to have many children! We were working on an elder’s field who is the senior most women elder in the community and seems to get help from everyone in the community since she no longer has a husband. With a strong crew we were able to harvest 2 acres of groundnuts in just hours!

Peanuts or Groundnuts. This variety is called ablain in the local language. It's best for oil.

Harvesting groundnuts...yeah I know I was fascinated when I finally saw how peanuts or groundnuts grow!

Harvesting groundnuts with the men in my household.

Groundnuts drying in the sun Zarea and Owaho (elder women in my household) in the background.

Most of my days were spent with the women in the village. One very prominent thing I experienced was the gender separation in Ghana – the line between jobs that are done by women and jobs that are done by men is pretty black and white – in short women take care of household chores such as cleaning and cooking, and the children while men generally do the farming. However, for groundnut harvest-time women play an equally important role on the farm. I was able to see and experience the role women play. I’ve typed out an entry from my journal below written after my second day on the farm with the women.

Fetching water with Maymuna (one of the girls in my household). Fetching water is definitely a women's job. (This was my first attempt to carry the bucket on my head thus the splashes of water down my butt and legs...)

“This morning I woke up at 6:20 am. Just as the rain stopped. Every night since I’ve come to Chayili it’s rained. I’ve been told that visitors bring good luck, so I’m the reason it’s rained. Even though the sun is rising, the rain has just stopped and I’m crawling out of bed, Senatu (head women in the house) has prepared breakfast and heated water for my bath. Today, I helped harvest groundnuts. It’s the season for harvesting so I’ve seen plenty – drying in the sun – roasting to eat – grinding into groundnut paste, or peanut butter as we know it in Canada! – bagging to sell and of course in the farm fields.

I spent the entire day with the women doing what they’ve been doing for the past week – harvesting ground nuts. We left at about 6:30 am for the farm. Food and buckets were carried on the children’s heads, babies on mother’s backs. The trek was about one hour to the farm. When we arrived, there were already plenty of women and children chatting and sitting amongst heaps of freshly uprooted ground nuts. We spend the whole day removing groundnuts from the plant.

Trek to the farm (Maymuna is just in front of me)

The day was very social as women rotated to uncompleted mounds of groundnuts and chatted with each other. Since I understood little of the language I just worked as fast as I could taking pride as my pile of groundnuts grew substantially throughout the day. I kept recalling the time I spent as a child picking strawberries with my mom and sisters – those trips were always fun but usually ended after about 2 hours with a stomach ache from too many strawberries. I had no idea what I’d gotten myself into today – no clue how big this field was or how long we’d be staying. Since I only had minimal knowledge of the local language and none of the women spoke English, I had no way of asking we’d be going home.

Communal labour

Harvesting with Magajia (most senior women in the village) - it was an honour to join her!

As the sun started to hint at setting (meaning around 5 pm) suddenly everyone started packing up, we’d finished our work for the day! I checked out my days work – I had collected 4 buckets worth and was proud of it, despite the fact that one of my companions had outdone me while she tending to her 5 month old baby all day. I gathered my things and followed everyone as we set off. But instead of heading on the path home we veered left and came to a crowd of women and two men sitting on a heaping mound of groundnuts. The men were the land owners and were collecting their harvest. For our hard days work, we were paid 1/5 – 1/3 of the grounds we were able to collect. It was only fair since it was this man’s land and labour that had grown the ground nuts.

Payment for the labour: this women didn't get too many groundnuts so she gets to keep 1/3 of them. The pile in the background is the landowner's.

So after a solid 11 hours of steady work, I walked away with ¼ of a sack of groundnuts, worth about $7…well I now literally understand the phrase worth peanuts!”

I bet you were waiting for a nutty joke J But seriously, the experience I had in Chayili will help me frame my work over the next year. As I post this, I have just finished my second day of work at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA). And as I learn about how MoFA endeavours to help rural farmers, I ask questions for my friends in Chayili: What do MoFA’s messages about farming mean to them? Will MoFA’s approach to farmer education enable lasting positive change in the lives of my friends in Chayili?

Left to right: Pakaw, unknown women, Senatu (with groundnuts on her head) next to Magajia (women elder in village) and Magajia's groundnuts from her farm.