Harvest Dances

One evening while my host family and I were sitting around pulling dried groundnuts from their roots, Lopei, the shepherd boy, began talking to me. Lopei doesn’t speak any English besides, “Yes, Annali, very good!” (He says that regardless of what I’m doing or saying.) One of the family members who does speak English began translating.

“Lopei wants to take you to a harvest dance tomorrow night.”

I was ecstatic. I am rarely allowed outside the compound at night because it is pitch black and I would most certainly become lost. Also, like anywhere, some people don’t make very good decisions at night and I could be hurt; and my host family is sensitive to my “inexperience” in Karamoja. Regardless, I readily agreed to go with Lopei to the dance and he responded, equally enthusiastically, “Very good, very good!”

The next day Lopei had very bad malaria and couldn’t take me but some of my other siblings were equally eager to show me true Karamajong culture. So we headed out around dusk and weaved our way through shepherds taking their herds home, fields of sorghum and groundnuts, and sunflower patches with drooping heads ripe with seeds.

When we were still a long way from the dancing site we could hear the crowd clapping and singing.  The songs that are sung at harvest are sung to one God (Akuj, meaning mystery) having blessed the community with food and wealth for another year. The dances are structured in a circle: the men make up the inner most circle and the women and children scatter around the outside. One or two at a time, the men will enter the inside of the circle and begin jumping, when each is tired he allows another participant to take his place. Around the outside the women and children jump whenever they feel like it. Typically the women hold hands and jump three times as high as they can, regroup and then start again. Everyone is singing and the women add high trilling screams(ululation) when they become overwhelmed with excitement.

I have absolutely no framework for a display of thanksgiving and praise performed with such abandon, but to see it danced out here in Kotido was both meaningful and sacred. As we walked home through the blackness of the night with only the stars to light our way I learned how to trill (ululate) like the Karamajong women. When Lopei heard my new talent, he said, “Yes, Annali, very good!”  

The men's dance circle

Women around the perimeter

Groundnut Harvest

Corporate life in Kotido is an immensely significant aspect of the daily routine (in fact just this morning on my way to work I was recruited to hold the back legs of a calf while a veterinarian drew blood from the cow’s tail.) So, you can imagine how much more families who have lived here for generations have developed relationships with their neighbors and friends. Much of the harvesting is taking place right now; on my way to work I ride past tarps covered in ground nuts, sorghum grains, and beans. The smells and sounds of the harvest season are unmistakable, pungent and unreserved.

Last Saturday my host family began the long processes of harvesting ground nuts. We walked to their field at the edge of Kotido where most of the family had been since 5:00 that morning. Maria showed me how to pull up the plants through the sandy soil and laughed at my amazement when the ground nuts emerging firmly attached to the roots. All morning we pulled the plants and made piles all over the field. Later Merireng, the staff driver and mechanic for the organization where Romano works,  came with the pick- up truck to gather the piles of uprooted plants to take back to the house compound.

Back at the compound we organized the plants so that all the ground nuts were stacked root-up. They dried for about one week before we took the ground nuts off the roots and prepared them for market. The whole process is dusty and tedious but the entire time family and friends were around to talk, sing, and enjoy the new mzungu (me), for whom this was all very new.  

Although the harvest of the ground nuts was fascinating, and the soreness I experienced the next few days was memorable, it was the community rallying around my host family that I will recall with the greatest clarity. Merireng said that some families have to hire people to help with their harvest; they end up losing money and sometimes the people they hire aren’t very hard workers. It’s a blessing to have a large family that can accomplish the entire process without help.

These strong relationships are also a reflection of Romano and Maria’s hospitality that they have shown to their friends and family throughout the years. Throughout the last 20 years Romano and Maria have sponsored and helped many children to attend school and to have a safe place to sleep and eat. Because of these years of helping others, boxes of fresh produce show up at my host parent’s home, and when harvests roll around there are always plenty of people to help. It’s a reminder to me that our possessions and resources are not our own, and that when we share we are blessed immeasurably more.

Gathering the groundnuts from the field

Hauling the groundnuts back to the compound

Loading the groundnuts onto the truck

Drying the groundnuts