Gone fishin'

Hanging around

There is an old familiar saying:

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

Here's what i add to it that I believe is the basis of our success:

“If you hang around and go fishing with him, you and he can discover what kind of fishing actually works where he lives. That is what you teach.”

Our years here led the International Collaborative to develop a serious version of the concept of teaching fishing. We don’t import the “teaching.” When “hanging around,” creative ideas and innovations are adapted to the reality in which the people live. It makes it possible to make things work, right here on the ground.

Solar micro-grid maintenance

Here in Arusha you can buy small household solar systems. However, we find that they are not durable. Instead, we install solar systems of our own design with carefully chosen parts.

For electric service, the people prefer the micro-grids we put into their family settlement. These are at their shared expense and include a panel, battery, controller,and underground wires. The wires go to all the houses, buildings, and corrals.

Perhaps a year or two after installation the people get in touch to report problems. Maybe the lights don’t work after 9 pm. Perhaps there is one house with no light, but the rest are okay.

It is important to have a well-trained team of electricians who can identify the problems and fix them. But it's not easy to learn how to diagnose a problem if the technology is unfamiliar.

The International Collaborative has held training workshops where the learners build electrical systems. We secretly introduce problems and ask the learners to find them.

But we find that with technical diagnosis training, it works best to take the team along to observe us in action. We bring a good meter, tools, and spare parts, We search and find the problem while thinking out loud.

Sometimes there are bad connections in a switch. Other times a battery is finally getting old. And sometimes we need to try the simplest things right from the start. We might take a light bulb that is working in one house and try it in the house with no light, and find the house just needs new bulbs. Our team is learning.

Benefits of rules and procedures in collectives

The International Collaborative has organized many women's groups. Each has 25 members. Every week, the women buy shares and the money is put into their collective bank. Members can receive small loans to help them with their businesses and to get through their problems.

Most importantly, each group has a collective business in livestock fattening. These are supported with capital they raise themselves, topped up by us.

We've seen that these groups benefit from frequent visits by our leading staff of organizers. Maasai women do not have a tradition of organizing. They are helpful to each other, but have not had experience with the added power that comes when organizations establish regular practice with rules and procedures.

Of course, the forces of real life are always testing the rules. Our visits, our hanging around, helps the members with adapting, compromising, and enforcing the procedures that make their organization so valuable for them.

Smart Farm systems

As a crucial part of our climate change adaptation program, the International Collaborative created the "Smart Farm." Experiments at the farm focus on practical ways to lessen rain dependence. We have invested in a borehole and solar-powered pumping to access groundwater, so urgently needed during times of drought.

We've found that it's important to visit the farm regularly. We are now developing flood, sprinkler, and drip irrigation systems.

We have watchmen and a manager at the farm, and hire women and men for day work when we need them. Everyone has their own conception of what we are doing. Frequent visits and critical inspections help everyone see what problems need to be solved and what new ideas should be tried.

Our visits awaken everyone and prevent a kind of complacent satisfaction that can arise just because the technology itself is so impressive and satisfying. The technology is only the beginning.

Water sanitation system oversight

Several years into the Maasai Stoves & Solar Project, I finally took the terribly polluted water situation seriously. The women were collecting polluted water from their surface ponds and it sickened people, especially children.

After trying some things that were a bit too clever, I finally “thought inside the box” and designed a chlorination system similar to those that work successfully worldwide.

We first visited the women collecting the water and realized that, most of all, the design had to be convenient for them, requiring no extra steps. They work hard enough.

The system we now use has a solar-powered pump and tanks for a two-stage chemical treatment process. Clean water comes out of faucets.

Periodic visits to the systems help keep the water management good and attentive. There are always surprises we only find by “hanging around”. The women and the managers can be so satisfied with the convenience of the water, coming as it does from faucets, that they just keep the system operating even if they don’t have a supply of the chemicals that are at the heart of the purpose of our technology.

Our visits get the system back on track by making sure we and the managers have a good arrangement for keeping the chemicals available.

The work is continual--sometimes surprising and always worthwhile. It's wonderful to have you with us.

Taking action today!