J.B. Nikiema
Jules Blaise Nikiema is Chief of the Animation-Communication-Training component of the FAO-assisted Natural Forest Management Project in Burkina Faso.
A brief exposition of local people's unexpected interpretations of extension drawings.
The involvement of local people in forest resource management is an important part of the FAO-assisted Natural Forest Management Project in Burkina Faso (UNDP/BKF/93/003), the current phase of a project initiated in 1985. During the first phase of the project, extension techniques and outreach activities centred on group discussions and "classroom type" teaching methods designed to transfer technical knowledge and practical skills to the largely illiterate target population of local forest users. Despite some successes, after five years of these types of activity an evaluation revealed that themes had been forgotten or only partially assimilated and that recommended methods were not always applied effectively.
More recently a multimedia approach (large-scale drawings, audiocassettes in local languages, slides and pamphlets) was developed to encourage a dialogue with local people and facilitate retention of a greater part of the technical knowledge being transferred. Illustrative materials were commissioned by a local artist, including drawings and photographs, and selected extension agents were trained in the use of these materials within the overall multimedia approach.
In July 1995, as a preliminary to producing large quantities of the extension materials for distribution and use throughout the country, a test was organized to verify the value of the tools and, particularly, the drawings and slides, in forestry extension training. Men and women from two villages were shown the materials and asked to identify the images represented in the presence of the artist who had prepared them and some of the extension agents who had been trained in using them.
The "culture shock" could hardly have been greater. To the extension agents, and of course the artist, the meaning of the drawings had been clear and unequivocal. But the interpretation of these images by local people differed enormously; in fact, it was apparent that the drawings, especially when presented out of the context of the planned extension message, were virtually undecipherable or simply failed to convey the intended message. What to the extension agents, the artist (and the author of this article) was clearly a black and white line drawing of a tree was interpreted by the local people as a road, with the lines in the tree crown interpreted as worms; a drawing of a cow seen from above was seen as a spirit, and a dangerous one at that; a syringe was often perceived as a bicycle pump; a cow tethered to a stake was an elephant; the horizon line in a drawing was seen as a boundary between two fields; a stream which continued past the edge of the paper was a porcupine; an improved beehive became a suitcase; a man falling from a tree was a man sleeping on the ground; a cross to signify negation was a pair of sticks.
The differences in interpretation were not confined to drawings; for example, a photographic image of a tree stump was identified as a lion and, to prove it, an older villager got up to show the lion's legs. A sample of the extension drawings and their definition by the local people is provided in Figure 1.
Asking the villagers themselves to draw the desired objects allowed for a better understanding of their perspective and the visual clues that aided interpretation (see Figure 2 for samples of the representative illustrations done by villagers). However, this did not totally resolve the problem - other groups of villagers had problems interpreting what the test group had drawn.
The results of this simple test dramatically highlighted the need for further evaluation before the multimedia approach could be adopted as part of the overall forestry extension strategy. The lessons to be learned are many and are relevant far beyond the local situation in Burkina Faso. A few of the most important are noted:
