Farming and Community Building

After the holidays, with their numerous church gatherings, the time has come for real work! As a present to myself, I’ve got a cutlass (also known as a sekan, both in Twi and Sefwi), and started using it like crazy. A cutlass is a pretty nifty thing – a mix of hoe, knife, scythe, hammer and many other useful things. True, I was a bit weary of seeing them all over the place (when I saw school children cutting grass with them on a football field, I thought of the Rwandan conflict), but now I’m more comfortable.

I've been going to various farms in the village – so, I’m finally redeeming myself for not tolling away at a collective farm in my pioneer days! One day I helped  Joshua, a local jack-of-all trades (he sings in the church choir, manages a community well, and he even built me an awesome latrine). He showed me how to sharpen a cutlass (see video) and also how to make a basket out of palm leaves (see photo). This basket is called bede, and there is a saying in Twi: “Bede ayieye na maso meso” (“The best gift for bede is to throw it away”). Because that is what happens: after using bede for carrying your farm booty, you toss it (because you can always make a new one). Farmers also use a long stick with a hook on it to pick cocoa pods from top branches, which is called akuaa (it literally means "I'm scared").

In case the video doesn't work, here are some photos:

Joshua sharpening my cutlass before weeding.

 Making a bede....

...and using it to carry the harvest.

I also had my first community meeting where we came up with two seasonal calendars: men's and women's. I used the PACA (participatory analysis for community action) method, mostly for myself, to figure out what people plant when, what women do apart from men, and when it is time to weed (the correct answer – every month). I was nervous, as I have tendency to get too involved in  thought process (recurring New Year’s resolution, anyone?), but I just let it flow, and was simply guiding farmers to come up with their own seasonal activities. It was pretty neat to see how the calendars were drawn, how women were arguing on whether cocoa harvesting was just men’s work. The entire meeting took only a hour, and everyone went farming after that. We’ll have a couple more meetings to draw a community map (my favorite one!), daily schedule and needs assessment charts. 

 Men and women farmers discussing their schedules and responsibilities,

The best thing was to see an old rabbit farmer drawing his own seasonal calendar!