Tag: work

Advocacy vs. Neutrality

I’m having some trouble deciding what my role is here. I’ve always been on the policy advocacy side of things. Now I’m supposed to be a facilitator, a stakeholder engager, a bridge, a person who is supposedly more neutral. Now some of you would probably roll your eyes by now, since I’m rarely neutral on any issue, especially something as important to me as food/agriculture.

But that’s what I’m supposed to be. I’m supposed to be helping bridge the gap between the farmers and the governmental bureaucrats. I’m not supposed to be advocating for legitimization of urban agriculture. I’m supposed to advocating for what the farmers want.

You see the difference? I used always be advocating what I think is correct or what I want. But now I’m supposed to be the middle person.

So in many ways, I am helping to make the compromises. And if it’s one thing I don’t like when doing political advocacy is compromising. It’s not that I don’t think it’s necessary, it’s just that it’s so unnatural to be actually advocating for a compromise!

What I mean is this – we’re trying to get secure land tenure for urban farmers. Yet, many government planners won’t budge because of a combination of really having no land in urban areas and the outdated (but very entrenched) notion that agriculture only belongs in rural areas. So it’s pretty much impossible for all of the farmers groups that we work with to get their specific areas to be designated as urban agriculture land. If we really do advocate for all the areas, it would probably take forever and we won’t get anything done. But it’s a fine line between that and just giving in without a fight. After all, we are the only ones representing the farmers’ voices.

The problem comes in when my supervisor and I have different ideas about how much we should compromise, at least without a fight.

I, of course, being the “radical” wants to at least try to advocate for the really urban areas to be incorporated, not just the peri-urban areas. Isn’t that our duty as an NGO that is trying to help marginalized populations?

My supervisor, being the ever pragmatic town planner, wants to just make this as non-controversial as possible so that the process can move faster (and of course so we can report that we’ve made progress to our funders).

So, what to do, what to do?

I had such a good work day today. Not that I accomplished a lot (well, I did get two meetings organized, which is quite big since it’s really hard to get anyone from the government to have a meeting), but because I was able to face some of my fears.

  • phoning people I don’t know or haven’t met face to face before. I’m getting much better at this essential skill. I got quite good at it back in Canada, but here it’s doubly hard because people usually don’t understand stand my English accent over the phone. I try to speak really slowly and to say things clearly, but sometimes it’s just hard to get your message across. It’s funny how I really have no trouble standing in front of a lot of people and speaking. But the phone is a whole other animal.
  • going to government offices and actually figuring out where I need to go. My kiswahili is definitely improving. plus, people get so happy when I speak a little bit of kiswahili. Like this person I was told to go meet (I just got their number and I couldn’t even get through to them on the phone. I just showed up.), his whole attitude changed immediately when I started speaking the little bit that I know.
  • convincing people who didn’t want to come to the meeting (it’s election time, super super super busy for government people) to come. will know if it actually worked on the day of.
  • and this one I’m not really sure if it’s a good thing, but hey, it got my job done: I phoned one of the planners this morning to ask if I can drop by today to organize this meeting. She said she’s too busy. I said I’ll drop by to just hand her the letter. So I showed up and actually got the meeting I wanted. If this was in Canada, I probably would have just sent an email and it wouldn’t really be organized.

Yes, I did spend half the day in the car (and goodness gracious, I really don’t want to be taking the taxi that much, but the public bus just takes too much time, plus if I got lost, it would be a disaster). But we all need to celebrate the little successes.

P.S. it constantly amazes me how I can just go talk to the heads of various departments without really too much scheduling. I’ll talk about my thoughts about this in another post.

Urban Agriculture Farmers Training Week

I’ve been super busy lately. The process of legitimizing urban agriculture (which I’ve talked about before) is coming along well – very surprisingly to me.

We recently had a bit of a milestone. We’ve been planning for a training week for urban agriculture farmers because due to their insecure land tenures, we can’t fund what they want the most – a borehole for clean water. So we asked them what are the second best things you want? And it turns out they wanted training in entrepreneurship, marketing, and environmentally good practices (e.g. making “natural” (non-industrial; cheaper) pesticides, making compost, methods of soil conservation etc). So we got together the 6 groups of farmers we mainly work with and funded and organized a training week. In additional to the training in skills, we hoped that the farmers would be able to network (it’s the first time they’ve all been in the same room) and share their challenges and successes.

