AFRO-NETS> The Drum Beat - Issue 123 - Mountain Voices - Dec 10 2001

[Warren Feek <wfeek@comminit.com>]

The Drum Beat - Issue 123 - Mountain Voices - Dec 10 2001
---------------------------------------------------------

from The Communication Initiative...global forces...local 
choices...critical voices...telling stories...

Partners: The Rockefeller Foundation, BBC World Service Trust, The 
CHANGE Project, CIDA, The European Union, Exchange, FAO, Johns Hop-
kins University Center for Communication Programs, The Panos Insti-
tute, Soul City, The Synergy Project, UNAIDS, UNICEF, USAID, WHO.

Chair of Partners Group: Denise Gray-Felder, Rockefeller Foundation 
<dgray-felder@rockfound.org>

Director: Warren Feek <wfeek@comminit.com>

Website: http://www.comminit.com

*****

The most important critical voices are from those who are most af-
fected by an issue: people living with HIV/AIDS on HIV/AIDS, children 
on child rights, people in poverty on poverty, and many others. Ini-
tiatives that enable people to shape their own priorities and have 
their voices heard are key to the processes of development in these 
communities.

The Mountain Voices website, from The Panos Institute, is one such 
initiative. The site presents a collection of interviews gathered in 
selected mountain and highland regions. Conducted by local people in 
local languages and translated into English, the interviews draw on 
direct personal memory and experience. The range of individual voices 
provides a picture of some highland societies, their changing physi-
cal and social environments, and their concerns for the future. 
http://www.mountainvoices.org or http://www.mountainvoices.net 

Below is a selection of quotes from testimonies from each of the 6 
country collections, as well as links to the testimonies themselves. 
You will also find direct links to the country pages. More informa-
tion on the site follows.

*****

THE VOICES

Kenya
http://www.mountainvoices.net/kenya.asp

1. In the olden days, there were so many more activities: singing, 
telling stories by the grandmothers in their homes. From them [young 
people] were taught songs that contained meaning...I think...maybe 
the old are discouraged somehow in one-way or another. Because if 
they feel that they are not recognised in the community, then any 
chance of them giving out their experiences [is lost]...they will not 
be in the mood to tell them... Most of the young nowadays...do not go 
to their grandparents and listen to stories or ask questions...
Robert, male, 30 yrs.
http://www.mountainvoices.net/Summary.asp?id=140


2. People have tried to plant various crops like coffee, tea, but the 
impassable road still remains a dilemma, and also the lack of facto-
ries to process the raw materials... It is donkeys that transport the 
products - potatoes, vegetables, maize - from the mountain and down 
the slopes... Those mountainsides are rocky and steep and the matatu 
people cannot reach there...
Lois, female
http://www.mountainvoices.net/Summary.asp?id=142


Nepal
http://www.mountainvoices.net/nepal.asp

3. The convention is to send the sons to school while the daughters 
are made to attend to domestic chores like collecting fodder and 
looking after the young ones. If they are sent to school, barely must 
they reach the age of 15 when they are considered ripe for marriage. 
In their own homes they are considered 'strangers' who must one day 
attend to the care of another's home. So, they are sent away like 
buffaloes and are not allowed to do anything except to collect fodder 
and other daily chores. 
Indira, female, 25 yrs.
http://www.mountainvoices.net/Summary.asp?id=356


4. If we look at it deeply, this ropeway is far more useful than a 
motorable road. This does not destroy our environment or our forest. 
Roads in the mountain get damaged during the rains. It is not always 
possible to construct roads everywhere, and road construction re-
quires huge investments. We saw this ropeway as a simple, easy and 
quick alternative and made a request for it.
Chandra, male, 55 yrs. 
http://www.mountainvoices.net/Summary.asp?id=351


Peru
http://www.mountainvoices.net/peru.asp

5. [Young people] leave to find work, they don't go for any other 
reason. They don't go because they hate their land... the majority go 
to escape the poverty, don't they? If there were better pastures and 
clean water, they'd stay.
Delma, female, 54 yrs.
http://www.mountainvoices.net/Summary.asp?id=260


6. At first there was no real awareness of the damage being done to 
the land [by mining]... [Miners] think of the present... about their 
money, about their work and that's all. They're trapped by their sur-
roundings so they're not even interested in whether their lungs are 
being infected... the truth is that when I was young... I felt more 
like a miner than a comunero.... But then you begin to realise the 
seriousness of the problem and.... you finally realise that you're a 
comunero, because this is your land and you're going to die here. So 
you do something about it, because they are contaminating the land 
and...sometimes the damage they do to the land is irreparable....
Hilario, male, 65 yrs.
http://www.mountainvoices.net/Summary.asp?id=235


