The Drum Beat 123 - Mountain Voices

The most important critical voices are from those who are most affected by an issue: people living with HIV/AIDS on HIV/AIDS, children on child rights, people in poverty on poverty, and many others. Initiatives that enable people to shape their own priorities and have their voices heard are key to the processes of development in these communities.

The Mountain Voices website, from The Panos Institute, is one such initiative. The site presents a collection of interviews gathered in select mountain and highland regions. Conducted by local people in local languages and translated into English, the interviews draw on direct personal memory and experience. The range of individual voices provides a picture of some highland societies, their changing physical and social environments, and their concerns for the future. Click here for the site or click here for an alternate site address.

Below is a selection of quotes from testimonies from each of the 6 country collections, as well as links to the testimonies themselves. You will also find direct links to the country pages. More information on the site follows.

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THE VOICES

Kenya

1. In the olden days, there were so many more activities: singing, telling stories by the grandmothers in their homes. From them [young people] were taught songs that contained meaning...I think...maybe the old are discouraged somehow in one way or another. Because if they feel that they are not recognised in the community, then any chance of them giving out their experiences [is lost]...they will not be in the mood to tell them... Most of the young nowadays...do not go to their grandparents and listen to stories or ask questions... Robert, male, 30 yrs

2. People have tried to plant various crops like coffee, tea, but the impassable road still remains a dilemma, and also the lack of factories to process the raw materials... It is donkeys that transport the products - potatoes, vegetables, maize - from the mountain and down the slopes... Those mountainsides are rocky and steep and the matatu people cannot reach there... Lois, female

Nepal

3. The convention is to send the sons to school while the daughters are made to attend to domestic chores like collecting fodder and looking after the young ones. If they are sent to school, barely must they reach the age of 15 when they are considered ripe for marriage. In their own homes they are considered 'strangers' who must one day attend to the care of another's home. So, they are sent away like buffaloes and are not allowed to do anything except to collect fodder and other daily chores. Indira, female, 25 yrs

4. If we look at it deeply, this ropeway is far more useful than a motorable road. This does not destroy our environment or our forest. Roads in the mountain get damaged during the rains. It is not always possible to construct roads everywhere, and road construction requires huge investments. We saw this ropeway as a simple, easy and quick alternative and made a request for it. Chandra, male, 55 yrs

Peru

5. [Young people] leave to find work, they don't go for any other reason. They don't go because they hate their land... the majority go to escape the poverty, don't they? If there were better pastures and clean water, they'd stay. Delma, female, 54 yrs

6. At first there was no real awareness of the damage being done to the land [by mining]... [Miners] think of the present... about their money, about their work and that's all. They're trapped by their surroundings so they're not even interested in whether their lungs are being infected... the truth is that when I was young... I felt more like a miner than a comunero.... But then you begin to realise the seriousness of the problem and.... you finally realise that you're a comunero, because this is your land and you're going to die here. So you do something about it, because they are contaminating the land and...sometimes the damage they do to the land is irreparable.... Hilario, male, 65 yrs

Ethiopia

7. When I was a child I have travelled on foot to Kaskes... There was no road then. People carried food for themselves and for their animals and travelled for a week or a month through the forest and the desert in those days. Some even died on the road. Now that the Chinese built this road for us, anybody, whether rich or poor, can travel by car to a distant place and come back the next day after doing his business... Because there is a road, they brought barley from Addis Ababa and dagussa from Gojam by vehicles here and saved our lives when the land refused to produce food. Ayichesh, female, 28 yrs

8. The people of Meket are active. They have prestige symbols such as guns and mules, which the owners show off on holidays. At home, though they are now getting poorer, their hospitality, songs, musical instruments and minstrels have a distinct quality of their own. Now the burden of poverty is weighing down on the people. Songs and dances are not reviving the spirit of families at home. Mothers have very little to feed their children and familial ties are loosening. Yaregal, male, 41 yrs

Poland

9. As the saying goes, mother cuts as much bread as the children need, and so that some is still left. And the same thing has to happen in the forest. There is a rotation - you are allowed to cut down only as much as has grown...your task is to plant enough, so that there is a balance. Bronislaw, male, 66 yrs

10. [Damage from the flood...] It was just awful what I saw, just awful. Lots of stones, pieces of rock on the road, people were crying, houses were flooded...they were trying to salvage their animals... when the water dropped, it left such a battlefield behind...you could say there had been a war...bridges had been broken, and [people] were totally cut off, they didn't have water, electricity, gas. Maria, female, 53 yrs

Lesotho

11. I have one field of my own, but then, truly I usually plough in partnerships. Right here with the old people here, or here, with people who do not have cattle. Or with those who are needy in the hands like the handicapped... Sebili, male, 46 yrs

12. Here where I have built, is a place where I have lived well.... I was ploughing, I was eating and getting full in the stomach. I was planting each and every single crop in the fields. I was getting wild vegetables that have been created by God... [But] this place where I am going [to be resettled], what am I going to eat? Who will give me a field? ...I feel that the beat of my heart will be in the direction of this place where my life was. It will remain as a rock on my heart when I think of the place that I am being removed from. Maseipati, female, late 80s

IYM 2002

13. On December 11th the global launch of the International Year of Mountains 2002 takes place at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Click here for the Mountain Forum site.

MOUNTAIN VOICES WEBSITE

14. The Mountain Voices website is an attempt to make the mountains debate of 2002 and beyond more inclusive by highlighting the perspective of those experiencing development and change 1st-hand. To date, some 200 interviews from communities in the 6 above-mentioned countries are available on the site. By mid-2002, 4 other collections will also be online: India (western Himalaya); Mexico (Sierra Norte); southwest & northeast China; and Pakistan (Karakorum mountains). The archive will eventually contain over 300 interviews from 10 different mountain communities. Visitors can search for oral testimonies by location and by theme - including environmental knowledge, migration, education, social change, culture and custom, economics and identity. Click here for more information on themes.

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This issue developed in close collaboration with Siobhan Warrington SiobhanW@panoslondon.org.uk and Olivia Bennett oliviab@panoslondon.org.uk.

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Are you a recruiting agent seeking top candidates for your projects and programmes? To place vacancy posts with The CI and in the Dec 18th DB Classifieds - Vacancies, contact Carey Hooge chooge@comminit.com

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