Caravan of Hope - The diary

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A long wait at the Botswana border brings bad news for the Caravanites as the Rwandans and Burundians are refused a visa and forced to seek a new route to Durban. But, as ever, the Caravanite's spirits remain high. Listen to this podcast

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PHOTO: The Caravanites receive a rather noisy welcome in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

Interview

With two days to go until we reach Durban, here are some reflections from Head of PACJA, Mithika Mwenda, on the journey so far and his hopes for Cop17.

Q: How did the idea of the Caravan come about?

A: In Africa, there is a need to demystify climate change so that people can see what the link is to their lives and what response they need to take. Now that Cop17 is coming to Africa, we wanted to think of a massive activity which would unite the people of Africa with the UN process. 

Q: How do you think the journey has gone so far?

A: This caravan has become the defining activity of Cop17. Everybody in Africa is looking upon it and we are happy with the reception we have had. This is not just an activity for civil society, it’s for all the people in Africa. 

Q. The Caravan focuses on Africa but how important do you think it is that people all over the world, join together in tackling climate change?

A: Climate Change is not going to be defeated by one individual, one country or one region so we want to underscore the importance of solidarity between rich and poor countries and the need to collaborate. Africans are suffering now because we are more vulnerable but people need to understand that together we are confronting a challenge that will swallow us all. 

Q: Have you got a message for Christian Aid supporters?

A: I would like to thank them for the support they have continued to give PACJA. They should also share in the successes that we are witnessing. But Cop17 won’t be the end of the struggle. It’s the beginning and I like to think that we will be able to continue this solidarity.

Victoria Falls takes you by surprise. You're wandering down a nondescript little path with scrappy trees blocking out the view ahead. And then there it is: space, plunging down hundreds of metres to a lake below and opposite, a sheer rock face with jets of water pouring over the edge.

It gets better as you go on. At the first glimpse of the view, we spent five minutes posing for photos (and if there's one thing a Caravanite can't resist, it's a good photo opportunity) before we realised there were even more spectacular vantage points ahead. We crossed a bridge ('don't look down, look forward,' was the guide's advice) and then carried on, keeping well clear of the sudden drop on one side of the path.

It was breathtaking stuff so it was hard to imagine that Victoria Falls are drying up. That at least is the belief held in the nearby town of Livingstone, related to us at a tree-planting ceremony in honour of our arrival. The volume of water tumbling over the side of the cliffs is diminishing and it is feared it could disappear altogether. Along with the snows of Kilimanjaro, could Victoria Falls become one of the highest profile victims of climate change in Africa?

It felt like a real privilege to see Victoria Falls as it is now and the view was enough to perk me up after a difficult day. The health problems I'd dreaded had finally happened and I had been feeling nauseous since the morning. The culprit may have been a fried caterpillar which I'd had at a buffet lunch the day before. Most of the African Caravanites steered well clear but in a foolish display of food bravado, I had one. Now I'm being punished!

Read more about the UN climate change negotiations on our campaigns blog.
 

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PHOTO: A Caravanite takes a moment to admire the view.

12 days and 7 countries after we pulled away from Bujumbura stadium, it feels like we are about to enter the home straight. We are now four coaches, around 150 people strong, and my used shirt rotation system isn’t fooling anyone; I desperately need to do laundry.

As we get closer to Durban, everyone’s thoughts are turning to the UN climate change negotiations whose arrival in Africa this year inspired the caravan. Today, at our event in Lusaka, the Zambian minister for the environment said: ‘All the African presidents, all the African ministers, all the members of civil society will go with one voice and claim what is ours.’ But no-one is under any illusions that it’ll be easy.

The first period of the Kyoto Protocol, the fairest system we have for ensuring industrialised countries reduce their carbon emissions, comes to an end next year, and the future of the agreement is on the rocks.

Some industrialised countries are trying to replace it with a weaker deal, even though – under the terms of the KP – they are obliged to negotiate for a new commitment period. Saving the protocol will be one of the toughest battles that negotiators from developing countries will have to fight.

The debate on funding to help poorer countries develop without harming the environment, is also expected to be a fierce one. There is a lack of financial commitment between 2013 and 2020 and although developed countries have agreed to mobilise $100 billion - itself an inadequate sum - each year by 2020 many questions still remain.

So the Caravan will culminate at Durban but the Caravanites understand that Africa’s fight for climate justice is unlikely to end there too. The campaigning momentum that we have built up on this journey will need to keep rolling on.

Read more about the UN climate change negotiations on our campaigns blog.

