In Bafata there was plenty of land and no malnutrition. The Casamance region is quite fertile and the villagers easily grew everything they needed to eat, generally rice, millet, sorrel, manioc and corn. The Casamance rivers and streams were rich with an incredibly boney type of talapia (a fish,) which provided protein in the diet. Their building materials were bamboo, dirt or baked mud bricks, and straw. Other than in emergencies such as when the village burned down they produced all that they needed, or traded with their neighbors for those things.
In some parts of Senegal life is much harder and the villagers need all of their fertile land for crops needed for survival. In those areas, the requirement to grow peanuts was a hardship on the villagers. But in my small corner of Senegal this was not a problem.
Since the villagers had an agricultural economy that used the barter system, and which provided everything they needed without relying on cash, it was literally true that the villagers did not understand the value of a dollar, or rather of a CFA, the main currency unit in Senegal and much of West Africa at that time. Everything they got from selling peanuts to the national cooperative went toward luxuries they would not otherwise get for themselves. My villagers made about 20,000 CFA per year, which came to about $100 at that time.
I remember that long before I went to Africa, I had read a National Geographic article describing the poverty in another part of Africa. To illustrate how destitute the people were the article noted that they made only about $50 per year from all their effort. Well, the folks in Bafata made only $100 per year per person but they were hardly destitute. I realized then that the annual per capita income of someone living in an agrarian barter economy doesn't tell you how well or badly off they are. It only tells you how much effort they are devoting to non-essentials.
In the north of the country the tribes had found ways to incorporate peanuts into their diet. A particularly tasty dish is mafe, a spicey peanut sauce usually eaten over rice. But the Casamance tribes had never made this leap into nouvelle cuisine. My villagers would nosh on peanuts as a snack food during the harvest season, but never incorporated them into meals.
Next to my hut there was a large metal barrel that I discovered was full of peanuts that Burahma, my host, set aside each year for himself and his family (which included me.)
The peanuts were raw, and I don't find raw peanuts to be very tasty. Burahma showed me a low tech way to dry roast them though, making them into a warm and tasty treat. In his usual eloquent manner, he pointed to the peanut barrel, then to the straw roof. He grabbed a couple of handfuls of straw from the roof, tossed them on the ground and lit them on fire with a burning stick from the nearby kitchen hut. Then he grabbed a bunch of peanuts and tossed them into the inferno. The fire less than a minute, blackening the peanut shells and roasting the nuts inside. Burahma immediately reached into the pile of roasted nuts and cracked one open, popping the tasty morsel into his mouth. I did the same and promptly yelped, dropping the smoldering hot nut. The villagers, accustomed to a life of farming and working with their hands, had thickly callused hands so that they could probably handle molten lead without getting burned. I, on the other hand, had the tender hands of a child who had not yet been introduced to the fields.
During my time in the village my hands did become much tougher, but never reached the level of those who spend most of their lives in the fields. But my feet became as calloused as any Africans. I think I grew an inch because of those calluses.
