 POVERTY
REDUCTION STRATEGY AND PASTORALISTS’ CHILDREN
Last week I had the privilege to attend rather
a very crucial workshop about Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS). It was organized
and sponsored by PINGO’s Forum – an NGO that champions the rights of the
pastoralists’ communities in Tanzania. Listening to the workshop keenly and
having been a philosophy student, I wouldn’t help several questions that kept
on dashing in my mind. When did we discover that we were poor? Had somebody else
discovered this for us and was out to help us with a strategy that would pull us
out of this messy stuff. But again who is behind all this sorry state of poverty
that we find ourselves in. These questions don’t require complex answers and
neither are they begging for metaphysical interpretation but are just too plain
for us to answer. Back to the PRS and the pastoralists’ children.
Saying that pastoralists are poor is rather
confusing to me. What is poverty and how do you relate that to a pastoralist?
How do you call somebody with hundreds of cattle poor? Let me put it this way,
what does it take for one to be poor? I mean which criteria is used to gauge the
pastoralist as poor? Yes! There are several ways from which poverty can be
looked at. First in the chart is ignorance. But who is ignorant in this case? Is
it the pastoralist or the government? Who is to get the largest blame for this
kind of ignorance? Listening to an interview program on a radio station by the
name ORS (Sauti ya Wafugaji), Edward Porokwa and William Ole Nasha both from
PINGO’s Forum had this to say " the pastoralists’ communities have been
marginalized for quite a long time on the assumption that they are difficult
people to deal with". But what do you say of these communities that even
the colonialists found tedious and unpredictable. But is that true? Is this not
a fallacy based on their traditions and culture that we have taken very little
time to understand. Yes, their culture! Have we as a government or society
attempted to free them from poverty within these parameters? For example we have
statistics in the government showing how much meat and revenue we get from
pastoralists, does this make the government recognize and appreciate the
pastoralism?
In the last PRS, the government got rid of
primary school fees and insisted on registering all children on age seven to go
to school. Again, it is another thing to have a policy in place and having it
implemented. It is useless and naked ignorance, to have the Maasai children
benefit from such a policy when the next school in their neighborhood is 15
kilometers. This is not even guaranteed because the children depending on the
seasons will have to keep on moving with their livestock in search of green
pasture. At this juncture is where the government and concerned stakeholders
qualify with distinct ignorance. For example, little effort has been invested in
creating awareness about the significance of education among the pastoralists’
children. Can’t we come up with a tangible plan that supports "mobile
schools" among these communities. Can’t the government find ways of
getting water sources to these communities so that children don’t have to miss
school because of walking long distances to get water for domestic use and the
animals
Now, after this PRS what is the future of the
pastoralists’ children? Let us put down strategies on the agreed issues to
become functional especially in areas that promote children’s rights and
empowerment. Otherwise, Poverty Reduction Strategy becomes Public Relations
Services which of course is another PRS. Isn’t it? Free the pastoralists’
communities from ignorance by having their children access education , anything
else that does not marry this argument becomes a vicious cycle with no positive
impact.
Email: rehofo@yahoo.com
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