Pulling Consho
About a month ago I joined a group of eight women - my sisters, aunties, and neighbors - to go pick consho beans on my counterpart's wife's farm. Concho are a type of fava bean (I think) that grow in pods on tall stalks, picked from the stem when they're dry and turned from green to brown. Served up with lots of spices, rich, red palm oil and fish piled high on top of rice or bread, it's filling, high and protein, and tasty. Before we leave for the farm in the morning, my counterpart's wife Kulako cooks rice and granat soup for everyone for lunch. On the way to the farm, we fill up a bucket with drinking water from the cool mountain spring on the way up, which Kulako casually totes on her head up the mountain trail. Most of the other women have already begun to work when we arrive at the farm - rows and rows of tall consho stalks sprouting from the slanted hill below the daunting flat rock face of Gborkolo Mountain. Kulako wraps a lapa around my head to keep
