The guys tell me, there is generally a gap in the rains out here for a few weeks in February in most years, before it gets wetter again in March. The brief window of warm dryness comes just as the regions maharagi plants begin to ready for harvest, so the local farmers are flat out in this area now including Mr Mlafu with his farming side project. He invited me along yesterday to see the way the harvest takes place and the techniques used for processing the beans. It would be another two hour hike each way, a chance to meet a few new faces and another day gone so why not.

It started as another hot day and during the hike every hut we pass now has something outside drying, mainly maharagi but cassava also, some ground ready to be used to make ugari. Along the way maharagi Plants at every farm are being uprooted and staked in bunches every few metres where they will be left to dry for a week or so. The plants are then collected and taken to houses for processing. That's where we were heading. Processing is probably a misleading description though, large piles of the pods are stacked and then beaten with sticks for a few hours to release the beans. Not all beans are released in the first beating so the pods are allowed to dry again the process is repeated. This technique was described as "Bang Bang" throughout the day's translations.

It seemed pointless to have travelled all that way to just stand around while everyone else was working, so grabbing a stick and pushing a pile of pods together I worked with Mlafu in alternating strokes to beat out a pile of clean beans ready for bagging up. Its good fun mucking about like this with the locals, as even if they have seen mzungus before, they haven't been on foot, let alone engaging in physical labour and I can splatter a few words of Swahili together these days which also makes for a good laugh. It was a novelty for me but its everyday life for people here and bloody hard work. You can pick the processors pretty easily they're skinny b*****s but have massive arms. I had a thought at this point, about a piece of equipment I remembered seeing back at camp. There was a sifting frame used for soils that may well work for maharagi in a similar way that we process seed in horticulture in Australia. The materials for the frame are basic and Mlafu could find them easily for next season if it works. It will take longer but fewer beans will be left behind and more importantly the energy used verses the energy produced will be more appropriate… If it works.

Mlafu also took me to meet the oldest babu (elderly man) in these parts. The guy is ninety seven with seventeen children to two wives and looks to be in amazing shape. Last year the man's health had been quite critical during the wet season and he had been helped by the caretaker at the time. On the mend, the babu forgot his age this year, sowing three hectares of maharagi and winding up with a possible hernia which was the centre of our discussions during the visit. The whole family were very welcoming and are well established and successful farmers. Masses of maharagi scatter the yard, dwarfing Mlafu's harvest and the hut and our seats hut are surrounded by ripening maize and pawpaw trees swaying in the breeze as we talk.

Content with my hit of local culture for the day we headed back to camp, when yet again a fast moving front swept through. We were only about five minutes from camp when the rain hit, the clouds dumping 25mm in half an hour then clearing again to a fine late afternoon. The rain was a particular concern to Mlafu who, at its clearing, jumped on a bike back to his farm. Mlafu is processing onto plastic sheet which makes it easy to cover or move his pods and there wasn't any problem but it's worry thinking about the people processing straight on soil when it rains like this. We are now waiting for the next few days hoping they remain clear so the plants still drying in the fields don't rot or shoot.

It's never silent here at camp, during the day the large leaves of the Mibango trees rustle with the slightest breeze, there's the hum of flying insects and the calls of various birds including the twenty or so chickens we have running around. At night the place comes alive to the sounds of thousands of bugs, crickets and cicadas, many similar to those you would hear in Australia but one is very distinctively different. High in the trees something makes a noise just like a ban saw. Clearing rain offers up a whole different variety of noises again and it was at this point in the day that I decided to venture out alone with the camera to see what had come out in the moisture. I was mainly looking for one of the giant snails to photograph but found all sorts of things. With my boots full from the rain and thongs useless and slippery in the mud, I decided to walk barefoot along the track, adding my footprints to those left in the mud by passing locals. It was probably this decision that allowed me to get close enough to see the large mongoose-like animal that entered the path fifty metres ahead of me. Undisturbed, it moved across the path in a casual trotting fashion and disappeared into the grass as quickly as it had appeared scarcely leaving a footprint behind to photograph. Gotta say it was very cool.

So with that I will get on to finding out what it was and say bye for now and thinking of you all back there.