Zoumana

ZOUMANA

The sun was lowering on the horizon, bathing the Mali landscape in
long, dark shadows. Little streaks of light were steadily shrinking
from the roofs of the ramshackle farm buildings, slipping out of the
gates and across the fields. Rippling as it pulled back over stubble
remains of crops.
The millet had finally been harvested and Zoumana studied the darkening
landscape with tired eyes. His son, Doumbia, had already retired,
exhausted by the last weeks work. The harvest had been a better than
average one, though the price for the yield never fairly reflected the
work that went into it. He was fortunate among his generation and had
learnt to read and saw reports from around the world about how farmers
were finding times difficult, and in a world where life was truly hard
the laughs from Zoumana were worth a thousand acres of land.
He looked over to his plough, a cobbled together item, made from parts
of a Renault, and then over to his sons' room inside the plain
farmhouse.
Doumbia was nearly twenty. Zoumana had been fifteen when his father
died and he had taken over. He blessed Allah for his long life, at
thirty-nine he was old-aged. Most men died about forty. His wife, Kadja
had died in the childbirth that bore him his son and for the most part
working the land had been a tough ordeal.
He therefore had little time for farmers that thought they had it hard,
but he doubted he would swap his life for theirs or go into another
career.
He was a guardian for a generation. Trying to feed the hungry, working
harder through times when crops were failing, crying for every child
that he saw, belly distended with malnutrition and ravaged by flies.
Although he only had one son, they were all his children. Their mothers
and fathers, his sisters and brothers. It was a common suffering and a
common happiness when the harvest was in and all could eat.
He looked at the sun, now three-quarters down. It's heat still caused a
haze that caused the air to distort and ripple, turning it into a
hundred shades of red, orange and purple. The sun, a giver and taker of
so much life on this continent, blurred and angry-looking, stretching
and pulling from its' regular circular shape into an oval.
In the next week they would turn the land. Plough it over, spread
manure, keep the desert from closing in one more season. The great
swathes of the Sahara always threatening. Deforestation from over the
mountains had seen the soil eroded and the great sands encroaching.
Every year was a struggle to keep the dust down, keep the soil fertile
and the crops coming in.
Even five years ago it all looked hopeless. He remembered a buzz around
the village one day. It was a strange kind of atmosphere. The crops had
just failed. The rains had not materialised, the river was low and
everyone felt great despair. Doumbia had just finished schooling and
had returned home. In a time of draught and food shortage the extra
mouth was never seen as a burden. In fact he had come back with books
and ideas from other areas. He had taken farming to heart and had
studied the subject intensely.
He remembers his son telling him that in times when there was no water
from the sky that it would need to be dug out. He told him of water
tables, and how having one would attract herders with cattle to stop
by. They were also searching for water for their animals. By using them
and keeping their manure to spread on the land, by wetting it with
water from the well they could increase their yield.
It is said that you do not inherit land from your father, he borrows it
from his children. It is something that must be protected and handed
down, looked after until the next tenant takes over and looks after it
for his children. His child had grown up and it would soon be time for
him to look after the land. But the boy helped the father, worked on
the farm and taught the older man to read.
One day they read that the government was inviting people to Segou to
speak to someone with ideas that may increase their farming yield still
further. They had been in turmoil with several poor yields in a short
space of time. People were dying of starvation. Aid was coming in, but
much of it was spirited away and their nation, and several surrounding
countries were desperate to be self-sufficient again.
Zoumana listened to this man from a foreign country explaining how
crops could be altered to grow faster and more resistant to weather and
disease. He talked of greater yield in smaller areas, and how people
would live longer and healthier as a result.
They went home again, feeling that their families would all have
brighter futures.
Some months later Doumbia read a report into how farmers in Europe were
resisting these new crops. How they were described as mutant food, and
the perils that they carried with them. He could not understand how
people had reached these conclusions. He had studied farming for most
of his education and the one thing he had learnt was that plant and
animal life had always been engineered ever since people had begun to
farm.
Zoumana sat down with him one evening and saw the worried creases on
his sons' forehead.
Doumbia explained it all and Zoumana nodded, looked serious and then
laughed. Doumbia loved hearing his father laugh. It wasn't entirely
rare, he laughed quite often, but it was always a comforting laugh.
Something that somehow filled him with hope.
Zoumana explained to him that Europeans didn't have a clue how to farm.
They wasted almost as much as they grew, claimed money for crops they
didn't grow at all, complained about never having enough money, then
complained when someone introduced something that would make them money
and make farming easier.
His son grew angry at first. He was amazed how much waste there was in
the world and how people in Africa were dying whilst farmers in other
countries were being paid to keep fields empty. Angry at their
ignorance and at how stopping the introduction of new plants endangered
future families in his country. He despaired at what he had read and
heard.
Zoumana was still relaxed though. As older people often do, he saw the
world differently. He talked some more to his son, telling him that
nobody could stop something that had been going on so long. That new
ideas would replace old ideas as new people replaced old people. It was
not up to others to feed their people, it was up to themselves, and he
would try anything that helped secure the future.
The next season genetically modified millet was introduced. It was
short-cycle, which meant that it took less time to grow, was much
hardier and produced more. Nomadic herders would stop over to drink
from the well, feed their cattle with millet, and then hand over manure
to fertilise the soil.
Four seasons on it was still a hard life. Farming had become a more
organised business. Crops still occasionally failed, though they could
grow more cycles a year, droughts still occurred, though the first
well, followed a few years later by a second one kept any water
shortage to a minimum. But Zoumana was still there. Doumbia was still
there, and the farm was still there. Still holding back the desert,
still something that they borrowed from their children.