January 14th-- Community Meeting/Community Forest

This morning we had a second community meeting in my village. The first we scheduled Saturday the 10th, so that I could formally introduce myself to the village (or the men who came to the meeting representing the village), speak a little about who I am, where I come from, what the Peace Corps is, the Importance of Trees and what Agroforestry is, and then what we can possibly do together over the next two years. I spoke in French and it was translated into Fulfulde. As it was more of an introduction the first meeting, I mentioned a few projects that other volunteers had done with their community, such as water catchments woodlots, beekeeping, orchards, forming group associations (a legal process in Cameroon which is encouraged, as groups can then take out loans) as well as working individually with farmers. 8 years ago, with a group of student researchers from France in the area of water and forests, who came every year for a few months at a time to do research on MK as part of master’s projects, the researchers started talking with my counterpart about developing a community forest. A technical community forest in Cameroon is a huge tract of land (often over 5000 hectares, 1 hectare being 100 m by 100 m) that is legally set aside and cannot be “developed” or trees removed illegally, etc. It is a legally protected area to be used by the communities involved. I’m not sure who decides, then, who can use the wood, because the forest is intended for people to use, for wood, for trees, etc. But at the same time, the aim is for reforestation and protection of land. It is a good cause and a great goal, however to actually succeed it takes a lot, especially in an area like MK, where many different ethnic groups are involved and with high tribalism, coming to any sort of agreement is difficult. Add onto that the nomadic groups who move through the area and the already high tensions between herders and agriculturalists, and finding consensus about the use of common land becomes near impossible (but anything could be possible, I like to believe). In addition, the paperwork to get through the process is quite daunting. So, five years after they were working on this concept (when a neighboring village wouldn’t get on board), the idea died, in 2005. However, my counterpart still was interested in the idea, and mentioned, perhaps Mafa Kilda could do a small one (woodlot) and if it goes well, it could serve as an example for other villages and then when they saw the results they would want to get on board. So this is really the pet project of my counterpart, because he is trained in traditional medicine with plants, and is hoping to benefit from having access to medicinal trees all in one place, which is fantastic.

After the first community meeting where we mentioned the idea of the woodlot again, my counterpart scheduled another meeting for the 14th to discuss this more in depth. We had a second meeting in front of the second chief of the village’s house. Less people showed up, and I was disappointed to see that a lot of the people from the Muslim cartier were not there for the second meeting. In addition women are not represented at village meetings. The first one I came to I was under the impression would be the whole village, men, women, kids, where I could say hello to everyone, and everyone would be clued in to who I am and what I’m doing in their village. And I showed up and there were 50 men. I asked my counterpart “I thought this was a village meeting!” And he said, “it is.” And I said “I was under the impression that a village meeting would include all members of the village.” And he said “It does, they’re all here.” And I said “What about the women?” And he said “Oh well generally women aren’t included as members.” Yes…So I have to rely on their husbands disseminating the information in their own households, which may or may not happen, and then my own relationships with women in the community. Not what I would have hoped for, but it’s the culture and you work with the culture. (I will schedule separate meetings for the women of the village.) During this second meeting I hardly spoke at all, and let my counterpart do all the speaking and formalizing. It was certainly an interesting experience to watch from the sidelines, complicated a little by the fact that because I wasn’t speaking, nothing was really translated out of Fulfulde or Mafa. But it started with an overview of the project idea, they debated whether or not they wanted to go ahead with this project, and were all on board, and then they moved to elect a committee of 12 people, a representative of each cartier and I think they ended up with 5 women and 7 men, which is incredible. All that was done in an hour. So we are going ahead with the planning and hopefully planting of a woodlot, hopefully choosing species, finding seed, deciding who will do the growing of seedlings, writing up laws of the committee and woodlot, all in time to plant at the beginning of the rainy season. I think one of my roles will be to make sure that as many people in the community are involved, including incorporating education of the students at the primary school, as they will be right next door to it. The risk is that in looking at a project those carrying it out will only look at it is solving a problem. They will plan it and make sure it’s in place and execute it. However, they might overlook getting the community involved and making sure everyone is informed. And I mean this is a problem for everyone, development workers, community members, anyone, whoever is in charge. If you have a project which is planned and carried out only by a small group of people, it will not be successful because there will be no community ownership and even understanding of what is going on. People will be out of the loop and have no part of either the process or reaping the benefits, because they will carry on life as usual. So I will try to talk about it a lot, with kids I play with, with women I cook with, with families, with the church, etc.

Part of me feels like this is going very fast, and isn’t really the Peace Corps “model” which encourages volunteers to sit still for three months (especially those opening a post), to not get into projects, to only focus on language and getting to know the community, as well to assess the motivation of various individuals, and scope out who are good people to work with and who are the less reliable ones. That maybe all of a sudden I have arrived and expressed interest in the idea of a Community forest and my counterpart is pushing ahead to get it done. However, no Peace Corps experience is cut and dry and every one is unique. For the past few years because MK has had researchers in the area of water and forests come to work the communities work with development is not new. I feel like I might have entered the picture right at the correct moment where they are ready to go forward after years and years of thinking about it, and so better to just go with it rather than try to put on the brakes because it doesn’t fit the “model.”

On another note it’s better for me to take a back seat anyway, as I’m here as a resource but not director. The less involved I am with the planning and execution, the better, as then the community will have more ownership, understanding, and if successful, pride of the project. It will serve as an example that they themselves can decide and execute something on their own, without the need for outside aid. Which is definitely good. So we’ll see. The project is very exciting and I’m looking forward to it working, hoping that it goes well.