Harvest Time—Peace Corps Zambia, Jun 9th, 2024

A Stranger in a Strange Land

Hello friends and family,

A few months ago, I wrote about the historic drought that is devastating Zambia. In the weeks since, the situation has only gotten worse. My host family’s corn fields have turned into a graveyard of short, brown stocks. Their sunflower bloomed briefly in February, then shriveled into brittle, useless husks. The only successful crop this year was tobacco. Tobacco is a hardy plant, and most of their crop stayed healthy throughout the drought. My host family, and farmers all across Zambia, are putting all of their hope into this year’s tobacco harvest. 

The trouble with tobacco, though, is how labor intensive it is. My host family devotes several acres to tobacco. In a few weeks, they have to harvest and cure around ten thousand tobacco leaves. Each leaf has to be assessed in the field, handpicked, bundled together, transported, and cured for more than seven days in a roaster before it's ready to be sold. Most of their “laborers” are children, who work on the weekends and after school in the sub-saharan Africa sun. They use no animals, machinery, or electricity. How do they do it?

To find out, I asked my host father to take me through the entire process of harvesting tobacco, from picking the leaves to curing them. In early May, we walked out to the main tobacco field, a massive plot of land that stretched up to the treeline.

He said that the kids had been working in the field since the early hours of the morning. They had picked ripe leaves off of the mature stocks and gathered them in piles scattered across the field. It had been a productive morning, but my host father looked displeased.

“Ah, these kids.” He said, “They left the leaves out in the sun. They will degrade in the light. We have to move them to the shade.”

We spent the next hour moving half a dozen leaf piles to a shady tree. At every new pile, each kid would grab a handful of leaves and walk to the tree. My host dad then wrapped most of the remaining leaves in a burlap sack that I would carry. He would pick up whatever leaves were left and follow behind me. The first few trips were easy enough, but the beating sun and hefty bag soon wore me out. I have no idea how pre-teens had done this for hours.

In between bundle trips, I analyzed the leaves. Most were bigger than my head and thicker than cardstock. They had a distinct smell, one I can best describe as sweet, musty, and smokey. The top side of each leaf was smooth, but the bottom side was a touch sticky, like a Post-It note. I could feel some of that stick on my skin and clothes. I looked at the kids and noticed that their clothes and hands were covered in a thick layer of tobacco-stick. Hopefully it would wash out.

We finished moving all of the leaf bundles to the shade. The next step, my host father explained, was to transport the tobacco to the oven roasters, near my house. He strapped one of the burlap bundles onto a bicycle. His oldest child pushed the bike into the grass field, towards the house. My host father asked me if I could also carry a bundle home. “Will I have a bike?” I asked. 

“Ah, no. Just use your arms.” He said.

“Joy.” I said.

After what felt like a long walk home, we arrived at the oven roasters near my house. We offloaded all of the leaves into one big pile.

Next, we used a long pair of strings to dangle the leaves off a thin stick. 

These stick bundles were what we would hang inside the roasters.

The roasters were a set of two boxy buildings. My host family had built them more than a decade ago from mud bricks, clay, cement, and iron sheets. When the tobacco was ready to roast, they burned logs in the lowest hole (see below). The fire’s heat would circulate through a pipe system that ran under the building and came out of the vent on the right (see below). This fire would slowly roast the tobacco leaves over the course of a week, turning the leaves from a vibrant green into a golden-brown.

We walked around back and I saw the inside of the roasters. I could feel the heat coming from the fire below (see the pipe system). It was less intense than I imagined, less like a sauna and more like a humid day in Florida. My host father explained that the leaves on the left had been cured for a week and were ready to be packaged. They would fill the right half of the roaster with with a fresh set of leaves. 

As he hung the new batch of leaves, I asked how he regulated the roaster’s temperature. “There is a thermometer inside the oven.” He said, “Every two to three hours, I check on the heat and replace the fire wood.”

“Do you check it even at night?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, “I check it 4 times a night, every night, for weeks. I am not sleeping well.”

“That’s for sure.” I felt bad for complaining about not having a bike.

Once the leaves are done roasting, my host family packs them into tight bundles and stores them in their shed. After all of the leaves have finished curing, representatives from the tobacco company come to their house and assess the quality of the yield. The better the grade, the more the tobacco company will pay for the leaves.

“They always give us a worse grade than we deserve, though.” He said. “That way they don’t have to pay us as much.”

“Can you sell the tobacco to another company?” I asked.

“No.” He said, “This company provided us with the tobacco seeds at the start of the farming season. We agree to take their seeds, grow their plants, and sell exclusively to them.”

He paused for a second, looking as his whole family strung up the tobacco. Everyone was in good spirits, laughing and chatting as they worked. I found it hard not to notice, though, the acres of desolate corn stock behind them. The drought had taken everything from them except tobacco. These leaves were the only thing separating them from hunger. So they worked with a quiet, desperate intensity that betrayed their otherwise lax attitude. 

“This year, we are struggling.”

“I know.” I said, “I know.”