members resolved the frustrating process by
simply asking the TFAP facilitators to stop
trying to empower them and just tell them
what to do.
The TFAP facilitators had no real authority,
so they made full use of shame to goad the
committees into action. Their most common
exhortation technique played on a core
value of North Pare culture — treating a
guest with hospitality and grace. “What
would you say,” the facilitators asked rhetor-
ically, “if the Germans came and asked you
to show them the terraces you had built,
and you had nothing to show?” Many meet-
ings culminated in resolutions to write to the
village government and ask the village chair-
man to write letters to farmers who had not
implemented the TFAP plan. None of these
resolutions and letters had any real coercive
power and were instead based on the subtle
threat of public shame. Village LUPC meet-
ings closed with another “three-kilo clap”
and everyone hurried off to other pressing
tasks.
The top-down nature of bottom-up partici-
patory planning became particularly appar-
ent when TFAP decided (in early 1998) to
sidestep some weak village governments by
going directly to the hamlet (an administra-
tive unit within a village) level for planning
meetings.^23 In one hamlet meeting, the
TFAP facilitator presented the members with
a form with blanks for how many meters of
terrace they would build, the names of the
springs they would protect, and how many
trees they would plant. He asked the meet-
ing participants how many households there
were in the hamlet and suggested that each
should construct 50 meters of terraces. The
line of women sitting on the grass (opposite
a line of men on benches) had trouble visu-
alizing what 50 meters meant, and after ten
minutes of discussion the members decided
that it was equivalent to two terraces per
plot. The facilitator still needed a number to
write on the form, so the meeting debated
several round numbers before the loudest
man said “just write 3000 meters.”
The meeting participants told the facilitator
that they didn’t need a number, but that
they wanted tools and fertiliser for the new
terraces. The facilitator responded by telling
them to form a cooperative labor group in
order to receive tools. The men in the meet-
ing agreed, and decided that the women at
the meeting would form such a group imme-
diately. As the meeting secretary wrote their
names on a list for the facilitator to present
to TFAP, the women remained silent and
stiff because they obviously did not want to
make this commitment, but were powerless
to protest in public.
Although TFAP wanted the village LUPCs to
be active agents for increasing awareness of
environmental issues in their villages and for
developing innovative solutions to these
problems, the agency’s top-down techno-
cratic practices effectively stifled the com-
mittees’ ability to voice local problems. At
many of the meetings that I attended, com-
mittee members presented innovative ideas
which facilitators either rejected outright or
ignored. Many proposed new benefits for
project participants, such as improved live-
stock breeds, seedlings for flowering trees
that would attract honeybees, traps for the
area’s enormous rats, and colorful clothing
History, cculture aand cconservation
Figure 3.The author with a village Land Use
Planning Committee, May 1998 (Courtesy Michael
Sheridan)
