Climbing Asarahai

Lohutok, Sudan

This morning, I gave a talk at the clinic.  It was not very difficult.  I talked about Matthew 5: 21 - 22 and 43 - 46.  I tried to bring out that God demands not just obedience to a few rules, but perfection of deed and thought.  I used a scripture about loving enemies because the Lotuko waste no love on the Taposa.  I was trying to follow the example of Jesus who demanded of the rich young ruler the very thing he was least willing to do.  I wrote my message out ahead of time in simple English so it would be easy for Michael to translate into Lotuko.

Brian Arensen and I left right after my talk to climb Asarahai.  It was about 10:00 am.  Asarahai is the mountain also known as "Three Sisters" because of its three peaks.  The first half of the way was easy going.  There was a good path to follow.  But the last half of the way we had to bushwhack our way through shoulder high grass and bamboo groves.  At the top, we were turned back three times by cliffs before we found a way to the peak.  It was a hard hike and we did not bring enough water.  We arrived at the top about 1:30 pm and ate our lunch.  We started down around 2:30 pm.  We did not find the path again.  We were walking cross-wise along the slopes which gave me blisters on my feet.  I ripped the knee of my jeans.  I was very thirsty. tired, weak and rubbery-kneed.  I was also very wet as we got rained on.  We finally got to Ahaba, the mountain field, and I knew the way back from there.  We arrived home at 6:00 pm.  The bed will feel great tonight!

Photo: Asarahai (left) and Lodyo (right) 

Photo: A closer view of Asarahai's peaks

Photo:  Me standing at the top of Asarahai

Photos:  Three views from the top of Asarahai

A Monkey Trap

Lohutok, Sudan

The plane left this morning.  After that, I walked up the valley to our west.  I walked for a ways up the dry, sandy stream bed.  As the stream got rockier, there was water babbling through it.  Parts of the stream were quite pretty with boulders and rocks, pools of clear water, small waterfalls, tiny rapids and grass and trees overhanging the bank.  After about forty-five minutes of walking, I came to the mountain gardens near the head of the valley.  The place seemed drier and sandier than Ahaba.  There was quite a bit of ometi (bullrush millet) mixed in with the osingo (sorghum).  I walked up to a small hut built up in one of the lower fields and said "mong" (a Lotuko greeting) to the young girls who were there.  I always get amusing reactions when I do that.  They were cooking some angiria (sorghum porridge).  I climbed up a rock for quite a ways.  People in some of the fields below me were playing flutes, pounding a drum and singing.

I saw a monkey trap made from a rock, sticks, bark string and a bit of sorghum used as bait.  The following sketch of the trap is my best attempt, but is not quite accurate.  I am not a very good artist.  If the monkey pulls the sorghum, the sticks propping up the rock fall allowing the rock to tumble and pin the monkey's arm.

I saw a young man and woman on a rock in the shade near a sorghum field.  They were talking and smiling.  It was the closest thing I have seen to romance so far.  The man was eating some holé  (or ahulé?) and gave me some to try.  It was a clearly a cucumber, but much shorter and chunkier than the ones we have in the U.S.A.

This afternoon, Martha, Marcia, Brian and I walked over to Lohofan.  This is the place to our east which reminds me of Buttermilk Falls in Ithaca, New York.  (There is photo of this area  at my blog entry dated June 27, 1980.)  I should mention that Brian Arensen is Lanny's younger brother.  He is  here on a short visit.

Additional Information About Crops

Lohutok, Sudan

I went to the mountain garden, Ahaba, this morning.  There are still very few weeds and little weeding has been done.  Low weed pressure is apparently one advantage in the first year after clearing trees in the mountains.  Some of the tall sorghum is heading.  Some of the maize (corn) is tasseling and looks very good.  Much of it has two ears per stalk though the ears are quite a bit smaller than we would expect in the United States.

  

My house is off to a good start at its new site.  Lanny decided it would be better if it were closer to the other houses, so we moved its location.  Samuel is putting tin on his roof today.

Photos: Construction on my house begins.

  

I talked with Tobia today.  I got the names of more types of sorghum and groundnuts.  I added them to my entry of Tuesday, 8 July 1980.  I will repeat the new information here also.

  

Red Sorghums:

Akunati - Tall, red, goose-necked.

Obilet - Tall, red.

  

Groundnuts (peanuts):  

Atuye - Bush type.

Elonge - Bush type. Very big brown nuts. Must be dug to harvest.

Logum - Bush type.  Like atuye, but big nuts.

Aheto - Bush type.  White nuts.  Many nuts in each shell.

Amakarara - Big shell like kabir.  Bush type.  Must be dug to harvest.

  

Maize (corn):

Etuyet - A type of oseri which is short and has one-ear.

  

Refer to the Tuesday, 8 July 1980 entry for a more complete list of crop varieties.

