Traditional means of communication help social services promotion in Angola
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We arrived at Moxico at dawn. Our flight landed in the Angolan provincial capital, Luena, but we quickly drove to one of its cities, Lucusse, 133 rainy kilometers away.
We came to meet with one of the Social Action Municipalization’s protagonists, the social activists, so we could understand together how to talk about Social Action to their people. The social activists are local men and women who, with the support of traditional authorities and religious leaders, will identify cases of people in vulnerable situation in their communities and refer them to the existing social protection solutions in the country.
The Municipalization of Social Action, a model of the APROSOC project (Social Protection Support), has as main goal the decentralization of social action services. Bringing these closer to the communities, through the activists, it's also one of the objectives. An Angolan Government project, APROSOC is funded by the European Union and it’s under the responsibility of the Social Action, Family and Promotion of Women Ministry, with the technical and implementation support of UNICEF and Louis Berger consortium.
Moxico is one of the provinces where the pilot project of this model will be developed and there we met with the pre-selected activists from Lucusse and Kamanongue. In all of the communities visited, we received a warm welcome in Tchokwe, one of the main local languages.
In Angola, although the official language is Portuguese, there are more than 20 national languages and dozens of dialects. In this province, the most expressive one is the Tchokwe, with many Luvale and Umbundo speakers as well. Everyone understands each other, as there is some similarity between these national languages and almost the entire population understands Portuguese. The laughs and hugs are always in Tchokwe. It is the affections’ language. Moreover, it will be one of the Municipalization languages, since we are planning the translation of information and communication materials as well as the activists training manual into this language.
Closeness and reliability should be the fundamental characteristics of social protection and its local agents, the activists. Through different group dynamics and communication-related games, we discover with them one of the most powerful message channel transmission in Angola, the tradition.
The impact of oral narrative tradition in Angola
In the country, to understand the local level of communication, it is necessary to talk about the traditional authorities: the sobas. From big cities to small villages, sobas are social managers that, together with local administrations, advise the population. Men and women generally older, sobas have been preserving oral narrative tradition in Angola, summoning the ondjangos, community encounters, that in Tchokwe, are designated by txota!
In Musseringinge, a Kamanongue commune that we visited, the process works like this:
The regidor, who receives updated information from the communal administration, keeps regular meetings with the village sobas who then pass it to the community. There are two different ways of message transmission: the “ondjangos”, for which the community is invited (sometimes by megaphone) and, under the shade of a tree, come together to talk with the soba; or through the “messengers”, women and men who, door to door, transmit the important messages.
These methods are also valid in order to hear the country’s and the world’s latest news. Without access, or with limited access to electricity, which limits the use of radio or television, a lot of villages hear the news through the traditional communications flow.
The first contact with Social Action services begins when the Social Activist greets the community, identifies cases of vulnerability and knows how to adapt its own narrative to the audience, by hearing, communicating and promoting participation. In order to refer a case to different social services, it is necessary to understand and to be understood, and therefore it becomes obvious the need to use traditional communication channels in the activists’ work.
Familiarized with the oral transmission of knowledge, the elderly in Angola have a very big narrative power, they are message transmission experts, telling stories with a very simple and expressive language. Their knowledge and narrative techniques become essential to accomplish the closeness and reliability that activists must have with the vulnerable population.
It was the tradition that showed us the way to effective transmission of messages in a local level: to combine the energy and mastery of new communication tools of younger people with the strength of oral tradition of the elderly.
As a result, UNICEF and the Kamanongue and Lucusse activists will prepare ondjangos with the traditional authorities and religious leaders to discuss the Municipalization and, through the already existing traditional communication channels, bring Social Action services to the communities. We will also hold meetings with teachers, health staff and catechists in order to, under a baobabs tree’s shade, talk about the importance of social protection. Together, we will pass the information through the traditional narrative flow and rely on the help of all sobas and messengers’ megaphones.
When returning to Luanda, capital of the country, Moxico is already sorely missed, as well as its cities, communes and villages — its people. After buying delicious mushrooms and honey from the province and typing long reports, and already waiting for the plane’s take-off, messages are reaching us through one of the most powerful tools of communication: sympathy.
