Le Champ

I went to the champ (farm) this week.  Or rather, a few hours Wednesday morning.  My good friend here in LT, Hortense, was just given a small piece of land (about the size of a basketball court) and she needed help tilling the weeds so she could plant beans.  Sure, I’ll help, I said, disregarding the hour of pilates I had just done and was already beginning to feel in my shoulders and back.  I’ve helped dig yam piles, but I’ve never really ‘gone to the champ,’ as does every single person here this time of year.  I wanted to be like everyone else; I wanted to prove a white girl could work too. 

We marched off from my house around 8 that morning (Hortense let me sleep in) machete’s in hand.  

My pride was big enough to float us to the farm, wherever it was.  As we passed village people they not only gave Hortense a hard time for going to the farm (remember, everyone knows where everyone goes here – imagining telling all the neighbors on your street every time you leave to go somewhere, and then them asking how the store or wherever was, every.single.time.) as a girl but then they really had a laugh when they saw me trailing behind. A WHITE GIRL is going to work in the farm? Hortense laughs this off, she’s used to it.  I unfortunately was much more defensive. 

Hortense led the way through random yards and fields of corn a good two feet taller than me.  I called up to her that my dad always told us never to walk into a field of corn for fear of getting lost; she thought that was funny. (The corn doesn’t get as tall here, nor is it as compact). After twenty minutes we came to this overgrown chunk of land, filled with weeds and wild grasses.  Hortense took off with her machete, making it look so easy, swinging and clearing a path in a matter of minutes.  No problem I thought.  

Twenty minutes later I looked up realize I had covered about a third of the ground Hortense had in the same amount of time.  As we both stood to take a breather, she smiled at me, and I glanced down at my hands, screaming as blisters had formed in several spots and popped at the same time.  What’s worse, she hadn’t even broken a sweat.  I continued on, switching to my left hand and thinking about all those batting lessons my parents paid for in high school were really coming in handy.  I pushed on, insisting I was fine as my left hand started to follow my right in its screaming for a pair of gloves.  As Hortense made her way back over to my section, cleaning up what I missed, I was flooded with childhood memories of mom vacuuming the same spot I had just attempted on our Saturday morning house cleanings.  So interesting that while I’ve come to this place to teach them new things, more often than not, I find myself doing most of the learning.  And usually it’s simple skills young children pick up like learning to walk.

An hour had passed and we had cleared about a third of the plot.  I could go all day, I thought, if it weren’t for these blisters, and the sweat dripping in a constant flow from my every point on my face, and my arms scratching incessantly from those few minutes among the corn rows. Yet again, a new level of being humbled. After two hours, Hortense said we could be done. This is how farm work is done here; little by little.  On the way back, Hortense asked if we even had machines for planting and cultivating our farms.   As I nodded, almost embarrassed, I didn’t have the heart (or the French) to explain the latest GPS technology that guides a lot of farmers’ tractors back home. We walked in silence and I thought about what a contrast our lives were; both young twenty-somethings, but living entirely different lives. I once again gave my silent prayer of thanks to God for being born and raised where I was in the world.

Back home I tended it my wounds, showered and collapsed in my hammock. Who needs pilates anyway?