After a good bit of uncertainty it seems like the group for fonio harvesting will leave for the fields this morning. Otherwise, says Lasso’s elder brother Mussa, all the grains will fall to the ground with the next rainfall. The morning is cloudy, but it should not rain. They won’t leave early, for the fonio must get dry before they can cut it. Lasso once described fonio to me as something you wouldn’t easily tell apart from some wild herb. But with its grains you can make some good to. Lasso looks for two bikes to borrow, but can’t find any. We take his scooter then, a two strokes, 50cc Peugeot Ninja that is unreliable due to cylinder problems. The fonio field is not distant, no more than 6 kilometres. We leave with a small sickle, in Seenku Kuè, and a thick metal bracelet, in Seenku Ko. After twenty minutes of me silently cursing the scooter’s rack, we get to a small compound were many women are busy preparing food. We wait for others to arrive, they come by bike in about half an hour. Also a boy arrives with a baan, carried keys down on the bike’s rack. We walk until the field nearby, which at first sight looks uncultivated. After some dolo and some baan practicing for the young players, men start to cut. I film, it’s like a dance. Later drums will arrive, called in Seenku Deni. Men seem to get more energetic as the day progresses, and clearly music drives them. The baan soloist plays alone when moving, but as soon as he stops the two accompaniment players join him. When shooting still pictures I find I have to listen to the music to capture the right position of the worker’s bodies. Also the metal bracelet that some of them make resonate against the sickle gives me an acoustic reference.
The day becomes hotter, even if there are clouds. Men sweat litres. They work intensely for about half an hour, cutting portions of the fonio and advancing in lines, more or less. Then they take a break and drink dolo. There are also whisky bags in quantity. I take advantage of one of these breaks to ask a few things to a thin man from the association who speaks a rapid French, Fie-Moussa Traoré. I also give 2000 CFA to contribute to pay the dolo, which are shown to everybody. When I give money for some communal purpose, it is always shown to everybody, as if for transparency. The association was founded in 2009 and is called Seenkwa. The idea is to build a common fund to help members in difficulty, for funerals or sanitary treatment. The fonio harvested today will be shared, but the idea is to sell some to constitute the fund. They also envisage that some state project could require a work association. All members are from Karankasso but membership is open to everybody. At the moment the association is constituted by a group of relatives and friends. It was started by the owner of the field, an officer at the Douane in Bobo Dioulasso. I am also explained that the fonio was seeded during the first year, but it keeps re-spawning for a few years without any further seeding. The field requires basically no cares, just some herbicide. In fact there are quite a few portions that are not cut because many wild herbs are there, the tall ones with brown extremities. Lasso says they can spoil all cultivated fields, but especially fonio. The fonio itself, by the way, is in fact like some herb with small seeds on top, and they fall quite easily. At the beginning I stepped on a bunch of harvested fonio and I was made to notice that they all fell to the ground. I’ll have to be careful for the rest of the day. Women are there as well, they follow  the man and gather the fonio into sheaves. By about 4pm the whole field is done, and everybody stops to eat. But first they dance, jumping, as if to show that they still have plenty of energy. We eat millet to and gban sauce. I cannot but think that this is a strange way of working indeed, but an impressive one though. Men from the association used music to harvest the fonio field with intense and rapid efforts, instead of letting the hot and humid climate impose a slow pace.