As I was flitting around my village last year, talking to every person I could about what they needed and wanted me to do during my two years as a Mandink in Fodé Bayo, one of the most common responses I got from the women in my village was to help them with the rice paddies (called a farroo in mandinka). Specifically, they needed help with water retention in the farroo. “Jiyoo man sii faroo-to.” they kept telling me over and over. “The water doesn’t sit in the Farroo.”
This left me with a bit of a down feeling when I was reading over my survey results that evening. The longing for aid in my womens’ faces as they asked me help them grow their most-needed crop flowed across my mind as I laid in bed that night. I was nervous. Faroos – rice paddies – these were things I knew nothing about. Beyond that, I was a health volunteer, not an agriculture volunteer – I hadn’t even received training beyond basic seed beds and pepiniere construction.
From my first day in Fodé Bayo through today, my mothers have been the most influential people in my service and biggest supports to my ideas. But beyond that, they are the only people in my village that are close to really knowing me. Knowing me to the point where when I sit around the dinner fire, watching them cook that evening’s sauce and pounding onions as my menial help, they can tell within a glance at my face if I’m in a good mood or not – if I’m upset or missing the states or feeling lonely.
No one else in my village can see me the way my village moms can, and the one thing they want my help with more than anything else, I know absolutely nothing about.
I know, I know, I’m getting a bit melodramatic. I have access to the interwebs, and libraries and tons of sources of knowledge about rice paddies and their cultivation… I really have nothing to complain about as far as ignorance goes, I know. The thing that gets me though is the specific location of my village and our faroo there; rice paddy research and perfection has happened all over Asia, in Mali, and around India, but in the Sahel? Not so much. What if, after all of my research and discussion with those who know better than myself, I try some new techniques in my village’s faroo and they don’t work? Or worse -they cause a lower yield than the previous year?
Last year around harvest time I wrote a blog post about what rice means to villages in my area; how much it means to spend three back-breaking months working on one field that will grow food that will hopefully be enough to feed you until the next harvest, but rarely ever is.
Ok, I’ll settle down.
One of my village moms leading the way to our faroo. The tools shes carrying are the hand-hoes that we use to till the land.
What I am doing this year, is working with two of my sisters on our own little field in the faroo. There, we will construct burms, or small barriers made of weeds, dirt, and other organic materials found in and around the faroo. Once constructed, these will act as small walls, causing water to stay in among the little burm patches in our rice field, instead of flowing away other lower-lying areas.
This sounds simple, I know, but you must consider the sand of the Sahel before throwing too many judgements my way. The earth here turns into rock between rainy seasons. Sure, you many be able to scratch away a few areas of top-dust, (top-dust, not soil), but once you try to hack deeper than 2 inches, you must grab a pick and whack away at the earth as if you were mining in a cave. Really – the earth here is that dry and strong. Knowing this, it is then easy to understand how the first rains simply roll over the top layers of the ground, only settling to seep in the areas of low-lying land once they can flow no further. In creating burms, we will hopefully keep this water that would previously roll on by, in our own little patch of land so that our rice crop is more plentiful than last year. Simple, I know, but it’s just step one.
One of my village women hacks away at her future faroo - the tilled land behind her is a resutl of six hours of labor.
Burm construction has yet to begin this year, as we are in the tilling-stage of the land. If you want to imagine this back-breaking work, than picture this: the sun is only 98 degrees but the humidity is at 99%. Four acres of land stretch out before you, hardened from nine months of cold and dry weather, waiting to be broken up so that you may attempt to get anything to grow from the land. All you have to plow this land is a simple hand-hoe – a wooden stick about a food long with a wide, flat metal piece shoved into the top end. Bending over fully from your hims, you swing your primordial tool high above your shoulders and crash it down into the hard earth. Chip. Chip. Chip. Flakes of black and red earth flick up in your face, as your single blow reaches only three inches deep – not deep enough for you to actually plant anything. Deep breath, swing high, WHAM, the hoe strikes the earth again. Five inches. Pausing, you glance up at the three other women working on their own five-foot wide areas at the same pace as yourself. In twenty minutes, you will have all moved only ten feet forward. Good progress, but as you gaze out over the acre of land you must plow, it seems but a wisp of earth in a massive terrain of labor.
That is what I’ve been doing with my moms the past few weeks. If the rains begin to cooperate, we will seed soon. Thankfully, among seeding, weeding, and harvesting, nothing carries as much pure labor as hoing the land does, but I’ve never seeded before, so I may be speaking too soon. I keep you updated. Hopefully burms and a higher rice yeild will fit somewhere in all of this.
