ITURI FOREST PEOPLES FUND

Clearing the forest for agriculture

In late November or early December Mupenda and his sons Gamiembi, Kenikungu, and Itude search for a section of forest to clear for cultivation. They are looking for an area as close to the village as possible because the women will work there each day and will have to return with heavy loads of firewood and foodstuffs. Like most shifting cultivators living in the Congo basin, Mupenda prefers sections of forest that he or his relatives cleared fifteen to twenty years previously. The forest growing in these patches is composed of softwoods such as Kere, the parasol tree (Musanga cecropioides), which can be fairly easily cut down and cleared with their simple tools. This secondary succession tree species, which never exceeds a height of eighteen meters (sixty feet), colonizes four to five years after fields are abandoned by farmers and dominates the canopy for the next fifteen to twenty years. (In South America Cecropia occupies a very similar niche.) If Mupenda chooses an area of forest younger than this, the dormant weed seeds stored in the soil from the last cultivation would still be viable, and his wives would spend much time weeding. Moreover, competition by the weeds for limited nutrients in the infertile soil would substantially reduce crop yield. Forests older than this contain progressively more mature forest trees, such as African ironwood, characteristic of uncut forest. These trees are extremely difficult to cut down, as the axes available to most forest farmers are frequently made from suspension springs of old Renault trucks or Land Rovers.

Once a suitable area has been found that satisfies these requirements and is located within Mupenda's usufruct, all the men of the village, usually with the help of Pygmy men, begin the arduous task of cutting and clearing the forest. Mupenda's usufruct is a region of the forest that he and his relatives have hereditary rights to cultivate. The land is not actually owned by Mupenda; he only holds it in trust for future generations. This traditional system of land tenure may promote conservative use of the rain forest as individuals may not degrade a resource that their children and children's children will inherit and upon which they will depend for subsistence.

While Gamiembi cuts part of the way through several of the smaller trees, Kenikungu, braced on a scaffold above the huge buttress roots of a kombokombo tree where the trunk is narrower, chips away to form a slowing enlarging V. If their plans work out, Kenikungu's tree will fall across Gamiembi's trees, bringing them down with it. This time they weren't so lucky, and Gamiembi went back to finish the job. After continuing this process for a week or so, the trees are down and the field crisscrossed with fallen timber. As the remaining branches are lopped and added to the debris on the ground, the women and adolescent girls move through the tangle planting manioc cuttings and plantain sprouts. For two months the sun beats down on the field, drying the dense cover of debris that protects the fragile soil from hardening and eroding. During this hiatus the women of the village start to shell and sort the seed peanuts and remove the dry corn kernels from their cobs. In February, on a windy day if possible, firebrands, carried from the village, are used to torch the field, which is as dry as it ever will be. The fire is not very hot, and the debris is never completely burned. The soil stays remarkably moist and cool, which allows the already sprouted banana and manioc plants not only to survive but to make the most use of the limited wood ash fertilizer. Unburnt debris is cut, piled into mounds, and burned until scattered boles of large trees are all that is left.

The field is now ready to be planted with peanuts, the first crop of the year. Planting is a communal affair, and Mupenda calls friends and relatives from other villages and the nearby camp of Eye (Pygmies) to come and help. All the women and girls down to the age of three or four drop seed peanuts from leaf cornets into shallow holes dug by the men using longhandled hoes. Some women carry corn seeds and intersperse them with the peanuts, while two adolescent girls plant small mounds of a climbing squash called kokoliko close to several of the tree stumps. Once finished, the field is a patchwork of sprouted plantains and manioc surrounded by a mixed planting of peanuts, corn, sugarcane, and squash. Mixed cropping in this way is believed to closely emulate the way vegetation grows in a natural tree fall clearing in the forest. Combining crops that require different Ievels of scarce nutrients and that grow at different heights and rates utilizes efficiently the available sunlight and wood ash fertilizer, in a manner that resembles natural successional vegetation. Moreover, mixed cropping means that the fragile soil is quickly protected from the destructive effects of direct sunlight and heavy rains, and crop diseases and insect pests are kept to a minimum.

At the end of peanut planting, men's major work for the year is all but over. Other than hut building every five to ten years and tool and basket making, Gamiembi and his brothers have a full nine months of relative inactivity before next year's field clearing. Lese men spend this time socializing around Libondo palms, drinking the mildly alcoholic sap, visiting neighbors, and idling away the days in endless games of mali. Unlike the men of the village, Alimoya, Uboobi, and the other women and girls have only begun a grueling work schedule. Girls begin working as soon as they can fetch items or carry a basket (when they are two to three years old) and women's work continues unrelentingly until elephantiasis, leprosy, or death excuses them. The women of Ngodingodi will weed the field each day until the peanut leaves cover the soil and inhibit excessive weed growth. In late June the peanuts are uprooted and laid in a specially built baraza to dry. The field is then planted with upland rice just in time for the heavy rains of August through November. Bananas and maniac are ready for harvest after twelve to fifteen months, although Uboobi will start gathering manioc leaves as soon as they appear. She'll use these to make sombe the Ituri's most flavorful dish: boiled and pounded manioc leaves mixed with palm oil and searingly hot red pepper. Sombe is one of the forest's few good sources of vegetable proteins essential vitamins, and minerals available to the Lese, but Uboobi must be wise in her use of these nutritious leaves because without them the plant is unable to produce the starchy tubers that provide most of the calories in her family's diet. Each new garden is used for about two years, by which time most of the crops, all planted within the first six months, have been harvested. A few plantains and oil palms will survive after the garden is abandoned to the already colonizing natural succession vegetation of the rain forest.