  

Tobia said some groundnuts must be dug with hoes while others can just be pulled.  The types which must be dug are elonge, amakarara, kabir and aful.  Tobia planted aful and atuye this year.  He had no seed for amilo as his was destroyed by the sun last year.  Amilo is planted about 2 weeks after other groundnuts.  The things he said about it seemed to indicate that it is less drought tolerant or else photoperiod sensitive.

One would expect that with so much variation to work with, crop breeding programs would have a good chance of success with sorghum and with groundnuts.

Interviewing Josiah About Lotuko Agriculture

Lohutok, Sudan
 
It rained most of the morning and some of the afternoon.  I read the rest of the CIMMYT publication about rapid surveys for planning agricultural innovation or research.  It motivated me to start structuring what I am doing.  I need to get crackin' on a thesis outline revision and some tentative ideas for a formal survey.
 
I talked to Josiah this afternoon.  Tomorrow they are going to have a meeting after church to form a cooperative for buying grain.  The grain can be purchased from Equatoria Trading Commission which is headquartered in Juba.  The grain can be purchased in Juba for 15 Sudanese pounds or in Torit for 22 pounds.  That compares with the merchants' price of 30 or 36 pounds.
 
Josiah told me that there is no person in authority who allocates the gardens.  Apparently, for the mountain gardens, a group of people decide they will make gardens in a certain place.  If someone wants to go along with them, he can.  They then, as a group, decide the boundaries of each person's garden.  Josiah says that there is plenty of land.  I guess that is why there can be such an informal arrangement for deciding who gets what and how much land.
 
According to Josiah, there is shifting cultivation out on the plains as well as the mountains.  That makes sense.  In the valley, cultivation is continuous.  On the mountains, fields can be farmed for 2 to 4 years with a 10 year fallow.  On the plains, fields can be cultivated for 3 to 6 years with a 15 or maybe 20 year fallow.  Weeds are the problem which necessitates rotating to fallow on the plains.  Weeds are not so big a problem on the mountains.  This I have observed.  I wonder why the cultivation period and the fallow period both are shorter on the mountains?  Faster nutrient cycling?  More rain?
 
There are 7 clans in Lohutok by Josiah's count.  A given clan does not live in a particular village.  Neither do village or clan divisions determine who goes together to clear a garden such as on the mountain.  One can only marry someone from a different clan.
 
Cattle, goats, sheep and chickens are owned individually.  Some people apparently have quite a few cattle and goats while others have few or none.  During the civil war, the Arabs and Taposa took or killed the animals.  Since then, the herds had to be built up from nothing.  When someone accumulated enough money he could perhaps buy a goat.  That is how the recovery began.
 
I get the impression that there are gender roles but that they are not strictly adhered to.  Hoeing the gardens tends to be done by men but women also hoe.  The women tend to be the ones who gather the weeds into piles if my observations are representative.  When planting is done with communal labor, it is the owner and his best friend and their wives who gather the weeds into bunches according to Josiah.  It is very important to take up all the weeds so they do not regerminate or prevent the crop from starting by smothering it.  (Apparently this is not true in some areas of the Imatong mountains.)  Weeding may also be done collectively.  For collective labor the owner of the garden must provide food and beer.  Weeding tends to be done by women but I have seen many men do the weeding also.
 
During school hours, children who do not go to school guard crops from monkeys and birds.  The children who go to school are supposed to relieve them by guarding the crops after school hours.  If all children went to school, I do not know how this job would get done.  It is not uncommon for a family with 4 children to put 2 in school and keep 2 at home to work.  Compulsory eduction and crop protection could be very conflicting goals.
 
Josiah said that perhaps three-fourths of the farmers have mountain gardens.
 
Josiah mentioned rural-urban migration as a contributing factor in the food shortage.  The drought was the main factor.  The rains did not fall much from July to October.
 
School vacation is from December to April which is the hot dry season.
 
Josiah said it could be difficult to get many people into a cooperative because they are not educated.  They might think the government should give them grain or that the government was taking their money to use for other projects.  This could hold a lesson about the feasibility of a credit program or herbicide and fertilizer programs.  The people might have difficulty understanding and implementing them.

View from Above the Mountain Garden; More Thoughts on Materialism

Lohutok, Sudan

I walked to the mountain garden this morning.  There were eight children there this time rather than the six I counted last time.  They were there to scare off monkeys.  The two boys and one girl I talked with were children of Atalino.  They seemed to have been hollowing out a log for a bee hive.  They had a small bag of sorghum which I would assume they were going to grind while watching for monkeys.  They were thus making good use of their time - guarding crops from monkeys, making bee hives and preparing food all at the same time.  They had some groundnuts (peanuts) and "malwa" in a little sack.  I think malwa is a cooked nut from a tree, possibly what Daniel referred to as "mule" when I talked with him on June 18.  The children had a vegetable spinach (cooked) called magi and some from another plant (freshly picked) called inore.  I noticed a maize (corn) plant tasseling in the mountain garden.  I had been told this garden was planted to sorghum.  Now I have learned there is also some maize.

