Vegetables and Cashews

We went yesterday to some villages with Sr. Cecilia of the Sisters of Presentation of Mary convent across the street from us.   

She invited us to accompany her on a trip to check on a well for a women’s community garden. She agreed to pay part of the cost of the well digging. It was time to confirm that there was water in the well before writing the check to the well digger. Now, at the end of the dry season, is the best time to determine whether a well is a success.

 (The garden, however, has been abandoned for a period of time because it is cashew harvesting season. Cashews provide the women a great deal of profit for a few weeks of effort. They will start the garden again after the cashews are done and the rainy season begins.)

There are other wells in the garden. Only one of those is deep enough to provide water. To use that well they throw a bucket and draw the water up with a rope while crouching on the ground, as there is no rim or fence around it. Anyone can fall in. We heard the croak of a frog inside, but saw neither beast nor human stuck in the well. 

The new well has a high cement rim and a wooden pole to support and balance the two hanging buckets, so this one is a completely different story.  I did ask about children. Sr. Cecilia said she never heard about a child falling in a well. 

The village women do all the planting, weeding, maintenance, and harvesting of their vegetable gardens.  It is very hard work. During the dry season, they have to dig the hard soil and carry many buckets of water for long distances.  We do the same in our little garden, with a watering can twice a day.  But our garden is small and the faucet is not far away.

After our visit to the garden, we went to the cashew orchard to see what is going on.  We learned a lot about cashews, having never before seen a cashew tree or the fruit.  The cashew apple is beautiful. It is red or yellow and looks like a little apple. (It tastes like an apple too.) The nut hangs on the bottom of the apple.

 When the fruit is ready, it falls off the tree and the women collect the fallen fruit at 6:00 AM each morning.  They tear the nut, which is encased in a thick green shell, off the apple.  They sell the nuts in their shells and get 40 Gambian Dalasis for a tin of nuts. It is about US $1.30, a lot of money for them, certainly more than they earn selling vegetables.  The nuts need to be treated and processed before sale to consumers.

The cashew apples are useful as a source of cashew wine.  When cashew fruit are shipped to India or Viet Nam for advanced processing, they can be made into seven separate products. Here, in The Gambia, the processing technology we observed employs simple materials and equipment that are readily available. It is a technically simple process but hard work for the women. However, they are not able to realize the full value of seven products from their harvest, as in more advanced countries.

To produce alcohol, the women pound the apples and then squeeze the pulp with their hands to get the juice.  They do it on a wooden log that had been hollowed into the shape of a canoe. The juice is stored in 20 liter plastic cans for three days to ferment. When the liquid is red, it is ready for distillation. The brew is transferred into a 55 gallon recycled oil drum to be heated and distilled. The vapor passes through a copper pipe which is coiled to fit into another 55 oil drum full of water to cool and condense the vapor into liquor. This is all done in the orchard.

The resultant liquor is fairly strong, clear alcohol (We tasted it, of course.) It is stored in 20 liter containers and sold to business people who come to the village to buy it. There were men there too, but they seemed to do the less heavy-lifting jobs, like minding the fire, watching the process, perhaps doing the selling.

This cashew wine production is done by Christians, as the Muslims avoid alcohol. We also saw the palm nuts, another source of alcohol called palm wine.

Palm wine is the preferred beverage, but it is in short supply.  When the palm wine supply runs low, the price of cashew wine goes up. The women can collect enough income from the cashew wine to meet the expenses of their families for the whole year. The work is done communally, moving the processing from one owner’s trees to another.

A young man told us the cashew’s shells contain gas that should be removed by cooking or roasting before the skins are removed.  He threw some nuts into the fire and we saw the gas going up in flames.  Later we peeled the skin and ate the nuts. They were delicious.

We went to another village where we walked quite awhile in the hot sun to visit another garden and also go to the river, where the women were working to convert oyster shells into lime. It seems that much of the work in villages is done by women.

Sr. Cecilia is 80 years old and walks around very vigorously.  She drove us herself in the convent's SUV, unlike most in The Gambia, who have a driver. (The driving can be extremely challenging. Some of the roads are not roads, just narrow sand trails.)  I guess one should hope to keep going like her.  David and I were exhausted when we got home and had to take a long nap. 

I turned grey here, as I thought it was a good opportunity to stop coloring my hair.  I don't like the result, but our hair looks more alike now.  Gambians often refer to us very respectfully as their parents or grandparents. I’ll see what happens when I am back to the society that worships youth.  Here people do not as often survive to ripe old age so we see fewer older people.  The head ties, hair extensions, and wigs most women employ are also helping to maintain their good appearance.

The aroma coming from the cashew apples is very strong now.  There is a single tree near our house. When I open our door, the smell hits me.  I guess it comes from the fruit left to rot on the ground, which ferments and turns to alcohol naturally.  One of our mango trees is full of overripe fruit, which also has a strong scent.  Other trees still have hard, green or purple, unripe fruit.  Once the rain starts, more of the fruit will ripen quickly. I made some mango jam and gave a couple of jars to friends.  I have few tools in the kitchen to do stuff I could easily do at home.  Chopping or mashing fruit is very difficult and I don't have the tongs to grasp the hot jars. (Instead, I use a pair of pliers David bought to fix things in the house. In this kitchen I have to improvise a lot.) I wish David were better at discussing menus as I have invited a Swedish couple for lunch tomorrow and they dislike Gambian food.  I am trying to think what to make and spent all morning in town looking for interesting veggies. (Not much success.)

The humid season has arrived.  It hasn't been too bad until a couple of days ago.  Usually there was a cool breeze in the early morning and at night.  Now it is more humid and it remains hotter at night.   The fan is a life saver.  We do have air conditioners in the walls of the bedrooms but are waiting until the heat becomes intolerable.

ooo

(Views expressed are my own)