|
"Ox Farming Pilot Project in Gulu, Uganda," Nigh Ox October 2006
 Somewhere, buried in the back pages of the newspaper, you may have read about the "night commuters" of northern Uganda, or even the peace talks going on in Juba, South Sudan between the Lord's Resistance Army and the Government of Uganda. Buried further beneath those stories is the tragedy of the Acholi people of northern Uganda who had to flee their homes and villages about 20 years ago. They have been living in Internally Displaced People (IDP) camps ever since--refugees in their own country, packed into extremely cramped conditions with little or not facilities. They are completely dependent on the World Food Program for their sustenance. Some live less than a half mile from their homes and fields, but cannot go to either because of hte hostilities at their doorsteps.
In April Tillers did an Animal Traction Assessment for Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Uganda around Gulu, the main city in northern Uganda. Aside from the status of animal traction in the area and their deep history of using oxen before the war, we learned that the people want more than anything to return to their villages, pick up the pieces of their culture and work the land with a team of oxen. This assessment precipitated a short-term consultancy for Tillers in an Animal Traction Pilot Project with CRS funded by the European Commission on Humanitarian Aid (ECHO).
John and Brian traveled to Uganda in the middle of July. The first objective of the Pilot Project was to adapt several animal drawn tools with some local artisans and to produce enough for the groups of farmers. Our primary partner was St. Joseph's Garage, a vocational school for metal fabrication and auto repair with the Arch Diocese of Gulu. Bob Okello, the manager of training at the garage, Moses  Okello, a lead technician, and Cesar Lagoro, a welder, were assigned to work with us. They are very talented metal workers. Bob had been pursuing animal traction technologies and training on his own before we arrived. He had a great understanding of the desire of the Acholi farmers to return to the land and farm with oxen. He was eager to provide farmers with low-cost, effective tools.
Surprisingly, Gulu had a good variety of steel and lumber available and at competitive prices. And what wasn't immediately available could be delivered in a couple of days from Kampala. St. Joseph's Garage had a forge and hand cranked blower; however, the blower had seriously worn gears and was inoperable. The forge was used mostly for heating water to make tea. We had to repair the blower before we could begin the smithing for the project. On the first day at the shop, John tore apart the blower and with some expert welding by Bob had it fixed before mid-morning tea. The blacksmithing instruction went smoothly, as all of the shop workers had had some blacksmithing training early in their vocational education. Within a few hours they were forge welding and upsetting a piece of a truck spring to make a hardy cutting tool.
Dick arrived in Gulu about a week later. He quickly joined in the efforts in the garage, and by the end of the first week we had built a prototype spike-toothed harrow, two yokes, a four-ox evener, modified one old plow the garage had in storage and purchased another that was manufactured locally. At the end of that first week, we went to a nearby camp with local farmers to test the tools and to get critical feedback from the farmers about the tools' performance.
The testing and demonstration turned out to be a great exercise. The farmers glimpsed the many possibilities of ox farming beyond just pulling a plow and cart, and we experienced just how deeply the farmers desire to return to ox farming. Their history of ox farming has give them great intuition about the uses and advantages about some of our "new" ideas. It took them less than two seconds to see the beauty of the dropped hitch yoke and the calabash ring. The four-ox evener also was quickly lauded. It has immediate impact for them since they typically plow with two pair hitches because of their smaller cattle. Rather than disregarding the tools that didn't perform so well in the fields, they saw the potential and offered suggestions. The day was a real eye-opener.
Incorporating the lessons into the tools was our next major task. We also started the construction of other equipment, such as a sled and an ox cart, which included an innovative hub and bearing design to simplify manufacturing and maintenance. The design would also reduce costs, and therefore make cart technology more accessible for local farmers. However, settling on an effective arrangement of the metal spokes from the steel rim to the square hub that would be simple enough to build easily and durable enough to handle heavy loads on the rough roads and paths was a serious challenge. The first attempt at the wheel had everyone scratching their heads with a sinking feeling in their guts. The spokes, rims, and hub were all in different planes. But, as a pure testament to the skills and innovativeness of the technicians from St. Joseph's Garage, the second and third wheels were dead on.
The second objective of the Pilot Project was the training of farmers from the IDP camps, CRS partner staff, and extension agents in the use and training of oxen and the associated equipment. Sixteen farmers took part, two each from eight separate farmers' groups. CRS's partner nd local implementer of the Pilot Project is Caritas, a German development organization with direct ties to the local Diocese. Caritas assigned Stephen Openy and Simon Okello to the project. At the end of this week, Dick busily coordinated efforts with Simon at the Diocese farm for safe keeping of the soon-to-arrive oxen and for class preparations, John and the shop folks continued modifying testing equipment, cart, and sled, and Brian traveled with Stephen and Bob to the town of Adjumani, 60 miles away via military convoy, to buy teams of trained oxen that needed to arrive soon.
