Involving the neigbouring community

For over two years, I am a regular visitor on the peninsula, sometimes staying a few days, alone or with visitors; just for a rest or doing some work on the site; sometimes to negotiate with a farmer who offers a plot for sale (actually we have bought 12 plots now totalling to roughly one ha, imagine the way land is split up into small plots, all a result of the high population growth rate, promoted by the Ugandan president).
In this way I had a chance to interact with many people living on and around the peninsula. I realised that expectations were high. "A muzungu (white man) always has a lot of money and now we are all going to benefit" is a message I hear repeatedly.

Neighbours come after work for a chat

During my work with communities in Uganda, I realised that there is a great dependency thinking, whereby rural communities believe that everything has to come free from outside. In fact I often was very disappointed, wondering what was wrong with so many rural people, making themselves so dependent on the outside world, not taking real action themselves to develop.
In the recent years, I got some training in Appreciative Inquiry and there is maybe an answer for this so important question: many years development workers have used problem solving approaches to identify needs, problems and deficiencies in rural communities and to find interventions to improve on those. However, it is not a surprise that local people stay behind looking at their village as a place full of problems which have to be solved by people from outside.
Appreciative inquiry is a strategy for purpose change that identifies the best of "what is" to pursue dreams and possibilities of "what could be". it is a cooperative search for the strengths, passions and life-giving forces that are found in every system to be used to create development.
In past employments as development worker i had the chance to use AI on a small scale and I was impressed by the change of mindset by rural people.
Two weeks ago, when i walked into our village, I was greeted by some youth calling me a real resident of the village. Than I realised that besides developing our Amasiko project, we should work with the surrounding communities, not by giving hand outs as expected, but bringing my capacities in to work together and make a development plan for the whole community using Appreciative Inquiry as a starting point.
Yesterday, I went to the village together with 4 farmers/facilitators I worked with in the past. we had a meeting with local Authorities LC1 village Committee and the parish chief. Of course the first questions where about what we are going to bring the village, how they can get development (money, animals, seeds............) from us. But after some deep discussions and examples from my farmer/facilitators, a meeting is agreed upon.
Next week we will spend 4 days with the community to work with AI as an approach to make a start for a Community Action Plan!!!!

All inhabitants, men, women, youth are invited and we expect around 80 people. each day to be ended with a shared meal, farmers have promised to bring the stable food, we are to supply some vegetables for the sauce, what an exiting proposition to learn more about my neighbours, know their achievements, capacities and dreams! And hopefully we are able to bring a change into the midset of our neighbours to beleive in their own capacities to bring positive change into their community.