Marcus is active in areas related to technology transfer and permaculture. He first connected with Dadamac in 2008, and visited Nigeria in September for the ecodome project.
He returned in 2009 for work on permaculture, and the email he sent while there is included in this blog.
Thursday February 4th is the First Thursday of the month. So here's my invitation to join me in the worknets chat room, and my usual thanks to Andrius Kulikauskas, director of Minciu Sodas for making it possible. All being well I will be around for an hour starting - 13.00 Nigerian time, 15,00 Kenyan time, 12.00 GMT.
A continued focus of our weekly online UK/Nigeria meetings has been the subject of permaculture.
This was not a word or principle I had come across often in my day-to-day life in South London.
However over the past two years I have been lucky enough to begin to learn more about it - and to appreciate the importance of designing the proposed ecovillage at Attachab along the principles it dictates.
Even as a relative newcomer to the discipline, I recognise it is the most practical and commonsense way to proceed. Not only does it make ecological and financial sense ... it should also help provide sustainable communities. In short, I am very much a convert!
Wow, what a start to the New Year!
Although it had been a few weeks since our last UK-Nigeria online meeting (due to connectivity issues and holidays) I was quickly reminded again how thrilled I am to be involved with this dynamic group of people.
Although these meetings with Fantsuam are arranged for the same time and day each week, they are never routine, dull or a chore.
As this was our first for a while, there was a lot to catch up on. Despite (yet another) loss of connectivity and time lags, we enjoyed another productive session - and, miraculously, still managed to cover the whole agenda! A real triumph over adversity for the team.
Hi Vijay
Given your interest in food security and wider issues surrounding it you may like to see this video about Climate Food and Developing-Country Livestock Farmers ILRI film:
In my mind it connects with John's vision for a model farm development at Attachab Eco-village and why it is important to develop models of good practice and effective ways to share them.
A quick update before too much of the week shoots past. I did meet Marcus Simmons at Tuttle on Friday, and later we went to City University to meet Ron Dennis. It was a continuation of the converstation Ron, Femi Longe and I had last week, regarding Nigeria, recyling plastics and other shared interests.
Marcus and I also spent a lot of time transferring his photos and videos to my hard drive, finding the most relevant ones to share, making breif notes, and trying not to be drawn into detail until all that was done. We discovered that we both planned to be in Central London today, so we agreed to meet again to continue our catch-up. There is a lot to cover - so, for starters, Marcus agreed that I could publish the email he sent during his trip.
Most meals in rural Nigeria are cooked over open wood fires. This is simple and familiar. Traditionally fuel has been cheap and fairly easy to find.
However demand for firewood has increased in line with population growth. As trees are cut down the environment suffers from deforestation, soil loss and eventual desertification. There is also increasing awareness of the damage to health caused by wood smoke, especially when cooking takes place indoors.
Efficient wood fuel stoves cook food more quickly and use less fuel. So if the stoves can be provided cheaply to local families everyone wins, right? Not quite!
John Dada and the Fantsuam Foundation are working to solve the issues with DARE, a Nigerian NGO and their German partners.
Dadamac network is wider than our website shows. I wrote this email to the globalvillages and learnhowtolearn yahoo groups to introduce some of my contacts there to Dadamac. Copying it here can, in turn, help to point Dadamac people to those yahoo groups:
THIS week's UK/Nigeria meeting provided another fascinating and informative hour, covering subjects as diverse as the training of local Nigerian instructors, crayfish and sms credit!
And all this despite an intermittent problem with time delay, which served as a gentle reminder that connectivity is still a considerable problem for most rural communities.
What particularly caught my attention was Fantsuam's ability to identify and respond to their communities' local needs. They are concerned, for instance, that their women farmers - comprising of around 1,500 of their microfinance clients - have difficulty affording fertiliser. This of course affects their productivity and ability to repay loans.
