Monday we headed out to a community near Rusape, about 2 1/2 hours drive South East of Harare, for 2 days of workshops that the Kufunda organic farming team had arranged. Kufunda have been working with 4 communities for several years to share some of their learnings across a range of areas. This workshop was the last of 3 communities that were visited for a workshop on winter ploughing as part of an organic farming regime.
Getting out there
The trip out to Rusape itself was very interesting. Since the Kufunda car was full with people and workshop materials Ali & I, along with Stephen from Kufunda had planned to take a bus from Harare to Rusape & then get a lift to the community from there. The bus trip turned into a hitch from the side of the road in the back of a pick-up for half the distance, followed by a half-hour wait for another ride and a second, very squashed trip in a pick up the rest of the way to Rusape. Total cost of the trip $3 each, half the cost of the bus, and a lot more oxygen! We received some very strange looks from people that were sharing the tray with us, and from people that were driving past. One guy asked us what on earth we were doing as white people never ride like this or hitch, because they all have enough money to drive themselves. When we told him what we were doing he was very encouraging and asked us to tell our friends and families how safe and beautiful Zim is, how welcoming the people are as the people here really needed to benefit from the economic effects of tourism and also the knowledge sharing that visitors brought to the country.
Rusape is on the edge of the eastern highlands, and on the way there we experienced the increasing number of large granite outcrops and massifs beginning to loom around us. Rusape is a small town on the road between Harare and Mutare (Zim's 3rd largest city). Like most habitations of similar size, the roads into town are populated with small fruit & veg stalls peddling sweet potato and people rushing out to meet cars to sell bags of apples, bananas and oranges, as well as lots of hopefuls waiting for a lift out of town, accompanied by various amounts of luggage and children. As was our experience the buses are few and far between, and mostly over full, so the chance of a hitch promises a quicker and more comfortable journey.
Community workshops
Kufunda work with two communities outside Rusape - one next to the massive dam at the bottom of the granite hills, and the other up in the hills. We arrived to lots of smiling faces and a hearty welcome. We arrived in the late afternoon, so no time to start any work on the first day. As is the Kufunda way introductions are held in a circle with all participants (a process that seems to drag on if anyone doesn't understand what 'keep it short' means, plus translations add to the duration) and a short prayer was said to open the proceedings.
Dinner was a basic beans and sadza, and then we were asked down to the local 'night spot'. This consisted of a small and dilapidated row of shops, mostly now closed, that fronted a shut-up 'lake resort' (some kind of accomodation / bar / restaurant with views over the dam). The bar was run from a previous fast food joint, we were seated in what had been a butchers (picture white tiles and flickering fluro lights). Drinks on choice were either one type of 'clear beer' (lager) or this local brew called 'Scud', which isn't home brewed but is commercially made by a company called 'Chibuku'. Scud is brought out in 2L opaque brown plastic jars, and is shaken vigourously before serving. (Note anyone going to the garden festival there is a DJ crew called Chibuku ShakeShake - this is where the name comes from). The shaking mixes up the 'roughage', and then a flat and chunky milky looking brew is poured into a cup which is then emptied in one go and passed to the next person. After managing to swallow a mouthful of it, the taste can only be described as a slightly sour beer milkshake with bits. The locals say that it is both a drink and a meal in one, when i've managed to get through a whole jar of it I'll confirm whether this is true or not! The entertainment for the evening was watching these large bugs (a cross between a caterpillar and a dragonfly) flying up to the lights, getting caught in spiders webs, wriggling themselves free, dropping to the ground and flying up to do it over again. Apparently they had a sting in their tail so none of the spiders would go for them - a pity.
The workshops with the two communities were very interesting, as apart from the farmers markets this was the first time that we have seen any outreach work that Kufunda do. The training was around the 'winter plough' stage of a series of organic farming sessions (two more to follow later in the year). The trainer, Mr. Murengwa (a farmer from one of the other communities that held the same training) demonstrated the set up of the plough (to be drawn by two cattle) for correct depth of tillage, before we hitched the cows up for the main event, ploughing the demonstration field. The cattle moved much more quickly than I'd imagined, and they weren't the type to plod along in a straight line as you might have imagined. Much stick whacking and cursing was required to keep them ploughing a rough line. Ali & I both had a go & it was much harder work to keep the furrows on track than I first thought. As the fields were ploughed the old maize stalks were put into the furrows, and were covered by the soil 'thrown' by the next furrow. This is to add organic matter to the soil that will break down before crop sowing in October - November.
