Don’t I have a job? [Project Update Part 2]

What next? Well having determined the success [at least in the short-term] of the methodology at the dam it was developed at, but what about other dams? The methodology has to not be location-specific, so the mobilization process was started again, this time at the Manyemuyemu Dam Community.

[If these names are starting to frustrate you, here is a trick I picked up from Clare… say the last syllable, then the last two, and so on. So:
yemu… yemu-yemu… man-yemu-yemu. It is actually pronounced more like man-yay-me-yay-me]

But wait! That’s not all! The manual has to not be user-specific. The methodology is a fusion of Nick’s and his co-worker, Ernest Melelele’s, methods, but what about other people? So now that we have a brand new Junior Fellow, lets pair him up with a different TSB officer. So currently I am running about the Zambian countryside with the previously pictured Kantu Kantu [his first name is the same as his last]. Perhaps I will find the time to write about him at a later date.

The Manyemuyemu dam was chosen because it has some severe erosion problems. The level spillway has to be level so that the water flows over it as slowly as possible to prevent erosion. The spillway is fairly level, but at the end of it things get a little less level as the water flows down into a shallow valley where the stream usually flows. The gully was not fixed after it started to develop and now… I can stand in it and ground level would be over my head. [picture to come later]. Very impressively, however, was the amount of work that the community had done in the form of fencing. An NGO had offered to provide the barb wire to fence in the dam embankment and spillway to keep it safe from livestock… all the community had to do was make and plant posts to attached the barb wire. They did that and the damn NGO backed out! But at least that means the committee is working somewhat, just need help figuring out the erosion problem. One area I see being a problem for my project is that a lot of the problems and/or possible solutions being identified by the community are all to do with needing external resources. They need to find a new donor for barb-wire and they need cement donated so they can make the spillway concrete and avoid erosion. I asked in an interview why they needed barb-wire and couldn’t use sticks and thatch which was what protects everything else in the villages, including their gardens, from their very same threat of livestock… but so far I haven’t gotten a good reason. Years of “hand-outs” style development have ingrained a dependency that is quite frustrating to the more participatory, down-up instead of top-down, ownership building development that goes on now. That being said, it hasn’t completely stopped either. That wonderful irrigation canal the community is building to better utilize their dam and improve their agriculture… not only has the materials been externally funded, but the community is being PAYED to do the work! The TSB officers don’t agree with it. Even some of the community members expressed their disbelief that people were being paid to build themselves something that would benefit them. But… the donor feels people need to be paid to work…


Back to Manyemuyemu…

Kantu and I are currently still in the information gathering stage of the manual. We have held a meeting with the community to discuss the uses, problems, and possible solutions of those problems, of the dam. At that meeting we also did a community mapping exercise which was really fascinating to see. We had the attendees split up into four groups [young men, old men, young women, old women] so that the women would not be intimidated by the men and the young not intimidated by the old. The usefulness of this exercise had been expressed to me in development literature, but seeing how detailed people know the area is really amazing. The Old Women group even made a key in the bottom of the map which denoted various types of structures [school, clinic, villages, locations of Village Headmen or subukos] and the different types of bridges. It was very entertaining watching the groups present their maps [and their ideas of uses and problems] to the other groups and all the laughter and criticism that accompanied fixing mistakes on the maps.

Now we are doing the interview part of the information gathering [where the real story is uncovered]. The interviews are conducted privately, in one-on-one sessions. Their responses are confidential and will be compiled and presented back to the community in another big meeting so that they can discuss and decide what to do. This process is to allow those meek voices in the community to be heard. We try to get a good representation of the community, but it is a particular challenge with the Manyemuyemu Dam Community as there are 9 villages that use the dam! Not only that, but the last community meeting they held was about whether or not to allow the villages beyond those 9 use the dam because some villages are closer to this dam than their other options [in the wonderful spirit of Zambian collectivism they decided to let them use the dam].

Anyway, in the mean time, interviews shall continue until the lengthy, and tedious, process of compiling and analyzing all the responses is undertaken after the EWB retreat at beautiful Lake Karibba.

Future plans of mine include doing interviews [yay! more interviews!] with TSB officers and other extension workers to find out if there are similar manuals they have used that they found very useful, what made them useful, how they would like to see a manual designed, etc. Even if the methodology is good… it doesn’t mean anything if the manual is too cumbersome to be of real use in the field. Currently I am under the impression this will be my biggest add value to the project. The methodology is quite comprehensive [with the exception of a few ideas which Kantu and I are testing that were suggested when Nick and Ernest presented the manual to a group of officers] and I will only be able to add small bits of improvement to that. Also the field skills of an EWB trained volunteer [trained in Canada], while a solid foundation, do not compare with those of extension workers who have attended post-secondary school in this field and have years of field experience. What I can do is try to translate all those skills and the wealth of knowledge contained within these officers into a manual that up and coming extension workers can gain from. But who knows, maybe my biggest add-value will show up somewhere else!