Farming Notes, Quotes

“Farming here is like the lottery,” says our language teacher. But over 80% of the population depends on this farming/lottery system! We had just mentioned to our teacher that we heard it was better when the rains come late here, because then farmers plant at the beginning of the rains and their crops get the abundance of water that usually comes late in the rainy season for good production. If rains come early, farmers plant early, and then are stuck with dying crops if the rest of the rain holds off till the late heavy period. Our teacher agreed, but said farmers are told this, but they still will plant their crops early if some rain comes early. In fact, he said he will too. Because sometimes if the rains start early, they also end early, so if you listened to advice and waited till the normal time to plant, you will be left with not a long enough growing period. Since no one knows what will actually happen with the rains, only God, then they’d rather trust God to provide continued rain for them than be guessing on human generated “probabilities.” So it’s like the lottery but trusting that God will give you help…

That means we’re praying the rains hold off till later for the farmers’ sake, but we’re also hoping the rain will come early to bring some coolness for our sake! We heard from a friend that the radio said it has been the hottest dry season that they’ve had here for 40 years… It’s been hot, but that’s still a little hard to believe. It definitely got hot here earlier in February than what most people remember, and recently we’ve had regular temps above 110F. Our best way to stay cool without AC is to wet our clothing or sheets and we are grateful for our generator to turn the fans when the electricity goes off.

-- El Padre