Such time-honored practices as planting dispersed fields in different ecological zones, intercropping, and dhomba were important strategies for blunting the vagaries of nature, minimizing the risk of crop failure, and enabling rural households to avoid the devastating effects of subsistence crises.250Although not all interviewees shared identical memories of food security before the construction of Cahora Bassa, they agreed that the Zambezi River had been critical to the human ecology of survival and that indigenous farming systems were well adapted to local environmental conditions. Reliance on river-fed gardens and cultivation of multiple fields in different ecological zones provided a critical margin of food security to most households and dramatically reduced the risk of long-term hunger.251Francisco Manuel summed it up best: “My family survived because we had two machamba (fields). During periods of drought we relied on our gardens, and, when large floods destroyed my gardens, we got by on the reserves collected from my field in the hills.”252Other long-time residents painted a much rosier picture: “In the past there was not any real hunger. We relied on food from the first harvest, which fed us until we collected grains from the second.”253According to Maurício Alemão, “When we lived in Chicoa Velha, there was no hunger. We always had something to eat.”254Even Senteira Botão, whose more nuanced account recognized that “in those times, occasionally there was hunger,” credited long-standing local farming practices with ameliorating it: “There could be a shortage of corn, but then we had some sorghum. There could be a shortage of both, but then we would eat sweet potatoes and other products from our gardens near the river. If someone lacked food, then neighbors would provide it in exchange for labor or something else. . . . No one ever died from hunger.”255
Inácio Guta and his friends in Chetcha gave a similar account: “In the past, when there were droughts, we experienced some hunger, but because we lived near the river we did not suffer too much.”256Their neighbor Pezulani Mafalanjala mused about the decades just before the dam was built: “Even when we were forced to grow cotton, there was no hunger because, if our fields far from the river had low yields, we could always rely on our river gardens.”257This recollection does not completely reflect reality, given that the colonial state forced peasants in the Zambezi valley, as elsewhere in Mozambique, to cultivate cotton between 1938 and 1964, provoking widespread food crises and famines throughout the colony.258
Despite the nostalgia evident in some of these memories, there is no doubt that the success of the Zambezi valley’s agroecological system rested on peasants’ access to the alluvial fields enriched by the annual flood cycle of the Zambezi. In most years, households with river gardens could both feed their families and produce some grain to trade for basic amenities. “In the past,” recalled Joaquim Sacatucua, “I might have two sacks of maize or I might have five sacks of maize that I could sell to buy school books for my five children, as well as soap, medicine, and cigarettes.”259When households with alluvial plots did experience food shortages, their intensity and duration were more limited. For them, seasonal shortfalls “typically lasted about a month, whereas in the region inland from the river, famines were more severe and persisted up to five months.”260
As this recollection suggests, while recession agriculture with its double-field system offered a measure of food security, it did not provide ironclad protection against hunger. The fields could still be ravaged by droughts, insect infestations, and other natural disasters, which occurred with some regularity,261and the region’s uncertain and relatively brief rainy season could still cause food shortages during the hungry months of February and March, when families had already typically consumed last year’s grain harvest and were anxiously awaiting this year’s first cereals. A number of elders stressed that, even before the construction of the dam, villagers were at the mercy of a sometimes capricious climate.262Moreover, when we raised the question of predam flooding, several elderly villagers acknowledged that the river could be unpredictable and dangerous and a threat to the stable productive agronomic system that had been practiced for centuries in the region.263
Local chroniclers gave catastrophic floods in the Zambezi valley powerfully descriptive names to ensure that people remembered their world gone awry.264The longest and most devastating flood was the 1952 Cheia M’bomane (“the flood that destroyed everything”). Marosse Inácio and his neighbors recounted how the waters “descended on their village suddenly at night. Although, in desperation, people climbed to the roofs of their huts to get away from the water, the storm swept the huts into the river. Many people drowned in the raging water. Few had canoes to escape.”265Six years later, Cheia N’sasira (“the flood that forced people to live on top of termite mounds”) devastated numerous communities living adjacent to the river. Limpo Nkuche explained how “many people died, while those who were fortunate enough to survive lost all their worldly possessions, including their livestock.”266Hydrological data confirm that severe flooding occurred in those years (see table 2.1).
Even when the river did not reach such levels, it still inundated many fields and could undermine the food security of hardworking families, as occurred in 1948 and 1963.267Bento Estima and Joseph Ndebvuchena, for instance, remembered how periodic flooding caused life to be uncertain along the river’s edge: “Before the dam, sometimes there was hunger. It depended on the rains. In times of drought, people cultivated maize, sugarcane, and vegetables on their plots near the river. When they farmed near the river, however, they faced the possibility of having their crops destroyed by the floods.”268
Thus, living adjacent to the river was more precarious than most villagers at first acknowledged. While capricious floods increased the possibility of losing an entire year’s agricultural production,269wildlife posed a more frequent threat to their food security. Without firearms, which the state prohibited them from owning, cultivators could do little to protect their alluvial gardens from hippopotami that ravaged their crops. As Luís Manuel recalled, “the only thing we could do was to go to the administration and ask them to send European hunters to kill these beasts.”270Such assistance was not always forthcoming, causing frustrated peasants sometimes to abandon their riverine gardens.271
Yet elders also stressed how the Zambezi valley ecosystem and the river itself helped hard-pressed families survive in times of scarcity. Oral recollections of foraging for wild fruit during droughts suggest the great diversity of tree species that could provide minimal sustenance.272During the hungry season, women and children regularly augmented their food supply by gathering edible roots, tubers, plants, and berries that grew along the river’s edge.273The most common wild foods harvested in the Tete region during these months were nyika (water lily roots), mpambadza (wild lily bulbs), mboa (wild mushrooms), nyezi (a cocoyam tuber), wild sorghum, and the berries of the maçanica bush.274Nyika was a significant famine food that grew in abundance near the river in the Mutarara-Inhangoma region, particularly in Lake Nbazema and in the riverine zone around Sena.275When gatherers returned home with nyika, they dried the root, peeled off the hard exterior, and pounded the flesh into a fine grain for porridge. In the nearby Shire valley colonial authorities reported in 1948 that “whole communities have lived on [nyika] without any other food at all for weeks at a time.”276In addition, according to João Raposo of Caia, aquatic plants could be harvested from the river waters and consumed when food was scarce.277Nevertheless, to get through the year, many had to rely on wage remittances from kin working in Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Malawi.278A Portuguese official estimated that over ten thousand people from the Songo region alone were working in Zimbabwe in the 1960s.279
Fishing
The Zambezi’s rich and varied fish population also played a vital role in the local food economy by supplying an extremely important source of protein.280The more than forty species of fish281 living in the river system in the predam period also depended on the Zambezi’s annual flood cycle for their survival. “The qualities of a river change drastically from the low-water to the high-water season. . . . During floods . . . the water spreads over a large area, where there is an abundance of inundated and rapidly growing vegetation serving both as food and shelter for the fish, and there is a large amount of insects, worms and mollusks available to the fish which migrate onto the flood plains. . . . Floods appear to be essential for reproductive success, and growth and survival of the young fish is improved during years with large floods.”282From December through April, rising floodwaters triggered crucial changes in the feeding and reproductive