Our first day of work! Weather is clear and warm, about 25C – just about perfect for being outside. We can see the towering top of Annapurna South peeking over the Most of the villagers are in the fields, bringing in the rice crop now so we don’t expect that they will be able to assist us very much at the moment. We can see them cutting the rice for drying, then carrying the stalks in enormous bundles on their backs from the paddies to the locations where the stalks are stacked in a round, peaked stack. When the stalks have thoroughly dried, they are threshed with the aid of teams of cattle and water buffalo that walk over them. The rice kernels are then winnowed using large round fan-like implements until the rice grains are fairly clean. The rice is then bagged and carried from the fields in large sacks, once again on people’s (mainly women) backs, and kept in storage until it’s time to use it.
Ralph Bullis
DWC Team Leader
Nepal 2010
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