When, in 1960, I arrived at Gombe National Park to study the chimpanzees there, lush forest stretched for miles along the eastern shores of Lake Tanganyika and inland as far as the eye could see. Gradually, over the years, growing populations of local people swollen by refugees, struggling to eke out an existence, cut down the trees for firewood and building poles and to clear the land for their crops. By the early 1990s the trees outside the park had almost all gone and much of the soil was exhausted. Women had to walk further and further from their villages in search of fuel wood, adding hours of labor to their already difficult days.
People, looking for new land to clear for their crops, turned in to ever steeper and more unsuitable hillsides. With the trees gone more and more soil was washed away during the rainy season, the soil erosion worsened and landslides became frequent. By this time the chimpanzees were more or less trapped within their tiny 30 sq m national park. There could be no exchange of females between other groups – which prevents inbreeding – and with only some 100 individuals remaining the long term viability of the Gombe population was grim. Yet how could we even try to protect them while the people living around the borders were struggling to survive, envious of the lush forested area from which they were excluded.
Building up Good Will
Clearly it was necessary to gain the goodwill and cooperation of the villagers. Accordingly, in 1994 the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) With a small grant from the European Union, began TACARE, a program designed to improve the lives of the people in these very poor communities. Project manager George Strunden put together a team of talented and dedicated local Tanzanians who visited the 12 villages around Gombe to discuss their problems. Together they worked out the best way for TACARE to help. Not surprisingly, conservation issues were not listed as top priorities: the villagers’ main concerns were health, access to clean water, growing more food and education for their children. From the start we included agro-forestry, tree nurseries, water projects, best farming techniques for the degraded soil, and ways to restore the vitality to exhausted land without the use of chemical fertilizers. We developed excellent relations with local government and, working with the regional medical authorities, were able to facilitate primary healthcare in the villages, including basic information about hygiene and HIV-AIDS and family planning. Roots & Shoots, our educational program for youth, was eventually introduced into all the villages. Initially we were criticized for wanting to do too much, that we should better focus on one particular aspect. But we felt strongly that all these issues are interconnected and there were no other organizations wanting to help.
The Importance of Women
All around the world it has been shown that as women’s education improves, family size tends to drop and, after all, it was the growth of the population in the area that had led to the grim conditions that TACARE was trying to address. It would be irresponsible to introduce ways of growing more food and saving the lives of more babies, without, at the same time, talking about the need for small families. There are TACARE trained volunteers from each village, men as well as women, who provide counseling – that is now well received – about family planning.
As TACARE became ever more successful, and attracted money from other organizations, particularly USAID, we were able to start a micro-finance program based on the Grameen Bank model. Women took out very small loans for starting their own projects such as starting a tree nursery. We had to be sure the projects were environmentally friendly and sustainable. Well over 80% of all loans were repaid.
“I Want to Thank TACARE for my Life”
Recently I took some visitors to see some of our TACARE projects. In one village women who had received loans lined up to share their stories. One, in her early 20s, said (I have paraphrased from Kiswahili) “I want to thank TACARE for my life. I grew up in a large family. We never had enough to eat, or good clothes, or a good education. I thought that my own life would follow the same pattern. Then I heard about TACARE.” By that time she was married and had a couple of children. She learned about family planning and about the micro-credit program, took out a small loan to buy a few chickens, the start of her business. Soon she had been able to pay back her loan. After a year she decided to have another child and took out a second loan to employ a part-time helper so that she could look after the child and continue the business. She ended “I just want to tell you – thank you again. Because my children will be well fed, well clothed, and well educated.”
There was scarcely a dry eye among the listening visitors. I thought she had been coached and – I was going to privately thank Mary Mavanza who runs the womens’ programs. But she said no – it had been absolutely spontaneous.
Information about family planning, along with access to health care that increases the likelihood that her child will survive, enables a woman to realistically plan her family. If she has also received an education, things will go even better. So we started a scholarship program for girls – for a poor family is more likely to educate boys leaving the girls, once they have finished their first years of compulsory education in the primary schools, to help at home. And today, with costs soaring, some girls are unable to stay on to the end of primary school. We try to ensure that our girls stay the course – and found that some were dropping out for a reason that does not immediately spring to the minds of those of us growing up in western society.
Unexptected Pitfalls for Girls’ Education
On one village visit, all the school children, in their neat compulsory uniforms and waving branches with flowers on them, ran out to greet me. There were parents and smiling teachers. They were there for a ribbon cutting ceremony to open a new building – which, to my surprise, was a Ventilation-improved pit latrine.
So – why all the excitement about a lavatory? One needs to know what the children had before – a floor of rotting wood with a hole surrounded by a thin layer of thatch or palm fronds—stinking, sometimes quite dangerous, extremely unhygienic – and absolutely no privacy. No wonder that girls, on reaching puberty, become embarrassed in such conditions – it is the main reason they drop out of secondary school.
‘TACARE FORESTS’
Recently I went with our forester, Axxx Kashula, to another village. A woman demonstrated her new fuel efficient cooking stove that reduces the amount of wood she needs by 60 percent. Because all the women get wood from the village wood lot of fast growing trees, they no longer need to hack at the stumps of trees that once grew on the bare hillside. And then, such is the regenerative power of nature, a new tree will spring from the seemingly dead wood – and within five years it will be 20 to 30 feet high. Kashula pointed out a hillside now covered in trees. “It’s just one of our ‘TACARE Forests’ he said. “Nine years ago that slope was quite bare.” The villagers gathered under the trees to greet us, including two shy scholarship girls. A very impressive 10 year old R&S leader, confident in his tight fitting red striped shirt, told me about the trees his club was planting.
When I spoke to the group I told them how proud I was of TACARE, and how I spoke about their villages as I traveled around the world. “And” I said “we must remember to thank the chimps. It was because of them that I came to Tanzania – and see what it has all led to!” I ended with a chimpanzee pant-hoot and had all the villagers joining in.
Chimpanzees, Corridors and Coffee
Most recently, JGI has been working with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, and other companies, to help the farmers in the high hills round Gombe to get a good price for their coffee. It is some of the best in Tanzania, but because of lack of roads and transport difficulties, the farmers were simply lumping their crop with the less superior beans grown at lower altitudes. Now there are two specialty brands on the market in the US, and the farmers are overjoyed – even those growing the inferior beans are learning how to improve their quality.
And the good will generated is helping the chimpanzees as well. Every village is required, by the government, to make a Land Management Plan – which includes allocating an agreed percentage of their land for protection or restoration of forest cover. And many of the villages are setting aside up to 20% of their land for forest conservation. And, working with JGI’s Lilian Pintea, expert in GPS technology and satellite imagery, to ensure these protected areas will form a corridor so that the chimpanzees will no longer be trapped in the park.
Restoring – and Now Protecting
TACARE has greatly improved the lives of the people in 24 villages around Gombe , and generated a degree of cooperation with the people that would have been unthinkable before. And today, under the leadership of Emmanuel Mtiti, we are reaching out to many other villages in the large mostly degraded area that we call the Greater Gombe ecosystem, with the aim of restoring the forests. Most recently, with government support, we are introducing the TACARE programs in a very large and relatively sparsely populated area to the south, hoping to protect the forests before they are cut down and thus save many of Tanzania’s remaining chimpanzees.
And to think it all started off with a young girl scrambling around the mountains with pen, paper and second-hand binoculars.
