Mark looked at the long row in front of him and sighed audibly. This was the most inefficient way to do things, he thought with irritation, and he could increase their productivity in a heartbeat.
"Hey, man," Tsotsi called out with a grin, a few yards ahead of him,"This is your third day, you don't have any more excuses to fall back behind the women." He was shirtless, sweat dripping down his dark brown skinned body and into the waistband of his cut off jeans.
A couple of the women looked back at him and giggled, and then went back to hoeing.
Leaning against his hoe, Tsotsi straightened up.
Mark couldn't help noticing the bulge in the front of the shorts. Damn, what was happening to him?
"Look, Tsotsi," he called back hurriedly, "We gotta talk about this."
Tsotsi walked back, "You know we have to get this done before we can put in the seeds, right? And all that needs to be done by the end of the week. We can't keep chatting every five minutes."
"You know machines can do all of that in a day, right?" Mark looked at Tsotsi, "No back breaking hoeing. No blisters...". He looked at his bandaged hands ruefully.
Tsotsi shook his head, "We had to have this conversation at some point, I guess. How you lasted this long, I don't know."
"Well, I thought this farming thing was some sort of exercise to get the blood flowing. But it looks like you do this for real. It totally is inefficient."
"So why are you here, Mr. Efficient?" Tsotsi grinned fondly at him, "You were really efficient back in New York, right?"
"What do you mean?" Mark was defensive.
"In your rush to be efficient, you became really inefficient, didn't you? In the last couple of days, haven't you had the best sleep in years?"
"The best, yes, I am so beat I can barely stay awake after 10," Mark said quietly, thinking of the 20 hour days he had put in many weeks, "But ..."
"But nothing, boss," Tsotsi said, walking back to his spot, "Tell me your sex drive hasn't picked up either. You have better orgasms too, yeah? This may not be efficient as a process, but you are happier."
"Ah, man!" Mark hadn't gotten used to this frank talk. He also saw one of the women - Thulani - look back at him with a saucy look. She straightened up and her wrap slipped a bit. She turned, and looked at him, loosening the wrap and pushed her chest out at him. She retied the wrap, but not before he saw her dark nipples peek at him through the beads. She had firm breasts that were hard to ignore, tight - and as saucy as she often herself was.
The damn tease, he thought as the women giggled at him again, aware of the tightness in his pants.
He picked up the hoe again and kept digging, a little quicker this time.
****
As it turned out, that day was shorter than the others because Tsotsi sent everyone back to the huts in the early afternoon after they had lunch under a tree.
The girls - there were four of them, beautifully sexual - had sat with the two men, and eaten with them, but scarcely said a word. They didn't need to say much, though. They would each make eye contact shyly with him, and then would look away. Thulani was more forward with her flirting, once licking her lip as she looked at him and then making sure her thigh touched his. If Tsotsi noticed, he was playing mum and was ignoring them.
Right after lunch, he sent all back, saying something about a dance that night, that they needed to rest up because it would be a longer night than usual. It was obvious that this was no surprise to the girls as they looked at each other with a knowing smile. They got up and filed down the path back to the huts.
"A dance?" Mark had asked, looking at Tsotsi quizzically. Was this related to the "healing" that Tsotsi had talked about in the morning?