This past month we've begun to plan our new Finnish funded project focused on Topnaar capacity building. It's got me thinking a lot about whether or not Gobabeb has a responsibility to give back to the community, and if so, what that responsibility might entail. It occurs to me that in the past, Gobabeb's work with the Topnaar community has been sporadic to say the least, preventing community involvement from making any significant impact. As we move into a new project, I'm wondering how we can ensure a lasting impact that promotes a stable relationship between Gobabeb and the Topnaar.
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| The last FLC funded project: The Youth Environmental Summit |
The first question to ask is whether Gobabeb has a social responsibility at all. Our core goal is research with capacity building coming in a clear second. Hypothetically, Gobabeb could drop our training section entirely and still achieve our main function of research. However, I believe our training section is essential to Gobabeb's success as a research station, though maybe I just want my job to matter. First, and most obviously, almost every Namibian staff member at Gobabeb went through one of our training programs like SDP or GTRIP. Our training programs prepare students to work in research and build awareness of our station. Several faculty members at both universities in Windhoek have described the experience students receive at Gobabeb as both unique and extremely beneficial. Students come out of our programs with improved writing, critical thinking, and presenting skills. These students often find their way back to Gobabeb for their honors, masters, or for jobs in the future.
However, in the end, this kind of training benefits Gobabeb because we gain skilled employees. Do we have a responsibility to give back to the community beyond our own interests? After some consideration, I believe we do for a few reasons. First, if we do not give back to our community in some way, Gobabeb will become a research island. Most of our significant work is done by international researchers who send individuals to Gobabeb from abroad. Though some of our Namibian staff members work on individual projects, almost every researcher is also responsible for the oversight of a number of international projects. Without community outreach, our station would simply be an island for international researchers rather than a truly Namibian research station.
Further, the results of our research are most applicable and significant to those who live within the environment that we are studying. Knowledge that the fog may decrease in the coming years is much more useful in the hands of the Topnaar who utilize fog dependent flora and fauna to survive than in an article in our library. In fact, with climate change as perhaps the most significant topic in environmental research today, much of our research hints at a need for changes in behavior such as more responsible water use, better disposal of waste, more sustainable methods to gather !nara, and more. In order to make an impact with our work, Gobabeb must look beyond our current goals (to publish as many papers as possible) to bring our findings directly to the impacted communities. This needs to go beyond simply posting on our website, or even distributing our papers; community outreach is a much more complicated and difficult process. Unfortunately, our local community, the Topnaar, are a particularly difficult group to reach. Many of them do not have internet access, do not have an education beyond grade 7, do not have a means of transportation, and cannot speak English. In light of these obstacles, disseminating information to the Topnaar has been a difficult goal to achieve. The answer in recent years has been to utilize methods known not to work, or worse, to not try at all. So how can we tackle this issue better in the future? Scientific papers are not understood, brochures cannot be read, posters are seen by few, and presentations are not widely attended. The only successful means of communication seems to be to visit each and every village. However, to further complicate the issue, in order to reach out to the community directly, we must first approve our actions with the Topnaar Traditional Authority.
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| Dartmouth University learns how to prepare !nara, the centerpiece of Topnaar culture. |
In light of all these challenges, one can understand how Gobabeb's research section might often ignore community outreach. When an international researcher finds something that may be significant to the Topnaar, they must first translate their findings into grade 7 terms, track down the highly unreliable traditional authority, find a community member to act as a liaison and translator, and visit each and every village to ensure the information is heard. When nearly every researcher's ultimate goal is a published paper, it is easy to ignore the complicated and time consuming task of information dissemination to a small local community.
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| A Topnaar woman sits in her village. |
Ultimately, the lack of consistent communication between Gobabeb and the Topnaar leads to misunderstandings. Many Topnaar community members believe that Gobabeb's main function should be serving the Topnaar and do not understand why we are not providing handouts of food and other resources. This leads to even more anger providing a poor foundation upon which new trainers work to build new relationships
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| Topnaar kiddos show off their !Nara. |
On the other hand, outside funders look for buzzwords like 'empowerment' and 'indigenous' in grant proposals. For example, the Finnish Fund for Local Cooperation has funded several projects at Gobabeb over many years. This year, the Fins requested a project aimed at empowering the local community. Obviously we want to maintain our relationship with this donor, and continue to utilize the money brought in by their grants. Therefore, we created a community building project that meets the requirements of the funders. This has happened multiple times in the history of the training section at Gobabeb. Unfortunately, these projects still fail to create a lasting impact. Instead, as soon as the end date of a project passes, the project is thrown in the trash as we quickly plan a new project to meet new funder wants and needs.
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| Humble Topnaar homes stand in stark contrast to the expensive cameras being used to photograph them. |
High staff turnover rates exacerbate this issue. Here is a common example: one trainer works on a community building project for six months. The trainer works with a village, builds relationships, and makes promises to continue the project, return with resources, or provide some sort of product. The project ends, and the staff member leaves two months later. The next trainer that comes in likely never knows the community building project ever happened. This trainer goes to the same village with a new project, but the community is already frustrated and angry that they are not receiving anything from the last project. This negative image of the research station makes relationship building even more difficult on new staff members. The lack of institutional memory prevents Gobabeb from maintaining projects with promise and from building a stable relationship with the local community, let alone giving something back to them.
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| Some Topnaar people meet with many visiting groups, but rarely get anything back. |
I am very excited about our new project with the Topnaar, but also extremely wary of the challenges. We received funding from the Finish Fund for Local Cooperation before we had ever talked to the Topnaar about our proposal. The community had no say in what we are going to offer them, making it impossible to know if our project will give them something they actually want or need. In addition, some parts of our project require extensive work beyond our proposal to actually work. For example, we are planning to train Topnaar people to give informative tours about the Namib Sand Sea which was recently declared a World Heritage Site. I am concerned that we will come up with a curriculum and teach Topnaar people the information, and they will return to their villages to never give a tour. In order to make this training program worth while, we must connect the Topnaar tour guides to tourists through the Ministry of Environment and Tourism and tourism agencies. This will require our station to look beyond simply appeasing our funder, and perhaps even more difficult, to continue work when the money runs out. I am excited about the possibility of creating a project that can continue to make an impact beyond the project report due date, but nervous that there are just too many hurdles to overcome. I hope to at least put in a strong effort to create a handover that allows future trainers to pick up where I leave off.
In the coming months, I have a lot to do including the new FLC Topnaar capacity building, writing up our report for the Summer Desertification Program, beginning the five month GTRIP course, and helping organize our next Youth Environmental Summit. I hope I can dedicate enough time to our FLC program to truly make a difference and build a stronger and more stable relationship with our community.
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| A Topnaar woman working on patchwork, one of the four foci of our new FLC project. |
