CADEPI supports local development by intervening in two areas: 1) sustainable management of natural resources and 2) local governance or decentralization. Their activities concerning natural resources include reforestation, tree nursery promotion, conflict-management, elaboration of local environmental laws, water and soil conservation, extending knowledge of anti-erosion farming techniques, harvest of non-woody tree products, strengthening farmer networks, environmental education, wood conservation, composting, biofuels, and helping local governments combat climate change.
More generally, CADEPI strives to strengthen civil society. Under this second, broader goal, their activities range from the implementation of local development plans, capacity-building for local development committees, evaluation of community institutions, implementation of participatory community self-diagnosis, promotion of income-generating projects and search for financing for micro-projects, training local leaders or elite in their roles and responsibilities, explaining to villagers their civil rights, and encouraging farmers to organize themselves in common interest groups and lobby the government. Basically, CADEPI encourages rural populations to become more engaged in government processes and take initiative for self-development.
CADEPI serves as an intermediary between villages and development partners, i.e. the Cameroonian government or international organizations. Most of CADEPI’s projects since its founding in 2002 have dealt with environmental issues, and usually CADEPI offers its technical expertise to execute projects conceived by larger organizations. For instance, CADEPI partnered with a Dutch organization to restore a local watering hole and elaborate local conventions governing its use. The government employed CADEPI in creating a network of tree nurserymen that now produces about 70,000 trees a year. For another project, CADEPI conducted an awareness campaign on the problems of desertification and climate change in schools and women’s centers, planting trees with the students and encouraging women to reduce their wood consumption with improved cookstoves. This summer, CADEPI will be funded by the SNV to promote biodigestors and to guide community negotiations against overexploitation of resources on the periphery of Waza National Park, one of Cameroon’s top tourist sites (I’m looking forward to tagging along on that project). Between projects, CADEPI survives through the annual donations of an extended network of members.
CADEPI currently has seven full-time employees, all in their 30s. Emmanuel Sawada, one of the founders of CADEPI and now its Secretary General, is my community host and project counterpart. That is to say, I was assigned to him by Peace Corps and he is responsible for helping me identify community resources, develop a work plan, and implement project activities on a regular basis. Based on my collaboration with him thus far, I don’t think I could have asked for a better partner. He has tons of experience and is incredibly knowledgeable on regional issues. He grew up in a village near Mora and has spent the past 15 years as an Agricultural Technician working for various development organizations in the Far North. Soft-spoken and patient yet doggedly persistent, he has a gift for explaining project objectives simply and persuasively and logically so that uneducated farmers can easily understand. In this way, he is often my translator at meetings not only in terms of local dialects but also by putting my sometimes loftier language into layman’s terms.
He is also very enthusiastic about the Peace Corps. At my introductory meeting at CADEPI, he explained Peace Corps’ approach to development better than I did! At our Inter-Service Conference in Ngaoundere, Emmanuel was constantly raising his hand and snapping his fingers in his eagerness to answer questions, leading group activities, and schmoozing with the other counterparts at break, so much so that my supervisor Tiki Manga commented approvingly and my fellow PCVs told me “your counterpart is a pimp!” He is receptive to my ideas; in fact, his favorite phrase is “Il n’y a pas de probleme” (on the contrary, I would observe there are usually lots of problems! But what he means is don’t worry about it, we’ll make it work somehow. He often thinks of simple solutions and makes me feel like I make things too complicated). In his early 40s, tall and solid with graying hair and a slight potbelly, he has never turned down food and loves to sit and drink bilbil and shoot the breeze in the village (Bilbil is a village-brewed alcohol made from millet, passed around in big gourds. It is bitter but refreshing and usually accompanied by a hard liquor distilled from it- probably the equivalent of moonshine in the US, alcohol content unknown haha). Gentle and chivalrous yet determined, pragmatic, hardworking, and very thorough- I would say I really lucked out in the counterpart department. He has willingly accompanied me in all my activities so far.
