Going To The Marketplace #4 - Walking Through The Terraces

GOING to the MARKETPLACE #4 ... more

by Nicole Jean-Louis

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Price

Not Specified

Dimensions

30.000 x 40.000 x 0.750 inches

Title

Going To The Marketplace #4 - Walking Through The Terraces

Artist

Nicole Jean-Louis

Medium

Painting - Oil On Canvas

Description

GOING to the MARKETPLACE #4
By Nicole Jean-Louis

Those three ladies are going to the marketplace at the bottom of the mountain. They carry produces from their land. Along the dirt path, they cross fields of various cultivated plots.

According to the World Bank Staff estimation based on United Nations, in 2015, 43% of the people in Haiti live in rural areas. Rural population refers to people living in the countryside areas as defined by national statistical offices. It is calculated as the difference between total population and urban population (town population). [1]

Most of Haiti's peasants have owned land since early nineteenth century. Just imagine a life without commodities; a life without any major financial obligations. Outsiders cast many negative stereotypes upon Haitian peasantry; especially when they see those women merchants walking bare footed. Foreigners see Haitian peasantry as living in poverty.

People living in rural areas are primarily either subsistence farmers, or agricultural farmers. Subsistence farmers focus on growing enough food to feed themselves and their families, in addition to selling the surplus to the marketplace insuring cash for other necessities. Agricultural laborers are mostly peasants, engaged in manual labor for a living; they till the soil, plant, grow, and later harvest peas, corn, mangoes, oranges, bananas, plantain, tomatoes, sugar cane to name a few.

Those plantations on the mountain sides are arranged in terraces. This type of landscaping is called terracing. It is used in mountainous land. Terraces help decrease erosion, and the runoff of the good topsoil, what we called the arable land. Agrarian terraces is an agricultural contribution of the Tainos, who had inhabited the whole island of Haiti before Christopher Columbus spotted Haiti in 1492. [2]

Those women are unaware of the benefit of the daily walk up and down the mountain side. The Haitian women merchants, who walk up and down the mountain are not obese; they have very tone and defined legs; in fact their entire body is into shape. This is an activity that we, modern day, urban women, who do not have access to outdoor hills, achieve at the gym, with a special setting of a treadmill... Are those Haitian women merchants fortunate?
REFERENCE:
1. Rural population (% of total population) /Data/ Table
2. HAITI 1492 BEFORE CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS by Nicole Jean-Louis - (one of my paintings)

Uploaded

February 9th, 2016