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PHOTO: Mithika Mwenda, Head of PACJA, addresses the caravanites

We crossed the Tanzania / Malawi border two days ago in the searing mid afternoon heat. 'Malawi is the warm heart of Africa' someone told me on arrival. 'No kidding,' I thought, as I panted over to a patch of shade.

But the welcome we received did full justice to the country's reputation. The Malawian Caravan team made the six hour drive from Lilongwe to meet us, and performed a dance in our honour: jumping and flailing to a beat hammered out at breakneck speed on a sheet of metal (watch the video).

And yesterday's official event in Lilongwe was an upbeat blend of climate change ceremony, pop concert and picnic. Yesterday afternoon, hundreds of people in Climate Justice-branded straw hats bobbed happily along to a reggae band. They looked like a particularly funky bunch of farmers; I was very sad to leave.

But Zambian hospitality has also been wonderful, and at a time when our spirits still needed reviving after so many overnight bus journeys.

Most of our events so far have been held in big cities, but this morning we sat under trees in a beautiful village just outside the town of Chipata. Women farmers greeted us with a cappella singing and then shared their accounts of how unpredictable rains are playing havoc with their way of life.

Their stories of hardship felt at odds with the idyllic setting but they were also depressingly consistent with what we have heard so far.

We wished them well, they wished us well too and the Caravan groups from each country planted a tree at the edge of the village. Then it was back onto our buses and onwards to our next stop: Lusaka.

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PHOTO: Zambian women farmers welcome the Caravan

Over the past ten days, I’ve had a tough time explaining the British public’s attitude to climate change to the Caravanites.

It’s been ok talking about the two ends of the spectrum. We’ve had a bit of a chuckle at the expense of the crazier fringes of the climate change sceptic movement.

And, I’ve recounted how many Christian Aid supporters are very active on the issue, and described how up to a thousand marched in Manchester in October to demand climate justice of our government.

But it’s the people in the middle - those who don’t doubt that climate change is happening but still view it as a distant and abstract concern – whose position my fellow travellers have difficulty understanding.

‘Well, they have other things on their minds at the moment,’ I say, which seems a little feeble when talking to a Kenyan farmer who has seen her harvests fail year after year.

We do, of course. I don’t want in any way to diminish how severe an effect the economic situation is having on many people’s lives. But reports over the last few days that climate change spending will plummet as austerity cuts take hold, is still a major blow.

Money from industrialised countries to help poor countries adapt to new conditions is a crucial part of climate justice. African countries, amongst others, need to adapt to weather conditions that have rendered traditional ways of farming close to useless. But more than this, if African countries are to pull themselves out of poverty and flourish, they need to find ways of developing without further polluting the atmosphere - read Christian Aid’s Low-carbon Africa report.

It's up to us to ensure that our politicians don’t view climate finance as an easy thing to dispense with as the cuts start to bite.

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A Caravanite keeps us entertained during our long wait at the Malawi-Tanzania border.

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Ally fills us in on the 15-hour journey between Dar and Mbeya, driving through a wildlife reserve and an unfortunate, but inevitable, bus break down. Listen to this podcast here.

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Burudians: seven days on the road and still smiling!

I've heard the phrase 'Mother Earth' before of course, but never so often as over the past few days. Then there's 'Mama Africa', another metaphor that portrays the land as a nurturing female force. Women are identified with the land in Africa because they both work it and share its life-giving qualities.

‘All the population must understand that we have to protect the environment to protect human life forever,’ says Nizigama Sylvane - a farmer and mother-of-six - who has been on the Caravan of Home since her home country of Burundi.

But the metaphor also reflects the way in which the fate of the land and the fate of women - particularly in Rwanda and Burundi where more than 90% of the population are farmers - are inseparable.

Nizigama comes from a community in central Burundi, whose maize harvests have recently repeatedly failed due to the variability of rains (not yet conclusively linked to human-induced climate change but certainly consistent with what climate change experts have predicted for the region). And there, as elsewhere, the burden falls heaviest on women.

‘Women are the first victims when there are food shortages,’ she explains. ‘When there is famine in the family the husband can leave - saying he will go to find work - but the woman must stay behind and cope with this misery.’

Rwandan Urayeneza Verene, a maize and haricot bean farmer, agrees.

‘And let's not forget that in Rwanda lots of women became widows in 1994 [during the genocide] and lots of orphans were created,’ she says. ‘And it fell to these women to look after them.’

Urayeneza and Nizigama have become friends during the Caravan, singing from a shared hymn book during long journeys (see video).

Their friendship is an example in miniature of the type of solidarity the Caravan aims to foster. But it is also a friendship based on a shared experience of hardship, an experience that women all over Africa can relate to.