The other members of CADEPI with whom I share the office every day are equally experienced and dedicated. The current president of CADEPI, Dominique Graba, is a Livestock Technician with ten years of experience and a very dry humor. He is the face of the organization, very hardworking, and never raises his voice above a calm monotone or makes any animated gestures. Khari Boukar, an experienced agronomy engineer, is the real brains behind the operation, very eloquent and erudite. He hopes to get his Masters in Europe. Agricultural technician Philippe Ajavdo and sociologist Mahamat Allamine are technical coordinators, writing projects, contacting potential partners, etc., and always giving one another a hard time for not having found wives yet. The organization’s accountant and secretary Evariste Saounaye works with a frenetic efficiency, and frequently scolds me for not asking him for help. Madame Fadi Kadi is the organization’s treasurer and breezes in from time to time in colorful scarves to offer financial advice. Former employees often drop by for updates.
The dedication, organization, and experience of CADEPI really gives me a leg up in terms of getting projects off the ground. First of all, it provides me with a work space. CADEPI has an office with two computers, two laptops, a printer, photocopier, powerpoint projector, etc. which I use as a base of operations. Plus, it’s very close to Mora’s administrators. Departmental and municipal government offices are all on one strip in Mora, so I can bike easily back and forth between delegates and CADEPI getting documents, asking questions, dropping off applications.
Secondly, I have lots of people I can bounce ideas of off, vent to, and seek advice from. They are all at the office five, sometimes even six days a week from 8am to 4pm, executing projects or applying for new ones. There is a real sense of camaraderie. Any time a new project is on the table, the whole office sits down to turn it over and tear it apart. After being in the quartiers and villages, it’s really refreshing for me to be able to have intellectual discussions about development issues, hear well-polished French, and to be with people who understand why I’m here and what I’m trying to do. Also, CADEPI is well-established- in existence since 2002. Its members have many contacts among other NGOs, international organizations (WWF, IUCN, and PNUD, among others), and Cameroonian government officials from their past projects. The name CADEPI is familiar to anyone in the region who deals with environmental issues. So I become sort of a double threat when I approach potential partners, because I can say that I am backed by both CADEPI and the Peace Corps, and have two organizations and all their resources at my disposal.
Looking around at my colleagues I often think, here is development at its finest. Local grassroots organizers, well-educated guys with degrees in agriculture who grew up here and instead of brain draining their country have decided to stay and give back to their communities. They speak several local languages, they understand the region, they are poor farmers themselves, etc. When the majority of the population cannot read or write and speak only their village language, having consultants out in the field who can help them understand the resources available to them and navigate the bureaucracy is essential. That’s what Africa needs, is more genuine, non-corrupt NGOs made up of native sons and daughters driven to make a difference at the local level. Ok, so they’re not perfect- there is the occasional day when they sit around and play Solitaire, but on the whole I’m impressed with my host.
As advised by Peace Corps, I spent my first three months with CADEPI just getting myself oriented to the locality and exploring local issues. I gave feedback on several funding proposals and helped them navigate English websites. Emmanuel and Dominique took me on protocol visits, to introduce myself to the regional and departmental heads of government ministries, former partners, and security officers, and as well as traditional authorities (Mora has a Sultan! He’s the king of the lamidos, or traditional chiefs). I also started a tree nursery of Moringa, a tree frequently promoted by development workers to combat malnutrition due to the high nutritional content of its leaves and seeds, as well as its many other uses.
During those first couple months, I was so gung-ho to get going after training that I stressed myself out. I mean, I was stressed in general just getting used to my new environment, but I invited extra stress by worrying that I was not hitting the ground running fast enough. Being an agroforestry volunteer can be daunting at times because, unlike education or health volunteers who are at the hospital or school all day, we have little imposed structure. Everything is self-initiated and self-motivated. That flexibility can be a lot of fun because it allows you to cherry-pick the projects that interest you the most, but also leaves no guarantee that you have work to do on a given day and no focus- you could go in many different directions, and many agros end up becoming jacks of all trades. You have little you are required to do, yet you could do lots of things, so you feel a constant pressure to be doing more without being quite sure exactly what that “more” will be.
