ABSTRACT
After the spring equinox of 21 March, Sahelian days slowly lengthen, and the midday heat rises remorselessly. The long dry season (rani) passes into the hot season (bazara) of local weather lore, and the daily maximum temperatures reach a climax, in May or June, of 40–43°C, depending on latitude. The cooling Harmattan haze has, by then, long since gone. The land stands bare of growing grass or herbage, the surface pools are but cracked hemispheres of hardened clay, the stumps of last year’s crops stand lifeless on the field ridges, and the herds and flocks scavenge the field detritus or burnt pastures for the last morsels of edible fodder, their bony bodies testifying to the season of starvation. Hungry it is too for households which have failed to produce a year’s food or income. This is the time when the granaries, standing in little groups on the village perimeters, become empty and fall into disrepair. For some they have long been empty, and food has had to be purchased, often selling animals and other valued assets in order to do so. For other, more fortunate ones, a surplus of grain may still remain, putting them into a position of considerable social advantage. Meanwhile, young men return from their dry season migrations (searching for work or trade), perhaps bringing cash to subsidise the livelihoods of relatives, or even invest in a plough, or fertiliser or seed. But for all, this is a time of discomfort, when the men and boys sleep in the street at night to find a little breeze, when the frequency or abundance of the daily meals declines, and sums are done to ration out what remains until the expected harvest in three or four months’ time. It is also a time of enforced idleness, when nobody knows when the rain will begin and everyone fit to work must wait, gathering their energy under the shade trees by day, knowing that the year offers but one subsistence opportunity, a short race lasting a few months, whose start is missed at one’s peril.
