The keys to sustainable development

Relationships and time, according to Andy Hart, are the two essential ingredients in a successful development project. So we learned today on our Geography class trip to Ismani village, located half an hour outside of Iringa on the tooth-rattling road to Dodoma. Andy, a British veterinarian and CMS missionary whose wife started Neema Crafts, took five students and me to see his development projects in the village, which include chicken vaccinations, cattle dip tanks, solar water disinfection, solar panel distribution, and most recently, bat farming.

Chicken vaccination is always the first project Andy implements in a new village. The average family in rural Tanzania usually keeps at least six or seven chickens, but is rarely able to increase that number because 60% of the chickens die every year from Newcastle disease (kideri in Kiswahili). For 2,800 Tsh, or about $2, Andy buys a vial of vaccine in Iringa and takes it to a village. There, he trains a local team to be vaccinators and community organizers. The team goes around to all the houses in the village and tells the families to keep their chickens inside that night; the next morning, the team comes to each house to catch and vaccinate the chickens.

Catching chickens, as anyone who grew up on a farm will know, involves diving behind chairs, under beds, and even climbing into cupboards. Once all the chickens have been vaccinated in this manner, the team has not only performed an invaluable veterinary service to the chickens, but they have (unbeknownst to the families) been able to assess the poverty level of each family in the village by looking for radios, lamps, water filters, and other possessions that indicate standard of living. If something troublesome catches their eye, they simply ask the family for a cup of tea, and then sit down to talk about it.

Once Andy chased a chicken into a grain silo and found a seven-year old child lying in the dark in a straw basket. The boy was born disabled so the family hid him away - common practice in a country with no social services and massive prejudice against disabled people. The neighbors didn’t even know the boy existed. Now, after two months of physical therapy, the boy is able to walk and will hopefully begin school soon. Contrast this with the highly paid mzungu who drives up in a shiny Land Rover to ask the families why they are so poor. Get it? Relationships. Catching chickens is everyday business, and villagers helping vaccinate chickens talk more honestly with each other than they ever would with an outsider with zero knowledge of their community.

The results of the vaccination program are astounding; many families see their chicken population quintuple within four to six months. Once these families have thirty or forty chickens running about the shamba, their children’s protein intake increases, which in turn improves their performance in school. Some families are inspired to entrepreneurialism, selling chickens for pigs, and pigs for cell phones and tin roofs that won’t leak during the rainy season.

Because of its quick, concrete results, the chicken vaccination program is the perfect way to gain villagers’ trust, and more importantly, for them to develop a new outlook on their own possibilities. With more money, a more comfortable home, and healthier children, villagers are much more inclined to listen to the next project Andy proposes, like cattle dip tanks, for example.