Hammermill

It is surprising (to me anyway but now not anymore) how much trouble a hammer mill can cause a community. Nameembo is small rural community in the district of Mazabuka and to get there we had to travel for 20mins along the main road to Lusaka and then a further 2 hours along a bumpy, rutted, falling apart excuse for a road. A few years ago as part of a HIV project, the community of Nameembo had received some funding, training and materials to help sensitise the community on HIV and AIDS issues. This also included the donation of a hammer mill to process locally grown maize, and therefore act as an income generating activity for the community. As there are no other hammer mills for approximately a two hour distance, then this one would hold a dominant position in the Nameembo area. The income could be used to provide transport to the local clinic, develop other income generating activities and provide more care and support for people affected by HIV and AIDS. In practice, this makes sense but this was our second visit to Nameembo in two months because the hammer mill had yet again become ‘personalised.’ By this I mean that a few people part of the committee responsible for the hammer mill had taken it over for themselves – they were benefiting directly from it rather than the community.

Our visit to Nameembo took most of the day, listening to the debate from all sides of the community (a friendly local man did much of the translation from Tonga to English for me) and in the end we elected a completely new committee to look after the hammer mill. Both we and the community itself seemed to have little trust and faith in members of the previous committee. We left them actions and deadlines in the hope that they would follow them, otherwise they were warned the hammer mill would be taken away and given to another community.

Ideally, Nameembo is one of the communities that I should be visiting every month to provide what can be seen as very basic support such as how to hold committee meetings, write minutes, monitor and report on activities. However, at the moment Judy and I have both hands tied behind our backs whilst we wait for the National AIDS Council in Zambia to provide funding for our organisation.