In light of our recent trips to the desert with various evaluators and today’s meeting with Dr. Salah and the IMADA folks, I think it is important that we express our intentions and goals in the upcoming meeting with IMADA. We have spent a lot of energy putting together our arguments, meeting with the community and trying to negotiate between the wants/needs of the NGOs involved (including WADImena/IDRC, IMADA, and the DDC), our own perceptions of this project, and the desires of members of the Abu Minqar communities. As Chris said, we have thus developed a fairly coherent presentation of our research in the context of the Abu Minqar community and broader developmental discussions of irrigation and agricultural issues in the oasis desert setting, which is rare in terms of available studies.
IMADA’s needs predominately concern the establishment of New Basaysa. To what extent do they consider our research useful? Judging by Dr. Salah’s comments, it appears that first and foremost he expects us to provide guidance to the IMADA crew and the future settlers by answering questions such as: what types of irrigation are most productive; what types of crops grow successfully in the existing community; what are the potential crops that could be harvested were the agricultural and financial conditions maximized? These questions largely apply to material aspects of the research, such as that done by the DDC engineer team. For the most part, we are able to answer these questions without much hesitation. We know that the irrigation system could be vastly improved were lined canals provided and perhaps a more efficient gate system constructed, that people grow many crops quiet successfully and actually speak highly of the land quality, and finally that citrus and other cash crops could be produced on the Abu Minqar agricultural land were the resources available to the community members. Indeed, members of the community wish to see these improvements themselves.
Another point which was raised for the first time (yaani) during the previous meeting, regarded Dr. Rick’s suggestions for agricultural projects which would help to improve the economic situation of the individuals at Abu Minqar. These included both the establishment of a site where members of the community might experiment with citrus production and the introduction of more ‘competent’ cows (i.e. livestock). We can conclude that the DDC sees itself as a source of improving the condition of agricultural production in Abu Minqar, potentially utilizing IMADA’s resources (i.e. land) to achieve its own goals. On the other hand, IMADA sees itself in terms of its future community, New Basaysa, and envisages Abu Minqar more or less as a location with comprehensive information upon which they can build the model community. Hence, we must acknowledge that both of these organizations have disparate (although indirectly connected) intentions – two very different frames-of-reference.
What about WADImena and IDRC? The comments which came from Laura, Lamia, and the ODI crew predominately concerned our integration into the community and our participatory work with the community (as well as our ambiguous relationship with IMADA). They want to see, understandably when bearing in mind the nature of their organizations, the broader contributions of our research: for example, what can we make known to the development/water conservation world that is as yet unknown? I think it is safe to say that we are well integrated into the community: though if we are to consider applying more serious/intensive ethnographic methods to this research the total amount of time at the site needs to be greatly augmented. To most of the community we are still merely ‘visitors’ whose activities, despite being more well-known and accepted, are more associated with ‘business’ (shirket basaysa) and desert agricultural development (DDC). We need to accentuate the fact that we are investigating the ‘social’ side of water usage and irrigation: that is, the people’s understanding of water, beliefs and practices surrounding water usage, etc. This naturally includes a thorough understanding of the people themselves (and their complex history) so that questions as mundane as why are women cleaning their dishes/clothes at Bir Wahed rather than at their homes (given that running water is supposedly available for much of the Bir Wahed community), or beliefs concerning afrit living in the well and perhaps how or if these effect water usage during night hours or youth involvement in irrigation practices. Obviously, we cannot necessarily explain all of this to the community, but we must articulate to them that there is a fundamental cultural element to our research, for most development agendas (and if we are willing to point out, government policies) simply look at the material aspects of agriculture (the land, the water, the irrigation canals, the economic system, etc.) and not the ideological/social/cultural – in this sense, our project is 1) more ethnographic in nature and 2) more aligned with IDRC.
We can explain this to the community by noting that we are trying to do a long-term study on all aspects of agriculture, or essentially an ethnography of the community with beliefs and practices surrounding water usage being the focus. We can stress to IMADA that we will make available to them information which is useful and help, by providing our reports, to try to integrate the two communities in the future. But if we are to consider sustainability our role should mainly be as their consultants, not as a medium for them to get into the community (the soccer game here serves no purpose as far as we are concerned and we should stress to them the points noted by Tina – for example, that it does not involve women – we should be vocal about this as this is where our consultancy proves useful). As for the DDC, if Dr. Rick is interested in publishing an ethnographic account of this community, perhaps centered on agricultural and irrigation practices, than we should get his agreement that that is our main output in his direction – possibly leaving other integration projects such as citrus and livestock production to the long-term sustainability issue and ask for a relatively minimal DDC involvement after our research is to finish. I think that IDRC and ODI, after our meetings and a (future) final report, will be pleased with our involvement if we are to put out a pretty thorough publication, either independently or through them, that tackles the cultural side of water usage. While the irrigation and material sides are rather rare and unique (i.e. oasis vs. riverflow), in every case of agricultural development cultural issues stand at the forefront of many hardships – and we could contribute to alternative approaches which address these.