The week of the farmer training achieved an even greater intensity, as the 16 farmers arrived for their course in Ox Farming, expecting and needing to have a supply of tools and oxen. Dick spent most of the weekend arranging fencing for the animals and preparing lessons and activities for the trainees on Monday. On Monday morning, he assembled all the farmers and Caritas staff and began the training, without oxen or tools. In the afternoon, Brian arrived with four teams of trained oxen, and John and the shop crew finished four ox yokes and one set of ox drawn tools for the training.
Tillers was fortunate to have the assistance of Adam Kwebiiha in the farmer training. Adam participated in the 1995 Tillers training in Tororo in eastern Uganda. He brought deep experience in  the skills he learned in the Tororo training. His children and adopted nieces and nephews haul water for neighbors with an ox cart as part of their afternoon chores. Not only does this teach them useful ox handling skills, it also generates income to help support the family, many of whom are orphans. For ten years Adam has taught various organizations and government agencies ox driving and training based on Tillers' techniques. In Gulu, he gave the students confidence by demonstrating his mastery of ox driving and training and speaking to the farmers in terms that they readily understood.
By the end of the week all of the farmers were driving teams solo and were plowing relatively straight furrows. John and the St. Joseph's Garage crew completed the first cart by noon on Friday. The class hiked 1.5 miles to the garage with a procession of oxen and hooked up to the cart for a parade back to the training center. It was a very exciting sight and the students felt the sense of accomplishment and understood just how far they had come in five days.
With the farmer training and the tool development completed, John and Dick departed Uganda for the U.S. Brian remained two more weeks to finish the construction of eight complete sets of tools, plus a short training for extension agents of Caritas.
At the end of the Pilot Project, the farmer groups had the training they needed to improve their food security and livelihoods. Skilled technicians are ready and able to build tools. The optimism of the farmers in the IDP camps and the growing interest of aid organizations were very encouraging to the Tillers team. There should be plenty of opportunities to return to Gulu to develop animal traction in the area. We encourage any volunteers who might be interested in helping with future trainings to give us a call or email. Additionally, we want to thankt he Catholic Diocese of Kalamazoo for their generous contribution, which made our participation in the Pilot Project Possible.
"Bob Okello Re-Designs Tools for Uganda," Nigh Ox August 2007
Last year when working in northern Uganda, Brian, John, and Dick built ox-farming tools in a mechanical garage led by Bob Okello. We were impressed with his skill, knowledge, and dedication to his people. When the Archidiocese of Gulu asked to send him to Tillers for more training, we were delighted at the prospect of being able to show him a much wider variety of animal-powered tools. He arrived in April and worked on projects through the first of August when he returned with luggage full of resources, and we trust inspired with many opportunities to improve Ugandan farm production.
Bob is a leader among the Acholi people of northern Uganda, who have suffered from a twenty year insurgency by the LRA against the government. At least 1.5 million people have been moved out of farm villages and kept in cramped camps of displaced people. Before their cattle were rustled in the mid 1980s, these people worked productively with ox-powered farming. As peace has slowly emerged from the chaos over the last 18 months, the people are eager to return to their villages and to ox-powered farming. Bob will be a key to recovering and improving their capabilities.
As well as running the St. Joseph's Garage, Bob advises the local plow company on their manufacturing setup and processes. Last winter, Bob was asked to find 170 plows for a follow-up by CRS to the Tillers pilot in August of 2006. Before the insurgency, they had forge bent small I-beam steel into plow beams. Now they discovered that they could not replace the steel with anything as strong at a reasonable price. Bob was excited to see in the Abbey Collection a number of plows with wooden beams. With a larger cross-section and with creative bracing of the handles, wooden beams can be as stiff as steel. Bob, John, Brian, and Dan crafted a test plow and were pleased at its ease of handling. It has a low center of gravity and is lighter. Bob plans to make it a low-cost option.
Moving people back into rural villages abandoned during the 20 year insurrection will require rebuilding roads and even lanes radiating out to fields. Bob took the animal-powered road building class with Jim Huthcison. He was impressed with what farmers can do with very low-cost road tools. The plow and a ditcher alone are very effective in draining water off the road and improving its passability. Bob rebuilt the road ditcher that Tillers had earlier introduced to Nicaragua and Honduras through RELATA. Bob worked with Dan, John, and Brian to retro design the ditcher to a primarily wood frame and to a 75% scale for smaller draft animals.
