The Crops of a Lifetime
Enriched by one of the world’s poorest communities
It’s easy to take food for granted when it is available, cheap and produced far away. For a year, I lived in a small Tanzanian village called Ilakala where I learned to see food very differently.
Every one of its 1,400 citizens grows food. Schoolchildren study only half of every day, using their other hours for farming.
Agriculture in central Tanzania has many advantages. The warm climate allows two crops every year, the rain is plentiful (though very seasonal), and the soil is rich and nourishing.
Even so, survival farming is hard work — or worse. While I lived there, climate-change patterns swelled the river so high that its waters wiped out most crops.
There are many other hurdles when total family income is less than $100 a year. As I was interviewing one mother, her young son rushed away, lugging a bag of vegetables. When I asked where he was going, she said that a flood five months earlier had washed away the family’s single knife. So most days, the boy went to a distant neighbor to cut up dinner. Of course, on my next visit to town, I bought them a replacement knife.
Most crops were grown for subsistence — especially rice, maize and cassava. People in Ilakala come from a dozen different tribal groups, each with its own specialities and traditions.
For example, the family I lived with were from the Chagga tribe, which famously values bananas — they even make red, fruity beer. This industrious family grew or cropped 92 different foods, from mangoes to rice to cassava. It was heaven to catch juicy mangoes falling from massive trees or pick limes and guavas just outside my bedroom.
Crops were turned into various drinks. The most common alcohol was made from fermented corn, and a few people made a potent beverage from the sap of a special bamboo.
Maize or corn was the village’s main food. Almost every family used it to make “ugali”… the tasty stiff dough that is eaten with meat or vegetables. Growing maize wasn’t always easy. Experts had convinced villagers to stop growing traditional maize and replace it with genetically-modified varieties. The harvests, spectacular at first, worsened every year because Monsanto had engineered the plants to depend on fertilizer that the villagers could never imagine affording.
The other subsistence food in Ilakala is dry-land rice. This is easier to grow than in wet rice paddies but is hard work to crop. Just as hard as protecting the ripe crop from ravenous birds. When Angelina, the mother of the family I lived with, needed to do something else, I stood guard and chased every feathered marauder from the field of rice that fed and supported them. One unguarded hour could lose half the family’s crop.
Chickens, guinea fowl and goats were kept for the treat of meat.
A few crops were cultivated to sell, using the tiny income for the two main purchases: clothes and cooking oil. Only a few people sold cashew nuts because extracting them releases skin-scarring acid. Many people sold peanuts and sugarcane. The main cash crop was sesame seeds.
I sometimes helped gather these seeds — a laborious effort to produce something taken for granted in rich countries. They grow on tiny pods at the top of tall stalks left to dry. To release the tiny seeds, the pods are shaken above a piece of cloth.
At that time, a huge burlap bag of hard-won sesame seeds was worth only $10 in the distant market of Mikumi. The dealers inflated their prices by at least 10 times, profiting from the need for poor farmers to accept almost any offer.
Even with the whole family helping to crop and process food, no-tech farming calls for communal cooperation. Neighbors make their way to a field ready to harvest, knowing they will need help very soon. This joint effort both reflects and strengthens community identity.
After this unforgettable year-long experience, I had deep “reverse culture shock” back in the U.S. It literally took my breath away to walk down aisles crammed with processed, over-packaged food produced by the nameless workers I will now always respect.
We shouldn’t feel guilty or ashamed to eat and enjoy food. This is, after all, an experience we all share. But we should also recognize that our comforts and affluence depend on a lot of hard work from a lot of people. Next time you see sesame seeds on a burger bun, remember they were cropped by someone like Yusta.
More broadly, the global impact of our uncontained consumerism affects the climate to impact their lives even more than it does for us.
It was an unforgettable privilege to live, learn, and connect with the people of Ilakala. I hope you now share some of that connection.
Note: My Public Radio series, “Voices from an African Village”, celebrates and explains life in Ilakala. Each short report explores major aspects, such as music, cooking, and childhood. I’ll gladly send free copies of the audio and more photos to anyone— just tell me, here or at info@johnlordcouper.com, where to send them. Please pass on this offer to anyone who might enjoy a taste of the Ilakala experience. Above all, I hope to help young people learn about this very different life, and enrich their view of the world.