Not sure where to start, I put pressure on myself to pay attention to everything in the course of my day, as if everything could potentially lead to a project. In my zeal to get going on projects, I behaved a little like Jason Bourne. You know how he is always scanning the area for resources or threats or escape routes? I did the same by being constantly alert for development opportunities: There are farms on that hillside- do they have contour bunds? What’s the shortest way to the post office and why is that goat poop not in a field fertilizing something and what if we dug a big pit here for all this trash and is the floodplain zone like this swampy field here? How much are those peanuts being sold for? Is selling peanuts profitable? There are kids with huge piles of firewood on their heads and women carrying water buckets- alert! alert! firewood needed, more water sources. In other words, I was acting as if I had to pull projects out of thin air. To do protocol, make contacts, and tour the countryside, I had to rely on Emmanuel’s schedule and he was initially too busy finishing project proposals to take me on visits all day every day, which is what I wanted. I felt trapped twiddling my thumbs at CADEPI. I could see the problems all around me but not how I would go about fixing them or what my role would be. I wasn’t sure how to start but at the same time I wanted to start everywhere at once.
This frustrating period ended as soon as I started actually meeting with farmers and putting a face on the problems. Peace Corps hammers into us during training that before starting any projects we must go through a process of “Participatory Analysis for Community Action” (PACA). That is, rather than imposing our conception of what we think our community needs, we facilitate a series of community meetings during our first three months to encourage our communities to analyze their problems and decide how to go about solving them. The theory is that development projects conceived through a participatory process that engages all actors in the community will be more sustainable. The projects will be based on community priorities and people will be more motivated to execute projects they designed themselves. Volunteers play the role of mentor, co-facilitator, co-planner, intermediator, consultant, “agent of change,” or networker, but we are supposed to work hand-in-hand with community partners at every stage of the project- analysis, design, implementation, and evaluation. The more the people take the initiative to do things themselves, the more they will be empowered to improve their quality of life. Along these lines, Peace Corps is a people-to-people, capacity-building organization and does not directly fund infrastructure projects. Rather than throwing money at problems, we attempt to use local resources as much as possible.
Indeed, the more I talked to farmers, the better I felt, as I could see my activities beginning to take concrete shape. In my impatience, I had unreasonably expected results before beginning PACA, when really all I had to do was wait and trust that projects would come along through the PACA meetings, not because I force them. Once I heard farmers’ ideas and requests, I had a starting point. I had understood the PACA approach in theory, but it took actually doing it for me to understand that it would work. Emmanuel, too, with his veteran certainty helped me settle down and be patient and trust that projects would come along through our meetings. I still struggle though, with all the waiting. It’s frustrating being on “African time.” Americans don’t like just waiting around. We have a “let’s get this done, go get ‘em” attitude that can clash with the pace of life in rural Cameroon. It takes a lot of patience. I’ve found that a good amount of relationship-building has to happen first. I have to let farmers get used to having me around. Not much may happen the first five meetings, but then maybe the sixth meeting one farmer happens to mention he wants to start a tree nursery, others that they want trees, and we’re off to the races. It’s just hard being aware of the big picture- that the project will go so much better if we can start it within a certain timeframe- and yet somehow not being able to speed things along.
To do PACA, I decided to focus my efforts within a small area of Mora, rather than stretch myself out over too many communities. I chose one quartier of Mora, called Mora Massif, because I noticed a big difference between Mora Massif and the rest of Mora. While it is technically still in Mora town, you feel as if you are suddenly in a village far away from any commercial center. The neighborhood is shabbier and poorer than those around it, and the inhabitants seem cut off (perhaps self-isolated in some ways) from the rest of Mora. It is very odd- the residents (we’ll call them MMs) seem to have little comprehension of or access to resources in Mora, yet they are literally right down the road from the center of town. For instance, they are close to schools, yet many of their children do not attend. The town has running water, but MMs are still carrying it to their homes in buckets from overcrowded wells. Most of the women do not have national identity cards. Most of the people do not speak any French whatsoever. This marginalization is partly because MMs are Christian or Animist, while most of the other cartiers are Muslim. Historically there is some animosity there, as the Christians complain that Muslims have political power and favor their own. This is also partly because MM is made up of migrants. MM is laid out in a semi-circle around one mountain chain, including villages both in and below the mountains. The “mountain people” have a reputation for being coarse, wild, heavy drinkers, and closed to outsiders. The flatland villages are made up of many mountain people who recently descended to obtain more of the benefits of a big town.
