Seven rays
by Stephen Davies
[ places - december 03 ]
According to Fulani legend, the sun has seven rays. Since Creation only one of these rays has been shining on the world, but one day the other six rays will descend and shine, and on that day the very earth will boil like milk in a cauldron. Then the End will come.
It is harvest time and there are four men in the rice field. Bent double, they inch forward in a line, cutting the waist-high rice plants at their bases and laying them down gently on the ground in piles. The straw-coloured stalks will be gathered into sheaves and taken home on a donkey-cart to be threshed. The donkey cart has not yet arrived, though; at sunrise Aadama Maiga went off to borrow one, and he has not returned.
Diallo Hamadou grasps a rice plant in his left hand; it consists of a clump of a dozen stalks, each with its precious cargo of around 30 brown rice grains. In his right hand he holds a tiny scythe, a "Product of Spain" sticker still adhering to its wooden handle. He positions the blade on the far side of the plant and with one swift, powerful movement slices cleanly through the stalks.
Two of the workers in this field are wearing Usama bin Laden T-shirts. One of the designs shows bin Laden mounted (somewhat improbably) on a camel, brandishing a sabre above his head. The other is a close-up of his face: doe-eyed, thin-lipped and resolute. The markets of the Sahel have been flooded with these T-shirts over the past 12 months; they are being printed in Nigeria, probably subsidised from elsewhere. That these harvesters are wearing them does not necessarily indicate support for Al Qa'ida, it is just that the bin Laden T-shirts are considerably cheaper than the Bob Marley or the Zinedine Zidane ones.
Hamadou glances up at the sky and sighs quietly. "Naange na haadi gilla joonin," (The sun is already bitter).
"Na haadi," echoes Ousmane, working alongside him. But it is not even mid-morning yet; the sun is just warming up.
The rice in the surrounding fields is not yet ripe. The stalks stand very upright, the grains on each head small and green. This is a problem because the rainy season has finished and the reservoir which irrigates these fields is empty: its vast basin is dry, except for a pitiful puddle at its centre where small children grope for catfish.
Once again, the sun is the culprit. On a day when it does not rain, the water in the reservoir goes down by about 8cm. Of this, 1cm is the water which is tapped for all the rice fields - when you see it gushing down the irrigation canals all day, even that 1cm seems a colossal volume. The remaining 7cm of water is drunk by the sun; as the day wears on, it simply evaporates into thin air.
By planting early in the season, Hamadou and his group were able to irrigate their rice before the sun stole their water. But his neighbours, who left it late, will be disappointed this year. When they visit their fields and stand in the sun surveying their rice, the thirsty, green plants gaze reproachfully back at them. Hamadou's harvest is a lonely one.
Aadama lurches into view astride a donkey. He is tutting loudly and kicking its sides with both heels to try and goad it into second gear. "Araawa nga wanaa araawa," he says, scowling. (This donkey is not a donkey). He hops down and ties the non-donkey to a small tree, before strolling over to the field. The workers ignore him, probably irritated at his late arrival and unconvinced that it is all the donkey's fault. Aadama whistles softly through his teeth and looks down at the cut rice, which he has to bundle up into sheaves. "Eeey, Naange na haadi." He bends to his work.
Once this rice is transported back home, the men will lay out a large plastic sheet on the ground, and roll metal water barrels into the middle of it. At sunset the threshing will start - by the orange light of paraffin lamps Hamadou and his friends will thwack the stalks over the barrels, showering the sheet with long, brown grains of rice. They will banter and sing and when the work is finished Aadama will stand one of the barrels upright and begin to pound out a harvest rhythm. Still wearing their bin Laden shirts, the others will clamber up onto the mountain of discarded stalks and dance with relief and joy.
For now, though, night-time seems impossibly distant. It is 11.30 and the field glares like an over-exposed photograph. There is not a breath of wind. The workers squint down at their scythes, each one occupied by his own thoughts. Bare feet crunch quietly over a mosaic of cracked earth; blades crunch quietly through dry, brittle stalks. "Naange," breathes Hamadou. There is nothing else to say.
It is astonishing just how hot a single ray can be.
