Digging It

For as long as I have known it, Djibo has always been orange. The houses are orange, the ground is orange and as a result my feet are often orange too. If left alone, the books on our shelves turn orange and there's orange between the letters on my laptop keyboard. It's generally a very orange place.

For this reason I have been quite excited about rainy season, as I am seeing Djibo in green for the first time. The dusty football pitch has turned into a cow pasture and the hills are alive with the sound of cultivating. There's quite a buzz in the air, and it's not just the mosquitoes. Rainy season is farming time and everyone and his donkey is out in the fields, planting beans, millet, corn and peanuts. There isn't a tractor in sight; this is all back-bending, hands-and-hoe work.

It was with a little trepidation, therefore, that I accepted my friend Dikore's offer to help work in the fields. "It's fun to give the white person a field to cultivate" she said. Fun, or funny – I'm not quite sure which she meant. This is a woman who pounds millet all morning, carries a two year old on her back and can walk miles with a bucket of water on her head. I get worn out watering the garden twice a day.

Nonetheless, I accepted and so have recently been out in the fields ploughing and scattering. I was amazed this morning as I rode out of town (I take the horse out to graze at the same time), at the number of people who knew I was going cultivating. If there was a local rag it would be in the gossip column "tubakku sows beans!"

As well as earning me a reputation, stomping around the fields in bare feet has given me a good workout, a farmer's tan and a lot of pleasure. It feels so…well, earthy. Meanwhile I am also learning more Fulfulde words, such as 'lamdam gertorde', which is a small grub and literally translated means 'salt for chickens'. I'm picking up other more useful words too, mainly about farming. Hopefully I'll soon have enough to tell the Parable of the Sower.

Language learning has really been my main focus of the last few weeks; I am now desperate to be able to communicate properly as I have so much I want to share and understand. I see the ladies from the sewing group regularly, although we only meet to sew together once a week now. We're going to start meeting in the shop so we can sell at the same time, but we're not expecting much business this month as most people are out in the fields. I have recently had some new contacts and ideas concerning working with more traditional crafts such as weaving and raffia-work which interests me greatly. More on that later!

Thanks for your prayers and emails, they mean a lot.