Rainy Season Comes to Mali

Its that time of year again; the season where the work just piles up and yet, most volunteers are bored out of their minds. Its raining in Mali.

In my area, the rains started coming sporadically in late June, but since then there is a steady downpour every other day. The rest of the time the weather is still pretty warm (if not downright humid, Miami-style) and the bugs are plenty. Thankfully, I've been gone from my village for a lot of the season already, although I don't mind the rainstorms so much; Mali has some terrific thunderstorms. The problem with rainy season is what happens after the rains: my village is turned into a sea of mud, and everyone heads for their fields. In a way, I rather enjoy the eerie quiet that has descended here. Its the first time in months that I haven't woken to the sound of my neighbors'pounding grain, or the kids on their way to school. The flip side is there is pretty much nothing to do. Its near impossible to get people together for meetings, and forget getting women to sit down for 10 minutes to talk about health problems. So most of the past week I have sat at the health center shooting the shit or in my hut, reading. Most villagers also think its pretty entertaining to try to get me to their fields. Nearly everyone I encounter wants me to go help them farm; the idea that I have no idea how to farm, much less African-style, does not register with them. How do I explain that I can't tell the difference between a weed and a peanut plant? They can't fathom the idea that I have never farmed, because everyone knows how to farm. I can't make them understand that I come from a city so large, there are no farms for miles. I am a city girl, born and raised, and proud of it, furthermore. But in all fairness, I did go out farming once or twice. And it is hard; more than that, its back-breaking. I know a little bit about farming, even if I don't know how to do it myself; my mothers' family is still in California's Central Valley, after all. The two have nothing to do with the other. Basically, there is no mechanized labor in Mali- everything is done by hand. Their hoes literally consist of a foot-long piece of wood with a crude metal spade attached. There is some access to pesticides and fertilizer here, but hardly used to the extent they are in the West. Because of this, most farmers are limited to farming small plots of land; mainly peanuts, millet and corn. I helped weed a peanut field for a few hours, and afterwards I was completely exhausted. I don't know how people here do it, day after day, but they do, and sometimes they grow just enough to feed themselves and a little to sell.

Frankly I think that if aid is going to help, it has to focus a lot more attention on the agriculture sector. Most of Mali's population is involved in farming, one way or the other, and unless better methods are introduced the poverty cycle seems likely to continue. I'm not advocating handing a tractor out to every farmer- that would be disastrous- but small changes may make big impacts.