And then there was land…
With what seemed like a year filled with uncertainties for a nation heading toward an election and a populace facing the biggest hike in currency devaluation, we borrowed from the engraved resilience of the Nigerian entrepreneur: “We Meuve”. And so we did!
Location… Location… Location…
It had always been the one thing that Mevis and I would ask each other, from my Introduction to hydroponics and wading through the storm of soil vs hydroponics. the same question kept popping up; Where will this be tested and validated?
With all the meetings and collaborative endeavors we embarked on as a team, I am sure that we have sat across the table with a handful of industry aficionados, both in the public and private sectors. One of which was the implementing partner of an ongoing dairy project by Nestle which was being run in Gwagwalada, Abuja on an existing grazing reserve. Our partnership and/or relationship with them proved fruitful, as they provided us with a location with the right mix needed for a good pilot run, from herder to farmer communities located within the same area. It was a perfect location to put all our experimentation and implementation knowledge to the test.
Lego build something…
The preparation to hit the ground running was in place and we had it all planned out. It was our predefined plan to make sure that all the materials needed for the construction came from the community or their surroundings because that is the only way to test the availability of materials in remote areas and therefore the scalability of the project. We started the market survey and naturally, we were pessimistic about finding all we needed there, but it turns out that particular community had a lot of artisans. Our quest was centered around cut-to-size wood for the frame of the shed, angle irons for the racks, metal works artisans for creating the racks from the angle irons, aluminum sheets for trays, and the aluminum sheet artisan for the fabrication of the trays.
We found the wood market that had a sawmill shop less than a kilometer away and a welder less than 200 meters from the site. The aluminum supplier and fabricator were a tad bit further away but were still within reasonable logistical reach of the site. So, we were set to go… the plan was simple, get the wood to the site and start on the frameworks while the aluminum and metal works were ongoing… aaannnddd….
Who pressed the panic button?…
It was a nice day in November and the Abuja sun was blazing, as usual, slowly toasting the nice people of the Federal capital of Nigeria, when messages started to pop up on social media and direct messaging channels about a looming attack on the capital by some insurgents or the other. The said messages created such an atmosphere of panic and fear around the city, you would almost feel like something bad actually happened. Might I add, that while this was going on, various members of our project team from the U.K. were planning their trip down to Abuja, most interestingly Nick and Dave, whom had been planning this trip for a few months now, unfortunately, had to cancel. But most importantly, the technical team for the civil works and construction implementation; Myself and My project manager, Mr. Taye a.k.a Ogbeni had to pause all activities in a bid to get clarity. In addition to all of these is the fact that the community we are in is a melting pot of cultures and religions, which in most cases in Nigeria, are the kind of places where if there were to be any form of chaos, would always be quite intense. We really didn’t want to get workers on site and have to be worried about the possibility of some crisis.
After consulting with security agencies and necessary contact persons that could shed some light on the “Hullabaloo” that’s in question, Mevis and I decided it was in everyone’s best interest to at least pause activities till there is more clarity on the likely threat and things are settled or at least the semblance of calmness has returned to the city.
I don’t see any wolf?…
Almost like it never happened, the whole situation came to pass and to date, I personally have not heard anything to validate the panic and anxiety that was felt in Abuja and its satellite towns. Long story short, someone cried wolf…
… We get back to work: Sprint 5
The shed
We knew what we needed and we got to work on acquiring them. The wood was from the pre-identified sawmill and wood shop. The mill had precut wood that was predominantly the sizes we needed, and the ones they didn’t have were cut from an existing log, transported to the site, and we basically started the shed. One of the first things we realised here was the quality of the wood itself, the adequate measure for the milled wood would be
straightness
strength
and at least aesthetically pleasing to look at
One of the things we quickly realised was that we needed to agree that we wouldn’t always get the perfection we strive for in these communities, especially when it comes to materials and artisans, and sometimes just quality of work, as they do not compare to the likes that we would find in the fully urbanised areas. But then again, that’s why we are here, if we could create demand then we could see an increase in all these parameters over time. Nonetheless, the wood was NOT straight… and because either the milling machines have worn out cutting blades or the wood has sat around for a bit too long, it was also not smooth, hence aesthetics was out the window on this one. Although, functionality as a measure of material, the wood was strong enough for what we needed it for.
