57077




Findings reports on ongoing operational, economic and sector work carried out by the World
Bank and its member governments in the Africa Region. It is published periodically by the
Knowledge Networks, Information and Technology Center on behalf of the Region.



                       Village Immersion : Mandaka, Cameroon



During the period May 19-31, 1997, three Bank staff, Connie Luff (AFC07), Philippe Callier
(AFTM3), and Mark Blackden (AFTI1), took part in a village immersion program. They stayed
for two weeks in the village of Mandaka, Far North Province of Cameroon, about 80 km to the
west of the Provincial capital of Maroua. The program was launched at the initiative of
Nicholas Bennett, Senior Education Planner at the Bank's Resident Mission in Yaoundé. It was
prepared and organized by CARE Cameroon, an international NGO with more than 18 years
experience in the country, and which has undertaken many projects in the Far North Province.

The Setting

The village of Mandaka is about 8 km on the dirt track to the north of the small town of Mokolo,
Far North Province of Cameroon (Box 1). It is a region close to the Mandara mountain range
that separates Cameroon from Nigeria. The hills are sparse and rugged, strewn with boulders,
and are sometimes quite steep. Terraces of stones built by farmers wind along the contours of
the hillsides to protect the topsoil and improve water retention.

Extended families live in compounds which are a cleverly arranged cluster of round mud huts,
each serving a special purpose: one for the husband, one for each wife and their children, and
separate huts for goats, sheep, cattle, grain storage, and cooking. Compounds are dispersed all
over the village, with cultivated plots generally close by.

 Box 1: Why Mandaka?

 The village was selected by CARE principally because it had an adequate potable water
 supply, and each selected family had at least one member living in the compound who could
 speak French.
Water is the lifeblood of the community in two critical respects. First, access to sufficient
potable water, and to adequate, timely rainfall, is the critical to survival. Second, the need to
tackle the overriding water problem has brought the community together and energized its
members. With support from CARE Cameroon, the 500 villagers in the Chechem district dug 2
wells, organized a water management committee, and each family pays 3 cups of millet annually
to finance maintenance and repairs.

Mandaka's 5,000 inhabitants are subsistence farmers, producing food for their own needs, and
modest quantities of crops for cash, mainly white beans, groundnuts, and cotton. They have
tackled their potable water needs, but adequate rainfall is entirely beyond their control.

Principal Constraints in Mandaka Village

Rainfall in this region is exceptionally variable and haphazard, both spatially and temporally
(Box 2). If the rains do not come at the right time, or are insufficient in any one place, the result
is drought, even when total rainfall is above average. This year, the rains began well in late April
but then became more unpredictable. With the good early rain, the villagers planted their
precious savings of last year's seeds, and hoped that the rains would continue. This year at least,
rains have been adequate and drought averted.

 Box 2: Variable Rainfall

 Data for the Mokolo area vividly illustrate the precarious rainfall situation. In 1985, there was
 a difference of nearly 380 mm of rainfall (about one-third of the average annual total)
 between two points only 12 km apart. Mokolo's total annual rainfall has varied from a low of
 700 mm to a high of more than 1,400 mm. It's hard to build development strategies, let alone
 contemplate innovation and risk-taking, in the face of such wildly shifting parameters.

There is no public transport in the region, and the people of Mandaka inhabit a walking world
(Box 3). We accompanied them as they walked long distances to schools, markets, health
facilities, and to the nearest town. The road to Mokolo is bad, discouraging traders and raising
their costs. We discovered for ourselves what the residents of Mandaka know only too well: the
critical tasks of getting people and goods around absorb excessive amounts of time and energy,
and their access to even the most basic forms of transport technology is extremely limited.

 Box 3: Means of Transport

 An informal survey of Mandaka's transport resources revealed a village poorly endowed with
 in this respect: no vehicles, 5 bicycles (all broken), 1 push cart (also broken), 4 pairs of oxen,
 and 5 donkeys. The oxen and donkeys are reserved for ploughing, and are not used much for
 transporting goods or people.

Mandaka does not have a health post, and the nearest facilities are the public hospital in Mokolo
(8 km) and an Evangelical health center in Soulédé (12 km). Inadequate access to health care is
a major preoccupation for the village, especially as health status can change very rapidly (Box
4). Three schools of markedly variable quality and accessibility serve the larger community.

 Box 4: Sickness and Health: A Precarious Balance

 Three-year old Jacanoa got sick alarmingly quickly, and was transformed overnight from a
 lively little boy into one nearing death from dehydration. At midnight, Connie was woken up
 by her hosts and asked if she had any medicines. In the morning, we pooled all the oral
 rehydration salts we had brought with us. Jacanoa improved visibly, though was sick again
 the next day, and had to be carried on his mother's back to the Soulédé health center for
 treatment. By the end of our stay, he was back in good health.