MMs are all subsistence farmers, in contrast to other mixed quartiers of Mora where you can find merchants, shop owners, government officials, or teachers. How these people scratch out a living is amazing. They grow crops out of BARE ROCK. Literally. The mountains are piles of rock with barely a sprinkling of sand, much less soil. From far away, you’d think there was no way anything could possibly grow there. Then you get up close and see that there are narrow terraces the villagers have somehow carved out of the mountainside, with straggly lines of millet going all the way up. Land is scarce in the area, so they are forced to use every inch of land available to them. Much of their hut construction requires rocks, and they are often forced to carry water up from the lowlands, so you know they spend a lot of time carrying very heavy things up and down the steep incline. I have seen elderly women farming the terraces- they are essentially climbing stairs all day- who would have been in a nursing home long ago in the US. Tough people.
Farming in the flatlands is equally challenging. The soil is so poor that families cannot live off a single field. Where harvests used to be ten sacks per hectare, they are now down to two sacks. With next to nothing to harvest from each parcel, families are forced to farm numerous fields spread far out from one another to get sufficient yield. They walk for miles just to get to their land (I get tired just driving around to look at their fields!). It’s a vicious cycle, too- because they do not own their fields and rent for short periods, they have no incentive to make long-term investments in improving soil fertility. The soil is not improved and the harvests get no bigger- they use chemical fertilizer to squeeze out small harvests each year, just enough to feed their families.
In terms of development projects, Mora Massif is stuck in a bit of a twilight zone. Not quite part of the town but not quite outside it, they are often skipped over by development projects, though (ironically) they are directly behind the government offices of Mora. I will have plenty to do, as MM suffers from every possible development problem. Even four volunteers from each PC program would probably be kept busy for decades. Also, I chose Mora Massif because all the villages are within an easy biking distance and close to CADEPI, which I knew would be important for building relationships with farmers through frequent visits.
Once I narrowed my target down to one quartier, we met with local development committees at Emmanuel’s suggestion. In 2008, the communities of Mora Massif wrote their own five-year development plans with the assistance of the PNDP (National Program of Participatory Development) as part of a government initiative to decentralize public investment in Cameroon. The PNDP grouped MM villages into three clusters to facilitate the process, resulting in three development plans and three development committees. The fact that there was already a framework in place to organize community discussions of development issues gave us a head start. In addition, the PNDP process was recorded in three reports full of information and population statistics useful for development planning.
We held meetings with the three development committees and traditional leaders, and asked them to help us mobilize the population for public meetings in each village cluster. We introduced the Peace Corps, asked them to describe their problems, and then to propose solutions. I quickly realized the question “What are your problems?” was too broad. It invited an airing of grievances including everything from having no money to diminishing harvests to insufficient health care to broken-down wells to low school attendance; enormous and overwhelming challenges impossible for a single volunteer to address over a two-year service period. So I learned to tailor my questions to make it clear that I can’t do everything: “What are your agricultural problems?” I explained the limits of my role as an agroforestry extension agent- sharing knowledge on how to improve soil fertility, multi-purpose tree production and propagation, environmental education, encouraging agribusiness/income-generating activities and helping farmers come up with strategies for self-development. Furthermore, people associate foreign development workers with money, especially since my predecessors raised funds to build a well and a school. I had to repeatedly explain that Peace Corps is a human resources organization and does not directly fund projects.
A few cultural differences revealed by this process: Generally, meetings take place under trees on the ground. We almost never start on time, as villagers usually shuffle in at staggered intervals. Many are reluctant to sit close to guests, preferring to huddle together at a distance; at one meeting, had I not urged everyone to move closer, I would have had to yell to make myself heard. They generally avoid eye contact. The majority do not speak any French- I have to wait for the translation of everything I say. Hardly any women attend; if they do they speak only when spoken to and sit segregated at a distance. A lot of the men need prodding to speak too; often I had to repeat my questions after long silences, or received answers from only a few. Young adults are the minority; instead, many of the attendants were chiefs so old I wondered how they got to the meeting, much less whether they could mobilize their communities around a development project. Arguments break out frequently. Even simple organizational questions like “how many villages are in this cluster?” can spur debates. A couple of times people took the opportunity to go on rants on grievances unrelated to our discussion or to make general accusations against their peers for not coming to village meetings or for failing to follow through on past projects. These behaviors were new to me, and I learned some tricks from Emmanuel- such as asking at the end “Was this meeting helpful?” to gauge their reaction, or cracking jokes and teasing people for not speaking to break the ice.