Following lunch at the end of the workshops there was some great singing and dancing and all of the participants said how happy they were that Kufunda had come to provide the training and bring us along as visitors.
We also took a short visit to a pre-school, where many of the children there make up to a 5 kilometre walk to get to the preschool; such little tiny kids making such a long trip. The school was run by 2 ladies, situated between some run down church buildings (apparently the church group aren't too keen on the preschool using their buildings and would remove all of the kids drawings when they used the rooms - very Christian of them, bunch of c-hunts). The teachers are trying to raise money for a preschool building and teaching materials - currently the kids are doing most of their work in the sand - drawing and learning to write their names. Terrible conditions considering the investment that this country had for education in the early 90s.
My interpretation of the workshops
Whilst it was well intentioned by the team from Kufunda that were running these workshops, there were several issues that I had with them, and a number of reasons why I don't think that will be effective. These reasons are also common to lots of community education campaigns run in places such as the UK, Oz, and other (most) development projects - I'm not singling Kufunda out as being particularly ineffective.
- - ploughing in poor granitic sands destroys soil structure and in the long-term will ruin soil fertility. Green manure planting halfway through the growing season (maize is a wet season crop), followed by slashing of green manure and crop waste to break down as mulch would help to build soil structure and suppress weeds.
- - the set-up of the plough was demonstrated with a tape measure and giving the correct heights and depths in centimetres. None of the workshop participants had a tape measure; no alternatives (eg a stick with marks on it were provided)
- - less than half of the workshop participants had access to a plough or cattle to pull the plough, no alternatives were provided.
- - no baseline data was collected to see how many people currently did or didn't plough, or how people set up their ploughs prior to training.
- - there is no monitoring or evaluation plan
- - the Kufunda 'circle' process done before and after the workshops doesn't give accurate feedback because Zimbabweans, like most of us at times, don't speak their true feelings in public as they don't want to offend people and would much rather give positive feedback and not do something than to let someone know that they have been wasting their time (apparently this is a huge problem with development projects across Africa and one of the main reasons that most development projects fail - a lack of understanding of the local people and their actual needs, more on this in a future post I'm sure).
- - We picked up that a lot of the participants came along for the free lunch and a chance to catch up with their friends from around the community, more so than the training, which for a lot of the time people weren't really paying a huge amount of attention to (a lot of the participants were complaining about the food rather than talking about the w/s content)
- - We had the feeling that they way that Kufunda have worked with these communities - providing free lunches, paying for school fees, building a preschool for one of them - that they have come to expect handouts from Kufunda, rather than Kufunda building capacity.
- - No handouts or follow-up information was provided or offered.
First hand stories of foreign aid problems
I also talked a good deal with one farmer and learnt from his first hand experience about the problem that food aid has been causing in Zim. Lack of rainfall for the 2008 rainy season meant poor harvests. International donors such as the World Food Programme and US Food Aid brought in lots of maize meal, dried beans & other basics. Because far too much food aid was brought inde (there is actually far too much food produced in the world & it is easy to dump excess on 'starving' populations) surplus is sold, driving the sale price of these commodities down. Thus the farmer I was speaking to could normally sell the beans that he grows for $5/kg, but can now only get $1/kg as there are still big surpluses left from the food aid. At these prices he can't afford to live, send his kids to school, etc. Its a balls-up that happens all over the world through food aid programmes.
This was reinforced by one of the Kufundees who owns some farmland in the southwest of Zim. His story was that his wife applied for food aid last year, but was refused based on their household income. His wife was annoyed, but he said that they will just have to be careful with what they have and work hard to fill any gaps. They did this, and got by, and worked hard to prepare their land and animals for the coming rains. Apparently many of his people in his area that received the food aid did little the prepare their land, as they had got used to the free hand-outs; they missed the opportunity from the good rains early this year and now they don't have enough to eat because the food aid has stopped. Another great balls-up.
The way that the villages are situated, either at the bottom of or amongst huge areas of bare granite rock there is massive potential for water harvesting - combining swales and dams to increase infiltration, reduce erosion, provide water for irrigation and habitat for fish. Given a small amount of investment to create such structures those communities should have no difficulty resolving any water issues they have, however it is the small amount of investment that is the tricky bit.
Baboon hunting
Following the training on the tuesday we took a hike up one of the granite hills in search of baboons. After a decent climb we were within 100m of 4 baboons patrolling the highest point on the hill, keeping a good watch on our movements. Seeing as the biggest one was a very well muscled fellow we decided not to get any closer, but it was nevertheless a pretty cool moment spotting our first wild humanoids!
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