Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Moment 73 - Salvaging

There are so many ways not to get hungry and one need not do bad things just to deliver a decent food on the table.

The aftermath of the harvest were the shredded stalks of rice and the farmers simply burn and allow them to turn into ashes or to rot in order to be part of the field again. I came across this old woman in a deserted rice field. Since I am no stranger to what she was doing, I politely asked her if I can take some pictures of her. I was glad that she allowed me to do my thing.

What she was doing was salvaging some grains from the so-called trash.  When the stalks of rice are being feed to the rice thresher, the heavy grains are gathered together and are directly collected by the farmers. The empty grains or the light ones are usually blown away.

The resourceful individuals would usually gather in a pile of shredded rice stalks  and would try to salvage some grains out of them.  They would repeatedly raise a handful of them to the air and allows the air blow away the empty or the light ones.  Though this kind of work is back breaking, patience is the key in order to bring home some grains of rice. Surprisingly, they could gather several kilos of "good" grains after several hours of honest labor.

No comments:

Post a Comment