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'Teach Them to Eat Fish Forever'
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19048 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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1 / 1991 |
3,376 Words |
| Author
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Patricia Summerside
Patricia Summerside is a free-lance writer living in Pierre,
South Dakota. Her articles on social issues have appeared in
several national periodicals. |
THE PONDS OF KALAMBAYI
An African Sojourn
Mike Tidewell
New York: Lyonds & Buford, 1990
276 pp., $19.95
In the heart of Africa, Mike Tidwell tells us, is an island. On that island--surrounded by the Lubilashi, Lualu, and Luvula rivers--live the Kalambayan people of Zaire. Their island is actually a peninsula nearly surrounded by three joining rivers. But, in its isolation, Kalambayi is truly an island.
To this island Mike Tidwell came as a Peace Corps volunteer with two goals: to create a self-perpetuating tradition of fish farming among the Kalambayans and to find himself. The first goal was hard to attain. The second was even harder.
The region's potential for fish farming had been recognized by Belgian colonial officials in the 1950s. Under their supervision, villagers had built hundreds of fish ponds, which the Belgians then stocked with tilapia. For reasons that are unclear--Tidwell surmises that the Belgians did not provide adequate training--the project languished as time passed. Without maintenance, one by one the ponds collapsed. By the time Tidwell arrived, there was just one fish pond left, harvested for ritual purposes only. There was no commercial fish farming in Kalambayi.
Starting over
Tidwell's job was to enable fish farming to "take" the second time around. If successful, the project would provide both a much-needed source of cash income for villagers and an equally necessary source of protein in their diet.
Tidwell faced formidable obstacles. The first was to persuade farmers to invest backbreaking labor in a project whose payoff they had to take on faith. They had good reasons for believing that they would reap partial rewards at best. One reason was their experience of the Belgian cotton company that still monopolized the region. Villagers were required by law to plant the cotton seed provided by the company and then sell the harvested cotton at a fixed price back to the company. The villagers thus assumed that Tidwell, in exchange for his help, would take his cut of their fish harvests. They also knew from lifelong experience of local tradition that their fellow villagers would demand a cut as
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