I would rather have a strong shed than a beautiful shed
The shed cover
We have tested the cover for the shed as a form of a mat (plastic, grass-woven straw mats or linked bamboo strips), something that we believe will be easily accessible to the communities and rural areas at the point of implementation for them in the future as well as being environmentally friendly. We believed it was an opportunity to work with a local artisan, who is part of the community as a way to better include the community members in the process and project. We found one and he was happy to be part of what we were doing, the first set he made was not up to the quality of what I would have liked to use, we guided him through the next batches that he did and there was an improvement in quality, although his personal work ethics were not necessarily the best, his ineptitude with time management led to a series of delayed deliveries.
The Racks …
The racks were quite easy to achieve as we found a welder that was 200 meters from the site who could put it together. As mentioned earlier, one of the issues we also had here was the finishing quality of the work… the rack was not racking, from weld points to the accuracy of measurements, we had to do a few re-runs and adjustments to get things to be in a better position, though still not perfect.
The Trays…
This took us on a journey because we were trying to balance what was available locally for the communities against what is most durable to last over time of wear and tear. All of this whilst maintaining a cost point that matches our experiment’s parameters. We finally found the right gauge and thickness of Aluminum to use and proceeded to outsource the bending, hammering, and hole punching of the aluminum. We had better success with this with respect to the quality of work because it was handled by artisans that were closer to the city, at the DeiDei International building materials market.
Water’in the hole!!!
Our system is predefined and configured to conserve water, through clever use of plumbing and an understanding of fluid mechanics. Albeit fancy and fantastic, we need to make sure it’s easy to recreate by the farmers and also clear to understand. That has been one of the things that we had experimented on over time; type of plastic, running length of pipes, angle of tilt, hydro gravitational dynamics, and all the general “how's?”. The outcome of this is a system that conserves about 80% of the water it is provided and is still easy to recreate by the community members, thereby reducing the impact on water usage in areas that might already need to conserve water.
COUPLING…
Oya (as they say in Nigeria), let’s grow some edible grass (for cows) …
Hardwood has gone into the ground, screws driven and nails hammered, metals joined and aluminum bent. How do all of these connect back to the community?
The training commenced with the team and the community members, from initial responses we could see a certain demeanor of “what’s this about?” while there was significant openness and eagerness to adapt and learn. But most interestingly, when the hands-on bit came into play, there was a high level of enthusiasm to be part of it. It at the least showed us that there was a responsiveness that could be capitalized on to increase engagement among community members in the future. They quickly used what they had learned in the theory part of the training and adopted it into execution, often responding correctly to what actions were required next, etc.
All prep and done, the magic moment has come, we’ve layed out the grains in the trays, taking all the necessary precautions and armed with our “faith of a mustard seed”, we turned on the taps and my oh my, the first 48 hours was just amazing. Community and team members proved to me that people can actually sit and watch grass grow, be it with anxiety or excitement, it was nice to see this;
On to the next one…
If anything was clear to all of us in this sprint, it was that we were right on the practicability of the systems and measures, and experiments we have been carrying out in the past months…
… and the questions of where, why, and is it going to work as we designed? We got the answer very clearly; go to where the problem exists, feel their pain points and build a solution for that. Because it was a glove-to-hand fit when we deployed in the community, If we hadn’t taken in the mountain of information gathered from continuously asking the questions from such communities, we could have developed a solution that had no bearing in the community and had no sizeable impact on the lives of the people.
With the next sprint, we are confident that accumulated learning and experience from this sprint and all that we have done so far will guide us to achieve the necessary goals going forward.
The next sprint involves a series of connected and well-planned experimentation of the reality of cattle feeding: we feed the cattle the fodder and monitor the impact on their milk production, weight gain, quality of life, etc.
We are already within the community…
If I were to go by what we have learned from this sprint, a few things stand out to me and it is only fair to suggest the following mental framework when dealing with future sprints:
- Discuss: At every point in time, and in everything that’s been done, take the community members’ input and points of view as independent data points during planning. What they say is the reality of their environment.
- Design: Design every step to match the reality of what is seen and heard, not discounting the fact that the communities might have different ways of doing things, ideally, match the community information against the data points from other communities. This should at the least provide a base line for community conversation and engagement going forward.
- Deploy: Reiterative and dynamic deployment style will definitely help in crafting the activities and methods of deployment in communities, as one would already know what’s best for each communities needs.
- Do it again: Get back to the drawing board and bring the community insights to the table to decide how best to apply new knowledge, findings, environmental changes, social impact yardsticks, sustainability, financial viability, common human good, etc. to the overall project and make these impact points move further.
Again, remember, “We are already within the community…”
