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Green: Generally food secure
Yellow: Moderately Food Insecure Orange: Highly Food Insecure Red: Extremely Food Insecure Black: Famine Gray: No Data
(My village is in the "yellow zone" on this map)
8/19/08 What "moderately insecure" actually feels like:
IT RAINED! Finally! After three long weeks of not-a-drop, after which the millet had gone brittle and yellow and slouchy in the fields, the sky finally filled with cloudy water balloons that popped above us. Mun gode Allah! Thank god! Sunday morning at 4 AM--wait it was Monday-- wind and splatter drops woke me and brought me indoors, where I sat and listened to the downpour begin. It is fabulous news, the best thing for farmers far and wide--everyone is talking about it, and praising God and smiling skywards. We got a good soaking! And then, not two hours later, another storm came through. So there is a sigh of relief shared by the thousand or so of us in town.
My roof is a little more waterproof since Ayuba and Shaibu fixed it up, but it still leaks in several spots, so I'm getting good at timing when I need to move and/or empty water buckets, pots, and cups that I rotate from drop to drop. One way you can gauge how hard it rained is by the number of household articles set out to dry in the sun the next day: clothes, mats, mattresses. This morning all of the contents of Narba's little hut were strewn about her concession! And yet no one complains because the blessing of rain for the harvest trumps all, even the caving in of mud walls and huts that I saw this afternoon.
7/14/08
On Wednesday morning I accompanied my friend Amu out to the fields where her husband Habibu and his brothers Ayuba and Zabairu were working. Wait--I should explain what these rainy season days are like; it will give you an idea of how people spend their time now. The last few weeks I have awakened at 4AM to the sound of women pounding millet to make hura (millet, milk, and hot pepper drink) for their husbands and sons to drink before heading to the fields at 6. Once the men and boys all leave, the women continue pounding for the rest of the day's meals, plus they pull water and wash clothes as usual. At around 10:00 AM, one or two women from each household will carry (on her head, in a big round gourd the color of dry grass) more hura and tuwo (millet mush with sauce--think polenta, that's about the right consistency) to the fields for the guys to eat during breaks; this is what they'll have to eat until they come home. Depending on how many women and girls are in a family, sometimes the hura/tuwo carriers will stay out in the fields and work the rest of the day, until everyone comes in at about 4 or 5 PM. If there aren't many girls in a family, they'll have to come home right away to make food for dinner, gather firewood, pull more water, and take the cows and goats out to forage. (I finally figured out that at noon each day, women herd all their animals out of their concessions, through the streets, and to the giant puddle outside the village to drink, eat the new grass, and I guess, socialize. This explains the mooing ruckus that surprises me every day about 11:30: the animals are reminding us that they are ready and waiting! The animals stay out until around 6, when they seem to find their way back, or are rounded up by their people. It's cool to be out and watch the goats and sheep charge for home, each one knowing exactly where to turn off.)
06/07/08My village has changed since the rains came. I am sad to have missed those first big rains. It was enough to fill the seasonal lake east of the village, and everyone has planted their fields! The millet is already several inches tall. I don't know how much water it needs to make it to harvest, but I am sure it can't hurt to hope for more rain. Last year the rains came early, everyone planted, and then it was so long before the next rain that some of the crops died and people had to plant again. It wasn't disastrous, but I hope it doesn't happen that way this year. In some places, something akin to grass is even growing. I am reminded of how normal it is for the ground to be green at home, and how special it is here. For five months, all my feet have touched is sand.
Click on the photo, taken on a road near Maradi in August, 2005, originally uploaded by More Altitude. Read the description of the food crisis at that time.
Estimated food security conditions, 4th Quarter 2008 (October-December)
