Very few Americans truly know hunger, and before coming to Mali I was no exception. Sure, I did the obligatory holiday food drives in elementary school, and my work as a counselor with homeless youth perhaps gave me a small glimpse into the harsh reality of worrying about your next meal. But, in general, it wasn’t very personal to me, and the relative safety net provided by social service agencies in a large urban area meant that even the hardest-off youth I encountered didn’t have to suffer extreme and prolonged hunger, the sort that breeds desperation and hopelessness.

There’s no safety net here, though. The problem of access to food, which in the States is usually a simple question of money to buy food–becomes a lot more complicated in a situation where isolated rural farmers are forced to eat whatever they are able to coax out of the increasingly overcultivated, deforested, inhospitable land. There is no choice for most families; your crops are your life, quite literally. Most farmers in Marena are scarcely making a pittance off of selling what they produce; it goes almost entirely to feeding their large and ever-growing families. Good rains and a solid growing season mean security for the year to come; a drought or poor yield can spell disaster. This pattern hasn’t changed for thousands of years; what has changed is the level to which the land has deteriorated due to human overuse and misuse, and the increasing uncertainty of the yields this land can produce.

June, July and August are the heart of what Malians term the “hungry season.” This is the time when last year’s crops have all run out, and the new crops have yet to be harvested. In short, it is the time when food supply wears thin, and diets suffer.  Although my host family in Marena is somewhat insulated from this uncertainty because of my host father’s income (he is a school headmaster whose salary is paid by the government), most villagers have no other option but to make the remaining food stretch out until September and October’s harvest. Which, with a big, hungry family to think about, is a long way away. And, with the double threat of hunger and malaria, during this time very young children, especially those who are already malnourished, are especially in danger.

And so Malians cultivate like their lives depend on it, a concept previously foreign to me. Sometimes I grow weary of all the talk of agriculture, this being neither my area of expertise, nor my particular interest. But it permeates all of Malian rural life. You can’t talk about health without talking about the foods people eat, and by extension the crops they cultivate. You can’t talk about improving people’s livelihoods here, or bringing about real development, without talking about agriculture. I’ve now begun to understand why the villagers are always asking me whether I’ve gone to the fields yet, and examining my hands for the inevitable blisters caused by hours of turning the dirt with a hoe. This activity constitutes a major part of their lives, and for me to take part is,  in their minds, important to understanding them.

And so, as best I can, I’ve decided to play along. My host family has assigned me a “field”–really just a small section of their corn fields–to have responsibility for “cultivating.” Now, anyone who knows me well can perhaps understand the hilarity of this–unlike other members of my American family, I have absolutely no green thumb whatsoever, and the closest I’ve come to anything like cultivation is planting small flowers in a plastic cup in the third grade. But, why not? With the work load at the health center pretty light and the village a complete ghost town throughout the day, I can’t imagine many more useful ways to spend my time than helping in the fields, in whatever small way I can. Since I know nothing whatsoever about planting or crops, I can’t really contribute any expertise–but I am an extra hand, however feeble, to add my labor to stave off the threat of hungry season.

On a Friday morning, the air steaming with humidity from the previous night’s heavy rains and bearing the distinct scent of grass, I swing my daba in tune with my togoma, the  12-year old girl in village who shares my name and delights in being my companion.  My hand at first is too light, but Awa takes the daba from me and shows me how to dislodge a large chunk of earth in one swoop, drop two kernels of corn in the hole, and cover them, moving quickly and creating neat diagonal rows as she goes. She moves with agility and grace, I move much more slowly. Still, I’m taking part. And I suppose that counts for something.

I’ve become perhaps the unlikeliest of farmers.  I have the blisters to prove it.