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We walked down the wide dirt road and soon reached the people in the fields. They had small sickles in their hands like those used for hand-cutting wheat and were hard at work slicing the flowers off as close to the ground as they could cut. Their long experience showed when all that was left behind them was a field of green stumps that were barely visible above the dirt.
They tossed the cut flowers behind them and other workers at their backs picked them up as quickly as they threw them. The flowers were set into large wicker baskets that hung from one arm, and when the basket was filled the people switched out their full basket for an empty one so that the pickup process was unbroken. Dozens of filled baskets sat on the edge of the field, and mostly women sorted the flowers by c
