Friends Plant Peanuts Together

Siti and me after planting peanuts

When I came to South Sudan, I noticed that, while I got more enthusiastic comments about my foreign-ness than I did in Asia, I got less invitations to be people’s best friends and come to their homes and go to their weddings and spend every free moment hanging out with them. It’s a trade off, I guess. I mean, it can be funny that the same kids get the same amount of excited-out-of-their-minds every morning when I go running by their homes, even though they see me almost every day. Still, I was hoping for a few friends that I could hang out with and share life with and socialize with on days when I realize that I am dangerously close to becoming a hermit, which is my subconscious life goal that my conscious knows should not be achieved for my own good.  It’s taken some time, but I’ve fought my way into the lives of several ladies here. I accost them at their work and show up unannounced at their homes whenever I want to hold their babies or practice speaking Moru. In return, I buy candy for their kids and entertain them with my ignorance of their everyday chores and my inability to carry things on my head (I’m working on it, but I have a really lumpy skull).

Siti's son Simon, though he prefers
"SimonPeter The Rock,"
watching the burning grass we cleared off

One day when I’d just gotten back to Mundri from Khartoum (where I’d been invited to several weddings and several homes by generous Arab-Africans in true Middle East/North Africa style), I went for a run. It was Saturday so I was going later in the day since I sleep in until 7(!) on Saturdays in Mundri, and I had decided to eat a mango before I went (it’s not a great pre-workout food, if you were wondering). Naturally, the combination of hotter weather plus mango made running more difficult than usual.  Half-way through my route, I realized—this is not fun. So I decided just to walk back home and enjoy the sunny day without wanting (but not being able to) barf. While walking home I met a nice lady working in her garden. She said, “Why are you running for exercise? Just come help me in my garden and you’ll get lots of exercise that way.” I said, “Sure. I’ll come next week.” And I genuinely planned to do that, but she never gave me a time, and so I worked in my garden that morning and thought I would go help her in the afternoon. But when I was about to go, Lexon said, “You should probably call her first.” He lives near her and she is one of his wife’s relatives. I did, but I found out that the Bishop of the Catholic Church (she’s a Catholic) was going to be there the next day, and she was helping clean the church. So I didn’t go. She said she would call me later. She never did. I forgot about it and went on hanging out with my other new friends that I have been forcing to love me.

Then, on Pentecost Sunday, my church had a big deal Fun Day. It makes sense—we are the Pentecostals, so naturally we should do something awesome for Pentecost. We also invited everybody, and Siti came as a representative of the Catholic church or maybe she just came for the food, I don’t know, but she was there. I said, “You never called me!” She said, “I did, but I had the wrong number. Come next Saturday and help me plant peanuts.” I said, “What time?” She said, “9am.”

The sign says "don't pass on the shoulder" but that
does not stop my dad.

So at 9:02am, I left my house to walk the 1.5 miles to her house. The 1.5 mile distance is an estimate made by me based on my running time, but it’s probably an over-estimation because I like to think that I’m going faster than I actually am, and I’m not as accurate as my dad at gauging running distances. Seriously, he’s impressive. I’ve measured runs we’ve gone on together on the Internet (source of all accurate information), and he’s been right to the decimal point. “Well, this run took us XX:XX and so that must mean that we went about X.Y miles.” I checked the Internet and lo and behold—X.Y00 miles. It’s his super-power…one of them--the other one might be the ability to memorize completely useless names of various players of various sports or the ability to cook multi-colored food (“Hmm…this stir fry  needs more color—add the yellow peppers and green beans! Do we have any red peppers? Let’s add some beige—bean sprouts!”) or his deep devotion to following Indonesian traffic rules and regulations. So many possibilities… But I made it to Siti’s house before 9:30, which makes my punctuality in Africa—culturally impressive, let’s go with ‘culturally impressive.’

And this is what my feet look like after
working hard all day.

We jumped right in hacking away at the ground with a hoe and a pitchfork. We dug out rocks and chopped up tree roots. Her husband popped over for a quick visit to bring us water and suggest that I become his second wife. I was kind of resentful of that conversation because I really don’t think that’s the best way to cement a new friendship with someone—having her husband hit on you in front of her. Fortunately, I’m excellent at stamping out those kinds of conversations with my natural charm and belligerence.  It didn’t seem to bother her too much (maybe since her husband actually helped for about ten minutes while regaling me with the benefits of polygamy) because nearly 4 hours later when we finished, she still invited me to lunch. After lunch, I ran home for a bit to charge my computer on my new inverter, which the nice khawaja guy who used to live here helped me set up. I clip these things that look like jumper cables on to the bolts on our solar battery, which is mostly not working (there are sparks, it’s cool), and then I can charge my computer on sunny days, during daylight, while it’s off. It has revolutionized my life. I love it so much. I also realize that there are benefits of hanging out with foreigners that include the fact that they do things like kayak down the Mori River—something that people here would never think to do. It was super fun. I have no photos because—I was in a kayak.

After charging the computer for an hour while working a bit in my own garden, I walked back to Siti’s to plant the peanuts, which we didn’t want to do until the sun wasn’t so hot (it’s a gardening thing, you wouldn’t understand). The last time I planted peanuts was in Aceh, post-tsunami, with a group of Indonesian volunteers who were training people who had newly inherited land and needed to learn how to cultivate it. At the time, I remember getting competitive (yeah, that’s what I do) with one of the guys who was this shy macho farmer from Medan.  He would finish his row and then do the end of mine before starting on his next row.  So once I booked it down my row and then finished his for him—it was a hilarious joke, I thought. Well, it made him laugh, and then we became friends so he told me about his girlfriend back home that he was knitting a purse for—he was adorable.  Anyway, apparently planting peanuts is like riding a bike because I am pretty good at it still. It’s a two-man job here—one person hacks the row for dumping in peanuts, the other person drops the peanuts in the ditch. As the next row is hacked, it covers the peanuts in the last row, burying them under a small layer of dirt.  Obviously, the hard part of this is being the one chopping a ditch with the hoe. Siti said, “I’m so tired. I think we should finish this later.” But I was in an American ‘git ‘er done’ mode. And I said, “No. Give me the hoe and we will finish this today before we get soaked in the coming rainstorm.”  And I hacked furiously and we finished planting the entire pot of peanuts. Yes, we did. And then Siti nicely said, “I would never have been able to get all this work finished without you.” Being useful—I kind of like it. And I think it’s a good way to cement a friendship.

Then I walked home as fast as I could because there was a for-real storm brewing. I made it back before it started in earnest. But I did get soaked on my way back to my house from the shower—it was kind of ok, though, because rain keeps you clean. And that’s why I use a sarong as a towel—it dries fast.

To recapitulate: my Dad is a super-hero. Happy Late Father’s Day. This would have been on time if I lived in civilization, but then it would have had to be a completely different story of me planting, say, turnips in Taiwan or something. If we can’t be American-punctual, lets be culturally impressive. Although, I think that you are both actually.

More on my dad--this is the newspaper I used to wrap up
a coffee mug I brought him from India. He spread out
the newspaper so that he could read the stories
from India. Then we had several interesting discussions about
the articles in it. Yup-that's my dad--likes the paper more than the mug.

This face. It's a good one.