A Culture of Giving

This past weekend, we went on our second village visit. This time, though, it was different. We didn’t return as strangers, but rather as friends. This time, I was no longer interviewing, but rather, I was seated on the ground threshing groundnuts with Emmanuel’s aunt and uprooting a mature crop with Benjamin’s grandmother. For this trip, my intention was to shadow them in their every movement and to really learn about what they were looking for in a machine. Their current method of threshing was surprising easy (energy expenditure-wise), but it was very slow and tedious work. And thus, our weekend was devoted to exploring how we might make threshing an easier process for users.

You might be wondering why I’ve called this entry a “culture of giving”, though. It’s because working in the villages, I’ve seen the simple hardships of daily life, especially in making ends meet. Yet, these people are some of the most giving people I’ve met. Never would they let me pay for anything. Never would they let me bear any burden. When it came to carrying my bags, my host, Bernice, asked that I give her my bag. I started to argue as I felt I should carry my own things, but in the end, Bernice won me over when she said “It’s taboo.” She told me that if she didn’t carry my things, it meant she didn’t respect me. I told her, “If I let you carry my things, it shows that I don’t respect you.” She said, “It doesn’t matter. You are the visitor.” *sigh*. Culture. And so, I let her carry my bag.

From this trip, I’ve discovered that though they have so little, they give so much. We asked if we could purchase some groundnut plants to thresh, they wouldn’t let us buy it. We were told we must take the plants…they were now ours. With all these groundnuts we’ve taken, how will they make it? I have no idea, but I am thankful for their generosity, and I hope we can bring them an amazing machine.