While taking a bath on a cold morning in my outdoor roofless bathroom is about the only time I curse the rain and do feel entitled to do so. In a country in which only 5.3% of the 3.8 million farms are irrigated, rain rules all. Talk of climate change has not yet seeped into every conversation here, but ask a farmer about the rain and you will learn that in the past generation the rainy season has just become unreliable. Its not that it now starts later or ends sooner; you just don’t know what the year will bring. Farmers cannot predict it.
Above are 2 forecasts for the South/Central Regions of Mozambique, the first one published in July 2010 and the second in April 2011, both by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET). Notice that there are about 4 months of overlap between the two timelines (Jan-Apr 2011). This is the general seasonal cycle for South/Central Mozambique. You’ll notice that the Rainy Season (blue) coincides with summer in Mozambique which stretches from October to April. This past season (’10-’11) it began raining in my town (northern central region) in late November and stopped in mid-April. It was a good rain year considering the past few, though ideally rains begin in late October to facilitate seed sowing in mid-November and maximize time growing in the summer heat, which never comes late. However, in the ’09-’10 season, the rains delayed until December and then dumped hard for just over one month, and then nothing. This drought killed farm production yields in May 2010 when corn/maize is harvested. The low yields then in turn meant less money in the farmers’ pockets or less reserve food at home. Since this ‘1st Harvest’ (green) is the primary harvest of the year it made the rest of the year tough. That is why on the first timeline Oct ’10 – Feb ’11 is marked as the ‘Hunger Season’ (red). During those months, just after the later and short vegetable season of August to October, the rains had just begun to fall and seeds were just barely in the ground. That means there is little to eat since besides foraged leaves, stored dried beans, and dried cassava. However those months are also busy; filled with the work of getting seeds planted and fields weeded. All the time hoping that that first big rain will be followed by another big rain within a few days so that the newly germinated seeds will have water to access. If they dry out, then the seed will be lost.
I am thankful that I have a salary which affords me food imported to my town, and that I, in the one season I witnessed this, was not submissive to the rain’s rule. But I felt the tension of those that were. Eyes always skyward. Talk always of the last time the rain fell and if it was good. Prayers that during those first precious weeks illness or injury not fall upon a household. Then a scurry to get the last fields sown only in time to fight the weeds in the first.
What is or is not accomplished in the beginning of the rainy season influences how the next one will play out, but ultimately it is the rain that decides how the next year will fall. This last year the rains fell good here, and dampened the end of the season. People were relieved to be satisfied. Because of this the rainy season, to begin later this year, will merely coincide with a ‘Lean Season’.
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