Given a lingering fear of having oxen rustled in marginal areas, the use of donkeys is a more secure form of animal power for some farmers. Yet, with their ox farming traditions, harnessing lacks comfort and effectiveness. Indeed, ox yokes are frequently used on donkeys as a means of making do. Bob spent time studying options and learned to maek a good collar with hames. While collar making is a demanding skill, there is little doubt that the donkeys will step into the load much better when wearing them.
Carts, weeders, and planters are longer term needs that Bob also studied. Our new over-the-row I&J riding cultivator is an impressively effective weeder, but perhaps too heavy and expensive. The smaller walking version of I&J weeder also has good spring S tynes that help break the soil away from weed roots. We are still in search of more economical means of buying of making these in Uganda.
A special thanks goes to the McMorrows and the Cagneys for taking Bob to church and introducing him to America beyond the fields of Tillers! We are looking forward to many years of productive work with Bob and his projects. We sent him back with a digital camera with video capacity and a computer on which he can play videos and DVDs. With the internet now available in Gulu, we can readily exchange challenges and possible solutions for Bob to test. We trust that Bob will regularly challenge the friends that he met here to search for means to improve animal-powered farming in northern Uganda.
"Horse Progress Days and Amish Shops," Nigh Ox August 2007
Horse Progress Days (HPD) is always a great place to see the newest innovations in equipment for draft animals. This July, it was in Arcola, Illinois, and Tillers was again invited to bring a team of oxen. Dulcy Perkins led the Tillers crew with Lena Yual, Bob Okello, Rachel Hestrin,  Scottie Browning, and Rob Burdick. Long standing volunteers Ted Vallenga and Ed Nelson lent a hand. For Bob and Lena, it was an especially good place to meet a number of skilled tool designers and to ask questions.
At HPD Nick Graber of Graber Steel and Fabrication graciously took Bob out to dinner. They spent a couple of hours learning about each other's communities, needs, and opportunities. Bob really appreciated Nick's help in getting some training DVDs to take back to the farmers in Uganda.
Bob first realized the significance of the Amish farming system when he visited Shipse Farm Supply in Indiana with Dick and Brian. As he walked around the yard of farm tools for draft horse farmers, he expressed amazement that so many draft animal tools were still being made in the USA.
We made a point to visit several Amish implement manufacturers with Bob. At Hochstetler and Sons in Topeka, Indiana, Ivan and his son showed us the highly refined system that they have developed for making steel wagon and implement wheels. And it was fun to see the innovations the Hochstetlers built into a new manure spreader. Bob enjoyed the excitement this Amish family showed about creating new implement concepts. Their new spreader replaces PTO drives and gearing with several individual hydraulic motors on the apron and on each of the beaters--truly a paradigm shift.
On the invitation of Wayne Wengerd, Brian drove Bob down to Pioneer Plow Company in Kidron, Ohio. There Bob saw Pioneer's use of gussets to tie the plow beam to the vertical standard rather than bending a beam. This may be a simple solution for farmers who prefer steel over wood beam plows. Bob plans to offer two models, and then see how farmers and funders respond.
|
|
"Blindfolds Help Trainers See as Oxen See" by Dick Roosenberg, Nigh Ox December 2008
ECHO III Animal Traction Training Project
As pairs of farmers pulled down blindfolds, I anxiously watched. Andrew Roberts (Tillers intern 2008), who joined us in Lukole, Uganda, had pushed us to use role playing. Intellectually, I know it was perfect, but my gut told me that if I tried this with the American farmers I know best, they would simply walk off in rebellion. To stoop to pretending to be an ox just to better understand the perspective of the ox is more than most farmers would tolerate. But Andrew is a perceptive young educator and had been working hard on other aspects of the training. We supported his idea.
As the third farmers--the "drivers"-- reached out with their sticks to direct the pairs of blindfolded "oxen," I breathed in some worried air. This was still the first day of the training. We had 17 carefully selected trainers in the class, and we needed to keep them for the next five weeks. They would become part of our staff for an October-November series of class es throughout the Pader District of Uganda, and hopefully long-term partners in improving the capacity of over a million ox-farmers throughout Northern Uganda. We dearly needed to keep as many of them on the training team as possible. As with most ox drivers in the world, these farmers are frequently impatient with their animals. They use pain too frequently to communicate. We wanted farmers to realize that the stick can be used as a simple signaling tool, short of inflicting pain. While discipline is sometimes required, animals work willingly when they understand what is wanted of them.
