God Floods the Fields

For weeks now my host family has talked about how when the rainy season comes we will farm corn, rice, peanuts, and fonio.  I of course have no experience as a farmer, living in the suburbs my whole like, but my village seems to have made it their mission to turn me into a farmer.  They talk about how we'll find the cows,  (dappitugol nagge), tie them down (hummugol), and use the bulls to pull the ploughs (I forgot the pulaar word for that).  Growing corn and the other crops made sense to me, but I didn't understand how they would grow rice.  When i think of growing rice I think of terraced, flooded rice patties in China, something like this:

There is a Peace Corps China, I wonder what that would be like

The only problem is, so far my site has been more like a savannah.  Well, more like a savannah woodland.  Either way, I didn't see how they would be able to flood the fields enough to sustain rice production.  There are fields and what not, but they are rather dusty and dry, as my previous photos are evidence of (I would re-upload them, but I'm really lazy.  Actually, in my language group that's kind of my nickname: gorko amudo, which means 'lazy boy'".  Anyway, I was talking to a fellow PCV, Cameron, about my site and farming when he came for a visit and I asked them what kind of irrigation or whatnot they used to flood the fields.  His response was "Irrigation? No, they don't flood the fields at all.  God flood the fields".  I've experienced rains at site so far, but it never really rains enough to fill whole fields full of water, so I still had my doubts.  I now understand what he means.  Today was the first real rains of the rainy season.  For the last few days I have been in the lovely town of Salemata for a language seminar.  Today we took the 2 hour drive back through some of the most torrential rains I've ever seen.  The road, not being paved, was in the process of being washed away.  It really was a site to behold as rivers of water washed over the road.  All along the sides of the road then fields had disappeared and in there place was flooded marshland, a perfect rice growing environment.  As we passed the turn-off to my village I looked out the window towards the bush path. Unfortunately, I didn't see a bush path, I saw river flowing over what was my bush path into the laterite road that was slowly itself becoming a river too (sorry I didn't take any pictures).  Anyway, now I see how the village people are able to grow rice.  They just cultivate, but God floods the fields.