Harvesting both grains and friendships on mission far from home

Ihave been working at the Wanbao Mozambique rice farm for eight years since my arrival in 2013. Before that, I worked as a technician at a farm near my hometown in Hubei province.

In the beginning, there were just a few local workers on the farm.

Since 2015, many villagers living near the farm have been recruited, and I have been guiding them as they have little knowledge on how to grow rice properly. Nowadays, almost all the farmers who grow rice on the farm are locals.

The most difficult part of the training is communication. At first, I did not know how to speak any Portuguese, the official language of Mozambique. But even if I did know, it still may not have helped as most farmers cannot speak the language either. Sometimes, it seems like they cannot understand each other well, too, as they speak different local languages.

So, I had to use gestures to try to make myself understood and teach them, and after some time I found that it worked. Now, I can speak a little of the local language, but sometimes I still have to make great effort when guiding the local farmers to do certain work such as the proper way to apply herbicides.

Another difficulty is the differences in natural conditions between Mozambique and China. For example, soil in the farm is very soft and quickly dissolves in water, which is quite different from the soil in China. This caused great difficulties for us in the beginning when we were building water canals to irrigate the rice paddies, as the canal banks kept collapsing with water.

Luckily, the soil in the farm is very fertile and not polluted, so it is easier to yield good harvests with proper farming and management.

Though I have trained many local farmers over the past few years, only a few are still working on the farm these days. Some of them have left and started to grow rice on their own, and some have quit to learn other skills. I think many local people have more interest in learning mechanics than managing farms.

In addition to having better harvests, many locals who work on the farm have also earned more income through employment. I remember many farmers wearing rags and even barefooted five or six years ago, but now they are better dressed.

We have been wearing masks when working since the COVID-19 pandemic, even when we are working in the fields. In the beginning, I felt quite uncomfortable, especially in high temperatures, but I am getting used to it now.

Due to the pandemic, I have not been back home for about two years, and I can only communicate with my grandson via video calls after work. In the beginning, my family members kept alerting me to guard against the virus, but now they don’t do so anymore as we are already getting used to the pandemic.

Over the past eight years, I have seen many Chinese colleagues come and go. They usually work for about one or two years here. However, I am determined to stay as I have taken to the place and the locals, who have shown great respect to us believing we are here to help them.