From these encounters, we learned the priorities of our target population: WATER SHORTAGES!!! are number one, always the first thing mentioned, followed by poor soils leading to diminishing harvests and famine during the dry season, followed by lack of access to credit or farming inputs such as fertilizers, improved seed varieties, or ploughs. The problems are interrelated and compound one another. If you plant more trees, the water table will rise, but how can you plant trees if you have no water? Putting animal manure in the fields is an essential part of improving soil fertility, but if there is not enough water or food for the humans, much less the animals, the animals are unhealthy or dying and you don’t have enough manure to fertilize the crops. These problems extend to the whole region. One of my colleagues described the Far North as the development worker’s laboratory, since there is so much need in every aspect of development work. It is the poorest region of Cameroon- 68 percent of the population live on less than a dollar a day.
At the end of three months of orientation and PACA exercises, Emmanuel and I traveled south to Ngaoundere to meet with the other Agro volunteers in my training group along with their counterparts for our Inter-Service Conference. It was a real morale boost to be with everyone again, and to commiserate on all the inconveniences of life in Africa. I think the majority of our conversations were about our cravings for American food. The contrast in experiences between the different regions was hilarious. Volunteers from the South complained of incessant rain, mold, flooding in their houses, even hail! Meanwhile volunteers from the North complained of extreme heat and water shortages. When it rained, all the Northerners ran outside ecstatically, while the Southerners just looked bored haha. Fortunately, everyone seemed happy with their posts and excited to get back. Over the course of the week, we analyzed the results of our PACA activities, learned about Peace Corps resources for finding project funds, and wrote Action Plans with our counterparts. I returned to post refreshed and re-motivated.
My first agroforestry activity in Cameroon was to give a presentation on the importance of trees. I assisted the members of CADEPI in a project where environmental committees were formed in two villages and the committee members invited to a workshop given by CADEPI on how to promote environmental awareness in village. As part of the workshop, I gave presentations on the benefits of reforestation, how to plant a tree, and how to take care of young tree seedlings.
The first item on my action plan was to start teaching erosion control techniques to farmers’ groups, based on their complaints that they lacked the know-how to improve soil fertility. Emmanuel and I proposed setting up “field schools” in the central villages of the three clusters of Mora Massif. Farmers in two of the clusters were receptive to the idea. We started in April, and since then we have held weekly “classes” on composting, finding contours, constructing contour bunds, sowing in a straight line using a seeding cord, and the “zai” technique of planting, which involves filling seeding holes with manure for a more efficient use of manure. For each session, we start with the theory behind the technique, then we implement them as a group on quarter hectares of land set aside as demo plots. We dug and filled two compost pits, staked out contours, and demonstrated the new sowing techniques on half of the demo plot. The other half of the plot will be cultivated according to traditional farming techniques. At the end of the planting season we will compare the two methods side by side and hope to be able to show a relative increase in yield. While we have a group of regular students, our sessions are open to anyone, and we try to encourage new people to come each week. Also, our demo plots are in visible areas to attract the attention of passersby.
In theory, the field school is a beautiful idea. It has worked well in other African countries (see FAO article West African Regional Integrated Production and Pest Management (IPPM) Programme)) Originally, Emmanuel and I had hoped that we could use our field schools to reach all the villages in each cluster. We deliberately held sessions in the center village of each cluster (Vame and Migawa) and tried to get two representatives from each village to come regularly. The idea being that after our students learned the techniques they would implement them on their own fields, and then we would have mini-demo plots in each village. Each student would become an extension agent for their respective village.
