Last time I was out in the village, I was able to help them plant corn! It was rather back breaking work, but at least with several of us working on it together, we had lots of stretch breaks. See the lines in the picture? Those are ropes tied to sticks, showing us how to plant nice straight rows. When those three rows are finished, we take the sticks out of the ground, move the rows over, and keep going. The lady standing next to me in the picture is my host mom. I so appreciate her!
Corn is the main crop grown by Our People, but peanuts, beans, cotton, and millet (I think that’s the English translation) are also grown. I had many people say that I should ask the village chief for a little field to grow my own peanuts (I think they picked peanuts because they’re the easiest to grow), and I thought that that would be a great idea! However, now I don’t know what to do. You see, I’ve been gone for two weeks for some curriculum development training in Senegal, so now if I want to start a field I’ll have to start it really soon or else the rains will stop too soon and make the harvesting of the peanuts really hard. I also have a trip planned in October (to go to Israel with other people from my home church – hooray!), which should be about harvest time. So I don’t know if I’ll have time to plant and harvest before then, and after the trip the rains will most likely have stopped, making harvesting hard. Also, hopefully soon, I’ll have to spend some time in the city saying goodbye to everyone and packing up so I can move out there. And I have no idea how to plant or take care of a peanut field.
All that to say, I’d love to have a peanut field, but I don’t know if it would be best this year or not. Could you pray that I’d have wisdom in knowing what I should do? Thanks!