The Argan Tree (continued):

Bringing in the harvest.

The top picture shows recent purchases I made at the slave market. As you can see they are a mixed lot comprising of both ‘Christianised’ Africans and white infidels from the West. I don’t discriminate and they weren’t chosen for the colour of their skin but for their muscular bodies and brute strength; both of which they will need in their future roles as slaves at my argan oil plantation.

We are approaching the peak season as the fruit ripens on the argan trees. Of course, my goats play an important part of this harvesting as they climb to the top of the trees, ingesting the fruit and excreting the remnants which fall to the ground and must be gathered up along with any other tree falls by slaves working in gangs for this purpose. This work is arduous and the gatherers work from dawn’s first light until the sun set in the West. They are shown no mercy or given any latitude; their only purpose in life is to perpetually bend their backs under the rhinoceros hide whips of my very impatient overseers.

Some slaves gather up the excreted or ripened fruit from the ground and load them into baskets carried on the permanently bent backs of other slaves. When these baskets are full - it should be noted that the slaves are given a set period of time for this task or face the prospect of a whipping - they are emptied into special carts for delivery to the far distant production sheds where still more slaves toil ceaselessly cracking open the kernels so that the oil can be extracted and processed.

Of course, once upon a time, donkeys or jackasses would be harnessed to these carts. However, as I own more slaves than their equine counterparts, I use slaves for this purpose as can be seen in the second picture. Quite deliberately, I ‘match’ a pair of slaves to this vital task. Harnessed under heavy wooden yokes to the carts these slaves are chosen for their brutish strength and must be robust enough to pull heavy loads over long distances of harsh country under an unrelenting sun. Needless to say, they require continual driving under the whip for this vital task.