Mark Edwards
“We call our group Nasongwende: not ‘God help us’ but ‘Let us help God’”, Jean-Marie explained. “What we meant was, God has given us this earth, let us help him to make it better.”
In 1988 the Observer Magazine sent writer Paul Harrison and me to a remote village in northern Burkina Faso in the drough-tridden Sahel, from where we reported on a remarkable Oxfam programme of stone lines for soil and water conservation.
Oxfam project director Peter Wright, working with local farmers, found that if the dams were built solidly and aligned with the natural contours of the earth, they slowed down run-off water and dammed much of it back uphill, giving it time to sink into the dry earth. Soil erosion was reduced or halted, crops got a lot more moisture, and new soil, dead leaves and seeds came to rest against the stone lines, allowing water to once again soak in.
The project is a model of sensitive aid: ultra low-cost, quickly taught, building on familiar approaches, designed with the people’s participation, and teaching them to help themselves rather than being dependent on charity handouts or government programmes.
Few aid projects anywhere in the world have achieved so much for so little. Stone lines have spread like bush fires all over northern Burkina Faso. Since the early 1990s, a third of a million hectares of degraded land has been reclaimed.
www.oxfam.org.uk
Burkina stone lines
A project worker shows farmers how the stone lines slow water run-off, Kalsaka village, Yatenga Province, Burkina Faso
Jean-Marie compares the millet and sorghum harvests from fields with and without stone lines
Collecting water in Kalsaka village
Niftine Sawadogo feeding her newborn baby, Kalsaka village, 1988
Niftine Sawadogo with her youngest child ten years later
All © Mark Edwards/Still Pictures
