Don’t I have a job? [Project Update Pt.1]

Looking back on what I had previously posted on my work here… well it isn’t much. Basically that was all that I knew coming to Zambia. So how does that shape up after a month?

Things got off to a terribly slow start. Unusually slow. I mean this is Africa, and things don’t move fast, but nothing happened the first couple weeks. That is because Zambia has decided that all farmers should be registered in a fat book for easy reference. I think it is a good idea, but I am not really sure what you would need that reference for. There is also the question of how quickly that information will change. In any case absolutely all MACO personnel were out in the field in a big rush to accomplish the registry. In the mean time I was left to gather any information I could about dams in Zambia, participatory approaches, etc. and take a good long look at the manual produced during Nick’s placement.

After talking with the District Agriculture and Cooperatives Coordinator [the DACCO], who is essential my boss, it became clear that he wanted the methodology that was developed to be verified. Does it work? Or is that manual a pile of wasted paper. And while refining the manual I would of course be helping communities organize themselves to better maintain communal assets like an earth dam [the direct impact on Dorothy].

I decided the first thing to do in terms of refining the manual was make sure it worked in the first place. Most of Nick’s work had been at the Mulabalaba Dam Community [it is utilized by 5 villages so I shall refer to them as a dam community]. To how things had changed in the aftermath of the mobilization, I conducted interviews with the community similar to the one-on-one interviews, prescribed in the manual, for the initial information gathering when mobilizing a community. However, people are not stupid so I couldn’t go with my usual co-workers [the Technical Service Branch officers] because if a TSB officer is standing their translating questions about how you maintain the dam less than a year after the TSB and another muzungo conducted a mobilization exercise… well you are going to tell him exactly what you think he wants to hear so they will be pleased with you. Similarly when you are asking questions you can’t lead the interviewee by saying “You use the dam for…”, because the tendency will be just to agree with you so you have to ask “What do you use the dam for?”. There is a cornucopia of little issues like that which turn a one-on-one interview into a very complicated, walking on eggshells, affair. To distance myself from the initial work as much as possible I went with a social worker who acted as an impartial translator [I explained everything to her] and asked for “dumb” questions as if I hadn’t the first clue about dams in Zambia. So instead of “What maintenance work do you do on the dam?” I’d ask “Does the dam need any work to protect it or can it be left untouched?”. My earnest efforts to get an unbiased picture of how things had changed were somewhat mitigated by the fact that a little over 8 months after Nick had left, here is another muzungo, who happens to be from Canada, asking questions about dams again. But I did what I could. Also it is difficult to gage how the newly elected dam committee [no one was happy with the old one] was doing was the fact that there was a canal project going on which was under the supervision of the committee with the help of the TSB [see picture of TSB officer Kantu Kantu standing on the canal construction]. As a result of this, most activity being coordinated had to do with the irrigation canals to better utilized the dam water.

The results of the interview were very positive. Pretty much everyone knew what was going on with the dam, knew about the rules of use and maintenance, and felt the new committee was doing a bang-up job. No severe disparities were uncovered by comparing the responses of men vs. women, individual villages, or age groups. However there was a lack of consensus on what the punishments were for breaking the rules or disobeying work orders [some examples or responses include: fine a goat which would be sold and the money put toward dam maintenance, nothing would happen, they will be arrested and taken to the city by somebody]. Also, only a fraction of the community felt that if the committee was not doing its job that their ineffectiveness would lead to the election of a new committee [other responses include: the dam will fail, nothing will happen]. Thus two minor things which could be given more focus in the manual were revealed. It shall be edited to include emphasis on asking questions about punishments and dam committee failure so that the community can discuss it together and come to a community decision on what to do that everyone knows about.