the good earth

AgroFest December 2010, Bafut

While I was in Cameroon this past December, I went to an AgroFestival. It's an annual event that takes place across the country, essentially farmers show their best produce at large festivalsand prizes are given to the farmers with the biggest, freshest, most interesting produce. Prizes included money, buckets, hoes, and other farm equipment. Most farmers (who are mostly women) do their work ALL by hand. It's really amazing. One AgroFest was held in Bafut, about 40 minutes away from where I lived. Cocoyams are shown above.

This was the ginger aisle and it came in different varieties. This type looks very wormlike...

There were beautiful displays of corn too. Endless stalks of corn grow in the NW region. Wherever people have space, they will plant a patch of corn, even in front of a one-room red brick house right next to the road, there will be a patch of corn outside the door, planted in their mounds, as commonplace as grassy front yards in the US. It's no surprise that corn is a staple food here.

These are spices. I don't know the official names, but the one on the right (skewered on a stick) is called "achu spice." I mentioned what achu was on a previous blog, but it's a traditional NW dish, and these spices are roasted and then ground up with a stone to add flavor to achu. It's very aromatic.

Melons that remind me of starfruit...

The land in the Northwest Region is as beautiful as it is fertile. Everywhere I turn, especially during the rainy season, the fields are a bright rich green. People have a deeper connection to the soil. They depend on it, it is their life source. People really work the land; they use their hands, they bend their backs, they sweat in the hot sun, and then carry their crops and spades home. When have I ever worked like that for my food?

It feels almost unreal when a woman unearths a yam from the ground from her farm, hands it to me all caked in soil and says, "Here, take this home with you!" Haha, maybe it's because I'm from Chicago where farmland doesn't exist or because I was never an avid gardener but I felt such a pure connection to the soil in Cameroon. All this musing about farming/land reminded me of the book, The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. If I were subjected to grueling, back-breaking work and reliant on the rains and soil for my well-being, how would I fare?