TOM-TOM AND RICE HARVESTING
Laye talks in these terms of the total solidarity existing among the harvester. The period coincides with rice harvest. The way it is done becomes of interest to him because they sing as they reap in unison. The systemic movement of the reapers involved also portrays the art of communalism.
Africa is closely associated with the cyclic time. The cyclic time is that which begins and ends with the harvest as Laye points out:
The festival had no set date since it depended on the ripening of the rice, and in this, in turn, depended on the weather, the goodwill of the heavens. It depended perhaps still on the soil, whose influence could not be ignored.
The harvesters made sacrifice to the good harvest and protection against the danger of snake bites. Reaping needs the goodwill and guidance of the spirits of the land, who have to be propitiated before the day of the harvest on the first day the head of each family cuts the shear of rice at dawn, and then with the signal of a tom-tom the reapers begins the harvesting.
Laye recalls the joys of working together in the farm. Laye writes: We would take care not to whistle or pick up dead wood during the time of harvest.
The reason why they do not pick dead wood and whistle during the rice harvesting is that it will hinder them and bring misfortune to the field. So, they adhere strictly to this superstitious belief as their guiding principles.
The reapers are led to the field singing, dancing and performing various feats behind the tom-tom players. The land is extremely important because it has a mystic connection with the ancestors. The area which every family claims as its own represents the parcel of kind occupied by the ancestors. The fruitfulness of the earth is regarded as a blessing granted by the ancestors, who hasten germination and growth in cultivated land. The rice harvest at rindican conveys the warmth of shared labour.
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