CEFA

A FORTUNATE WITNESS

More than 5000 Km from Bologna we find ourselves in a dark night, dark as coal, with warm air, which reminds as of our spring ,heavy with spiced perfume.
We arrived in Nairobi as if we had been catapulted on to another planet landing in a country that even though there is internal war and poverty it keeps and transmits a potent energy which is touchable and breathable in its smells associated with the evening and touches your heart.
It is January 2003 and there are seven people in a village in Africa united like me, a fortunate witness.
We came to document a project of CEFA in Bologna, a European Committee to promote Agriculture . It is a non government organisation which for 30 years has occupied itself to give concrete help to areas badly hit on our planet: Somalia, Bosnia, Guatemala, Tanzania, Kenya, Morocco.
HELP TO A POPULATION through a project which becomes a reality in a country, in this case it is the construction of an aqueduct which can serve a 250 sq. km. zone carrying water to a 60,000 people. The project covers a vast area from Kiirua in the north of Nairobi, east until the pre- desert in the north or Ethiopia and east to Somalia.In Kiirua there is the headquarters of C.E.F.A.. Ludovico Tterzi an engineer from Milan and Massimo Lanciotti a lawyer from Padova, who have lived there for months follow the project step by step.
It its true that I never thought when buying my T shirt at a stand in the Fair at Bologna and then having been selected in the T shirt draw, that I would actually be in Kiirua to witness the C:E:F Mine was a small spontaneous gesture which led me to witness an emotion where you can see the seeds of solidarity in action .Giovanne Beccari ,the boss behind the scheme having been taken from a frozen Bologna at five in the morning with a temperature with his tools of his trade ,films, goals, video cameras, notebooks, microphones and passion Journalists ,cameramen, photographers, engineers, and people from Aimag in Modena Beccari and myself all with faces which are weary from the journey sniffing the African night air. In front of us are five carts weighed down with the luggage while we wait for the jeep of voluntary workers who are to come and meet us from the airport The morning after the only tarmac road pushes us north to a height of 2500mt.All around us red soil and beyond almost nothing.
Here our rather small European outlook tends to shatter, the enormous wide open spaces that gather together to form in the distance outlines of mountains. Mount Kenya, beautiful ,and domineering surprisingly situated in a green area due to the recent rain.
The light is the end penetrating even if you wear sun glasses. Crammed between luggage and equipment the video film makers and the journalists are already at work filming and taking notes, while the volunteer guide in our car is explaining the project of the aqueduct and answering hoards of questions.
The jeeps fly along the road coming across furrows and craters which are dangerous not the least, sometimes passing people on foot moving along the dusty un- made road carrying their burdens.

All forms of daily life take place on the road, the production, bartering and commerce, obviously moving from place to place with their goods crammed onto carts. On our way we saw chaotic markets jammed with goods either strewn on the ground or displayed in a logical fashion in a colourful blaze mid shouting and confusion. We managed to buy some things amid the fruit and vegetables and the milling crowd.
Our photographer in fluent Italian managed to communicate with these people and as if by magic was soon surrounded by smiling faces all seeming to participate as if in a game.
Kiirua where we arrived at sun set was by the side of the road
On the right of the village were wooden or houses in red earth. A petrol pump operated by hand, a market, wooden benches, a fountain by CEFA all surrounded by a street where the women and children go to get their supplies.
To the left of the road in a handkerchief of green surrounded by a little allotment, irrigated, is the hospital, where we were to stay and also the office for CEFA, run by the nuns. It is a low construction in white bricks and inside a coolness some how un- real after all the dust.
To give us a very warm welcome there was the dog who lives with the two volunteers and keeps watch over their dreams.
The following day we went to the excavations. The long red trenches showed where they were going to lay the new water pipes. Inside these trenches of more than one and a half metres are men and women who scoop out the earth using picks and spades in a continuous noisy way. Standing above these people is our engineer who follows each step of the laying down of the pipes And the people laying down the pipes are doing it for their water. Participating in this way they are actively involved in the project, they have become the main actors today and tomorrow they will became the owners of the entire project They became conscious that in everything that they are working for is actually here. They work here every day in the ground because they realise, even if they can draw water from the wells they must still carry on to extend the system to others.

CEFA co-ordinates and supervises everything that has been invested or which is still needed to bring this project to a satisfactory conclusion.There is still a lot to do to complete this water net work but years ago it was thought to be only a dream.
In the following days we were to cover many miles returnig to Kiirua to only sleep.we were to see many aspects of life which under lined the importance for water.
We were often to see women dressed in brightly coloured clothes bent double with large tanks of water strapped on their backs walking at a good pace for long distances .They seemed to pop up from the stony paths and as we met they always had a smile as we passed.
Water carried as if it was gold for the purpose of eating, washing and watering. Water which for some is still a dream even in the year 2003 which has been declared by the international community the year of water, where every resource both human and technological will be used to take this precious commodity to people above all who have been deprived of it.
The days fly in a sea of interviews, appointments meetings and film making for our two young professional volunteers who have for years been over seeing this project here and which with out them and other young people and the nuns of the hospital and orphanage would be un-realisable. Slowly coming out of the cultivation immerge new trenches, which become ours and then mine in the daily life for these people working. In the evening we returned to prepare the evening meal in the spacious kitchen looking on to a green field between a brick wall and a porch where our rooms were.
Above us there was an incredible sky full of stars an a slither of a moon which at the equator seems to be upside down. Two young women of the village help the volunteers with the domestic work as they are always occupied outside. In the morning they make bread with rosemary and while the day's work is being planned near the warmth of the oven with its fragrant smell coffee and biscuits appear on the table.
The day before we managed to hire a plane to document more accurately the excavations. A door had o be taken off to accommodate them and their twelve kg of inseparable material but they returned with wonderful pictures which reflected the scale of this water network.
The evening of our departure we found Nairobi to be jammed with traffic, confusion everywhere, the light un-real as it was hung with dust and smog We had to stop as we had a puncture but it was changed in a record time using many gadgets looked on by many curious people brightly dressed.
Sinking into the arms of the silent night we took off I looked out of the window holding in my hand a book of poems written by Joseph Tola from Cameroon which moved me . His lines seemed to dance in the night
"Tomorrow we shall be hungry
Hungry enough to cure the world
From its misery
Hungry to fight the evil
And his various companions
We shall be hungry tomorrow
Hungry enough to prepare the world
For the pompous fortune of the brotherhood"

C.E.F.A. - Comitato Europeo per la Formazione e l'Agricoltura
Via Lame, 118 - 40122 Bologna (Italy)
Tel. 0039-051-520285/520068
Fax. 0039-051-520712
cefa.bo@tin.it

Sito realizzato ed offerto da ITALIA MULTIMEDIA S.r.l.