Waiting for the good harvest

Aureliana Siki is soon to give birth to her third child.  But she seems far more anxious about her second child than the imminent arrival of another. “She just won’t eat, she’s always getting sick and having diarrhoea”, she says of her 18-month-old daughter, Amelia Jessica. “I am so worried she is going to die”.

Amelia clings to her mother listlessly.  She weighs just seven kilos, and is officially classified as having severe malnutrition.

“The problem is that we had a bad harvest this year. Instead of harvesting the normal four sacks of rice, we only had two. And instead of twenty bunches of maize, we only had ten,” she explains.

The other women in Aureliana’s village of Tes in West Timor confirm that they too have lost about half of their production this year.  They say some families are only eating twice a day. The reason is clear: climate unpredictability.

Normally the wet and dry seasons are clearly distinct. It rains from November to March, and then is dry from April to October.  This year the rainy season was short, causing drought in some areas.

“Last year the rain did arrive in November”, explains Yosefina Lake, a 39-year-old woman also from Tes. “But then it was dry again in December, and we lost a lot of our crop. Then it rained again in January. It is still raining now when it should be dry.”

West Timor is one of the poorest areas of Indonesia, and the district where Tes is situated is one of the poorest in West Timor. Many children are malnourished.

“There are several reasons why there is severe malnutrition,” says Anton Efi from Yabiku, Oxfam’s partner in the area, “but unreliable local food production is certainly one of them”. 

The villagers of Tes are unfamiliar with the vocabulary of El Niño or climate change.  They talk of “God being responsible”. But climate experts say the recent weather unpredictability in 2006/7 is due to what is known as a “moderate El Niño year”.

More extreme weather

Indonesia is expected to suffer more extremes of weather and more unpredictability in the future. And it is the latter which is causing another problem in managing the projects, as the director of the Oxfam partner in the nearby Belu district explains.

“Climate uncertainty is really causing us problems,” says Father Urbanus Hala from PPSE. “The villagers work hard to prepare the land for the vegetables, they plan everything, and then the rain does not come.”

Despite everything, Aureliana is optimistic. She is one of only a handful of women and men receiving training in growing vegetables. Oxfam has installed water tanks to help guarantee irrigation.

But it’s going to be a hard struggle. When the so-called ‘hunger gap months’ start in October, there could be even more serious shortages of food.

Aurelia’s kitchen at the back of her wooden home is virtually bare.  She is reluctant to show it, but all you can see are a few bunches of maize hanging from the roof and some rice stacked in one corner. “Maybe it will last us until October”, she says.

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Real stories: climate change is affecting the world's poorest people