Field Work - Part 2

Last month, I wrote about the field work training in a village south of Niamey - following that two-day training, I headed off with the trainer to another village just North of the city.  We are in the beginning stages of development work in this village, so the training here is back to the first level: how to prune trees.

This knowledge is valuable in a few aspects:

1.  This village land could be the "poster-child" for desertification.  The soil is wind-swept and cracked dry - you can look across the fields and see the scars in the land as you track the wind patterns throught the field.

By learning how to prune trees, they can build up the wind break on their land.  The trainer also taught how the clippings can be left on the land in the scarred area to build up the soil. 

As the wind sweeps across the land, the soil it carries will catch and gather among the clippings and help rebuild the soil base after a year.

Even after one night, you can begin to see the difference:

2.  As the trees grow stronger and with more branches, eventually the trees will be large enough to produce wood for the field owner - wood that can be used for their cooking fires and wood that
can be sold in a time of need for income.

Recently, the village chief son told me the story of their village land - when his father was a young child, this land was like a forest; and they roamed the land with their cattle.  It was land they occupied with giraffes and lions.  When it became evident that they would need to settle semi-permanently and plant fields in order to survive in the changing world and economy . . . they cleared the land of trees to create field land.  Unwittingly, they created the effect of desertification on their land, and today after many years of soil erosion, this village has a consistent and almost yearly poor to average harvest.  The years of drought and grasshopper infestation, worms and birds eating their crops aside - their harvest on a good year is insufficient to feed their family until the new year's harvest.

We pray that as we begin to bring in more teaching on field work, that their harvests will begin to improve.  It is a slow journey that may take 3-5 years to see a return for their work - and we pray that they will remain steady in the task of applying what the Fulani trainers from the East can teach them.

The training in light of the proverb: "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime."  We could search every year for funds or partners to feed the villagers during the lean months of May - October, but that is not enough.  For one day, if we are not here, they are back in the problem they have always found themselves in - lack of food.  The villagers say "there is always hunger".  And we long to see the day when their fields produce a harvest sufficient for them to say "there is enough food".