A couple of genuine, drenching rain sessions and Zambia has woken up into farming mode so going out into the bush on home visits, the view has changed dramatically.
Most of the trees are evergreens and some other plants seem to have sensed the rains' imminent arrival and greened up in anticipation but the obvious change is in the level of human activity in the landscape. Some ploughing and soil preparation has been going on for a month or more but now it seems everyone's out, preparing, fertilising and sowing.
This is for the maize crop, the staple foodstuff of Zambia and other Southern African countries, eaten as a stiff porage, nshima here in Zambia, sadza in Zimbabwe and mealie-pap in South Africa. Other foods will be grown during the rainy season: groundnuts, beans, potatoes (both sweet and 'irish'), carrots, cabbage, okra, spinach and many more.
Plants can also be grown out of the rainy season but only by those with access to water for irrigation, either on a small scale by those living near a dam (reservoir) or river or on a larger scale by the large commercial farms which are fully mechanised.
Soil preparation is done by ploughing (tractor or oxen) or by hand, using a 'hoe' to make softened lines, neatly and evenly-spaced, ready for the fertiliser and seeds. The face of the countryside is changed from a dusty, dry tangle of old maize stalks, branches and leaves to an ordered, mainly brown terrain with the detritus of the last harvest cleared away. This, coupled with the freshness in the air brought by the cooler weather and the lovely wet, bring about a sudden change to this land. You can almost smell the hope in the air, anticipating the harvest already though this is still some months away.
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