Excerpt from draft of "Apostle to the Pygmies – The Doctor Jerry Galloway Story”
Cutting a field out of the forest was very hard work. We planned to clear two acres by August. The young men wanted to plant peanuts and hoped to yield eight to twelve sacks of peanuts per acre. I also told them that they could use the wood they cut to build pig pens, and I promised to buy them a female pig to start a pig-raising business.
Luba, Bola and Mpia made the decision to try farming. I went out to the village to help them select a field to cut. Each family had their own allotted, ancestral land and the senior member of each family gave permission where one could acquire a field. Luba was born in the nearby village of Liamba, and the soil was allegedly better in that area. Luba went to ask his uncle for property, who agreed to give him an area about one and one-half acres in size.
With a smiling face, I excitedly came to the village to help the boys on their first day of cutting the field. As I approached the village, I heard several loud voices. I walked up to a very heated discussion. A group of three young men were squared off against another group of three, and there were about twenty-five women trying to keep them separated. The fight was over the fact that the young men of the village did not want Luba, Bola and Mpia to cut the field. After all, they did not live in their village.
“What if you go to the village chief to settle the situation?” I suggested.
Apparently, they had done so, but the chief only got mad and left. Suddenly, the groups squared off again. The men were yelling and hurling insults at one another. The tension was high and I worried that someone was going to get hurt.
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