Pastor Kadie's Farm Part I

"So, Eddie, what is... what exactly is the difference... is
masangke... what is masangke?" I tried several different questions in
short succession, as soon as we got out of the car. Eddie, the farm
manager, just looked at me with wide, uncomprehending eyes. I'd
already tried this question many times, and gotten many answers that I
already knew and were not what I wanted.
We'd spent two afternoons coming up with a business plan. Katie and I
had been trading off between saving web pages and reading them on our
computers, passing the USB wireless back and forth. Tenera, Dura,
Psifera... we even knew the genetics that determined the different
breeds of oil palm. We knew the percentage of oil by mass of a fruit
bunch for each breed. We knew the global price per metric ton of palm
oil over the last three years, by the month. We knew the expected
yield of a hectare of Tenera palm every year for 16 years out. We knew
the steps of the process, in theory, and we had some leads on where to
get equipment. I was particularly proud of our discovery that we
should lay out the palm trees in a hexagonal pattern to maximize the
density. The reason why I liked this innovation was that it agrees
exactly with the mathematical fact that if you want to pack the
largest number of identical circles – say, palm tree canopies – into a
given area, each circle touches six other circles.
But most of all, we knew that there was a crucial decision to be made:
which palm should NOW plant on its 10 acres?
Planting season ends at the end of June, and the tractor can plow 1
acre per day. The field has to be plowed before we can plant the oil
palm seedlings, but as the plow works other workers will fill in and
plant in the already plowed land. So the decision about which tree to
use had to be made now; tomorrow at the latest. That left Katie, Allan
and I trying desperately to connect our internet-researched knowledge
with local terminology and wisdom, in order that our research could
inform Bailor's decision. I was trying to decipher the mystery of
masangke, the yellow, less desirable palm oil.
Eddie is the farm manager. He was wearing a shiny blue African shirt,
and his eyes were wide and a bit scared above his sunken cheekbones. I
was trying not to intimidate him by laughing and apologizing for my
barrage of questions. It wasn't working at all.
The car had stopped, for some reason that I wasn't able to understand
from the fast Krio in the front seat. Amhidu, Sahr Bindi, Eddie,
Allan, Ali (new driver), Katie and I had all driven out to see the
nursery where the palm seedlings were kept. I was fervently hoping
that we would resolve our question of which type of palm to plant. At
this point the options ranged between four different varieties, a mix
of two varieties, and a single variety. As I got out of the car, my
brain was firmly engaged in mental calculation about what masangke
might be, and whether it was a product of specific varieties of palm,
or whether any palm could produce it.
The road was gravel and dirt, and cutting across a slope. There was
green everywhere else, both uphill on the left and downhill on the
right. A palm plantation sloped away to the right. It looked like a
valley bowl with a few palm trees and a sparse cassava ground cover.
At the far side of the valley, the land curved upwards again towards a
bald but green hill. In the center of the valley there stood a massive
tree. Its bark was a shiny light grey, and it had no branches for the
first sixty feet of trunk. At that height, the branches arced out like
a menorah, turning gradually upwards and ending in dappled green
leaves.
I gave up on Eddie for a moment. "Wow, look at that tree." I gestured
to Katie and Allan, they didn't hear me. "Look at the tree!" Still no
response. Okay, well, it's a nice tree anyways. Eddie heard me; if he
understood, he might have agreed.
"That's what all of Sierra Leone used to be." Allan did hear me. "But
then they cut it all," Allan made a small 'cutting' shake of his head,
"Look at the grove up there." Further up the hill, on the other side
of the valley, a thick grove of the same type of tree had turned the
hillside dark green. I could see graceful grey branches reaching
sideways through the canopy.
"Wow."
Something caught my attention up on the left. The slope was pretty
steep, but there was a small family a short ways up the hill. There
were fewer trees on the left. A tall black man unfolded from the small
group and began ambling down the hill towards us. He had the answers,
I knew it.
"Eddie, just elbow me or something if I'm being obnoxious." I don't
think Eddie understood me. We were having communication problems, and
they were exclusively my fault. But they could be resolved later – for
now, I was dying to find out as much as possible about oil palms.
"Oh, okay... this is the farmer, the one with the trees..." Eddie
motioned back up towards the nursery. It was in a small town at the
top of the road.
"Right. Maybe we should get Amhidu so we can translate..." I still had
no idea how this meeting was going to go.
"No, no, he is a learned man. A pastor."
Alright, a pastor.
The most striking pastor I've ever met. He wore dusty black rainboots,
olive dress pants, a yellow and blue patterned African shirt, small
round glasses and a faded dark grey baseball cap. He was tall and
skinny, and age had tightened the skin on his bones and deepened the
smile lines around his mouth. By now he was right in front of us,
wearing a wide gap-toothed grin and laughing, and he wrapped up my
hand in a big African handshake. "Pastor Kadie Kanawa."
"Me nem na Chris... Christopher... Sahr Christopher, like Kono."
Pastor Kadie laughed with deep rolling chuckles, slapped me on the
shoulder, and then gathered both Eddie and me up into a greeting with
Allan and Katie.
"Oh, so good to meet you! You know, I had some friends once, some
European friends once. They came and they show me how to do all this
farming." He motioned at the farm. I looked at the big tree. Pastor
Kadie's voice was warm and quavered slightly, but I was impatient.
Answers, answers.
