Goat Skinning (credit: Matt Gruenburg)

Their hands acted almost independently, knowing just where to insert the knife and just how to break the joints, so the whole process was smooth, clean, and calm.

Lo and I were walking through the medina in Tangier, at the mouth of the Mediterranean on Morocco’s northern coast, when I saw a ring in one of the jeweler’s stores that was nearly big enough around for two of my fingers. What woman, I wondered, could possibly wear a ring that big? Haven’t you noticed the women’s hands here? Lo replied. It wasn’t until several days later, in Ain Chaib, that I understood.

The trip from Tangier to Ain Chaib, a village with just over 1,000 people in southern Morocco, consisted of an overnight train ride to Marrakech–a frantic city of stifling heat on the high plains–a five-hour bus ride farther southwest, up over the High Atlas Mountains to the coastal city of Agadir, and, finally, an hour riding in the back of a worn-out Mercedes Benz taxi, shoulder to shoulder with five other passengers headed home to villages and towns sprinkled along the highway.

We stayed with the same extended family, nearly 40 members across three generations, that Lo lived with during her service in the Peace Corps two years earlier. Family members cycled through the main house throughout the day, but for lunch and dinner everyone gathered.

Beyond taste and smell, every meal the family prepared was a tactile experience. Once one of the aunts or nieces placed the tagine, a conical clay dish used to cook many meals, in the middle of the table, another family member would take several rounds of hubz, a type of flat bread made by hand that morning by one of the women in the family, and tear them in half, and then in half again, giving everyone several rough quarters with which to scoop food. Tearing the hubz into perfect, bite-sized pieces with just my right hand, as even the youngest cousins were able to manage, required more dexterity than I was able to muster at first. Trying to gather tiny grains of couscous into a single, edible ball–again, with just one hand–proved even more difficult.

One morning, Elgada, the 70-year-old grandmother of the family, cracked Argan nuts to begin the process of making oil, which they use to add a smooth, nutty flavor to many dishes. Nearly blind from diabetes, Elgada sat on the ground, and with one stone balanced on her lap and a smaller one held in her right hand, she split open a nut she held pinched between her left index finger and thumb. Her calloused fingers then deftly separated the nut from the shell. As I sat in the shaded courtyard to avoid the heat, I watched her do this dozens of times without missing once. Years of doing this had given her the precision required to avoid smashing her fingers between two rocks.

Cracking Nuts (credit: Flickr user mgilbir)

The Sunday we were in the village, two of the brothers slaughtered and butchered a goat to make lunch and dinner for the family. Slaughtering a goat usually happens at the end of Ramadan, or for a birth or wedding, but I wanted to see it, to experience the ritual, so we helped the brothers pay for one. As they worked together to corral the goat, cut its neck, peel the skin back and remove the innards, there was little hesitation in any of their motions. Their hands acted almost independently, knowing just where to insert the knife and just how to break the joints, so the whole process was smooth, clean, and calm. In fact, the hands often seemed to lead the body, making quick work of a particularly odorous process and belying the grimaces on their faces.

Hands here made bread every morning, poured tea, slaughtered goats, peeled pricklypear fruits, all with an ease that could not come naturally to me. Some women in the village make jewelry, and those in other villages in the region weave carpets, or silversmith, all requiring dexterity and flexibility I can only admire.

In the two years since Lo had been in the village, the Internet has made its way to Ain Chaib. The family can now email a sister in Memphis without traveling to the nearby town, Ouled Teima, a 45-minute walk across an open, dry, dusty field. But the distance between the two communities won’t last. Ouled Teima is creeping toward Ain Chaib, extending a skeleton of development across the fields. A grid of roads, with a forest of solitary lamp posts at each corner, populates the otherwise barren landscape. In two more years, houses, families, markets, and taxi stands may fill the space.

Though the ring I marveled at in Tangier might fit the women in Ain Chaib, their fingers and palms large and muscled from years of  work, none of the women I met were wearing anything like it. Most will never go to Tangier. But Tangier is coming to them. And when it does, I wonder how their work, and their hands, will change.

Camels in Field (credit: Matt Gruenburg)

Farmer and children (credit: Bee Wuethrich)

It is the rainy season, and there is no rain. We take the road toward Monkey Bay, and pass a pick-up truck, people wave wildly. The driver stops the car; it is Justice and Eddie who have jumped out of the pick-up, and who run toward us. “Forgive me if I am tired today,” Justice says as he settles into the back seat. “I returned this morning at 3:00 a.m. from a funeral in my home village.” His cousin’s daughter, four years old, dead of malaria.

We drive. Through Mangochi, past the Hotchkiss gun, across the Shire River bridge, and wind up the hills west of Lake Malawi, long and dusty. Dustier still the dirt road that branches off, abandoning thoughts of trade with Mozambique to cross a plateau crisp with brown dry leaves and shriveled ears of maize.

It is nearing harvest time, the hungry season, when last year’s stores of food are running out, cash is short, and it is not yet time to bring in the harvest. It is like being on an ocean with nothing to drink, these endless fields of drought-plagued maize.

According to recent newspaper reports, people are beginning to eat seed processed for planting—fumigated with chemicals to protect it from insects. And they are selling the fertilizer purchased with vouchers to raise cash to buy food.

“I bought my mother a sack of maize for 2000 kwacha,” a man tells me. “It is a 100 percent increase in price.”

Then, look at this. The farmer leads us through his village, over rutted roads. Green in an ocean of brown whispering leaves. We see a field of maize taller and greener than the rest. An abundance of big cobs jutting off of each strong stalk. The farmer has planted a different seed than his neighbors, an improved drought resistant variety. He sells the seed in his village store to farmers who travel miles on foot or bicycle. Most farmers purchase it with vouchers issued by the government. It is known as “Champale” or poundable, the hard outer kernel lends itself to be ground into maize flour, and its yield is 30 percent higher than the local variety. As the farmer shows off his field, his family gathers, many of his 14 sons and daughters. They are smiling, his wife give us a thumbs up.

Demonstration plot (credit: Bee Wuethrich)

The seed farm that grows this improved seed sold 50,000 packets this past year—enough to feed an additional 150,000 people. They sold it through a network of 29 agro-dealers, spread out across a region that encompasses one million people.

One of those agro-dealers used his income to buy a car, so that he could distribute the seed to another three outlets. The route took him half a day and covered some 30 kilometers. Before the start of the growing season, he sold 2,000 sacks of seed.

“I know the people,” he says. “This area is where my home is. I want to assist. That is why I spend my money on fuel. In other areas there is drought. But in my area, because the farmers got the seeds early, they are going to survive.”

For now, success in Malawi’s green revolution is measured in survival.

Editor’s Note: This story was reported in March 2008.