The Great Flood of the Dry Season

During the second week of January, while over at my jatigi's concession, my host father's brother, Badama, pointed out into the fields. I looked, and was shocked to find what looked like a large lake spread across the fields as far as I could see! A huge body of water, a flood... and it hasn't rained a drop since early October! How could this happen?

My friend Daouda takes his 'misiw wɔtɔrɔ', filled with 'malo kala' (rice stalks), through the flood waters. A motorcycle passes by, in waters past knee level.

Turns out, each year when the rice growing season is over, water is drained from the rice fields and spills into the surrounding fields. Most years, this water is fairly minimal and has no real impact. This year, however, the water that spilled out from fields around the village of Tiby, about 15 km away, caused some fairly substantial flooding.

The flood waters around my village.

My friend Aliwata told me that the last time the flood waters came close to this significance was about 15 years ago. But Basolo, a young man who has spent time working in the fields of Tiby, told me that this may now be a yearly occurrence.

Last year, the Chinese completed a new road which runs from Soke, through Tiby, and into my market town of Yolo. When they built this new road, they also built a dike to prevent waters from flooding out this road. The consequence of this, however, is that the flood waters are now forced into a different direction, that being my village.

The flood waters have made work difficult. These kids were unable to coax this donkey to cross the waters, and had to turn around.

At their deepest, the waters reached between knee and waist deep, and blanketed all roads leaving my village to the West, North, and East to a length of about a football field. It made travel around the area difficult, especially out to the rice fields where work was currently ongoing. But thankfully, after a couple of weeks, the waters stopped coming, and with the exception of holes/depressions along the ground, the land is now dry. It wasn't all bad - the added water may actually improve the soil for next season's crops.

Ashimi, a 'cɛkɔrɔba' (elder man) has a garden on the perimeter of the village. His family had built a mud house there for them to stay in while working the garden. The flood waters reached waist-deep along the walls. Fortunately, they were able to build a dike around the perimeter which saved the building from collapse. These kids are running back from checking out the waters around the house.

The flood waters were not only hard on work animals. Lassana, the man on the left, is Ashimi's son and found a large rodent which drowned in it's den.