Last week I got a call from a dear friend.
Him: hey man how are you doing?
Me: am good how about you?
Him: am great. So listen there’s an opening in an organization that I’m affiliated with and we have field work to do but we need a field officer. Are your weekends open?
Me: am not sure but let’s see what happens.
On Friday, he reached out again and I told him I will be free because I didn’t have anything scheduled. So, he went ahead to explain what I was supposed to do. This said organization deals with farmers and my job was to go around not less than 18 farmlands to see how their crops are doing and also to see to the distribution of weedicides to the farmers.
On Saturday by 7:30 AM, he called to inform me that he was on his way to pick me up. By 8:00 AM, he was at my place and we set off. It was a smooth journey to the village which was on the Tamale-Kumasi Road. The name of the village we went to is Gbalahagu. It took us 30-40 minutes to get to the village. We informed the group of farmers of our presence in the community. We ate before coming out to meet them. After exchanging greetings with them, we had a little conversation before heading to the various farms.
We moved towards the eastern part of the village where we visited 6-8 farms. The crop they grew was soybean and it looked promising as it was still sprouting and unwanted weeds were the only problem facing it. We moved towards the western part of it where most of the farms were.
After inspecting 3 farms, it started to drizzle but we kept moving. We were able to inspect more than 8 farms in that part.
Before we went back to the house, it was past noon.
We called the group of farmers the organization is dealing with and I thanked them for making time out of their busy schedule to make it to this short meeting. I explained to them what the organization expects from the committee heads of 4 members, and what the organization expects from each member of the group and I also took their concerns so I could give it to my friend for them to take into consideration.
From there, I started sharing the weedicides with them and it was shared according to the number of acres an individual had. So if you only have 1 acre, you will be given 1 bottle of weedicide and if you have 2, you will be given 2 bottles of the weedicide.
We were still in the process of sharing the weedicides when it started to rain so we had to move into a room and waited for the rain to stop. After it stopped raining, I continued with the distribution and within a few minutes I was done with it.
But then, there were 3 farms we couldn’t go to because it was on our way back home so we decided to visit it on our way back home.
We thanked the farmers and set off to go home.
I was informed that there was a particular farm that was damaged by animals and it was part of the farms that we were to inspect on our way home. We got there and I inspected the first 2 farms they were also promising and the last farm was the one that was damaged. It was a bit far from the other 2 farms and when we got there, I inspected it and realized it was indeed damaged but not so much that it will affect the entire farm. Luckily for me, a member of the committee was head of part of us and I told him this damage cannot affect the output and he agreed with me. We had a little chat and we left for the house.
After learning the theoretical aspect in the classroom, I got the opportunity to practicalize it in the field. This is an opportunity only a few get even though it was a volunteer job but am grateful that I got to experience what it’s like on the field.
My friends too were very impressed with how I handled things over there