Villagers build a dam, reclaim their lives
Dec 7, 2005 (LATTIT, eastern Sudan) — Two years ago, Lattit’s farms were arid wasteland and its villagers refugees.
Now, thanks to a new earthen dam, green fields stretch into the distance, producing food for sale and to feed hundreds of families who have returned. And they are reason for hope in a poor and violence-wracked corner of Sudan, and perhaps for other trouble spots in a troubled country.
Most importantly, villagers say, they _ not aid agencies _ initiated the transformation, at one point bargaining with a road crew for use of a bulldozer to build the dam.
“Aid comes in the morning and is consumed by evening,” said Sheik Ali Mussah Hammid, a leader of the region’s Sinkat people, contrasting that with projects led by the community he believes can last a lifetime.
“There is no way to compare the two, no way,” he said.
Successive years of drought had devastated this region in the 1980s, forcing thousands of families to leave in search of jobs in cities like Port Sudan, 600 kilometers (400 miles) east of Khartoum on the Red Sea, the hub of the region that is home to the Beja ethnic group.
Fighting in the neighborhood as Eritrea struggled for independence from Ethiopia meant even more displaced people, and more strain on scarce resources.
The Beja Congress launched a rebellion in 1989, complaining the region was neglected by the central government. The Beja war has seen little large-scale violence, but has been troubling for a central government fighting insurgents with similar complaints in the south and in the western region of Darfur. The 21-year southern war ended with a January peace accord, but fighting in Darfur, which erupted in 2003, continues.
War in eastern Sudan only contributed to the decline that started with drought, forcing more people to flee. At one time, nearly all of Lattit’s 500 or so families left.
They did not find life easier in the cities, where their farming skills counted for little. Men left their fields and cattle for low-paying jobs as dock workers or janitors. Government officials and U.N. studies say almost all the estimated 700,000 people in the Port Sudan region live on less than US$1 (85 euro cents) a day.
Abdullah Issa, a Lattit community leader, said the rehabilitation of this village 220 kilometers (140 miles) west of Port Sudan started with one of the displaced who had managed to get an education in the city. Sheik Mohamed Tahir proposed building a dam across a creek that runs near Lattit only during the rainy season to hold water for a few weeks, long enough to soak into the land and ready it for cultivation.
By coincidence, Tahir, now a representative in the state legislature, r was presenting his ideas to his neighbors as a road crew was working in the area. Villagers offered the road crew access to their well water in exchange for use of a bulldozer for a few weeks.
Once the dam was complete, villagers approached the United Nations for tools and seeds under a poverty alleviation project for eastern Sudan to which the U.N. contributes US$1.4 million (A1.19 million) and the state government US$400,000 (A339,933.71).
The project offers small loans for projects designed by villagers, such as buying cows to start a milk business or the simple technology for a grain mill. U.N. experts advise villagers on how to manage the loans and projects, and money from loan repayments funds more projects.
The U.N. hopes the program can be a model for Sudan’s other volatile regions.
“Marginalization and poverty breed conflicts. Our work with the government and communities … is part of our conflict prevention strategy,” said Heba El-Kholy, head of UNDP in Sudan.
The first growing season on Lattit’s reclaimed farmland was a success. Family incomes from selling vegetables were 10 times what they had been from menial jobs in the cities.
The first year, almost every family that had moved away sent at least one member back to work Lattit’s fields. The second year, entire families began to return.
“In two years, 90 percent, or over 500 families that had left this place … have now returned,” said Issa, the village headman. “This is a wonder. We hadn’t realized that miracles could happen.”
Sheik Mohamadin Issa Adam, who had worked as a laborer, deck hand and janitor in Port Sudan before returning to Lattit to farm after the dam was built, said he often did not earn enough to feed his family in the city and had to take his children out of school.
Such desperation could lead some to take up arms, Adam said.
“We would have joined anybody, even the rebels,” he said.
He boasts of the 40 sacks of sorghum he harvested his first season, along with vegetables and watermelon. His seven children are studying again.
“Working for someone else cannot be compared to working for yourself, being your own master,” Adam said.
He gestured at his feet as if writing in the sand, the Beja equivalent of swearing on a Bible.
“This is the best thing that has happened to us in the last 20 years.”
(AP/ST)