Usurious strangers and “a better tomorrow”: Agricultural loans, education, and the “poverty trap” in rural Sierra Leone

Rice was historically a “total social phenomenon” in Sierra Leone, molding rural identities through farming. Crop yields are rapidly declining, forcing change among people who once claimed to be “wealthy” from rice and now face severe food insecurity. In response to change, they can take out loans—offered by “strangers”—to continue farming rice, or they can “diversify” and farm alternative crops. Low rice yields largely condemn those who accept a loan to farming solely to pay their debts, a “poverty trap” that most cannot overcome. However, the majority of farmers in our study area accepted seed and tractor loans, arguing that rice is “the only way” to offer their children a better life through education—even as no children from the villages have procured waged jobs—as it is the only commercial crop that pays school fees. We argue that thinking in terms of fetishes offers a constructive analysis of the dissolution of total social phenomena. Devoting the next generation to the new “fetish” of education is paradoxically dependent on retaining one's commitment to the old fetish of rice, allowing the usurious stranger to profit from this paradox.