Kathryn Bracewell. Photo: Christian Aid/Adrian Arbib
"When we told the people we met that American cotton farmers get up to four times as much for their cotton as they do, they laughed in stunned amazement"

At 12 noon on a Monday I would normally be serving jacket potatoes at our church drop-in centre, so at 12 noon today I have to keep pinching myself as I’m sitting in the strong sunlight, among 100 cotton farmers.

It is the first of two days in villages, talking to the farmers about what life is like for them – and we discover that it is beginning to look extremely grim.

Right across Mali bad rains mean the cotton harvest will be severely reduced this year. And on top of that, cotton prices are at an all-time low. One of the reasons for this is the subsidised production in the United States. When we told the people we met that American cotton farmers get up to four times as much for their cotton as they do, they laughed in stunned amazement. ‘We didn’t think it was possible to receive as much as that,’ one man said.

As we sit listening to cotton farmers telling their life stories, I find myself sobered by the realisation that unjust world structures have a direct effect on the person sitting opposite me – a cotton farmer who only wants and deserves a fair price for the cotton he works so very hard to produce.

It really has been an incredible time so far – hard work, no doubt about that – listening, learning, trying to take it all in. We almost feel like detectives too, trying to piece together all the bits of information about how the cotton industry works.

And to cap it all I end up sleeping in the open air! Chilly but fun.

• Read third diary entry