Sanhá João Correia is stressed, strolling across the boat and urging folks to sit down. He’s apprehensive {that a} flip within the climate will imply a missed probability to cross the Geba River.
The agricultural engineer from the Guinea-Bissau NGO Tiniguena ensures everybody embarks promptly and the boat leaves Bissau, the nation’s capital, loaded with consuming water, gas and rice.
The crossing to Ilha Formosa, one of many Urok Islands within the Bijagós archipelago, takes 4 hours. It’s residence to a novel group of ladies, “the seed keepers” – farmers who’re preserving the ancestral grains of the Bijagós.
The boat is the Cantoucha – the title of a revered seed keeper who died in 2021 – and is crewed by Bijagós sailors. “Solely those that belong to the archipelago are allowed to navigate in these fierce waters,” Correia says. “To navigate safely you will need to ask permission from the gods.”
A girl and baby on Ilha Formosa, the place girls see it as their cultural activity to preserve creole vegetation. {Photograph}: Vanessa Rodrigues
Correia and operational coordinator Emanuel Ramos are agroecological technicians in Urok, working with Tiniguena, and supporting the Ladies Keepers of Agricultural Biodiversity Seeds mission, to preserve creole vegetation and their valuable seeds.
The Bijagó ethnic group inhabit a number of islands of the archipelago, a Unesco biosphere reserve off the west African Atlantic coast. The Urok Islands have been designated a group marine protected space since 2005. About 3,000 folks stay there.
Creole seeds have been handed from technology to technology and are very important for the survival of the Bijagós. These are varieties and species, from corn to rice and peanut, that resist pests and the area’s fierce local weather, which is getting extra intense resulting from international heating.
‘That is my work in nature’: Sábado Maio, 70, one among 12 elected head seed keepers. {Photograph}: Vanessa Rodrigues
The mission has already educated greater than 150 girls in seed care, with 12 girls elected as head seed keepers. Sábado Maio, 70, is one. She says storing seeds is a cultural activity of Bijagós girls.
“That is my work in nature. Ladies are the mom of every thing, so girls maintain the seeds greater than males. Ladies are the bottom, males are the sky. Ladies give beginning, males don’t, so vegetation survive due to girls.”
Born within the tabanka (village) of Canhabaque, on Ilha Formosa, her backyard boasts 19 styles of crops and a shady banana plant that bears ripening fruit. Maio is apprehensive that the rains will quickly destroy it. She says it has been raining extra this season than final yr – a recurring criticism within the islands.
Maio is accountable for the seeds together with red-skinned yam, geneva yam, cassava, horse-corn and pumpkin. “I’m a keeper as a result of I watched my grandparents do it. I do know the significance of getting seeds to make sure our manner of survival,” she says. Even her language is now endangered: Bijagó is spoken solely by the elders.
Camilo rice is dried and preserved in a group barn. {Photograph}: Vanessa Rodrigues
Two group adobe bembas (barns) have been constructed the place 15 styles of rice have been preserved and seeds are distributed to growers.
