I don't know how many people believe it, but most people know that saying about how when you look into someone's eyes you can see their soul. In Burkina, I think you can look at someone's hands and see their heart.
It's the beginning of rainy season here which means planting crops that the family will live off of for the next year. Lots of ki (millet) and beans and peanuts. Unlike in th US everyone here farms. And when I say everyone, I mean if you're over 5 and don't make enough money to live in Ouaga (85 percent of everyone)you farm. I have found it difficult to explain lately how big machines do all of our work planting and harvesting, so most people never have to farm for their family. I have found it difficult to explain to myself why GPS airconditioned tractors are becoming norm in the US, while families continue to eke out a living here.
Recently, I went with a family to farm. I decided that since I live in a community where everyone farms, I should understand what it's all about, and besides, who doesn't want more help? I discovered a few things on my adventure, the first being that they didn't expect me to actually want to help, and the second being that I'm not very good at farming. (The third being I bought the wrong kind of farming tool.) The women tried to tell me this in as nice a way possible, but here I am socially inept; things I would be able to pick up on in the US just go right over my head, and I just kept trying to work more. Finally, after hearing a comment that was all too clear in Moore about my, shall we say, lack of helpfulness, I sat down under a tree and damn it if I didn't cry. In Mossi culture crying in front of people is like... well I can't think of what it's like, but you just don't do it. (But screw that, I couldn't help it.) We ended up blaming my crying on a blister and said I had to go make lunch because here there is just no way to explain that I felt useless and left out and like maybe my whole purpose for being in Burkina was shit... and that is when I started to think about my hands.
Since I've been here they've tanned and gotten dirty, but unlike my feet they have not callused. I use my hands primarily for writing and studying. I have a bump on the ring finger of my right hand because I hold my pen wrong to prove it. But I do not have the callouses that come from a tough life, a life of hunger and pain and nights spent talking under stars. Since I got my blisters, I have started to notice the women's hands as I greet them. Some have callouses so thick they are wider than the finger itself; some are like sandpaper; some are burned; some are gnarled and twisted; and all of them speak to me.
These women smile at my naieve, priviledged, American hands when I show them my wound as proof of my farming. Their hands tell stories that some of them have started to tell me. It's still difficult, given my limited Moore, but they pantimime and smile and sometimes can find a woman who can be convinced to use her 6th grade French. Someday I hope to be able to understand the stories that aren't as freely told.
When I walk a little farther than the school any day of the week I will see brown bodies bent at the waist, digging holes and planting seeds one by one. I will go back soon, when my latest blisters have healed to find a family that isn't afraid to teach me how to blister and bleed so I can have the callouses life offers. After all, in Burkina I believe the hands are connected directly to the heart.
