BLOGThis is the Blog of Season Images which belongs to photographer Len Abrams, ARPS
Southern Matabeleland in Zimbabwe is the driest part of the country. In the communal lands dry land farming fails 2 out of three years. I spent 4 days in Matabeleland in June 2013 assessing projects for possible funding. Small dams with simple irrigation schemes give communities the opportunity to provide food and some cash for their families. This is not charity – it is people exercising their right to control their own resources.
I have just spent a week in Harare – the capitol of Zimbabwe. I spent the whole week in meetings but had one day when I could take out my camera on a field trip outside the city. (One of the meetings was on the 16th floor of a building – with no working elevators! A day after I had made the climb the newspaper carried a story of a woman who had had a miscarriage climbing the stairs in the same building – a heavy price to pay.)
I was in Zimbabwe as a consultant to support the drafting of a new national water policy. In about 2008 the country hit the bottom. Following the economic collapse with hyper-inflation, everything ground to a halt. Wide spread unemployment meant that people could not pay their bills, local authorities had no revenue to provide basic services, infrastructure collapsed… Without electricity water and sewage pumps don’t work, raw sewage is routed directly into rivers and dams from which drinking water is drawn, massive cholera and typhoid epidemics result… And yet somehow the people continue, they have no other option. Today, although the situation has not changed much, there is hope and a sense that the corner has been turned. The resilience and energy of ordinary people on the streets and in the markets is inspiring.
[Note: A selection of charcoal images is now available for purchase and download from the Image Market – HERE.]
I have added to my collection of images showing the impacts of the wide spread practice of charcoal making on the environment in Africa, which results in vast areas of deforestation. (See the images in the Season Images Gallery.) The use of charcoal as a cheap household energy source is just about the only option open to the ever increasing urban fringe populations where firewood has long since gone and other options such as LPG or electricity are either not available or are too expensive. For a more detailed comment on charcoaling, go to my blog entitled “Charcoal and deforestation“. On travels in Africa at the end of 2010, I captured images in Uganda and Ethiopia of urban charcoal markets – a key element in the supply chain.
I also visited Kigali in Rwanda where there is a surprising initiative underway which has resulted in the cleanest African city I have ever seen – not a spot of garbage anywhere. A cooperative called Association for the Conservation of the Environment (ACEN) which makes briquettes from garbage as an alternative to charcoal. Garbage is brought in to several centers throughout the city and paid for – providing a marginal income for some of the poorest and resulting in the cleanest African city I have ever seen! The garbage is separated before the organics are shredded, dried and molded into briquettes – the inorganics are recycled. This results in less demand for charcoal and less pressure on rural environments, which, together with a cleaner city is a win – win for everyone.
Rural development in sub-Saharan Africa is a vast area of activity embracing one of the most intractable problems of the 20th – 21st centuries. Much has been done since the end of the colonial era in the 1960s and a great deal has been achieved and yet the problems remain endemic and a real blight on the progress of human achievement. In almost all countries there remains enormous challenges in all sectors – health, education, agriculture, housing, financial systems, human rights, and basic services such as energy, water supply, transport and communications. The great irony is that today – March 30, 2010 – whilst millions of people carried dirty water to impoverished homes all over Africa, scientists celebrated the first successful particle collision in the Large Hadron Collider in Cern, Switzerland in the biggest machine ever built costing untold billions of dollars. Continue reading “Dealing with demons – Part 1: Development work – the realities of the long haul.”
I am not sure this is very wise – putting it all out there in a blog. I think that Blogging is somewhat pretentious, the assumption that you have something useful to say to the whole wide world that anybody would be interested in reading. It reminds me of a radio talk show I listened to in South Africa some years ago – a listener had phoned in and explained in intimate detail her gynecological condition. When asked by the talk-show host if she had spoken to her doctor she said that she was too embarrassed. . . ! There is a point at which mass anonymity is easier to cope with than one-on-one intimacy. In a series of articles I will be writing about the experiences of the long-term development worker and depression. Dealing with demons. Each article will be a work in progress – I will probably go back to each multiple times and edit them substantially over time.
I have decided to do this in the hopes that the exercise may be of help to others if this is not too vain or presumptuous. It may also be cathartic for me, if this is not too indulgent – boy do we have hangups sufficient to stop anyone from writing anything!
The initial set of topics will be as follows:-
1. Development work – the realities of the long haul.
2. The dark hole – dealing with the demons of depression
3. The myth of “Making a difference”
4. Footprints – the impacts of development
5. Large or small – the dilemma of scale in development
6. Travel – the Temptress and the Slave Driver