After a moment the pastor swept past and pulled the Sierra Leoneans
with him. Alan caught my eye.
"Chris, slow down on the questions." I was instantly sheepish; Allan was right.
"I know, I know."
"It's just like," Allan let his facial expression finish the sentence.
Katie was up ahead walking right behind Pastor Kadie, and Amhidu, Sahr
Bindi, and Eddie were right behind. Ali had stayed with the car. I
caught up to Katie in a few steps, and then we all turned down the
slope on to a path.
Suddenly I noticed a machete in Pastor Kadie's left hand. It was the
kind with a steak knife handle and a narrow straight blade with a
curve right at the end. The point is at the end of the curve,
perpendicular to the long direction of the blade. The blade itself was
worn and tarnished.
Whenever I turned my head I caught a glimpse of tall oil palms against
blue sky, and the rounded green hill in the distance. But mostly my
eyes stayed down on the path, determined not to put my sandaled feet
in anything spiky or poisonous. My brain was deeply embroiled in
trying to calibrate itself to Allan's advice. I had been too
voracious, so voracious that I might be preventing us from getting the
information. So how could I choose my questions judiciously so that we
learn exactly what we need?
Or maybe I didn't know what we needed to know? I took some deep
breaths, and watched Pastor Kadie for a moment. He moved with an easy
gait through the farm. He didn't move that much, but he covered
ground, and the steps he took looked very familiar and comfortable.
It wasn't a farm in the North American sense, not at all. There were
no rows of anything, no fences, and no immediately apparent
organization. But there was cassava under the palms, to shade out the
weeds, and worn pathways linking the trees.
First Pastor Kadie took us to a short, young oil palm. Its trunk was
maybe four feet high, and the fronds extended out like a fountain.
Clustered around the base of tree were two fruit bunches, one black
and one red.
"This one..." Pastor Kadie swung half heartedly at a couple of plants
between him and the tree with the point of his machete, "is Dura." He
touched a couple of the fronds with the point of the machete, and then
gestured to the fruit. We paused in silence for a moment, and the
Pastor Kadie made a step to continue.
"Wait," I couldn't contain myself, maybe this was the answer to the
masangke mystery, "why is this one red, and that one black?" Maybe
it's ripeness? I thought.
"This one is ripe." He tapped the red one with the point of his
machete. Then we continued down the path.
The fruit bunches are quite alien. They look like large pinecones,
perhaps the size of pillow, except there are many palm fruits stuck in
the spaces of the pine cone. The palm fruits are smooth, shiny and
football shaped, yellow near the points and darkening to crimson red
or maroon in the middle when ripe. As they grow, they are first olive
green, then black, then red or purple. The fruits generally fit in the
palm of your hand, and a fruit bunch has between 50 and 150 fruits.
These are just ballpark numbers to give an idea; even the few fruit
bunches and palm fruits we saw varied widely in size, number, color,
and texture.
After a couple more turns, a bit closer to the big tree, we came to
another squat palm. "She is," Pastor Kadie poked at the palm with his
blade, "she's also Dura."
Eddie came forward, excited. "This one," he pointed to a small bunch
with olive green fruit, "this one will be masangke! It will have
yellow color when, when we make the oil."
"Oh, okay." I nodded. It didn't fill in all the blanks. Could the same
palm tree give both red and yellow palm oil? The red was more
desirable, the yellow was masangke, I thought. To be honest, I'm still
not totally sure, but I'm much more patient about it now.
We walked onwards. The grove was quiet, completely different from
Koidu Town. The palm trees, even the squat ones, had majestic crowns
of palm fronds, and the big tree in the center kept arresting my gaze.
"I'll take you to a place where I have recently harvested." Katie and
I both murmured that that would be great. After a quick turn back up
the hill, I was completely disoriented; I thought that maybe I could
pull out my compass and look at it, but I didn't.
Pastor Kadie glided off to the side, revealing another squat palm
drooping over a pile of fruit bunches. There were about ten or eleven
fruit of them. I stepped off to the side so everyone else could filter
in.
"Can we eat them?" Allan asked. Katie was already eating one. Allan
took a bite. Amhidu and Sahr Bindi reached down and grabbed some. I
leaned over, touched one, and stood up again.
"Mmm, doesn't taste like much." Allan wasn't impressed.
"Well, it's interesting. I'm not sure if I like it or not. It's very
oily." Katie's fruit was half eaten. Inside it was yellow, with plenty
of fibers. I was trying my best to remain impartial, but failing.
Amhidu was clearly relishing his, and Allan revised his opinion
upwards.
"Actually, I like the taste of this oil much more than the palm oil
after it's processed."
The pile of fruit bunches looked a bit like a pile of beehives to me.
I picked up a safe looking red one. It was smooth in my hand, firm and
clearly alive. In my mind I could feel the palm oil inside, see it go
into the pot to be boiled, see it crushed for the oil, see the oil
boiled dry, see the oil bottled into containers, lifted on to trucks,
and bounced six hours into Freetown, where they might wait on a
loading dock for a crane to lift them on to a boat. I could see the
amputees piling the bunches, machetes in hand. What would it be like
to use machetes for their livelihood, and for the livelihood of the
clinic, instead of the nightmare ways that machetes had been used on
them? And how did the machete sit so comfortably in Pastor Kadie's
hand; how could a machete sit comfortably in anyone's hand in Kono?
The palm fruit was firm with vitality in my hand.