Skip to main contentShow accessibility statement
Change the world with your donation

Meeting the early rains

M. N. Ziblim
M. N. Ziblim wrote on 23-05-2011

As the early morning sun rises and children begin to chase butterflies in the emerging green environment, M ma Neena (mother Neena) begins to ponder over what awaits her in this season, will it be the usual routine???. The early ains have just started coming and farmers are busily planning and making preliminary preparations to start ploughing their fields. As the season is at the infancy, most women peasants are busily negotiating with the menfolk for land to start their farming entreprises. The lucky ones will get good and fertile lands while the rest may be given "just land" for their farming activities. They will have to look for tractors or bullocks to plough the fields, seed and them start the hard labour of weeding the farms. In this direction, a woman who is already overburdened with the daily household jobs (that she offer for free to the family) has the additional task of doing all these hard jobs to be able to make significant impact on the farm. This even becomes more burdensome if she is carrying a little baby at her back.

At the end season, she may either smile at the end produce or carry her heavy face back home and start praying for survival for the rest of the year. This is due to the fact that extension and input support to women farmers are very low and most women depend entirely on their own initiatives to endure the hard task of the farming season. This project intends to reverse these and to make agriculture and farming more rewarding to women. Your support and efforts in any form will help to reduce the burden on these women and enable them find joy and honour in peasant farming.