I climbed on up above the gardens to the pass.  I could not see too well from the pass, so I went on up to the peak to the south.  The napier grass up there was a foot or two tall.  I could see to the Boya Hills.  There were gardens along the base of the Lopit Mountains.  Further out, there were trees which were fairly thick.  After those was what looked like fairly open grass savannah, perhaps with scattered trees.  I could see some bare, sandy spots among the thicker trees.  The trees extended into the savannah along watercourses or low-lying areas.

I looked through one of Martha's magazines called The Other Side.  It seems devoted to encouraging a simpler lifestyle, doing away with military force and helping the impoverished.  One of the articles was critical of the Urbana mission conventions for not dealing with social and political action as they relate to missions.  (I attended Urbana '76.)  I think the criticism was a bit exaggerated but perhaps somewhat valid.  I was convicted by the articles about economic lifestyles.  Sure I could go home to the U.S., tell everyone how I am living here and be complimented for sacrificing for Christ's sake.  Yet I am sure the Lotuho think I am rich and are correct in so thinking.  It does not bother me to see them live in conditions (nutritional, medical, housing, educational, transportation, government services, etc.) that I would not tolerate.  I have a double standard.

Visit to the Mountain Field

Lohutok, Sudan

Thobia took me to one of the mountain fields today. He went to Uganda during the war. He speaks fair English. He seems to have had a fair amount of education and would like to get more. His texts and other books were stolen in Torit, which is why he must wait to continue his education.

The sorghum in the mountain field looked good. Most of it was from knee-high to hip-high. The soil was a loamy texture and had some moisture in it. The field is situated in a concave area (or trough) which runs down the mountainside. There is a ditch of sorts down the center of the field. The field is very steep relative to the plain below and the trough is also very steep from side to side. This was the first year the field was planted. The first step in preparation was to cut down the trees in February. These were allowed to dry for a month, then they were burned. Rocks and logs seemed to be placed on the contour in a sort of terracing system. Some were not placed on contour but up and down the slope to demarcate property lines.  Or maybe they mark garden boundaries rather than ownership. I do not yet know much about the ownership system. The fields were fairly free of weeds in general. He said that after the planting of the lowland sorghum, the mountain fields would be weeded. Brown or red sorghum is grown on the mountains and white sorghum in the valley. The white sorghum (millet?) is better to eat according to Thobia. I want to visit a field which has been production for several years for comparison purposes.

Above: Thobia standing in the mountain field.

Below: These two photos show sorghum growing in the mountain field. 

Below: The steepness of the field is evident in this photo taken later in the growing season. 

Thobia pointed out many trees along the way whose seeds are used for food. There is one tree whose seed is used for oil. The leaves of another tree are used as a vegetable. We saw some children picking a plant which is used as a vegetable.

There were notches cut in some trees. If I correctly understood, this was to see if they were hollow and therefore usable as beehives. The beehives were made from logs which were hollowed out. These seemed to be at least partially capped and hung in the trees. I wonder how they harvest the honey without being stung? He also showed me an old trap used for catching animals. It (or what was left of it) consisted of some stones stood on edge in an open-ended rectangle. Apparently when a monkey, or perhaps even a leopard, goes inside, something (a rock?) falls on him and crushes him.  (It was not always easy to overcome the language barrier.)

There were two people at the mountain field to scare monkeys away. Monkeys pull up the sorghum. One person was assigned to each side of the field. The field was quite large, so this was not a large use of manpower. I think the field may have been twenty acres in size. (That's a guess from my memory. I did not make an estimation while at the field.)

Below: A boy guards the field from monkeys.  Birds will also be a problem after the grain forms.

On my way down the mountain I was talking with Thobia. He seemed to want me to get him some shoes. He also wants to see some textbooks. He wanted me to see if the others would bring tea and sugar to him and the other Lotuko men who work here. I am not sure how to handle such requests. I wonder about what my goal should be in helping these people materially. Clearly their level of living should be higher. But I would not want them to be cursed with the materialistically high level of living of the U.S. Maybe this isn't the right question. It is the attitude toward wealth rather than wealth itself with which a Christian ought to first concern himself.

Martha was talking last night about how many people are hungry this time of year. (She said Hans says it is because they sell their grain earlier in the year and have to buy it back later.) I ought to ask her to collect statistics about health status or weights of people who come to the clinic. It would be a useful addition to my thesis.

Samuel and Christine told me tonight that there is a rain queen in Lohutok. Her husband the rain king died a few years back. It is claimed she can make it rain or withhold rain. They say that she really seems to have that power. It is so easy for us to forget that we are in a real spiritual battle. I guess it becomes a bit clearer around here. We need to pray that God will display his power over the rain queen.