Working Women in the Congo

These African women, on their way to the agricultural fields with empty baskets slung over their shoulders like back-packs, were already worn out from a lifetime of hard labor. The woman in the foreground is carrying a mat, while the other has a staff to lean. Both were barefoot, posing for my photo near leaves for a roof laid out to dry.

In the subsistence culture of Zaire (now the Democratic of the Congo), the women worked from sun-up to sundown. Depending on how far away the fields were meant a hour to several hours walk (distant fields might not be tended daily, but at critical times, the family would camp out on site). The baskets were filled with the harvest, which would include beans, peanuts, squash, corn, manioc, bananas, and local greens. One important product -- firewood -- was cut and transported to the village in the backpack baskets. Full packs weighed between 50 and 75 pounds.

Children helped their mother in her daily duties. They would help weed and chase off animal pests that were constantly testing and tasting the harvest. Children also played "house" and "hunting" and boys would practice building snares, and ferreting out nests, looking for small animals such as rats, squirrels, porcupines, and bats, which would be cooked and eaten on site.

Men did not work in the fields. Their only contribution to cropping was that they cut down and burned the biggest trees in the so-called "slash and burn" system (the ash from the fire gave a fertilizer boost to the normally poor forest soil). Another contribution of the men was the meat brought in by periodic hunting.

Photo by D. Messinger