Sami Koto

So after you make it to Garawol on the gelly and are riding your bike down the road to Sami Koto here’s what you’ll find. The main road actually dead ends right into the small village of Sami Kuda. Sami Kuda means New Sami, and is actually separated from Sami Koto (old Sami) by a football field, the English School, and some crop land. There are a little under 800 people in total in the old and new part of the village. The reason for the split is… well I don’t know exactly but you can imagine. The new part of the village actually has their own governing structure, which means their own Alkaloo and Village Development Committee. There is only one English school, and one Arabic school though where both parts of the village send their kids. So its all one village, but its kind of in two parts.
Everyone is pretty much a farmer, and all the land that surrounds old and new Sami is used for growing crops, kind of like a halo around the town. The men grow millet, and they have just finished planting all their fields. They will start work after the first rain. The women do all of the peanut planting, and they will have just started planting because we had our third good rain last night. Since the men start after the first rain, they will have a longer season, and can grow another round of millett, and usually corn on their extra land. Millett is the main staple crop for Sami, and we eat it every meal along with peanut sauce. The extra peanuts can be sold after the harvest, but the millett is all for home consumption. Almost every compound in the community has at least one person who is working abroad, so they will send money home for rice. Our compound is all millett though.