misery of tobacco growers

above the eastern horizon revealing at intervals the dew drenched queuing trucks laden with tobacco and the human shapes lying peacefully underneath them.
In one of the small lodgings just a stone’s throw from the tobacco auction floors, a middle-aged man stirred, felt the empty space to his left and immediately drifted back into sleep.
When he eventually woke up, it was already 10 o’clock in the morning and the lady who had brought him to the room was nowhere in sight. His first thoughts were that she was in the bathroom or anywhere near.
It was at 10.30am when staff at the lodge ordered him to leave the room as their time had lapsed.
That was also the point at which he realised that his jacket was lying on the floor.
His heart skipped a bit but he collected himself and picked the jacket.
Everything – his wallet, shoes and most importantly the money raised from the sale of his 10 bales of tobacco – had gone.
The woman had vanished. He vaguely remembered how she looked like and did not even know how he ended up there.
He was a man trapped between the twin gates of fear and loyalty, madness and principle and did not know how to confront his wife back in Muzarabani.
There was the food vendor to deal with first to recover his identity card that he had used as security to get food while waiting for payments.
Then there would be the hired hands waiting for their dues too at the farm.
All the man and his family had worked for had gone in the blink of an eye.
His sad story had begun a week earlier when he brought his tobacco to the floors.
The canteen was not functional and the computers were down for the printing of sales sheets and cheques.
He had to join hundreds of other farmers queuing to off-load their produce and as fate would have it – the heavens opened up and a heavy downpour soaked both people and their produce alike.
Only those with tents and plastics to cover their bales were spared.
Our unfortunate friend had five of his bales spoiled by the rains and so he spent the next three days drying the tobacco in the sun.
Of course he was not alone in this misfortune. There were lots of other farmers who lost even larger quantities to the rain. This aside, the other grave matter was the issue of toilets that had not yet been opened for public use when this scribe visited the floors late last week.
“We are using the bush system and there are very high risks of disease outbreaks here if the situation remains unchanged.
“We are also sleeping in the open, usually under the trucks or inside where there is very limited ventilation,” said a farmer from Mt Darwin.
Tobacco floors have literally turned into hunting grounds for hookers who throng the place as early as 4 o’clock in the afternoon while thieves have now made it a point to camp in the area just like any innocent citizen for the entire duration of the marketing season.
They have made off with fat purses in some cases while business operators have always waited for the selling seasons with drooling mouths.
Traders in agricultural equipment, inputs, furniture and clothes have found the tobacco-marketing season very lucrative every year hence the emergence of flea markets and marketing stalls.
Farmers are known to drink and dance the nights away after getting their payments and unfortunately lose their incomes to different human prey in the process. Boka Tobacco Floors managing director, Mr Matthew Boka conceded that payments had been delayed for those who had queries while some had even tried to fraudulently get double payments only to bounce at the banks.
“We still need to do a lot of verification before we disburse cheques as we are new players in the industry.
“At the moment we have only one conveyor belt that is on-line with two more expected to be ready by weekend, which makes prompt payments a bit difficult,” he said.
“The canteen is yet to be completed as more equipment is still coming.It will be operational by next week,” added Mr Boka. On farmers getting drenched after being denied entry into the floors, Boka said it was difficult to allow all the farmers in so they needed to come prepared with their produce covered.
“Septic tanks for the new blocks of toilets are still being constructed and the first ones to be completed filled up in less than a week.
“There are just too big volumes of people at the floors and I am sure farmers constitute maybe less than half of the multitudes. The rest are vendors, thieves and traders in a little bit of everything,” said Boka.