Most importantly, we wanted this training week to be part of the process for demarcating land for urban agriculture in which we’re pushing for more participation from the farmers. On the last day, we became a bit more political. We invited all the big shots, some supportive of farming in the city and some not.  As far as I know, it’s really been the first time when all these stakeholders (many government officials and farmers) have been together in a forum where they can really have a discussion back and forth.

My PhD roommate set the tone for the day by giving a presentation about urban agriculture around the world (in Swahili! Super impressive). The main goal being to persuade the big wigs that UA isn’t actually backward or (god-forbid) undeveloped. That it has its practical and social uses. (I can’t wait to see the thesis my roommate will write – she does the most interesting research that yields the most interesting answers. And she’ll hate this sentence because she hates the vague word of ‘interesting’). Lots of good feedback on this one.

Then we had a high level representative from the Ministry of Lands, Housing, and Human Settlement Development (the MLHHSD). The MLHHSD is actually supportive of UA. There is a national law, mainly a legacy of kilimo kwanza (farming first – national goal by the first president, the highly respected Mr. Nyerere), that legalizes urban agriculture. The municipalities are supposed to implement this law by providing assistance to farmers in the city. There is a reason why they hired agriculture agents for all three municipalities of the biggest city – Dar es Salaam. Question period came and the room lit up with tension. Nobody from either the farmers or the municipalities knew about this law. Farmers were delighted and appalled in equal measure. Municipality representatives didn’t know what to say when questioned why they hadn’t done anything to execute this law? Why were they doing the exact opposite by forcing farmers off their land? My supervisor did a great job in calming everyone down. It was more important at that point than to get answers.

Then the farmers presented their concerns and proposed actions. We had asked the farmers early on to discuss with their groups and then write down a list so they can take full opportunity of the chance. During the training, the farmers self-organized and suggested that it would be better if the six groups worked together as one to present. They willingly stayed behind to talk to each other and summarised what they wanted to say. I was so happy to see that. Political activism isn’t what I’m normally used to here. People just don’t go on protests, punching their fists in the air. The farmers must have really understood how important this chance was. Unfortunately, this period seemed a bit short (although it was scheduled for longer), but since I can’t understand Swahili, I can’t be sure. I think it just somehow melted into the next section. Either way, I think the farmers at least got some responses from these normally unreachable government representatives.

Finally, we were supposed to discuss which parcels of land should be earmarked for urban agriculture. We had asked each municipal Agriculture and Livestock office to bring a map marked with areas that they think should be submitted as UA land. Unfortunately, none of the offices did this (which I 99% expected). So instead, the representatives just presented what their departments are doing. On the positive side, it was good because then the farmers got more time to ask questions.

They day was pretty long and intense at times. Especially when one of the farmers got up and made a 15 minute impassioned speech. He was talking about their hardships as farmers and as the ones that are always blamed and moved around. Of course, I couldn’t really understand any of it, I only got the summarised translated version later. The representatives couldn’t really do much either because they’re working in the government which changes slowly. Even if they personally supported UA, their departments might not.

Either way, this day was definitely a very good milestone. I think we’ve changed a few minds and won a few allies. Now comes the next step!

First and current impressions

I had a long and interesting talk with one of my roommates last night. I don’t really remember the specific details since I was quite brain dead after a 12-hour work day. But I remember we were discussing about how we were adjusting to life here in Dar.

As I mentioned in another post, frankly, there wasn’t much adjusting on my side. This is way easier than how we lived in Kampala, which was my first time in any “developing” country. I still remember vividly how I felt in the first four weeks after I arrived in Kampala.

It was awful.

Don’t get me wrong, I was excited about the different culture, the intriguing sights everywhere, the interesting classes we were having, the people, the language, the nightlife…But it wasn’t easy.

Kampala is a very different city than Dar es Salaam, at least my experience of it. Kampala is less planned, less “developed”, less stable.

