wfn.org | ALL AFRICA NEWS AGENCY BULLETIN No. 45/02 (c)

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

November 18, 2002

AANA Bulletin is an ecumenical initiative to highlight all endeavours and 
experiences of Christians and the people of Africa.  AANA Bulletin is 
published weekly and, together with the French Edition - Bulletin APTA - is 
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please contact: 

AANA Bulletin	: Acting Editor - Mitch Odero		
Bulletin APTA: Edition en frangais, ridacteur intirimaire : Sylvie Alemba

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How Communities Are Dealing With Poverty, AIDS

It was the worst experience of poverty I have ever seen, recalls a 
participant of a visit to Malawi during the recently-concluded four-day 
Lutheran World Federation LWF consultation on church social service. These 
were some of the remarks by participants attending the consultations on 
diakonia - church social service - that ended in Johannesburg on November 
7.It was attended by over 80 representatives of Lutheran churches and 
partner organizations

By Pauline Mumia

T
hey were sharing their experiences following exposure visits to LWF country 
programmes in the southern African region prior to the conference.  "In a 
village we visited in Malawi there was not one complete item of clothing 
but all the signs of malnutrition," recalls the participant.

"Now I believe that peace in Angola is real," says another 
participant.  According to yet another observer: "I learned about the 
difficulties experienced by church leaders in traditional African 
communities to talk about sexual matters in an appropriate manner".

At the consultation, over 80 representatives of Lutheran churches and 
partner organizations were examining the different understandings of 
diakonia in the context of the global challenges of violence, poverty and 
HIV/AIDS.

During the field visits, participants were confronted with country-specific 
social issues that call for the active response of churches. They went to 
different LWF projects and diaconal institutions in Angola, Malawi, 
Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe, and were thus provided with local 
perspectives of the most urgent challenges in the future.

Although most participants have worked in diaconal projects, they 
considered the field visits as an eye-opener. In many cases the exposure 
changed their focus with respect to the extent and nature of critical 
issues and ways of addressing them.

For example, in South Africa, 21 million people live in poverty, and it is 
estimated that by the year 2010, seven million people in the country will 
have died of HIV/AIDS. In Swaziland, more than 25 percent of the population 
is living with HIV/AIDS, and in Zimbabwe half the population is said to be 
on the edge of starvation.

Participants from outside Africa were often impressed by the seriousness 
with which people tackle their own problems. Dr  Tapio Saraneva, Director 
of Finn ChurchAid, visited a camp of former soldiers of the Union for the 
Total Independence of Angola, UNITA, in a country that had been ravaged by 
civil war for more than 25 years.

"I now believe that peace is real and that the people are very committed to 
the peace process," he said. "The government is doing its best to integrate 
UNITA soldiers into society, I hope, and now it is our time to help this 
peace process and not drop Angola from our agenda".

Rev  Klaus Daniel, president of a diaconal institution in Brasov, Romania, 
recalled his visit to a street children's project in Johannesburg. "I saw a 
house, which was completely open, and children can come and go," he recalled.

"In spite of this, a nucleus of children has formed, who are staying in the 
home and have become multipliers. They go out to other street kids and tell 
them how important it is to have a place where you can feel at home".

Several participants realized how closely related the three issues of the 
diakonia conference were. Rev Silvio Schneider, executive secretary of a 
Lutheran church diaconal foundation in Brazil, visited two projects in 
Mozambique.

This was remarkable, he said. "These communities are dealing with all three 
issues daily - poverty, violence and HIV/AIDS. To be able to visit these 
communities ... gave the group a more solid understanding of what is going 
on and how complicated issues are".

Ms Naomi Hansen from Malaysia spoke of a similar experience. At an 
agricultural project in Zimbabwe, she was confronted with the very poor 
living conditions of people working and living on a farm.

"What made it worse was that in the evening, after work, women had to do 
all the housework, while the men visited the beer halls. The women told us 
that half of the money they earned is spent on beer," Hansen said.

"If they complain, they are beaten up or the husband takes another wife as 
punishment. In this way HIV/AIDS is brought into the families - I saw 
violence, poverty and AIDS all together in one place," she said.

