By: adebanjo.near
Adebanjo
Close to the Zahara desert in the northern part of the western Africa, is housed a wonderful and industrious village called Ajatan. The village of Ajatan is a reserved, calm, silent and industrious village settled in the valley between two mountains in the Ajatan kingdom. 70% of the villagers are farmers, 20% are fishermen while the remaining are miners. Despite all their varied livelihoods, all the villagers live together in harmony. Farming activity is what primarily increases their income.
Since the majority of the villagers are farmers, they only make profit during the rainy season because the rain waters their crops during this season and their harvest at that time increases beyond every reasonable doubt to the extent that other neighboring villages depend on them for farm produce. For this reason, the rainy season is celebrated as a bountiful harvest time.
When the rainy season dwindles and ends, the village and surrounding area retreats into desert. Green fades from the landscape and the area becomes desolate. The village, such a center of commerce during the rains, sits idle. Despite the labour needed to plant and tend, the villagers hate to see the rain go.
Among the villagers was a renowned farmer and inventor named MarmaJ. She loved her community and hated to see the worried looks on the faces of her neighbors when the dry season stretched across the land. She also disliked sitting idle – she always found tasks to do, things to mend, people to help during the dry season. She’d been thinking of ways to enhance the security of the village and could often be found sketching by lamplight late into the night.
One early morning, after a night of sleeplessness, she held up a sketch and cried, “I’ve found it!”
She’d designed a way for villagers to maintain their crops into the dry season. It would be a vast reservoir. MarmaJ took her savings and employed workers who helped her to dig the reservoir.
Not everyone in the village was on board with her project. It is said they mocked her saying the digging was a total waste of time because they believed no basin could hold water for months at a time. She was patient with the criticism and kept on with the construction, believing her plan would work out. The construction had begun at the beginning of the dry season. Construction finished weeks before the rainy season began. Villagers would travel to her fields to laugh at the great dusty,empty reservoir. But the rains came as expected, watered her crop and the water reservoir began to fill up. The lined reservoir filled and did not diminish. Nor did the sun shrink the water. The reservoir was shaded with an enormous tarpaulin and the water remained.
When the rain was finally gone and other farmer’s were out of water to water their dying crops, MarmaJ’s reservoir helped all the farmers in Ajatan keep their crops and business intact. There were many murmured apologies, and MarmaJ gave water to any with need.
The villagers all kept selling farm produce and this helped them make so much profit during the dry season because MarmaJ’s invention had indeed paid off and they all got to irrigate their farms.
MarmaJ prospered and regained her investment. But she refused to charge her community for the water. Her love for her community and the knowledge that she’d helped in some way was her reward.