A Day Planting Rice

Yesterday Lorrie and I had the pleasure of going out to the rice fields with Lucy Lambal and her hired workers. The day started by us waiting at Lucy's aunts house while she gathered supplies and her workers. Lucy's husband was the only son and he inherited large rice patties. Lucy and Joe had four children who are all still rather young. The work is divided up between women's tasks and men's task. The planting of the rice is a task for the women, while the digging of the fields in preparation is a task for the men. Lucy's daughter is only four years old so each year Lucy must hire workers to plant her rice. We went along to help.

The hired workers rove in bands of women from similar age groups. We were working with a group of single women from Dvante. Each family pays all the group 5,000 cfa 0r $10 for a full days work on their fields. Then at the end of the season all of the money made is used for a big party for the group. There were similar groups that we saw from other villages of different age groups working for families.

We followed the long line of 50 or so girls out to Lucy's patties, hiking our skirts to cross a river and walking through stagnant smelly mud and traversing precarious passages between the patties. We where then given our first rice planting lesson. Lucy stood between Lorrie and I and gave us each a handful of blades of grass with the rice root at the bottom. You take one blade and use your thumb to push it down into the mud. Five across and five down. Over and over and over again all day long. The girls with us were like machines. Zoom Zoom Zoom. Meanwhile Lorrie and I were working very so dutifully to make sure each was planted well in it's hole.

After about an hour of work, breakfast was delivered. Unfortunately bees were delivered as well. Swarms of them followed the hot bucket of milk and sugar and the bags of bread with chocolate inside. What a shame it was for Lucy who was bound and determined to drink her coffee and eat her bread. I was given a cup of milk that after two seconds of bees landing all over my hand dumped out and gave back the cup. I had to watch that no bees landed on my bread and went into my mouth. I did later step on a bee and that gave me start, and oh man did it hurt. Poor Lucy. I felt so bad as she ran from the bees to try and drink her coffee.

We kept plugging away with the girls. Lorrie and I each attached ourselves to one of the older girls and followed them through the fields so we would no where to stand and plant our seedlings. The whole day bent over knee deep in mud, elbow deep in water. Lorrie was just talking about what breeding ground this would be for leeches when screaming was heard and low and behold, there were leeches in the mud. Who woulda thought.

We worked until about 5 p.m. With the girls and then Lucy led us back across the fields towards home. It was a long and wonderful day.