Saturday, March 21, 2009

A small victory


In February we went back to the community in the Chimbolelo Valley. During the Participatory Rural Diagnostic the community hat stated that their main problem was that some commercial cattle farmers grab their land. These farmers have leased large amounts of land, but they take more than they have applied for and fence it off. When we went back in February to discuss this issue more thoroughly, the community told us that one farmer was busy fencing of 8 km2 of land that is not his. The next day we went to have a look and took the coordinates of the disputed area.

When we were back in Lubango we spoke to someone in the department of land registration to find out what the community could do about this. The solution was reasonably simple: write a letter to the government. A week later we went back to the community and told them what they could do. The representative of the community wrote two letters, one to the provincial government and one to the municipal government. We took those letters, photocopied them and made sure the relevant department signed the copies, indicating they had received the letters.

Last week we went back, because apart from this complaint, the community now wants to register their land that in the name of the community. We told them that this is possible under Angolan Law. Registering their land, secures their acces to it, which is what our project should be trying to do, so we support this wholeheartedly. Part of the registration process is a joint defintion of the borders by all concerned: the community of Chimbolelo, the commercial cattle farmers and other neighbouring communities.

To prepare ourselves for this, we wanted to get coordinates of all the commercial cattle farms in the area. We had two aims last week: one was to try and drive around the commercial farms to get coordinates and the other was to help the community to write the official application for communal land registration and to take that document to Lubango.

The very first thing the representatives of the community told us, with huge grins ontheir faces, was that the manager of the farmer mentioned above in question had stopped fencing the land. Apparently the manager was told to stop fencing the land until further notice. So it looks like we scored our first little victory.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Participatory planning


During the Rural Participatory Diagnostic, people told us what their main problems were. Now it is time to see what can be done. Most problems have been stated in a general way such as `lack of water‘ or `hunger‘. The first step is to try and find the causes for the problem. The first steps are usually not that difficult. There is a lack of water because there are not enough boreholes.

This is a first step, but then you have to inquire carefully what people mean exactly by `not enough boreholes‘. The answer seems obvious enough, but there are a few pitfalls. One is translation and the other is that just about everybody often does not realise that what is obvious for them, is not neccesarily obvious to others. Sometimes, a lack of boreholes means that there simply are no boreholes, but at other times there are plenty of boreholes, but they have broken down or are inaccessible.

After we get to the root of the problem, it is time to think about solutions.
tome causes are left untouched, there is not much you can do about low rainfall or water tables that are 150 m deep. But yu can try to make the best of the situation with other solutions which sometimes require thinking outside the box. This is often the more difficult bit, especially if you want everyone to contribute. The people we work with have little access to information and travel very little and therefore thinking up new solutions does not come easy for them. We provide them with more information, but even then it is not always easy to grasp the possibilities of new techniques straight away.

But ours is a pilot-project, so we are supposed to come up with new and innovative solutions. The whole participatory approach is actually new for Angola, but we are also supposed to introduce new technical solutions. So occasionaly we have to steer the discussins a little bit.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Field Work


The areas we are working in are rather large (Gambos is over 8000 km2 and Cahama and Bibala are about the same size) and rural roads are not that good (see picture at bottom). So when we have work in Taka or Chimbolelo for a day or more, we usually set up camp there.

Camping in these areas is rather different from camping in Europe or a well visited african game reserve. The top picture shows our last camp site in Chimbolelo. The corrugated iron sheet is the toilet: There is a little hole behind it and the sheet is there in order to prevent you standing/sitting in full view of passers by. The picture below that shows our bathroom in the same area. People have few qualms about taking a bath in view of others, but then again, you are supposed to keep on your underware while bathing and passers by are supposed not to look. The latter does not quite work out when a white guy takes a bath.

Food tends to be very basic. For dinner rice with a stew from a local chicken and for breakfast the left-overs of the previous dinner with tea or instant coffee. In areas like Taca we pay for the chicken with a plastic jerrycan. No-one needs money and everyone needs jerrycans to transport water. We take mineral water with us and the plastic bottles are also very popular with the community. They use them mostly for sour milk or home made beer (bafo/macau).

If we stay longer than one night, we usually take bread along, which means that breakfast is stale bread with a tin of tuna. Bread, vegetables and fruit are usually not available in these areas. As you see, a cast-iron stomach is highly recommended for this job.