Surveying Kentucky

Our second week of placement was when the real work began. We split the team in two, with Kamo taking 2/3 of the team to do the market research which will be the basis of the market reports we have been asked to produce, and me taking 1/3 of the team to prepare the trainings on ISALs (internal savings and loans).

As we are the first ICS team to work with Caritas and to work at Kentucky, our first step was to prepare some questionnaires to get an understanding of the community. We asked questions relating to personal information, finances, their plots, what they grow, how much they earn and how much they save. It was a really time intensive task, as we were aiming to survey at least 50% of the 216 beneficiaries at Kentucky.

On Tuesday 18 of us headed off in a Kombi for our first day of surveying! We split into pairs and set off to the corners of the farm to interview as many beneficiaries as we could. It was difficult at times as we were often translating from English to Shona and back again, but it was absolutely fantastic to get the chance to actually speak to the farmers and understand a bit about their lives. What amazed me the most were the women who would walk 1.5 hours to get to the farm for 8am, work carrying water, digging beds and picking vegetables until 4pm, walk 1.6 hours home and then prepare dinner for their families when they got back. And they would do this 3-4 times per week, and due to previous issues at Kentucky, they were earning very little from doing so, as it takes 3 months for the crops to grow.

Some of the longer term residents who had previously had good seasons growing their crops talked about how they had spent their earnings. For most it was to support their relatives, for example paying school fees or transport for children to get to school, or covering medical costs. For those who were just starting, they were so pleased to tell us that they had just sold some vegetables for 1 dollar the night before which had allowed them to buy meat or sugar to supplement their daily sadza portion.

Doing the interviews and questionnaires really brought home how important the work that we will be doing is, and how much need there is for this kind of project. This is not the kind of project where we come in and give handouts, we will be helping the beneficiaries to build sustainable livelihoods so they can work to support their families. These skills will last so much longer than any short term gain money could bring.

At the end of the week we had interviewed over 120 beneficiaries, which will hopefully give us lots of useful information on which we can base our training sessions in the next 7 weeks, and for us to measure our impact against.