Biovision

Ugo Vallauri currently undertakes training in participatory video production with Infonet-Biovision’s information officers in Machakos (Kenya). In this interview he outlines the project which is part of the field research for his PhD.

How would you define the concept of participatory video production?
Participatory video revolves around communities progressively taking ownership and control of filming equipment and of the process of creating a film, thus creating much different movies about themselves compared to what a filmmaker external to the community would be able to come up with. In the context of the project I’m working on with Infonet-Biovision’s information officers at Kari Katumani (Machakos), it might be more appropriate to talk of “semi-participatory” video making. First of all, the participation happens at the level of the information officers, who work together in creating films about the farmers’ groups they work with. At times, these are groups the information officers are part of, but in most cases they have long-lasting relationships. As a result, the movies attempt to portray the perspective of the groups filmed using Kikamba, the local language, even when they are produced by the information officers alone.

How do you teach the information officers in Machakos?
The project was inspired by the results of the evaluation of the Infonet-Biovision programme I conducted in autumn 2010. At the time, information officers – and particularly those from Katumani – had expressed an interest in using visual communication, and therefore video, in their work. As a result, the focus is on learning, more than on me teaching. I share what I know about video shooting with small camcorders and editing with free and open source software (OpenShot on Ubuntu Linux). Officers are enthusiastic about learning, and literally couldn’t wait to make films about agriculture and about their communities. Therefore, I came up with a flexible learning-by-doing approach. Information officers bring back to their information hub the clips they recorded, then proceed to edit them on a timeline. Every time they work on a new project, they learn new features: adding an additional audio track, improving on storytelling, applying a transition between two clips, etc.

How can you benefit for your PhD research?
This project is at the heart of the field research for my PhD. It is structured as a participatory research, where I am involved in two ways. As a practitioner, I share my skills in media production. As a researcher, by observing the ways in which information officers use video and the reactions to video for the farmers’ groups they work with, I can analyse the role of video in rural agricultural settings, as well as contextualize ICT divides within other rural divides, such as access to water, land or capital. The participatory element of the work is key in all phases: for example, my understanding of the realities of farming communities in rural Kenya is greatly enhanced by my close collaboration with the information officers at Katumani. Additionally, the screening of videos during interviews and focus group discussions facilitates more participatory discussions and exchanges afterwards, whether on the topics covered by the videos screened, or on the overall challenges and opportunities for the groups involved.

Dr. Akumu works for Vétérinaires Sans Frontières Suisse (VSF), one of Biovision’s partner organisations. They implement a camel project in the drought-prone areas of Northern Kenya which is supported by the Swiss Development Cooperation SDC (DEZA) and Biovision. SDC supported the distribution of goats and camels targeting 275 households. 105 households have already benefitted while another 170 households in the area will benefit in the course of the year. Biovision has joined in the project to support the provision of more trainings and development of training materials for camel husbandry and health.

What are the goals of the camel project?
The project aims at a longer term improvement of the livestock-based livelihoods of resource poor families affected by the recurrent droughts over the past years. A short-term strategy is to provide them with 5 female goats.

Which actors are involved in the project?
First of all there are the beneficiaries who directly gain from the project by receiving camels and training, they are mostly from the Borana community. They have formed a community restocking management committee to monitor the camels that have been distributed so far. Other actors involved are the department of livestock production, camel traders, agro-vets stores, animal health service providers and the veterinary department.

What are the daily challenges you face?
Due to the severe drought in the area there is a scarcity of browse and water for the camels. The herders have to go into inaccessible and unusual areas to feed their animals so the herds become difficult to monitor. Another challenge is that the beneficiaries and the general community are so eager and are demanding more trainings to learn more about camels than we can provide at the moment.

What is special about working with camels?
A camel requires more attention than cattle. You have to know about camel husbandry to care well for the animal. Also, the camel is a new animal in the areas that we are currently working in. People have developed an interest in camels, but there is little ethno-veterinary knowledge for camels as there is for cattle. For example for cattle, people know which plants or treatments to use for diseases, but they don’t know that for the camels. Thus most diseases are not easily identified by local knowledge. This is why we have to train people and build their capacity in camel husbandry and camel health.

In rural Uganda, the coverage with practitioners of Western medicine is very low. One doctor serves about 250’000 people in Mpigi District. On the other hand there is about one traditional healer per 187 people. Traditional healers are thus important providers of basic health services and treatments for the communities. PROMETRA Uganda is a local NGO working together with traditional healers to increase acceptance of traditional medicine. PROMETRA operates a forest school in Mpigi where traditional healers are trained on sustainable cultivation, improved formulations and hygienic processing of herbal medicines. One of Biovision’s partner organizations, icipe (International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology) in Nairobi, is working together with PROMETRA to test the efficacy of herbal medicine and to develop products for income generation.

What does your curriculum look like?
The forest school curriculum is divided into 3 years: The first year of the curriculum is dedicated to the study, identification, cultivation and preparation of 320 medicinal plants, as well as environmental conservation topics. In the second year the trainees study human anatomy and learn how to identify 40 common diseases such as diarrhea, different tropical fevers, infections and how to treat them with herbal medicine. They also learn to identify severe cases and how to refer patients to hospitals for further testing, for example in the case of cancer or HIV/Aids testing. In the third year the healers specialize into different areas such as herbal medicine, traditional birth attendance or bone setting.

Who attends the courses?
Traditional healers from different fields, health care volunteers from the local communities and university students from Kampala, international interns and some visitors from overseas who are interested in our activities. Apart from the forest school we operate a community clinic where we provide free treatment. Sick people first come to the clinic and then become interested in our training activities and join the forest school. We have a lot of mothers with sick children who get interested in learning about traditional health care in order to treat their own children when they are sick. Now we are also getting children of the traditional healers because they become interested in what their parents are doing.

Which impact does the knowledge you teach have in the daily life of the people who attend the courses?
The people who have been attending the courses report that the knowledge they gained has improved their life in different way. Mothers say that they are now able to treat themselves as well as their children with herbal medicine they have produced in their gardens, for example with cough medicine or herbal fever treatment. Their families are healthier and they say that they are now not going to the hospital at all anymore, only for severe cases. This has improved their health situation and also has economic benefits as they save money by spending less money on hospital visits.

How does the knowledge reduce the threats to biodiversity?
Much of the material that we use in healing is derived from the diversity of the forest. In the forest school we teach good methods of harvesting, e.g. not to destroy the trees when you take some of their sap for a medicine. This is why we now focus on the domestication of plants used in herbal medicine to reduce the pressure on the forest. We teach people how to plant their own herbal garden so that they can produce more herbal medicine without destroying the forest. Now we know the value of the biodiversity in our forests and we value and respect the forest for what it provides us and we have to help to conserve this.