Small, Practical Steps

A rural life in Africa is usually characterized by hardships and denied access to technologies and skills that could give a family the means to raise their children with the prospects of a better life.  Indeed, life is hard, and rural life in Luangwa Valley is no exception.  Without a helping hand that can offer solutions to key needs of food security and personal income, families search for options that sometimes lead to destructive use of their natural resources, like wildlife and fish. 

For many years, for example, families throughout much of Luangwa Valley experienced regular episodes of devastating outbreaks of diseases that eliminated their flocks of village chickens.  Months would pass without having easy access to meat, necessitating survival measures of relying on wild game meat to compensate.   With collaborative efforts with Cornell University and the International Institute for Village Chickens, COMACO undertook a farmer-led initiative to vaccinate village chickens and the results have led to larger flocks, more protein in families’ diet, and more opportunities to sell surplus birds for cash.  A few chickens can literally help pay for a child’s school fee.  It may not seem like much, but the difference in having this extra source of income can mean the difference in a child being educated or not.   Solutions to help bring about positive change often start with small steps that can be easily scaled up and impact on many thousands of lives, as the case with vaccinating chickens.  

For many people, growing vegetables during the dry season was a rare practice.  No one had taught families how to dig a well, prepare seedling beds, replicate vegetable seeds, or make compost to grow vegetables.   Today, over 500 families are actively growing vegetables to support tourist lodges for their vegetable needs.  COMACO offers a trade link through its Green Market shop that provides communications and cold-room services for the lodges.  Surplus vegetables are consumed locally and today, children have a more balanced diet of healthy, green vegetables, which was not the case before COMACO.

Again, the future improves with small, practical steps that can be sustained and perpetuated.  The key is finding the market links, the right technologies and the necessary coordination by a committed partner.  COMACO has become that partner but it remains firm that the benefits require compliance to conservation.  It is a small request when compared with the benefits that families gain in exchange.