A Summer Day in the Garden

Patrice offered to show me his garden a few days ago. I eagerly accepted, asking if I could work with him for a day. He looked me up and down and said “Vrèman?” Really, are you sure? Maybe it was the sun getting to me or fatigue from a long day working at the school, but this somewhat odd response sent up no red flags for me. I smiled and said, “Of course!”

Patrice’s “jaden” turned out to be a seemingly endless plantain farm. Typical mistranslation. I admit that on the way over, the machete and pickaxe that I carried seemed like odd candidates for garden tools. When Patrice told me to stop and said we had arrived—in the middle of what looked like a dangerous jungle—I almost laughed at my mistake. Almost.

We set right to it. The plan was to find the best-looking young plantains, uproot them, and transport them to Patrice’s other plot of land a mile away to be replanted. He demonstrated how to uproot the plants, plunging the pickaxe into the soil and using it as a lever to pry the plantain out of the earth. Easy enough. Then he showed me how to chop the roots and leaves off with the machete without damaging the actual plant. This was to be my job for the rest of the day. We quickly fell into a grueling, mind-numbing rhythm. Patrice uprooted the plantains, I hacked off their vital organs, then grabbed two and carried them to one of the three piles we had made. I enjoyed using the machete, despite the many hand cramps along the way, but carrying those abominable plants was awful. They are not light, and I had to lug them through the cacophony of vegetation, avoiding tarantulas as big as my hand and lizards as big as my arm. I simply did not have the energy to pay these beasts much mind, so I stuck to the rule of “harmless until proven deadly.” Luckily, nothing seemed to have the energy to pay me much mind either.

In addition to their weight, the plantains are covered with sticky juice. Patrice told me over and over not to let the juice touch my clothes (difficult) or my hands (impossible), but I didn’t see what the big deal was. So what if my clothes get a little stained and my hands get a little sticky? I need to listen to Patrice more carefully.

After hours of hard work, we had formed three large piles of stripped plantains. We went to fetch Patrice’s old horse to move the plantains to the other farm. While Patrice tied a large metal harness to the horse, I asked if it had a name. “Cheval,” he said. “Horse.” I asked if I could name him/her Betsy and he said okay.

Betsy could only carry one pile at a time, so we made three trips between the farms, totaling to about 6 miles. After the last trip was completed, I got to ride Betsy, metal harness and all, back to the village. I even jumped her across a small stream without falling off, almost forgetting for an instant that I’m a city boy from Southern California.

When we arrived back in the village center, Patrice took me to a well where his family was washing clothes. We stripped down to our underwear and proceeded to wash our arms and hands. People either stared or looked away, presumably blinded by my highly reflective white back. I quickly realized why Patrice had warned against touching the plantain juice. My hands and forearms were stained brown, all the way up to my elbows. Even using detergent, I couldn’t get much out. My shirt fared worse, ripping to shreds wherever it was stained. Woops.

When I got back to the house, I managed to sleep for about an hour before waking up in a dripping sweat. I had developed a fever and some unpleasant stomach issues. Lara told me it was sun poisoning, a term I had never heard before. Whatever it was, it passed fairly quickly and I’m feeling fine now. I’m going back out on Wednesday, and I can’t wait.