We stayed in a hostel that local students live in to attend Makerere University. It was right next to one of the unplanned settlements. When the rain came (and tropical rains are like nothing that I have seen before, it’s like half an hour (sometimes more) of a crazy Hong Kong typhoon without the wind), the water would rush pass our hostel like a river and accumulate in the unplanned settlement. The water would be a dark brown – who knows what is in there. When we visited an unplanned settlement a bit further away, we asked them what happened with the waste from the pit latrines that were built. “The rain takes care of it” was the answer. Flooding is no joke in Kampala; disease outbreaks are rampant and many people lose their homes.

The hostel itself was alright, minus the fact that no matter how much we cleaned, the room, especially the bathroom was still dirty. We had cold showers every day. We washed our own clothes by hand. We ate local food every day because it was prepared for us (I like the food, but it’s different). There was no internet (only very, very slow one at the university).

The city was littered with garbage, mosquitoes, and dust clouds. Trash burning was everywhere – I don’t think holding my breath when passing really helped me avoid the toxic plastic fumes. The potholes were so big on some of the roads that water would accumulate and it felt like you were going through a small pond. Constant “mzungu” (white person) calls were unavoidable, as with the hair touching and hand grabbing. Getting ripped off for taking transport was common practice. The pit latrines, when we had them during trips, were hard to get used to, especially the ones with lots of cockroaches.

And of course, there was the poverty that was so visible, yet so vast, that there’s nothing you could do but feel helpless.

I’m painting a very bad picture, aren’t I? But it’s true, those were my first impressions. And being very honest, I had about 3 weeks of a career crisis of sorts.

You have to understand, I have always felt a draw towards humanitarian work, sometimes it even feels as strong as a life mission I was born with. But here I was, in a place where I had thought I wanted to be, and all I could think about was life’s discomforts and feel guilty (well, that’s essentially what feeling helpless about poverty is about). How was I going to ever work in international development work again when I can’t even stand living a middle class life in Kampala? How was I ever supposed to help the marginalized when I can barely live in the same city as them, let alone truly experience their situation? I had major doubts, and it wasn’t pleasant.

Luckily, and surprisingly, all this almost vapourised after three weeks. All I could do at the time was remind myself that I could get through this, to not think about it too much and just concentrate on my learning. And eventually “their” way of life because “my” way of life. I stopped having a panic attack every time I had to cross a major road (those speeding cars are scary!). I took in, and enjoyed, the everyday life I saw rather than let my guilt get in the way. I saw more of the assets of this community rather than all that it was missing. (Come to think about it, it was very similar to the asset mapping exercise we did for our training in the downtown east side in Vancouver).

I’m still not very sure what happened, but I’m glad it did. I’m glad that by the end, when I went back to Kampala for 3 days after my 2 month stay in Tanzania, I actually missed it. I was so excited to buy a rolex (a chapatti and egg omelette roll that’s the most delicious thing ever)!

I’m glad to be here again. Especially without the career crisis feeling.

Work isn’t really work

It’s 2:40 am. A rooster is crowing outside my window. Who in the world thought about domesticating these birds?

Now that I’m up and unable to fall back into slumber, I might as well give you an update.

Work has been pretty crazy the last two days. But I’m really starting to see how I fit into the whole picture of SC’s work here; especially my role and involvement in the legitimisation of urban agriculture part.

Let me explain that.

Almost none of the farmers in the city (which there are A LOT, something like 40% of the city population is involved with urban agriculture in some form or another. But then, there isn’t really even an accurate number of how many people live in the city. Officially, there are 4 million inhabitants, but guesses can go up to 10 million. Dar es Salaam is *the* major city migrant workers go to; everyone comes here to try to “make it.” The number of unplanned settlements (new trendy word for slums) makes it hard to actually do a census. – phew, that was a long aside…sorry) have secure land tenure, meaning they farm on land that is not legally theirs. They could have asked for permission from the land owner, whether it is private land or the local government, but usually they do not have a formal contract for long term use. Hence, if the owners decide, they could be very quickly evicted.

As you can imagine, this insecure land tenure issue can bring about a ton of problems. Uncertainty (and it’s scary because this is your whole livelihood) for one, but also inability to invest in the land. For example, many of the farmers would like to irrigate with clean water (who wouldn’t?) but they can’t get any funding or help to install wells or boreholes because no one would fund a project that can be taken over by the land owners any day.

In fact, almost all of the complaints that the farmers have can be related back to the fact that they don’t have any ownership whatsoever over the land they farm.

So that brings us to why I do my work here.

