Starting "Real" Work in Country

Hello all,

It's been a few weeks since my last update, and this might be the only one for this month. That's mostly because my work as an agriculture volunteer is finally starting now that the rains have come. After nearly 3 months of waiting, the rains have come to Niger and my villagers are planting now. I have two fields: a small plot in the maigari's fields about 5 km north of town and another in my counterpart's fields about 3 km south of town. That's a long walk, but I have managed to keep my iPod alive, so it's not too bad if I have to do the walk alone. I've also started garden plots about one kilometer south of town in my friend Ali's garden. I've planted tomato, lettuce, melons, sunflower, and okra. Half of it is stuff from America, so I don't know if it will take, but I'm hoping it will. It takes about an hour to get out there and water each day.

The field work is a little more intensive. All of it is done by hand. We leave early in the morning for the walk out to the fields carrying a kalma, a long "L" shaped handle on which we attach a kalmize, something akin to a hoe. They plant by taking a step, digging a small hole, and moving on another step to continue this process until the couple hectares have been fully planted. Usually a small child or the farmer's wife follows with a handful of seeds in each mound before covering them and moving on. The holes are about a meter apart, and it's a process that takes all day. That's all for now, I'm actually going out to post in about 30 mins to get back to work on my gardens and fields.