For Dr	Lake Lambert of Wartburg College in Waverly, USA, visiting a Roman 
Catholic church AIDS hospice and HIV/AIDS clinic for affected women in 
Durban, South Africa, highlighted the close connection of HIV/AIDS to
poverty.

"I learnt about the difficulties experienced by church leaders of African 
traditional communities to talk about sexual matters. Zulu-speaking pastors 
told us that there (is no) vocabulary in their language that is appropriate 
for a pastor to use. This makes it very difficult to speak about HIV/AIDS 
and sexuality".

Participants from neighboring African countries such as Namibia were able 
to share their own experiences during the field visits. Rev Magdalena 
Ya-Shaloango, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia, met with pastors and 
congregations in Moxico, Angola.

Noticing that both pastors and people in the communities seemed to be 
reluctant to talk about HIV/AIDS, she cautioned them to act before it is 
too late. "I don't want them to repeat what church leaders in my country 
did. It was too late and is still too late in Namibia. We are burying two 
to four people a week and this is really very serious," the church leader 
said.

"If the Angolan people are not taking this seriously, they will be in a 
position that my church is in now". By 2001 Angola, with a population of 
10.3 million, still had a relatively low HIV/AIDS rate of 5.5 percent while 
Namibia's was 22.5 percent in a population of over 1.7 million people.

Ms Pamela Meggit, Lutheran Development Service, Swaziland, was both shocked 
and impressed, when she visited a village in Malawi. "I experienced the 
worst poverty I have ever seen. Children were clothed in rags and had 
potbellies. There were no smiles. That really shows poverty, if a child 
does not react".

On the other hand, she appreciated the extent of the involvement of the 
Malawian churches in a number of projects through the Evangelical Lutheran 
Development Programme, the LWF Department for World Service (DWS) country 
programme there.

All conference participants agreed that the field visits were an integral 
and indispensable part of the consultation. "The field visits gave the 
conference, which in principle could be anywhere in the world, its local 
stamp and embedded it into the South African context," one participant 
summed up his experience.

The diakonia consultation was organized by the LWF-DWS in collaboration 
with the Departments for Mission and Development as well as Theology and 
Studies.

Poverty-Busting Project Could Also Benefit Wildlife

A pioneering new project to heal dying and degraded lands fringing Africa's 
mighty deserts was launched on November 11 by the United Nations 
Environment Programme UNEP and the Consultative Group on International 
Agricultural Research CGIAR. The project, marking a new phase of the five 
year-old Desert Margins Programme, has numerous aims including conserving 
the rich and unique plant life that has evolved to survive in these dry and 
arid lands.

By Nick Nuttall

E
xperts believe the genetic diversity remaining in these desert margins 
could be a veritable treasure trove harbouring potentially promising drugs 
and products for 21st century agriculture and industry.

Under the scheme, key dryland areas and sites have been pin-pointed in each 
of the nine countries involved. These range from the Acacia Savanna of 
Matebeleland in Zimbawbe and the Sudano-Sahelian Zone of Senegal to the 
Dwarf Shrub Savanna of southern Namibia and the denuded lands of the Kargi 
settlement in northeastern Kenya.

It is planned to unravel the key causes of land degradation and damage in 
each of these land areas before drawing up action plans for arresting and 
reversing the decline. The action plans will be blue prints for land 
recovery and wildlife conservation projects in similar kinds of desert 
margin areas elsewhere in Africa.

Crucial to the success of the US $50 million scheme, which is being backed 
by governments and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), will be the 
gathering and sharing of traditional, indigenous, knowledge and marrying 
this with modern, land management  techniques.

Local people and tribes have, for millennia, developed strategies and 
methods for surviving in these harsh, low rainfall, areas. These have 
allowed them to grow crops and graze livestock without sacrificing the 
fertility and stability of the land.

The Turkana of Northern Kenya traditionally plan crop planting around an 
intimate knowledge of the behaviour of frogs and birds, such as the ground 
hornbill, green wood hoopoe, spotted eagle owl and nightjar, which are 
revered as "prophets of rain".