Ethiopia
http://www.mountainvoices.net/ethiopia.asp

7. When I was a child I have travelled on foot to Kaskes... There was 
no road then. People carried food for themselves and for their ani-
mals and travelled for a week or a month through the forest and the 
desert in those days. Some even died on the road. Now that the Chi-
nese built this road for us, anybody, whether rich or poor, can 
travel by car to a distant place and come back the next day after do-
ing his business... Because there is a road, they brought barley from 
Addis Ababa and dagussa from Gojam by vehicles here and saved our 
lives when the land refused to produce food. 
Ayichesh, female, 28 yrs.
http://www.mountainvoices.net/Summary.asp?id=127


8. The people of Meket are active. They have prestige symbols such as 
guns and mules, which the owners show off on holidays. At home, 
though they are now getting poorer, their hospitality, songs, musical 
instruments and minstrels have a distinct quality of their own. Now 
the burden of poverty is weighing down on the people. Songs and 
dances are not reviving the spirit of families at home. Mothers have 
very little to feed their children and familial ties are loosening. 
Yaregal, male, 41 yrs.
http://www.mountainvoices.net/Summary.asp?id=126


Poland
http://www.mountainvoices.net/poland.asp

9. As the saying goes, mother cuts as much bread as the children 
need, and so that some is still left. And the same thing has to hap-
pen in the forest. There is a rotation - you are allowed to cut down 
only as much as has grown...your task is to plant enough, so that 
there is a balance. 
Bronislaw, male, 66 yrs.
http://www.mountainvoices.net/Summary.asp?id=300


10. [Damage from the flood...] It was just awful what I saw, just aw-
ful. Lots of stones, pieces of rock on the road, people were crying, 
houses were flooded...they were trying to salvage their animals... 
when the water dropped, it left such a battlefield behind...you could 
say there had been a war...bridges had been broken, and [people] were 
totally cut off, they didn't have water, electricity, gas.
Maria, female, 53 yrs.
http://www.mountainvoices.net/Summary.asp?id=269


Lesotho
http://www.mountainvoices.net/lesotho.asp

11. I have one field of my own, but then, truly I usually plough in 
partnerships. Right here with the old people here, or here, with peo-
ple who do not have cattle. Or with those who are needy in the hands 
like the handicapped... 
Sebili, male, 46 yrs.
http://www.mountainvoices.net/Summary.asp?id=209


12. Here where I have built, is a place where I have lived well.... I 
was ploughing, I was eating and getting full in the stomach. I was 
planting each and every single crop in the fields. I was getting wild 
vegetables that have been created by God... [But] this place where I 
am going [to be resettled], what am I going to eat? Who will give me 
a field? ...I feel that the beat of my heart will be in the direction 
of this place where my life was. It will remain as a rock on my heart 
when I think of the place that I am being removed from. 
Maseipati, female, late 80s.
http://www.mountainvoices.net/Summary.asp?id=203


IYM 2002

13. On December 11th the global launch of the International Year of 
Mountains 2002 takes place at the United Nations Headquarters in New 
York. See - http://www.mountains2002.org and http://www.mtnforum.org


MOUNTAIN VOICES WEBSITE

14. The Mountain Voices website is an attempt to make the mountains 
debate of 2002 and beyond more inclusive by highlighting the perspec-
tive of those experiencing development and change 1st-hand. To date, 
some 200 interviews from communities in the 6 above-mentioned coun-
tries are available on the site. By mid-2002, 4 other collections 
will also be online: India (western Himalaya); Mexico (Sierra Norte); 
southwest & northeast China; and Pakistan (Karakorum mountains). The 
archive will eventually contain over 300 interviews from 10 different 
mountain communities. Visitors can search for oral testimonies by lo-
cation and by theme - including environmental knowledge, migration, 
education, social change, culture and custom, economics and identity. 
See - http://www.mountainvoices.net/themes.html for more information.

*****

This issue developed in close collaboration with Siobhan Warrington 
<SiobhanW@panoslondon.org.uk> & Olivia Bennett 
<oliviab@panoslondon.org.uk>

*****

Please send material for The Drum Beat to 
Deborah Heimann <dheimann@comminit.com>

To reproduce any portion of The Drum Beat, see 
http://www.comminit.com/Helpdocuments/sld-3318.html for our policy.

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