🚀 go-pugleaf

This is in reply to John Barker who asks for examples of community
'hands-on' use of video.

I know  of three initiatives in Tanzania. First,  I and Dominick de Waal
have experimented with such video for two years in Mtwara and Lindi Regions
in the SE corner of Tanzania.  Second,  we are also, through the Forests,
Trees and People Programme of FAO, involved in supporting pastoralist NGOs
with collecting testimonials of land conflicts on video. Third, I know from
Mr Wendelin Mlenge that the HASHI project in Shinyanga has been using video
for several years for documenting local knowledge and for some kind of
drama thing.

The 'Mtwara Video Centre' was established in 1994 through collaboration
between two donor-funded projects: RIPS, a rural development programme
supported by Finland, and the agricultural research institute at Naliendele
supported by ODA.  We trained a handful of staff from different local
organisations in using Hi8 camcorders and introduced video in a  number of
participatory planning and research activites. Antti Pirskanen from Finland
helped us to set up digital editing on Mac with Radius VVS.

We've been using video for documenting participatory learning exercises,
village workshops,  farming systems research, policy lobbying, dialogue
with donors etc.  We haven't had villagers to actually operate the
camcorders yet. Instead we established small working groups made up of
local people and staff from external organisations, such as extension
officers or researchers. The original purpose was to document PRA exercises
on video. Wherever possible  tapes were played back to the community in the
same evening using a petrol generator. The idea was that working groups
with community members should control editing immediately after recording.
But this  often turned out to be difficult to organise.  Edited material
has been copied to VHS for screening in villages and at meetings. It has
also been stored on DAT tape for easy retrieval and re-editing.  When
working groups screened their film they would  bring a camcorder and offer
the audience to comment afterwards, and then they would incorporate
additions in a new version. In this way the projects that were documented
sometimes became synonymous with the video narrative in a very interesting
way.  A committee of  fishermen and women  toured with their film on
dynamite fishing first to forty coastal villages, and then to Dar Es Salaam
where they showed it to several ministers and  government officials. They
recorded the ministers' reactions to the show and incorporated these in the
next version, that went on a new tour, etc. In another case, one scientist
and one farmer met regularly  during a year both on the research station
and in the village, and videotaped a series of short discussions on cassava
breeding.  There are plans to use video in very many ways but the centre
may be difficult to sustain, we'll see what becomes of it. Dominick and I
have brought some of the material from 94-95 to Sweden  and we hope to be
able to distribute a few subtitled samples within short.

The pastoralist project was also a spin-off from Mtwara.  Ndipapa Ole Ikayo
from Ngorongoro participated in a  training course in Mtwara organised in
collaboration with the Tanzanian FTPP network. In December 1995 he and
Geoff Taylor recorded 20 hours of material from six traditional meetings in
Maasai communities within the Ngorongoro conservation area at a time when
the conservation authority was circulating a draft management plan for the
conservation area for residents' comments.  We edited and subtitled a fifty
minutes long version of this material in Sweden and by now tapes will
probably have been passed on to traditional leaders who will use them in
negotiations with authorities and donors.  Ole Ikayo will continue to
record the planning process from the perspective of the residents and he
has also offered the authorities to help them present their intentions with
the management plan in a Maa-language video.

I can provide more information on these projects on request. I have just
come back from Mtwara and I don't have a media background so I really don't
know what is going on elsewhere. But reflecting on our experiences  I find
Over to some of my questions.   Who else is doing  similar things in
Africa,  particularly Kenya and Uganda?  Any organisation willing to
co-finance a workshop for exchange of experiences? A video centre in the
North of Tanzania? An experiment with mobile DV editing in the field?

Lars Johansson

Ys=E4terv=E4gen 2
S-182 63 Djursholm
Sweden

Phone: +46 8 755 9685 and +46 8 755 5678
Email: lars.johansson@pi.se