The Buganda, whose present-day descendants live in southern Uganda, 
believed in the sanctity of nature developing sacred, protected, forest 
sites, strict codes on hunting including a taboo on killing young or 
pregnant animals and strict rules on the extraction of clay.

But the rising populations, witnessed across Africa in the past few 
decades, allied to a gradual erosion of traditional values and cultivation 
methods in favour of Western or Northern-style systems has intensified 
pressure on these desert-fringed lands and their biodiversity.

Some experts also point to the impacts of the globalization of trade which 
had led to unstable and often rock bottom prices for such commodity crops 
as coffee and tea. Poor farmers have been forced into increasingly fragile 
lands, such as Africa's desert margin areas, to cultivate higher and higher 
volumes in an attempt to compensate for the price falls.

Developing alternative livelihoods will be a key part of the project. A 
pilot study in Bamako, Mali, has shown that planting banks of trees for 
fodder, close to the city, has cut pressure on nearby forests while 
boosting incomes.  The fodder "banks" are producing 4.5 tonnes per hectare 
giving an income of $630 a year in a country where the average annual wage 
is $270.

The project is also aimed at offsetting some of the worst impacts of global 
warming, which according to scientists with the Intergovermental Panel on 
Climate Change, is already underway.

Climate change is set to aggravate the plight of the peoples and the lands 
of the desert margins, making it even tougher for them to cope in 
traditional ways with droughts, unless urgent action is taken.

Klaus Toepfer, UNEP's Executive Director, said: "This new phase of the 
Desert Margins Programme, with crucial support from the GEF, is in line 
with the poverty reduction aims of the Plan of Implementation agreed at the 
World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) just over a month ago".

The new phase of the Desert Margins Programme involves nine sub-Saharan 
African countries:Botswana, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali, Namibia, Niger, 
Senegal, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Dr Saidou Koala, global coordinator of the Programme who is based at the 
International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) 
in Niamey, Niger, said it will build on over five years worth of pilot work.

This has already unraveled some of the clues to the causes of land 
degradation and desertification in these sensitive areas. The work has also 
identified solutions able to drive local and National Action Plans.

Ahmed Djoghlaf, Director of the Department of the Global Environment 
Facility (GEF), said: "The new project is the largest ever undertaken by 
the GEF in the area of land degradation and meets the very pressing needs 
and objectives of the Convention to Combat Desertification".

Kargi in Kenya's Marsabit District  in the northeast has been one such 
pilot site. It began to be settled in 1949. Average annual rainfall is just 
200 mm a year. There has been severe loss of forest and land degradation as 
a result of over exploitation of trees and plants for fodder, fuelwood, 
construction and livestock enclosures.

Human and livestock impacts have left the soils hard and compact leading to 
rapid run off of rain water with little penetrating down to deliver 
moisture below.

Surveys of the people living there indicate that the loss of the 
traditional, herding or nomadic life, has played a key role harming the 
land. The move to permanent settlements has resulted in over-grazing and 
deforestation. Insecurity and fear of livestock raiding has led to people 
clustering together in areas around permanent water points, again degrading 
these valuable grazing sites.

Traditional strategies for coping include drinking blood, mixed with animal 
fats; eating wild tubers and fruits; borrowing camels for milk and trading 
cattle for food.

Dr Henry Cheruiyot, Assistant Director in charge of Range and Arid Lands at 
the Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute, said:" The people use many 
different plants and plant parts such as bark, dried leaves and seeds to 
treat their livestock".

He said studies were underway to compare these natural treatments with 
conventional veterinary drugs with emerging evidence that the natural ones 
can out perform conventional drugs.

Eventually it may be possible to isolate promising compounds from the 
plants and turn these into a new generation of veterinary products with 
profits returned to the people living at Kargi who have been the custodians 
of the indigenous knowledge.

(*NB- The article above has been edited only for space considerations. The 
writer, Nick Nuttall, is Head of Media Services, United Nations Environment 
Programme, Nairobi, Kenya - Editor)