In the Mangroves of Ceramica

One of the biggest environmental problems in Mozambique is deforestation. In the area that I am located in, the problem is more specifically deforestation of the mangrove swamps. These areas not only are carbon basins and house a diversity of native species but they also provide necessary inputs for human life. Some of these things include providing spawning grounds for fish, wood for cooking and barriers from tropical cyclones.

While Chinese corporate interests threaten forests in much of the country, the problem in Ceramica (a community about 30km from Beira) is due of a lack of planning and management of forest resources by locals. One of the things that ADEL-Sofala already does is help community members create local energy plans for their area in conjunction with promoting fuel-efficient stoves.

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As part of my role in developing volunteer programs with ADEL-Sofala, I saw that volunteers could do a lot of the work in order to ensure that the trees that are taken are replanted afterwards. To change the way the community interacts with the mangrove will take a lot of will but it is quite achievable.

Last week, I helped organize a workshop that aimed to showcase the will and the potential to reforest the mangrove and show how to plant the trees themselves. Thanks to a small grant from VSO we were able to accommodate 118 people including the volunteers and youth of Ceramica, the traditional community leaders and the district administrator who praised the initiative.

The event was a success and featured demonstrations for planting mangrove trees, speeches, singing, theatre performances and a traditional lunch. Something that was particularly interesting to me was the traditional ceremony that we did before the mangrove planting. It involved removing your shoes, pouring drinks on the ground and clapping in a rhythmic pattern with our heads bowed. The ceremony was a blessing of the activity and it was performed by the traditional leaders. After the blessing, I got to do my first large speech in Portuguese in front of about a hundred people. I was a bit nervous but I think it went quite well overall. After some training on how to plant the mangrove seeds, we all went about planting trees to finish-off the workshop.

Once again, thanks to Jacques for taking these wonderful shots for ADEL-Sofala. I feel quite positive that volunteers in Ceramica can make a difference through the re-plantation of the local mangroves. The next project working on will be to encourage community groups to do theatre about climate change and deforestation – a traditional way of passing on important knowledge. Wish me luck!

Até a proxima

Volunteer Environmental Auditing

My posts have already highlighted the environmental schools project that I have been working on. Over the last few weeks, the project began to see the light of day as we did a presentation to partners, and two pilot audits of schools.

The presentation was ably performed by two of my colleagues, Rodolfo and Sazia, who both did an excellent job. We invited partners from other NGO’s, government, major businesses and other districts. They also showed off the published material that I had helped create including a brochure, an environmental ‘toolkit’ and a t-shirt design.

A tree planted on the school grounds – one of the positive things we are looking for

Inoperative bathrooms are one of the important issues that we reviewed

School children play football with plastic bags tied together – very creative

Here I am discussing the audit with a member of our partner organization

Sazia helps a child understand the questionaire

Some of the team at the first environmental audit

Some team members at the second environmental audit (including Sazia and Jacques in the top right)

These children are working hard on their questionaire

One of Jaques’ wonderful artistic shots before the audit

Me, the school janitor, and Sazia

During the last two weeks, we visited two schools and conducted environmental audits. The schools definitely have some environmental issues, but the willingness of the school leadership to allow us to conduct the audit was great. We noticed problems with lack of sanitation, toxic chemicals, lack of trees and other important factors that influence the well being of the children who attend these schools. It’s exciting to see how parents and local community members really have an opportunity to change these conditions through the environmental clubs that we will help them to create.

Part of the audit involves engaging children in the process by getting them to complete a questionnaire. These pilot audits alerted us that our questionnaire was a bit too difficult for the children to understand and we since changed the questionnaire. Many thanks to Henriette from the Netherlands for helping with that! Jacques (also from the Netherlands) was kind enough to go with us and take pictures. He has been offering ADEL Sofala his services as a photographer over the past few weeks and it’s great to have him as a part of the team.

We feel that generally the first two environmental audits were a good learning experience that that the success of these pilot audits bodes well for the future of our environmental schools program.

This weekend, I am planning on heading to Mutare Zimbabwe. I’ll post about it when I get back.

Até a proxima!

Environmental Schools Program / Programa Escola Ambiental

This is the group of people that conducted the first environmental audit on Friday, May 11th 2012. There will be a blog post coming soon about this so stay tuned.