Farmers are Farmers
Farming in Hiati, at least up here in the mountains, is very, very basic. A well equipped farmer owns a pick, a hoe, a machete and a sekle (pronounced seekla) knife.
A
sekla knife is a large hooked knife that is bent so you can cut underground roots
and pull weeds from the ground. I don’t
own one yet. Mine is just a broken pick
end that I’ve attached to a wood handle.
It works, but not as good as a knife.
Haitian farmers are no different than their American counterparts
in liking to see clean fields. Clean
takes o a whole new meaning when you move from the world of pre-emergent
herbicides and Roundup ready plants.
Welcome to the world of ‘sekle’.
We
inherited a house with Pwa Nwa (Black Beans) planted virtually right up to the
doorstep. So I had been sekleing he
areas we looked at most often. I was
even refered to as an ‘abiton’ (farmer) this week. I consider that a high
complement!
First
of all, there are often 2 and sometimes 3 different crops planted together
along with the occasional volunteer stalk of corn that is also valuable. Second, all the plants are the same size and
everything is planted randomly across the ’jaden’ (garden or field) so you are
weeding through individual plants and not rows.
Finally, all the plants are 6-8” tall which means you spend the whole day
bent over at the waist or squatting! The
one good thing is the jadens are steep, so working uphill means you don’t have
to bend over so far.
Monday, a crew hired by the person who planted our Pwa Nwa came through and cleaned the jaden. There were 7 of them and it took most of the day to sekle our ½ acre of Pwa Nwa. They were paid no more than $20.00 Haitian ($2.50 US!) and a meal.
At
the end of the day the jaden was clean, the workers were fed and it felt good
to be considered and ‘abiton’!
