African Women Drying Husked Rice in Sierra Leone.

This is a typical village setting in a forested or semi-forested area of Sierra Leone, West Africa. The lady above is drying rice, harvested from her farm. The husked rice is laid on flat surfaces like concrete or beaten earth and turned with a broom (made from mid-line straws of the palm or bamboo leaf) every couple of hours until the rice is dried enough for milling.

This process usually commences at the end of harvesting in the dry season, from October to about the end of March. The average temperature round about this time is about 90-95 degrees Fahrenheit. She has no shoes on because shoes are taboos with food processing and other cultural reasons. Her clean but bare feet though must be burning on the pavement and on the husks of rice.

The Fashion

She is wearing a headkerchief of printed cotton material which shields her head from the sun’s stinging rays at this time of the year. Also, a sleeveless cotton-knit or polyester top and a tied-up print cotton lappa or wrappa (a single piece of cloth, usually about one to one-and-a half yards in length and width of very light fabric). It’s usually tied in a knot from both ends or from strings of the same material stitched unto either side of the lappa. It is tied on from her navel section down to her lower legs or sometimes worn to the knees or ankles. It denotes both functionality and modesty of the African woman. But the lightness of the material and it been open at the bottom end lends for aeration of her body.

The Surroundings.

In this other picture, another lady similarly attired, is performing the same rice drying process on a similar surface in front of an adobe styled red-brick home. The roof as seen in the first picture is corrugated zinc metal on a frame of sawn timber or forest wood branches (not seen here). However, less affluent families would use palm tree thatch or savannah grass to roof their houses which are also invariably made of adobe bricks or earthen balls.

Please come back next time and we’ll show you how the rice is milled in wooden mortars in the typical Sierra Leonean and generally West African village setting.

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