Living Land

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Pour un autre monde works with small investments for big

profits. We are a small non-governmental organization (NGO)

with a €30,000 yearly budget, but we help feed 15,000 pupils

for eight months of the year. Those pupils are able to study

better and are in better health. Girls can remain in school

longer instead of pounding sorghum.

As volunteers we pay for our own plane tickets and food,

only declaring these costs to the tax office to get a one-third

rebate on annual income taxes. The NGO rents a house in

Titao and bought its own vehicle — a three-wheeler motor-

bike — to visit the schools, meet partners and carry materials,

covering distances of approximately 5,000 km in 12 weeks.

Transferring know-how is free.

The projects include fostering 40 pupils or students and

providing materials and books, photovoltaic plates (we have

already installed 18, 10 of which were co-financed by Sol

Solidari), 40 pedal sewing machines for girls leaving school,

five mesh roll hand machines for out-of-work youth (creating

10 self-sustained jobs with profits going to the schools), and

five fuel grain mills controlled and managed by mothers. We

plan to open the first solar powered mill in November 2015.

A project begins with somebody contacting the coordina-

tor (kindly loaned by the Directeur Provincial de l’Education

Nationale et de l’Alphabétisation (DPENA) in Titao) or any

Pour un autre monde representative — phone numbers, cards

and flyers are easily passed from hand to hand. Before making

a decision about the request, we meet three or four times with

teachers (and pupils’ heads in secondary schools), parents’ and

mothers’ associations (APE/AME), the Education Inspector, local

authorities such as chiefs, elders and mayors, and environment

and agriculture directors. We report twice yearly to the DPENA.

The first group of partners wrote a ‘guide for sustainable projects’

in 2012, whichwas completed in 2014. The guide describes activi-

ties during the five years of the project, the role of the NGO and

what the teachers, pupils and parents will do (including a 20 per

cent contribution in money or work). It lists the people responsi-

ble and the materials in the school’s inventory, and explains how

controls are establishedwith the school garden copy book (written

by different pupils) and with the APE/AME bank book (as schools

soon gain money selling surplus vegetables or grain, iron mesh

rolls, charging telephones or grinding flour).

If everybody agrees, after hours of friendly discussion, news,

translations and thanks, the plan is signed and a copy is given

to the DPENA. We set up a Comité de suivi et de gestion (moni-

toring and management committee) which consists of parents

and teachers working together with the NGO as a non-voting

member. Once that is in place, the practical work begins.

Here is a typical account of how we work to make a garden

out of a ‘zipelle’ (a sterile ground haunted by djinns). Before the

first practice visit, parents have dug the first of four trenches

(3 m x 0.75 m x 0.4 m). Pupils have collected ‘rumbs bindu’

(dried cow dung) for azote, dried vegetal refuse for carbon,

little bags of ashes from the kitchen fire for potash, and dried

small poultry or fish bones for calcium and phosphorus. The

cow dung and vegetal refuse, including sorghum chaff, are

watered two days beforehand to revive the good bacteria and

prevent people from inhaling cow dung dust when breaking it

into small pieces (this causes pneumonia, as I found out).

To check soil permeability we throw water from five water-

ing cans into the bottom of the trench: if it disappears quickly

we need clay, of which there is plenty in Loroum. We then ask

volunteers to stamp the damp clay— the pupils enjoy this chance

to have their feet in water and mud with their parents’ and teach-

ers’ approval. If water remains we start some damming using the

pupils’ feet as well. Then we make a gigantic sandwich consist-

ing of 17 wheelbarrows full of damped dried plants, six to seven

wheelbarrows full of humid cow dung in small pieces, two hand-

fuls of ashes and two handfuls of pounded bones, with five or six

cans of water for each layer. This fills the trench up to knee-level.

To finish, we add plenty of dried grass in a layer 10 cm thick. If it

Trenches are layered using the natural fertilizer material and water, then dried grass is added to the top and weighed down to secure

Images: Association Pour un autre monde

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