It didn’t exactly work out like that. Attendance started out strong, as people were curious about our visits, but quickly whittled down. In Migawa, we had 20+ people at the initial meeting. That dropped to four the second meeting. Now we’re down to two very dedicated attendees- Mathias and Papa Lade. Instead of setting aside a community demo plot, we’re using Papa Lade’s field as our demo plot. Part of the drop in attendance was probably due to the fact that Migawa built three wells simultaneously in April, a task which occupied all the men in the village. In Vame, all the attendees are from the same village. We’re relatively on track with our original vision here, though- we have a community demo plot set aside, started clearing it for planting, and average about 10-15 people at each session, including women. Vame is our most successful because everyone in the village belongs to the same family. The village leader Philippe is very motivated. For one session, he had a stomach flu but still hobbled out to our session before everyone else. He reliably mobilizes his brothers, who mobilize their wives. Even at Vame, though, we’ve had weeks where only one or two people come, especially as the planting season approaches and people are busy with their own fields. We had to reduce the size of the demo plot since we had less manpower than expected.
That said, we now have one farmer in Migawa attempting to implement all our techniques on his land, where before there was no one. He is already attracting attention- his field looks different from those around it and neighbors have come over to see what we’re up to. Each session, we have passersby stop and listen in on parts of the session. In Vame, we are well on our way to having a functioning demo plot, and many of our students have declared that they want to implement our practices in their fields for next season. Hopefully the techniques will sell themselves and word will spread. The project is really kind of fail-proof, because as long as we have at least one person in each village implementing the techniques for everyone else to see, that’s a big step forward. At the very least, we’ve got our foot in the door. We have an excuse to visit the villages every week and build relationships- already the field school is leading to other projects just from chatting before and after the sessions. Part of the obstacles we’ve run up against, too, are due to our late start; it would have been better to start before December, but I wasn’t at post yet. We’ll learn from our mistakes for the next round.
Eventually, we want to use the field schools to promote tree nurseries and agroforestry- planting multi-purpose trees in fields as live fencing, windbreaks, improved fallow, and alley crops. Which leads me to how THE WORLD WILDLIFE FUND SCREWED US OVER. Haha ok that’s not really true. For the last few years, WWF funded a large tree planting campaign in the Far North and was the primary source of tree seedlings for PCVs. Last year, CADEPI had 12,000 fruit and agroforestry trees from WWF to distribute to farmers. This year, expecting the same thing, Peace Corps, CADEPI, and other WWF partners in the region waited for WWF to give the go ahead before ordering trees. By the end of April, WWF still hadn’t given official notice. The excuse was that the president of the cell phone company MTN, one of the primary funders of the project, was “sick” and could not sign the contract. Turns out in health he wouldn’t sign it either, so the project was scrapped for this season.
In agricultural work in the Far North, timing is everything. The growing season or rainy season is only three to four months long (June-August/early September). As soon as the first rain falls, farmers rush to get seeds down. Timing is key for lots of projects. You can’t build a well during the rainy season. You can’t start a compost at the end of the dry season because it’s too difficult to water it regularly. And the ideal time to plant trees, with the best chance of survival, is in June at the beginning of the growing season. That way, trees have three full months of rain to establish themselves and grow strong enough to survive the eight month long dry season. Tree nurseries, therefore, should be planted in February or March, since it takes young trees about three months in the nursery to reach planting height. WWF’s delay means that most tree nurserymen either went ahead and took a gamble- planting without knowing which species their clients would want- or they waited to plant and their seedlings won’t be ready to leave the nursery until July or August.
Meanwhile, PCVs are scrambling to find trees at the last minute. And now we’re scavenging- it’s too late for us to order the particular species we want (for instance, if you’re doing a live fence, you want a thorny tree) from nurserymen we’ve hand-picked. The mayor’s office in Mora has 20,000 trees ordered to reforest schools and public areas, but has refused to put any aside for CADEPI in advance, or to promise that there will be enough for our projects, saying only diplomatically “We will inform you when the trees arrive.” Inquiries into the Environment/Forestry Depts. and other NGOs have yet to yield trees; most of CADEPI’s partners have already designated planting sites and offer only trees for the next planting season. I’m bummed, as I have only two growing seasons while I am here to plant trees. At least, I’ve learned how the process can go wrong, and can make next year perfect and timed far in advance.
