Chikankata is located 30 km from the nearest town. In
this rural area, Zambians support themselves through subsistence farming.
Chikankata is located 30 km from the nearest town. In
this rural area, Zambians support themselves through subsistence farming.
| The "cattle savers" have come, the
rains which begin the greening of the bush. They are called such because,
previous to the rains, cattle literally starve as there is no grass to feed
on. The countryside is brown, dry, filled with swirling dust.
Without the early October rain the cattle will not have enough strength
to plough when the rains begin in earnest in November. Without the
strength of the cattle, there will not be much corn planted and the people
will go hungry.
Now it is grey, overcast, moist and cool with the rich heady scent of rain. The wind is from the west, instead of the incessant monotonous prevailing easterly. The frogs and toads in the school pool announced the rains weeks ago with loud orgies of croaking, spewing forth copious quantities of eggs and tadpoles. With nets we fish out the young to dessicate in the hot sun so that we could swim, only to do the same a week later. But their fecundity has limits (though the croaking seems to have none) and we reclaim the pool. Venus, baleful and bright, burns in the western sky after nightfall. Jupiter and Mars are about to make their meeting directly overhead and Scorpio is beginning to sink. It's comforting to see the stately sure movement of the heavens in their orbits. I will sorely miss their reassuring steadiness with the coming rains. The Tonga have almost finished their cabbage and leafy greens growing. Their vegetable fields were hand irrigated, but now the harvested greens lie out to dry before the coming rainy season makes it too wet, pest and weed filled to grow vegetables easily. But there is still time for tomatoes. So mulberries, stripped of their fruit by a hundred purpled hands (and mouths), become stakes for the young plants. |
