The Evil Muzungu

Well, I arrived safe in Beni on Sunday and will be here for a month
working with the UCBC university. I'm helping the university start some
agriculture projects on their 90 acres of land. They have a work
program with lots of labor from the students and agriculture projects
seem like a good idea to the board and I agree. I'm not going to be
doing lots of teaching or anything too cool, I'm just trying to set up
some basic agricultural guidelines for UCBC to follow in the years to
come as the university gets larger, expands programs, and teaches
Congolese students how to be leaders with morals and integrity. I
firmly believe in what UCBC is doing and am happy to be here supporting
them and their goals.

Yesterday I walked around some of the land where we want to start the
projects. Because there is so much land and UCBC has not used much of
it yet, they have let community members farm the land, for free, with
the understanding that when UCBC wants the land, their squatter fields
are forfeit. We have the support of the law (it's our land and we have
the title) and the chief and mayor of Beni, as well as many community
members who see UCBC as an awesome opportunity for Congo development.
Unfortunately though, the squatters have put in tremendous amounts of
time and labor working these fields and I'm pretty sure we do not have
their support as we will call the land into use for UCBC both in
agriculture projects and building projects in the future. They have
used much of the land already and so yesterday I walked around with
Kutembo to look for places that had not been cultivated yet to tread on
as few toes as possible. Or at least that's what I thought we were
doing.

After arriving at UCBC I talked to Kutembo and he said he would come and
find me when he was ready and able ot head into the field to look. I
thought that was a good plan and so got to work planning some other
things. He came and found me and we headed out.

I know I explained that I wanted to see the land on this side of the
spring and I wanted especially to see the land that no one is using
right now (this was on Tuesday). He said okay and lead the way off,
making a bee line to the first squatting farmers we could see. He
approaches them happily saying how are you and how is the work. They
reply happily that it is good. It's still early enough in the morning
that they did not tell the Muzungu that they were hungry. Maybe they
should have because Kutembo then started talking again. I didn't fully
understand everything that he said but I heard enough. He basically
told them that on Thursday UCBC would need all the land. They responded
and he said again, all the land, implying their fields that they were
working in at the time!

And here is the white guy, three paces behind him, cowering in his wake,
trying to take up as little space as possible in the hopes that they
don't see me. I really don't want to be on this trip anymore. Why does
it have to be with the Muzungu that he goes and takes away their land?
Well, maybe he just misunderstood me, so as we leave those workers
looking a bit confused and dejected, I explain again that I want to see
the land that no one is using. Okay he says and we walk on.

Must not have got the message because we did it again too. I tried one
more time to shrink away into nothingness as these people have enjoyed
these fields, until this Muzungu came and took them from us (at least
that's how I imagine they felt - I could be completely wrong, but the
first time a Muzungu walks the land, their fields are forfeit). I tried
one more time to explain to Kutembo my intentions of looking for unused
land and he finally said that there really wasn't any, except for very
small pieces here and there. By this time I was pretty distressed, not
wanting to cause problems and was done with the trip, but we continued
and gave a couple more farmers a hard time. Finally as we were walking
back to the building where they keep classes there was a sizable piece
of land. It looked like it had for sure been planted at one time,
possibly harvested and planted again, but it was overgrown enough that I
was comfortable saying we could use that land. The cassava growing
there was irregularly spaced and it looked like no one was using it. It
was also pretty close to the building so that's good too for security
purposes. On Thursday, the students will begin to clear and cultivate
that land. We will hopefully plant next week Tuesday or Thursday. I'm
not sure what we will plant, but I"m happy that we found a piece of land
we can use without kicking people off right away.

As it is, as people finish harvesting their fields now they will be
reminded that when they started they were told they would lose their
fields eventually and the time is here. UCBC will expand it's
agriculture program, a soccer field, and building projects in the next
months and years. On the one hand I know it's UCBC property and it's
awesome that they let the farmers use it, for free, but I still feel
like a jerk going around taking the land back from them.

As a side note, the official UCBC policy on this is the fields will be
forfeit after a harvest or the farmers will be compensated for their
expected harvest. We are not an evil empire who just takes people's
fields and hard work right before it's harvested.