Getting to know the community and working with community knowledge.

Back in the day when I was a full time Humanitarian public health worker it was always something of a mantra to “listen to the community and work with local knowledge”.

In Mozambique whilst doing an assessment of flood risk on the Zambezi Valley, this meant my feeding back to head office that local farmers had told me that there was a high risk of flooding citing indicators such as greater than usual hippopotamus movements, the number of birds and the size of the mangoes.

Of course this was too much for an urban, office based leadership group to fathom and a month after my report was rejected as being too lacking in credible evidence, the heavens opened and we were faced with a flood response affecting tens of thousands of people….

Well this may not be the Zambezi Valley, but it’s the same principle. So having decided that I needed to do some terracing on the land before I could put any tents down, I thought I’d ask around.

One of the many great things about prioritising as a “necessity” seeking advice from the local community, is that you end up being invited for wonderful home grown breakfasts, more home grown bread, honey, oil, tea and whilst you can’t see it here, in this case, surrounded by fields of home grown pot!….But more of that later.

I can’t show it here, but the warmth, generosity and friendliness of the people I have met on Loubar has been truely wonderful.

Ultimately everyone pointed me in the direction of Mwalem Bni Mohammed, a gorgeous, peaceable man who lives about 10 minutes from the land. I found him one morning outside his house and explained who I was and what I was trying to do. Of course he had heard about me and my hair brained project. We walked the land, talked about what could and couldn’t be done and agreed he’d start once I’d managed to get sufficient rocks to build with…and he’d finished his marijuana harvest.

One thing that is becoming increasingly obvious to me, is the huge difference between urban and rural environments.

Earlier on in the year I completed an investigation in the DRC as to how to translate a rural WaSH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Promotion) program in to an urban slum in Bukavu. The differences soon became obvious.

Whilst rural societies are characterised by social cohesion, longevity of institutions, high levels of community interaction and broad access to local natural resources and a lower access to financial resources, indeed money per say, urban populations, certainly within a process of growing African urbanisation frequently are not communities, can have lower social cohesion and are characterised by a severe shortage of time and an acute focus upon gaining access to money, given that everything in new urban localities has a financial value.

 I mention this noting not only the very different experience I have in Loubar and in Fez, but also by the simple illustration of Mason Mohammed being able to up sticks and spend the best part of a day walking, wandering around and talking with me, a complete stranger and with no immediate recompense.

That we were then able to stop and eat a breakfast that has been wholly produced by the household in which we ate it and that all of my neighbours emphasised that a significant proportion of the resources necessary for the work on the land could equally be resourced from the land itself. This contrasts greatly with Fez and all the more so with urban Europe.

Time and money, I look forward to enjoying the former more and needing the latter less, the longer I spend in Loubar.

As I’ve said before, most of the neighbours advised me that I could get everything from the land and that I should break up the rocks that already exist there.

Unfortunately I feel that this will destroy some really stunning beauty spots and thus have decided to buy my rocks from Hakim, the price for a 6m/3 truck load being 730 dhm.

However I also thought I could benefit from bringing a few rocks out from the river, whilst also giving it a bit of a clean up. Taking rocks from a river bed is dangerous as it can change the direction of the water flow and of course lead to degredation and land falls.

Having said that I think we did well to get a few free lorry loads, whilst at the same time clearing the river bed of blockage caused by non/organic debris. We’ll see if I’m right come the rains!!

Obviously one donkey wasn’t going to be enough and so I’ve bought another at what I thought was a bargain, only 1,200 dhm.

Again I bought him with Fuddle and thought that I’d gotten a bargain because of Eid…it seems however that he’s got a knackered leg, which I didn’t see…well once he’s finished hauling rocks she’ll be put out to pasture and only carry bags, children or picnic hampers to local beauty spots…I think that’s called early retirement for donkeys, especially those otherwise destined for the knackers yard!

 

Although I’ve been focussing upon planning for glamping and have been quite opposed to any idea of building, a surprise visit to Khanfous Retreat has completely changed my mind on that.

I’ll tell you more about that later on, but suffice to say that I went away in August preparing to organise terraces and composting WCs and come mid September I was so impressed with what Carin has done at Khanfous Retreat, that I am now in the process of planning a 6 bedroom berber house!

Masons here are expected to build at approximately 5m linear per day and a six bedroom house will require approximately 240 m linear of rock wall. The prices are within reach, a mason costing 120 – 150 dhs per day, his mate 80 – 100 dhs and as stated 6m/3 of rocks, approx 730 dhs…..but getting materials to the land is a major problem and the potential for the rains to interfere makes this more so.

I had thought of digging a road up to the land (300 dhs for half day rental of an excavator), but thought the idea of a foreigner suddenly building his own piste, let alone the various negotiations it would take with other land owners and the Habous (Ministry of Religious Affairs) who own the old mosque and several other large tracts of land), the wrong direction to take and so it’ll all be done by donkey along our small track…time will of course be the issue here…as I want to try to get materials on the land before the rains, thus having them ready to start in spring…watch this space.

However now we’ve got started Mason Mohammed has shown his worth and has already put up an amazing wall where I had spent a week trying to simply create a flat space.

Seeing this come together fills me with excitement. This top spot is stunning and I can’t wait to get a tent up here…though realistically this’ll only be in the Spring.

Here are some images of the next spots as they look now, which we’ll be turning in to glamping sites.

They may not look like too much now, but the views from these are stunning and with a bit of luck, a continued dry Sept and MM’s expertise, we should have these up and looking beautiful before long….yippee!