Key Findings

   ·   The community actively shunned public services, a finding that confirmed the results of
       the 1994 Participatory Poverty Assessment (see references at end of article). Residents of
       Mandaka say they prefer to go to the Evangelical Mission health center in Soulédé,
       which is 1.5 times further than the public district hospital in Mokolo, and where they
       have to pay more for services. They prefer it because they are courteously received, and
       will actually get the treatment and medicines they need.
   ·   Similarly, the least popular school choice was the Mandaka public school. Though the
       buildings were impressive in comparison with the parents' association school, the
       teachers were not motivated, 2 of the 4 did not speak Mafa, the local language, and there
       were only 5 textbooks for the entire school. The principal admitted that the planting
       season was too busy a time for children to be in school, but schools are not free to set the
       calendar to accommodate peak labor demand. A number of the children go to the private
       mission school in Udkia, even though it is furthest away (1 1/4 hr walk) and the most
       expensive in the area. Here, teachers could communicate well with the children, as all
       but one spoke Mafa, and there was 1 textbook to share among 2 children.



   ·   Community spirit and strong organization in Mandaka. The community was proud of
       having organized itself, and launched water projects, before CARE Cameroon came to
       support them. There were 3 main groups (elders, youth, and women's groups) engaged in
       village development projects. A village development committee brought together
       representatives of each of these groups for community-level projects.
   ·   The villagers know what they want, understand well their resource limitations, have
       clearly defined priorities, and are willing to work hard and pool efforts for what they
       want to do. Their great success with the water project has encouraged them, and they are
       now keen to pursue other priorities. They desperately want to bring a health center to the
       village, and to set up a small shop, so that people do not have to walk as frequently to
       Mokolo. The women's groups want to buy a mill for grinding their millet and maize, thus
       saving them around 3 hours every day. The youth group, in addition to putting in place a
           mechanism of mutual support with school fees, also wanted more opportunities for
           socializing. The committee is keen to have a school that is close, as children now cannot
           start going to school until they are about 8--before that age the distance to school is
           simply too great. The committee has supported sending a woman student to Maroua for
           teacher training.
     ·     Even with good organization, a dynamic and determined community, and appropriate
           technical support, luck is still a critical ingredient in meeting water needs. The
           neighboring community of Biscavai was less fortunate than Mandaka. The 5 wells they
           have painstakingly dug since 1988, one of them 23 meters deep, have all come up dry,
           and their potable water needs are as acute as ever.
     ·     Mandaka is a very small economy with little scope for specialization within the village.
           There are small- scale transactions within the community: farmers can either rent land
           from better-endowed neighbors or work on others' land for a wage. Many women
           produce bil-bil, a local alcoholic beverage derived from millet and sold at the weekly
           markets on Thursday and Saturday nights. The only specialized skills are those of the
           blacksmith families, who are also potters, and those of older women who weave
           beautiful baskets for family use. Obstacles to the diversification of skills within the
           village are the small size of the community (about 50 families), and the fact that people
           are risk-averse since life in Mandaka is precarious.
     ·     The women are always working, and their time constraint is severe. This clearly has a
           seasonal dimension. At the busy time of planting, the women usually need to walk the 8
           km to Mokolo ( where the nearest powered mill operates ) every 3 days to grind their
           millet. In the rainy season, the walk is too difficult, and there is too much work to do.
           Consequently, the women get up at 1 a.m., work until 5 a.m. grinding the millet with a
           stone, leave to work in the fields all day, returning only at 6 p.m. to prepare the evening
           meal for the men and to rest after washing the dishes. Fetching firewood is also more
           time-consuming than ever, as population pressure on land and increasing drought take
           their toll. Some have started to use improved stoves. Families are already limited to
           gathering fuelwood from their own plots of land, and have, as a result, started to replant
           a few trees on individual fields. This may well prove to be a creative way of encouraging
           replanting, and is likely to work better than community-level projects. But there is still
           little general awareness of what we see as an impending fuelwood crisis in this area.

The program brought us closer to our clients and their problems, and gave us insight, through
shared experience, into their constraints and coping mechanisms. It also helped to foster
partnership with CARE Cameroon, and to demystify the Bank a little in the process.
For further information on Cameroon and this region, please see: Jan Hijkoop, Mahamat Abadan, Hama Hadama Bello, Les Monts Mandara: Les Hommes
et l'Environnement et les Expériences du Projet Agroforestier. Projet Agroforesterie Villageoise, ONADEF/CARE Mokolo, Mars 1992. Cameroon:
Diversity, Growth, and Poverty Reduction, Report No. 13167-CM, World Bank, April 1995. Cécile Séverin Abega et al., Evaluation Participative de la
Pauvreté, Etude menée dans la Province de l'Extrême Nord, Mars-Juin 1994. For copies, please contact Mark Blackden, Rm. J2-123, World Bank, 1818 H
Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20433. Tel. no.: (202) 473-7555 ; e-mail address: Mblackden@worldbank.org