Last Thursday I spent the morning au champs with my environmental association. Four men made raised rows, swinging a daba to shift the soil into straight mounded lines. A daba is the largest version of the Togolese hoe - picture a metal end about the same size and shape as for a western shovel. This is attached to a short wooden handle, forming maybe a sixty degree angle.
The women of the association followed behind, planting corn. Every foot or so they made a small indentation, dropping two or three kernels in before covering them lightly with soil. Every woman has her own technique: some used a simple long stick, some the wooden handle of a hoe, and others a machete to make their indentations. The implement of choice seemed to be a function of how far each woman was willing to bend over - the longer the implement, the more upright the woman could remain. To carry the corn some women brought a small calabash, others little plastic or metal dishes. Still others tucked it into a small fold of their the pagne wrapped around their waist, others simply carried it in their hands.
These gender roles were pretty strictly followed - men make the rows, women sow the seeds. Although I did notice one older woman following the youngest man, straightening out his rows a bit.
I worked with a houe, a smaller version of a daba - a rounded square metal blade, maybe ten by ten inches, attached at about a sixty degree angle to a short wooden handle, only about a foot and a half long. The blade of a houe can be a smaller size as well - I have a smaller one that I use for weeding. The coup-coup (machete) and houe are the basic tools for just about any kind of work in a Togelese village.
The association's field is right next to the route, and I was working clearing the ground right next to the road, where it slopes down from the asphalt to the good soil. No land is wasted - even this small four-foot wide slope was planted, although not in the mounded rows like the rest of the field.
The women let me work for an hour and a half, but then they decided that I had done enough. So they took away my houe and sat me down with some water. It was awkward to just watch them continue to work, but many of them had arrived an hour later than I had, so I let them take the next shift.
