Farming in Africa

 It is just before the rainy season here in Rundu and that means it is planting time for many people. There are only a few amount of people that participate in the planting even though this part of Namibia, the Kavango Region, has some of the most fertile farmland in all of Namibia. The people that are fortunate enough to have land must travel very far out of the village to get to their farmland and then they live on the farmland until the planting is finished which can be a number of weeks.

The traditional way of farming in this area has been to “slash and burn” weeds to clear the farmland and then plow the land. Often the people have to hire someone that owns oxen or a tractor to come and plow the land. This is an expense that takes much of their profit from the last years season.

This past week AIM brought an expert to hold farming workshops that show farming techniques and practices that are geared for low income people in this type of environment. Carl traveled from Capetown, South Africa to join us here in Rundu and talk to the people of the Kaisosi village about farming.

Carl is part of a ministry called “Farming God's Way”, www.farming-Gods-way.org. “Farming God's Way” is a workshop based ministry that comes along side people and shows them the proper techniques to farm in a Christ centered way. As I said earlier the traditional methods of farming in this area is to “slash and burn”. In the minds of the people the burning is to rid the land of weeds and termites. However, the Farming God's Way method says that termites are not the enemy of the land and in fact termites and insects are good as long as they are not eating your crops. The best way to get the termites to not eat the crops is to provide the termites something else to eat...“God's blanket”. God's blanket is dead organic brush that is placed on top of the field after the field is planted. The blanket provides a land covering that will greatly reduce erosion, hold moisture in the ground, and also provides the insects something to eat. Another big part of farming God's way is to respect the land and give thanks to God for providing the land and praying over your crops. As Carl said during the workshop there is no way to know the type of injustices that have been done on the land and the sins that were committed on the the land especially in the area we are in because in the past there was a great amount of fighting and bloodshed between Angola and Namibia in this area.

 

There were two sessions of the workshop put on, the first was Friday and Saturday and the second was Monday and Tuesday mornings. The group on Friday and Saturday was a younger group that really embraced the Farming God's Way methods. It is very exciting to see the group eagerly anticipate the upcoming planting season so they can plant using Farming God's Way methods. Even though it will be hard for many of them to negotiate with their families and community to switch to this method of planting they are excited to try the methods on a small portion of land and hopefully show the difference in the crop yield. Where so many times new methods are not received well in Africa it was encouraging to see them get so excited about the teachings. Please pray for the people that attended the workshops as they go into their growing season. We pray that the methods that were taught can be attempted and that the crop yield will be greater this year.

During the second session when we were out in the field demonstrating to the people how to plant all of a sudden someone yelled snake! Everyone dropped what they were doing and ran to where the yelling came from. We all saw the snake in the weeds and the two guys with hoes started swinging at the snake. The snake was going moving around all over the place and finally found a tree that it began to climb up. The tree wasn't very tall so the snake did not have anywhere to go to get over. Once the snake got in the tree everyone started picking up rocks and throwing them at the snake in the tree. There were some direct hits but it is more amazing no one got hit by a rock because there were people on both sides of the trees throwing rocks in either direction. The snake was finally hit enough to make it fall from the tree and one of the guys with the hoe was able to kill the snake. It was interesting to see all the men instantly drop what they were doing to kill the snake. Even some of the mamas got in there to pitch a rock at the snake. I guess in a region where most of the snakes are poisonous it is better to take a snake out then chance the snake biting a child from the nearby playground. 

Julie and I kind of forgot that this week is Thanksgiving!  It really doesn't feel like the holidays when the weather is so warm.  However I must say it has been very nice here lately and not as hot.  Well it is either not that hot or we are actually getting used to the temperatures.

Julie and I would like to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!  We miss you all and are SO thankful for the support and prayers of our family and friends!  Eat some turkey for us!  We are thinking about having a Thanksgiving celebration this weekend with some of the other missionaries and some of our friends from the village.  Those plans are still in the works.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!