There is one crop left to harvest in the village of Juffure: the rice. This particular harvest is done by the women of the Mandinka, as is the custom of the tribe. The women bend all day, chopping off the gold stalks to let them dry on the sidelines for a few days before transporting them to the village. Even when the women are done with their special chore, they still have to help the men pick the cotton, which has been left a little longer in the hot afternoon sun of Africa in order to make the fibers even better for spinning.

Now begins the great preparation for the harvest festival. The women spin the very cotton they picked that day to make new thread. Next, they take the thread to the village weaver, who uses an old loom to make cloth, which Binta dyes a deep blue with indigo leaves. Soon colored clothes are drying on all of the bushes surrounding the village.

While the women spin, weave, and sew, the men fix the village fence and repair huts, because soon the summer heat will become so unbearable that no one will be able to do any work at all. The well’s water becomes muddy, so the men decide to dig a new well for the village, digging up big globs of green clay to give to the expectant mothers to eat so their babies will be strong.

Kunta, Sitafa, and their friends are mostly left to themselves these days (with the exception of their usual goat-herding duties). In fact, almost all of the children of Juffure are left unattended as the grandmothers weave many wigs and hairpieces for the unmarried girls to wear at the harvest festival approaching.

Kunta notices with humor that every woman except Nyo Boto is made to show the utmost respect to the men of the village. Nyo Boto sits outside her hut, half-naked, weaving her wigs and shouting insults at every man who passes by: “Look at that! They call themselves men! Now in my day, men were men!” And the usually rugged men of Juffure skitter away as fast as they can.

The girls Kunta’s age gather spices to dry for the festival as well as help with the family washing while the men slowly run out of things to do and the musicians begin to practice. Suddenly, Juffure is filled with music made by all sorts of gourds and strings as Kunta and his friends practice with their slingshots and as other adults whittle small wooden figures or masks.

Kunta looks with disgust at the young girls his age. They have turned from tomboys into girls that “went about acting coy and fluttery. They couldn’t even walk right.” Kunta chides that they couldn’t even shoot a bow and arrow. He marvels at their huge lips that have been pricked with thorns to cause the “beautiful” swelling. He notices how many women create mixtures that turn any lighter part of their bodies as black as possible.

Not understanding this, Kunta asks his father, Omoro, who replies, “The more blackness a woman has, the more beautiful she is. . . . Someday you will understand.”