Goin fishin!

Fish provide an important source of food for my villagers right at the end of the dry season.  This time is also called the "hungry time" because grain supplies are running low, no fruit is growing, and gardening is difficult.  Luckily, this is the perfect time to go fishing.

Fishing in Mali is pretty different from in America.  The river about 10km from my village is very low, because there has been no rain for almost 8 months.  Every hundred meters or so, it is dammed, turning the river into many small sections.  One day every week around the month of May, the whole village goes to the river and fishes in one of the sections.

They take the seed pods from the Nere tree, tie them into bundles, and beat them with sticks.  This turns the bundles into pulpy, juicy balls.

 

Then, they drag the bundles up and down the river.  The Nere juices are released into the river, sort of like a tea bag in a cup of tea.

 

You can see here, at one of the dams, just how different the water colors are from the Nere juice.

Something about the juice from the Nere tree really messes with the fish.  They get all stupid, and swim slowly at the surface.  These makes they easy pray for men to hack at with machetes, and for women and children to scoop up with nets.

Unfortunately all of media I have from the rest of the day is in videos, too large to upload.