When the farmer who was momentarily playing the driver just lightly touched the blindfolded "oxen" on the back and saw them step forward, I breathed back out. Then the driver tapped the back of the shoulder of the far "ox" and the front of the knee of the near "ox," and the pair turned left toward the driver. The point was made! The driver and the "oxen" all realized that just a touch was sufficient and less frustrating. The Ugandan farmers were great sports about role playing. Perhaps it was more natural because of the Acholi tradition of evening storytelling around the campfire. Anyway, Andrew was right, and Tillers has a powerful new learning tool.
For two hours before blindfolding the "oxen," we had worked on building consensus around a set of five local words to use in teaching real oxen to respond to verbal commands. We argued out the need to select the simplest words to maximize consistency and thus the speed of learning by the oxen. We start ox tra ining with a simple vocabulary of commands: forward, stop, back, left, and right--in Acholi, 'wot,' 'cam,' 'numa,' 'acuc,' and 'acam.' 'Wot' is the Acholi verb 'to go.' Yet, it turns out not to be so simple. 'Wot' is the familiar form of the verb, but there is also a formal/imperative form, 'woti.' We finally settled on 'wot' for its crispness, assuming the oxen would not be affronted by our familiarity. But, all the discussion left most student-trainers unconvinced that their common usage of 'turn' as a command was less than optimal. They argued that they usually plow fields clockwise--repeatedly turning right. When the drivers started using verbal commands on their blindfolded "oxen," the "oxen" quickly resolved the theoretical argument. The first time a driver reverted to the old command of 'turn,' the "oxen" just stopped and patiently waited for further instruction. People laughed with near immediate recognition that 'turn' merely poses a dilemma--a question of right or left. Role playing quickly convinced everyone to replace 'turn' with the more meaningful 'acam' and 'acuc,' right and left.
As the drivers rotated roles with the "oxen," throughout the next hour, we increasingly realized that Andrew's exercise was converting skeptics into advocates. Empathizing with the oxen gave Tillers' future trainers the insight they needed. It distinguished signaling from punishment. And in the next few weeks, these trainers eagerly put six more groups of 120 additional farmers into blindfolds as "oxen." This series of trainings not only ramps up the skills of 120 representatives of farmers cooperatives, it is a big step in Tillers' push to magnify the effects of its training.
During two weeks of long walks to condition young oxen to pull heavier loads and to begin plowing in the fields, the drivers learned much greater skills in consistent signaling with the stick and in reassuring verbal commands. We spent several days walking kilometers out and back on roads with ei ght foot tall grass on either side, pulling increasingly heavy logs. Then we asked the oxen to pull sleds, onto which we incrementally loaded several hundred pounds. We increased the weight until the dynamometer in the chain measured draft equal to that of a plow, 250 to 300 pounds. All the while, the drivers would brush or stroke the backs of the animals whenever they stopped. As the drivers developed near automatic motor skill patterns of movement for left or right, the oxen relaxed with a clearer understanding of what they were being asked to do. The progress in responsiveness and calmness was amazing.
The drivers came so far that on the last day in Lukole, several drove a team of four young oxen--two yokes--without assistance. Driving a team of four is most possible with a calm and easy touch or hardly a touch at all. The work goes best when each ox understands his task and willingly cooperates. Fear does not work as well as trust. Working a team of four is a test of advanced driving abilities. We were delighted to see it, but not anywhere near as happy as the new drivers who accomplished it.
For years, we have been developing a powerful six day series of exercises here in Michigan for the new ox driver that we call "Oxen Basics." Internationally, we have expanded that to two weeks, which gives us enough time to train adult animals to plow. This October-November series of the session repeated six times in as many communities with a total of 120 farmers. We took a strong enoug crew to run three simultaneous sessions with the help of 17 Acholi traine rs. In addition to Andrew Roberts (Tillers intern 2008), Jan Ott (Tillers intern 1994), Brian Webb (International Outreach Coordinator), Kjell Dale (a Norwegian we worked with in Madagascar), Bob Okello, and I led the new trainers through the sessions. This series of trainings in Uganda was generously funded by the European Union and included support for documenting our training modules into printed material. While most farmers prefer their local Acholi language to English, most can read some English and greatly appreciate having illustrated text to remind them of what they studied. Clint Bolton and Jan Ott worked for two weeks before teh session developing a sequence of printed training modules to take along. We also captured Ugandan work on video and added international examples of innovations in ox or horse farming for use by our trainers to catch the attention and respect of students. At the end, we held a feedback session with the Uganda trainers. They positively critiqued their work and laid the groundwork for another iteration of improvements. One of the finest basic training modules will get even better.
30 minute DVDs of the training are available from the Tillers General Store for our friends to share at just $5.
|
