Hopf in Niger: Field Work: Training

As I mentioned in a previous blog post – my team is working in the village of Kongu this year to provide grain aid for the villagers without food from last year’s failed harvest and to provide field work training so the villagers can improve this harvests of this year and the future.

Every time I visit this village, I look at the dry and scorched, wind scarred land and I wonder how these people manage to grow any food at all.

When the rainy season comes though, the landscape morphs into a lush and green land – it is oft-times unfathomable that all this life is dormant below the surface . . . waiting for the rains!

This land can grow grain! But, it needs help. You can look across these fields and see the effects of desertification. As I sit here week after week, teaching in the village – I see the sand blow off the fields and you can track the wind pattern on the ground in the scars it leaves behind.

The chief’s son tells me that when his father was a child all their land was like a forest of trees – they lived by roaming these lands with their cows. (He also mentioned once that when his father was a child, the lions lived here . . . I am glad that I do not need to sit in the village and wonder if there is a lion behind yonder scrub bush!)

The Fulani were once a nomadic tribe, yet now, they have settled on land (or are semi-nomadic) and plant fields. This generation is the first to plant fields!

Earlier this month, we divided the village into three teaching locations and held a two-day training with national agents teaching on field work.

The training was done in Djarma (another national language) so I only caught a few basics as I watched the demonstrations.

The first day of teaching, the farmers learned two methods of using a micro-dose of insecticide powder in combination with non-organic fertilizer:

1. micro dose of fertilizer with seed grain

2. non-organic fertilizer

3. digging a hole – mimicking the action of a small wooden hoe

Even though we divided the village into three training sites, in order to reduce the distance some had to walk, there were still those who walked up to five kilometres to the training! (as opposed to 15 km) As the training was two full days, we provided lunch each day, so that the men did not need to walk home for lunch and then back in the afternoon.

I started off the first morning on the chief’s land for the training and ate lunch there before heading off to the second training site for the afternoon. The women set up their kitchen just off the side of the shelter, so we could smell lunch cooking – I wandered over to take pictures. It is quite the process, each pot of the many serving a function: cooking the oil, onions and tomatoes; cooking the rice; cooking the sauce; frying the hot peppers in oil.

For the afternoon, I drove out to the second training site. After a short time, lunch was served here to the teacher (the men having eaten earlier . . . I was confused) but this meant second lunch for me! Culturally, I cannot refuse the food, so I ate again but thankfully it was sufficient this time just to eat a few handfuls to satisfy the cultural politeness.

In the second session, we learned how to use a combination of non-organic and organic fertilizer (yes – manure!) along with a new method of using the fertilizers. The Fulani do use manure – for all through the dry season, their cows, sheep and goats graze their way through the fields, leaving their droppings behind. However, the manure is left on top of the ground, never mixed in with the soil.

For this session – a child of the household was sent out to collect some manure of sheep, goats and chickens from around the hut. Then the teacher taught how to dig a hole, line it with a small amount of non-organic fertilizer and then cover it with manure. This is then left open until the rains come and mix this together – then the seed is planted in the hole and finally covered: