Maize Harvest

It's the first week of May, and while the northern hemisphere is dusting off its summer dresses and picnic baskets, in the Chaco we gather around the fire to warm our tootsies. Clouds crawl up from the south, bringing with them a snowy perfume. Temperatures right now are mild-60s by day and 40s by dark-but with no heating and an outdoor shower, it feels colder. My sisters and I used to don bathing suits and lay out by the pond when it hit 60 in the Great Lakes spring, but somehow 60s here draw me down into my mattress, under three blankets and a myriad of sweaters. Last winter was nasty, and the prognosticos are calling for this one to be even uglier.



Despite its goosebumps, winter does have its redeeming qualities. The sweet tangy gift of our region's citrus trees plump up for the picking by the wheelbarrow full. Any visit I make to a friends house ends with an armload of mandarin oranges or grapefruits. Winter is also the only time of year one can dine on fish in land locked Bolivia, and the only place to get them is from the Rio Pilcomayo in Villa Montes. The most exciting winter prospect for me, however, is camping. The cold lulls the snakes and bugs into dormancy, making a night in the woods more enjoyable and a heck of a lot less terrifying.



This past week I spent my first night out in the monte. Chimeo's womens' group had spent the week harvesting four hectares of corn that they planted as part of a chicken project implemented by the departmental government. While the project began with nearly 50 women, months of sowing, hoeing, and harvesting had reduced participation to 22 women. Throughout the fall we watched as thieves-possibly members of our own group- stole ears of corn while we waited for it to dry on the stalk in order to properly store it. To deter more theft, the women agreed to spend the night in the corn field once it had been picked and piled. The first night a truck pulled into the field to fill with maize, and without a man present, they said, the women were too scared to approach the thieves. Instead, they said, they sent their dogs after the men in the truck. The dogs apparently shared the women's sentiment and turned right back around. Due to this fear, the second and third nights the women enlisted a few husbands to help hold their corn vigil. The fourth night Don Euardo had a birthday party, leaving the men indisposed, so the women brought the next best thing: the gringa.



I arrived at the corn field at dusk, backpack brimming with coffee, layers, and my sleeping bag. The first objective of the evening was to take fotos of the proud women with their piles of maize. The four hectares had been consolidated into three enormous piles of gingery nourishment. For the first foto, the women climbed up the mountain of maize and posed, legs together and knees bent, in the style of a JC Penny catalog. Dona Josefa, who speaks the least Spanish of anyone in town and bears an uncanny resemblance to my grandmother, sat at the summit of the mountain, and we crowned her Miss Avati (corn) 2008. We took more fotos of Miss Avati, this time with a crown of the largest anko (squash) that had been harvested this year.



We returned to the camping site on the side of the field to make some dinner and warm ourselves as night fell. We used machetes to split some golden buttery anko and set it to boil in an enormous recycled manteca vegetal (Bolivian Crisco) can. Conversation slipped into exclusive Guarani, which to me sounds something like this:



One woman xxxxxxxxxx you come xxxx we talk xxxx tiger xxxxxxxxxx big fire xxxxx lots and lots xxxxxx work xxxxxxxxxx nothing but a liar xxxxxxxxx woman xxxxx husband xxxxxxxx delicious xxxxxx two x no no no never xxxxxxx fox xxxxxx delicious xxxxx work.



Not that I mind. Seldom do I have the opportunity to sit and listen to Guarani, as Spanish is the language of business and commerce in Chimeo and Villa Montes. The only Spanish spoken was to me, usually to let me in on a joke being told at my expense. At some point we slept, nothing but blankets and the open air. They curled up between wool blankets and their children while I, as they put it, "bagged myself" in my sleeping bag. Dona Elva told stories for a while and we slept at some point, but judging by the puffy eyes in the morning it must have been late. At dawn, the women with children in school returned home. I stayed behind with the older women and we had a breakfast of sugary mate and their delicious anko, with sugar sprinkled on top as the sun rose in the sky.



This would be the last night that the women were in such jovial spirits. The truck from the mayor´s office that was due to arrive on Monday morning never arrived. We waited. Tuesday. We waited. And Wednesday. After a week of sleeping outdoors in the cold and with rain threatening, the women ran out of patience. They sent me to ask Don Perez, one of the non-Guarani living in the community, if we could contract his dump truck for the afternoon. He agreed, but for a hefty fee of 100 Bs per truckload. The four hectares had rendered three truckloads, and I was looked to to front the money. The group will pay me back in short order, but I am loathe to lend. I constantly fear that community members will start to see me as a bank, not as a source of knowledge or technical assistance. I paid the man, and together the fifty of us-women, husbands, children- lifted the corn by the sackful into the truck. A cold rain started to fall, but luckily not so hard that it soaked through the husks and ruined the corn. In high spirits we finished after dark, and now our jokes had turned to the representative from the mayor´s office, deemed Inginiero Yapusiki (Mister Big Liar).



Although Im glad its over, something changed in my relationship with Chimeo´s women this week. As a result of shared hardship or maybe my rapidly improving Guarani, we are all closer now. Those who speak Guarani fluently no longer address me in Spanish but rather their mother tongue. This, to me, is huge. There is a painful stigma of backwardsness attached to Guarani people in this country, and it has been drawn into the spotlight in recent months with the government´s attempts at land reform. I don't feel that I know enough about the legislation or its implementation to write on it, but there is an article on it that came out in the NYT today (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/09/world/americas/09bolivia.html?ref=world).





In addition to the corn harvest, our projects are humming right along. The 8th graders recently painted the tree nursery´s tank and will present their work along with information on photosynthesis and the importance of ecosystems at an environmental fair in a nearby town. We should break ground on the nursery itself this month. We have planted onions, tomato, carrots, lettuce, parsley, cauliflower and broccoli (the last two at my insistence) in the gardens at the elementary and nursery schools. Last, but certainly not least, our beekeeping partnership project is up! A link to the project can be found at the top of this blog.