The Harvest Begins...

 Last week the boys brought in the first of the peanuts from the fields, indicating the start of the harvest season, which for me and the women in my family means hours of sitting on our butts on little stools surrounded by mountains of peanut plants, separating the nuts from the roots. Its a monumental task, so each household takes turns harvesting their fields on different days and everyone in the village gathers under the big party tree to help collect them. Its kind of like a big block party, with men popping in and out, women gossiping and kids running around and jumping in the big piles of discarded peanut plants just like American kids jump in piles of leaves.

After the plant is discarded and the buckets are all full the peanuts get sorted one last time to remove the empty shells and any debris before the majority are stuffed into big 4foot tall "bodybags" and shipped off to Kaolack to be sold to a peanut oil company. The leftovers are dried out in the sun and will become the staple of our diets for the next 6-8 months. The peanut butter here is really good, but everyone thinks I'm crazy for eating it raw. Senegalese people only use it to make Maafe, a kind of peanut sauce that could be really good except that they put dried fish into it so it tastes like the Jersey Shore smells and you never know when you'll choke on a hidden bone. The biggest peanuts are soaked in salt water and roasted in hot sand to be sold as a snack and the runts of the litter get pounded up to make Bahal, a very dry dish of rice, peanut crumbs and crumbled up MSG bullion cubes.

The "rough sort" where any empty shells are removed from the pile

The "fine sort" where any remaining debris is picked out
before packing them up

My sister Oumi, less than enthusiastic about the work

Peanut roots with a plethora of peanuts pleading to be picked!