Years of Rain, Years of Hunger

Years of Rain, Years of Hunger

Kibogoji was a blessed land.
But its blessings depended entirely on rain.

When the rains were good, life was easy. The land opened itself generously, and harvests were heavy. Granaries filled. People smiled more. Crops were exchanged for the things that mattered—clothing, salt, cooking oil, sometimes even a bicycle. New clothes came once a year, and that was enough. In good years, no one complained.

Food was plenty. There were celebrations after harvest. Drums echoed through the valley. Boys disappeared into the bush and returned as men, having gone through circumcision rites. Girls entered puberty and were gathered by older women to be taught how to become wives, through customs that included genital mutilation—painful rituals carried out in the name of tradition. These were days when the whole village moved together, bound by belief, rain, and the promise of tomorrow. In years of rain, everyone was happy.

Drought years were different.

When the rains failed, everything failed.

This was Kibogoji in the early 1980s—a time of turmoil for Tanzania itself. After the Uganda war, the country fell into a deep recession. Ujamaa, once full of promise, was failing. In towns, people lined up for hours to buy soap, sugar, and basic necessities. Sometimes the shelves were empty by the time their turn came.

In the villages, the suffering was quieter but heavier.

Coupled with the lack of rain, life became unbearably hard. There was nothing to sell. Nothing to exchange. No clothes that year. No salt. No oil. The land turned hard and dusty, cracked like old skin. Hunger crept in quietly at first, then stayed.

In drought years, people walked for miles into foreign lands to exchange their labor for food. They worked on other people’s farms, bent over fields that were not theirs, just to earn a meal. It was humiliating work, but hunger leaves no room for pride. A day of labor earned a small portion of food.

Once the food was earned, it had to be carried home—balanced on the head, step after step, mile after mile—back to Kibogoji to feed waiting families. By the time it arrived, the food was already spoken for. Children ate. Mothers rationed. Fathers pretended they were not hungry.

Most times, the food lasted only a few days.

Then the journey began again.
Again and again.
Walking. Working. Carrying.
Fetching food so life could continue, just a little longer.

You have never known hunger if you have never lived through hunger in Kibogoji.

Meals became rare. One meal a day, if you were lucky. Some days, there was nothing at all. You drank water and went to sleep with an empty stomach, listening to your own body complain in the darkness. Children grew quiet. Adults spoke less. Hope shrank with each dry morning.

In Kibogoji, rain was not just weather.
Rain was life.
And in those years—when the nation was struggling and the skies were empty—its absence was hunger.