Aside from the fields schools, I am in the process of helping several farmer groups earn legal recognition by the state as Groupes des Interets Communs, or GICs. Before legalization, it is difficult for farmers’ groups to obtain government interventions, international donations, or bank credit. Emmanuel emphasized in our initial meetings with the three clusters that strength comes in numbers and organization is essential. Also, that farm work has to be year-round. Instead of treating the dry season as eight months of unemployment, he encouraged them to work in groups to find off-season income-generating activities. We invited leaders interested in to forming GICs to come forward for consultations.
I now have six farmers groups filling out applications for legalization. In some of the groups, all members are illiterate and need my help; in others, one or two members are educated and can fill out all the paperwork for their group. Once they are legalized, we plan to continue working with the GICs to assist them with income-generating activities and obtaining credit. Already, we are working with business volunteer Martin Case to start Village Savings and Loan Associations or VSLAs (Most of our GICs currently pool their money in the form of a “tantine”- each group member gives the same sum of money each week, and all the money collected for a given week goes to one member, on a rotating basis). In all of the GICs, we hope to offer technical advice on raising goats and chickens by inviting the Delegate of Livestock to do vaccinations and advisory sessions. I’m also helping a bee-keeping GIC start a tree nursery to reforest around their bee hives.
Three of our GICs are interested in starting community farms. One womens' GIC has a community plot that they have farmed together for several years now. They were reluctant to implement the soil fertility techniques we suggested because they were not sure how long they would be able to rent the land, and thus were not sure that they would be able to reap the investment. So we used a land rent agreement designed by CADEPI to help them negotiate with their landlord to keep their plot for the next five years. With a longer-term commitment, they are more willing to make investments in soil fertility. We hope to encourage other groups to use the same agreement, as renting land for short periods of time is a common excuse against implementing erosion control techniques.
Of the other two, one group is still searching for land to rent, and we are not sure if the other- a group of about 50 women- is really serious about the project. Their meetings are mostly to pool their money; once the money is collected, they bring out the bil bil, and the meeting dissolves into something resembling an uproarious medieval banquet, people yelling back and forth and generally making scenes. The first time Emmanuel and I went it was pretty comical, us trying unsuccessfully to make substantive announcements over the din. If they do express interest in expanding their activities we’re going to encourage them to have meetings separate from these “fetes.”
Outside of those projects, I had hoped to give the trees in my Moringa nursery out to women in my neighborhood and explain to them its many uses. Unfortunately, of the 200 Moringa trees I planted in my nursery, only 50 are surviving right now- lizards, water shortages, and my inexperience took their toll- but I’m planning to plant another round.
Outside of agricultural projects, I am in the process of planning a Young Girls’ Summer Camp with my postmate, Education Volunteer Liz Adamo. Three other PCVs, Liz Loftus (Agro), Catherine Nguyen (Health), and Martin Case (Business), are also organizing the camp with us. The theme of the camp is “Les Capacites Necessaires pour la Vie,” or “Life Skills,” based on a Peace Corps training manual that outlines activities for youth leadership workshops. Camp activities will cover decision-making skills, communication skills, peer pressure, positive relationships, and leadership skills, as well as money management, hygiene, AIDS prevention, the importance of education, and planning for future careers. One entire day will be devoted to careers. We have invited Cameroonian women with professional careers to share their experiences and advice with the girls. The camp will take place at a local pre-school from June 6-10 (8am-12 each day). We expect 50 girls between the ages 10-14 from primary schools and high schools in the town of Mora to attend. We also have several Cameroonian women helping us facilitate activities. We received funding from the Department of Education, and are expecting a supplementary grant from Peace Corps’ Gender and Youth Development Committee.
In addition to these projects, Emmanuel and I have come up with a rather ambitious to-do list for the length of my service: analyse water problems in Mora Massif and potentially fund a well, conduct a trash collection campaign (Mora is famous for its trash river that runs right through the center of town next to the market and is apparently the dumping ground for the town waste), plant several community woodlots, find trees for next year, and examine how to make CADEPI a more self-sufficient organization, among other things…we’ll see how far we get.
*to DEFEAT the HUNS! I didn’t realize my blog would have this many Disney references…I can’t help myself…
Keep it up Jess. Sounds like all your hard work is starting to pay off a bit. Good luck with the myriad of projects. Im rooting for you.
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