In the short term, we’re trying to help these farmers with the issues we can currently address. Mainly, it’s about building their capacities, which is development jargon for training them in some skills or encouraging them to be confident in applying their skills (“empowering”). For example, right now we’re organizing a training week that includes workshops in marketing, entrepreneurship, and environmentally good practices (“agronomy” – for some reason, this is what they call it here). These are the top issues the farmers identified and we’re trying to help. We actually just had a very fruitful meeting with the trainers and farmer representatives yesterday. Very happy.

But the main reason I was happy about the meeting yesterday isn’t all because it seemed like the farmers are interested in the training. It’s because this training is the first step in getting towards our long term goal.

Eventually, one day, we hope to get urban agriculture land to become a legitimate land use in urban areas. In cities, land use planning involves “zones,” where places are left aside for residential housing, commercial activity, green space, public institutions etc. We want urban agriculture to become one of those zones. The problem with this in Dar es Salaam (and actually many places) is that city planners often fail to see why agriculture should be zoned in the city. There is still very much (as with most places in the world) a view that agriculture is completely a rural activity. (If you’re thinking, well, duh, of course farming is a rural activity, then I will have to explain in another post).

Which, you know, simply means that they are dismissing 40% of the city population’s livelihoods as irrelevant. Even if you don’t agree agriculture should be done in cities, shouldn’t the planning of cities be for the benefits of the inhabitants?

So on the last day of this training week, we are going to get a bit political (which is always interesting). We’re trying to bring together the head planners of each municipality (there are 3), heads of the municipal agriculture offices, representative from the national Ministry of Lands, Housing, and Human Settlement, and representatives from farmers groups. We’re trying to get a discussion going and give an opportunity for the farmers to directly converse with these government officials, who, frankly, don’t listen enough. Hopefully, we’ll also get a rough draft of maps of where areas of urban agriculture should be zoned.

I was very happy with the meeting yesterday because it seemed like we got our point across to the farmers that this last training day is going to be very important. Be prepared for it. Discuss with your groups and write down what your main concerns are. Maybe even draw a map of what you think should be zoned as urban agriculture land. Make sure you think about the bigger picture of urban agriculture in Dar es Salaam rather than just the group you farm with.

In a nutshell, minus all the political and human dynamics, that’s my job. In development jargon, it’s called “engaging stakeholders.”

Do you see why I enjoy my job? :)

Oh wow, the rooster stopped crowing. Maybe I can get a few more hours of sleep…

Categories
agriculture

The politics and economics behind urban agriculture (specifically land tenure and zoning issues) are so complicated that it’s getting me really excited. Well, it actually makes my job a bit harder, but then if it was an easy issue to be solved, it would have been solved already.

One day, when I learn a little bit more, I will write a post about these complicated dynamics between individuals, organizations, and the physical environment.

First Day at Work

I arrived in the morning and immediately got to work after lunch.

Met lots of people relevant to my projects to just introduce myself. Participated in a meeting where they were negotiating/asking for funding. Interesting people dynamics. Definitely different than what I’ve experienced before.

Now I’m super jet lagged and sleepy.

Dar is very different than Kampala. I can’t wait to find out more.

New Chapter

I’m going back to Tanzania!

This time, I’ll be in Dar es Salaam (the largest city, not the capital). Working as a project officer for urban agriculture needs assessment for two NGOs (one based in Vancouver and the other one in Dar).

I’m so unbelievably excited about this job, it’s hard to describe. Maybe I should just say that I danced around the UBC office I was working in when I got the phone call. Thankfully, my co-workers knew me enough to not call the police.

I guess, although this is only going to be a 6 month contract, it’s going to be a new chapter in my life. I intend on documenting this chapter a little better than I have in the past. Or so I’ve told everyone I know. Yeah…..I know I know! Stop looking at me like that. I might have said similar things in the past…but I’m serious this time! :P

No promises, because I’ll probably break them. You probably know by now I’m not great when rules are made. But I really would try to write even a little bit once in a while.

I would really appreciate any questions or comments!!!

As one of my friends said the other day, even getting a blank piece of paper in the mail is awesome! Just the fact that you took the time to send that piece of paper, right? So comments are much appreciated.

I’ll be arriving in Dar in about 2 days. See you then!

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