We have finally arrived in Gitega! This was what we came for, to do our research here. Although there are still a lot of uncertainties about how the research will go, we had a good, productive, and inspiring week.
Our goal for the week was to join the Burundian staff, whom we will be working with, on visits to the farmers in the ‘collines’ (villages) participating in the project. This week was a great week to start: Tuesday through Friday workshops were given to the first and second generation farmers involved in the project (see the description of ‘Fanning the Spark’) about how to train the third generation of farmers. Each colline has 20 PI’s (innovative farmers) and 200 second generation farmers. Not all of them wanted to be involved in training the third generation, but in each colline, around 50-70 farmers showed up who were excited and motivated to pass on their knowledge to others.
The workshops started with revisiting the concept of the PIP (integrated farm plan) with the farmers. This provided a great opportunity for Henk to see how the information is presented to the farmers. Much to Allie's delight, the concepts of the project are communicated through a series of drawings.
After revisiting the concepts the farmers split into groups in order to strategize about how to reach the remaining farmers in their colline. Finally the farmers were given a plan for the next few weeks.
We were encouraged by the farmers' excitement about the project and determination to reach their entire colline. The farmers demonstrated that they had a good grasped on the PIP and they had some good ideas in how to reach the other farmers. However, the handout mentality remains present and difficult to move beyond. For example, the solution most often proposed to perceived problems was that the project should deliver more help. The project aims to move the farmers to a mindset of ‘developing ourselves’, as community greeting goes “Tufashanye - twitezimbere twese ” (We help eachother – to develop ourselves).
During the workshops, Henk had the opportunity to contribute some questions to help kick off his research. He asked the farmers why they had decided to join the project, why other farmers had not yet joined and what challenges they face in implementing their plans to improve their farms. Besides many positive comments about the project, some of the interesting responses I got included:
“Some farmers are lazy and do not want to invest in their future”
“Sickness prevents us from being able to implement our plans”
“There is a lack of trust between members of the household” (Especially between husband and wife)
“Many farmers have too little land and they are afraid to experiment with new techniques, because the risk is too great”
“The older people learn slower, but work extra hard to keep up with the younger ones”
It is exactly these types of answers that Henk is interested in. For his research and for the project it is important to know which factors can determine whether farmers will become involved in the project. And more importantly, whether they will continue to adopt the techniques that they are taught. For Henk, this was an important first step in the research, and we are grateful that we had this opportunity.
Besides spreading smiles, Allie was able to contribute by receiving a second translation, proving very valuable. She also was able to stir up some more answers from the women and brought to light an interesting factor that has come up in all of the workshops: gender issues.
During lunch, we were provided with a giant plate of rice, beans, a chunk of good but stringy-gets stuck in your teeth -beef and greens for everyone halfway through each day. Somehow ours and the staff's plates managed to have two or three times as much of the already large portion of rice and beans that everyone else received. And since we were always placed in the prominent front, with ALL eyes on us, we were met with a familiar Mzungu (foreigner) dilemma. That is, a mixture of guilt that you yet again have more than the people around you, feeling overwhelmed by the impossibly large amount of food on your plate that the watching eyes expect you to fully consume, and that the feeling that these feelings categorize you as being ungrateful. On top of that, the creeping sense of helplessness at the fact that none of this is in your control and the growing realization of the unfamiliar dynamics of extreme hierarchy. It is an acute self-consciousness which feeds into itself and the spotlight only gets brighter. However, we are quite familiar with the unfamiliarity of this sort of situation and certainly will run into it more often.
The next step for us is to finalize the questionnaire for the one-on-one interviews, and then try it out.