A mere 18 hours on the bus yesterday. Our rather bleary-eyed group of Caravanites assembled in the lobby of our Nairobi hotel at 4am. An even more bleary-eyed group got off the bus at 10pm on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam. It was easy to be blasé about the distances we’d travel when I was sitting in London - less so yesterday morning, when I caught an unfortunate glimpse of a sign giving the distance to Dar.

Luckily, Africa was putting on a fine display for our entertainment. There was a disappointing no-show from Kilimanjaro – which was hiding behind a thick wall of cloud – but in the afternoon, we were treated to views of vivid green plains and my favourite kind of African weather: darkening skies, a slight chill and the electric tingle in the air that precedes a storm.

Scudding clouds, open road – at the risk of sounding like a middle-aged man, if I’d only had some Springsteen on my iPod; my happiness would have been complete.

But there was some fine singing (watch this short video) from Nizigama Sylvane and Urayeneza Verene, a Burundian and a Rwandan farmer respectively, who have become good friends during the journey.

As for meals, my number one fear on this trip is getting food poisoning and being forced to endure a journey like yesterday’s, a grimace on my face and queasiness in my stomach. So when we stopped at a dubious-looking foodside stall, I became the joke of the group by buying what I thought was the safest lunch option: three pieces of cake and two bananas. In the end I was shamed into having some fried chicken too. No adverse effects so far.

'Hope' is written in huge letters on the side of our coach, but the word that has been used just as often - in speeches, chanted at rallies and in conversations all along the route - is justice.

The caravan may be a celebration of Africa's flourishing climate change movement. But it is also a show of strength; a sign that African activists know their rights and are ready to demand them. As one of the few people on board the bus from an industrialised country, the activists' speeches have made for uncomfortable listening at times.

I squirmed in my seat in Bujumbura, I squirmed on the terraces at Kampala rugby club, I am squirming now in a city centre hall in Nairobi and I expect to keep squirming all the way down to Durban.

The idea of climate justice - that the burden of responsibility for climate change lies with industrialised countries and so it is their duty to make amends - is expressed with such simplicity and clear moral logic, that it feels embarrassing that African activists have to ask for it at all.

And it is even more shaming when you hear about the impact that climate change is already having on Africans themselves, via the accounts of a Burundian farmer, a Ugandan activist, a Maasai musician.

The caravanites have made it very clear what they expect of industrialised countries at the Durban negotiations: commitments to ensure significant cuts in carbon emissions and funding to help developing countries adapt to a low carbon future.

But I wondered what they had to say to ordinary people and campaigners in industrialised countries, who would have been squirming, along with me, if they'd had the chance.

'We want them to lobby their politicians and say "See what our brothers and sisters from these countries in Africa are going through,''' Kenyan climate change activist Festus Mutavi told me.

'If I as an African campaigner try to stand all alone, my voice will not get through. Solidarity between people in industrialised countries and us is crucial.'

Kampala, Uganda

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The Concert for Climate Justice strikes a chord for the Caravan of Hope in Kampala, Uganda. Ally reflects on how African musicians inspire activists before the caravan moves on to Kenya. Listen to this podcast here.

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Kampala: caravanites discuss climate justice with Ugandan vice-president Edward Sekande.

Charles Gahire doesn’t look like the sort of man who often sports a matching T shirt and baseball cap. He wears his specs perched donnishly on his nose and is a distinguished naturalist and leader of the Rwandan caravan delegation. But today, like the rest of us, he is happily sporting a bright green cap - in the interests of raising climate change awareness.

‘If you are not aware, anyone can step on you,’ he tells me. ‘Once you are aware you can demand your rights.’

He is a charming, incredibly knowledgeable if rather depressing bus companion, often leaning across to point out how climate change has affected the Ugandan countryside, flashing past the window outside. And though he prefers to speak in measured, scientific language, he’s not above issuing the occasional dire warning. ‘If we continue burning fossil fuels, it will bring us to the brink of extinction,’ he says.

Rwanda and Uganda are among many of the countries on our route experiencing temperature rises due, in part, to climate change. In Rwanda, he explains, this is baking the marshland dry and causing insects and diseases which destroy staple crops to flourish.

Meanwhile, there is already anecdotal evidence from farmers of the kind of changing rainfall patterns that scientists have predicted will affect Africa in the future. When the rains do come they are sometimes too heavy or interspersed with periods of fierce sunshine, wrecking the harvest.

But though he paints a bleak picture, Charles sees both the Caravan and the UN talks as a source of hope and he is hoping to make his mark at Durban. Africa’s farmers couldn’t hope for a more formidable champion.

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A brass band leads the way on our morning rally in Kabare.

No sign of so-called ‘African time’ in Kigali. We arrived at our hotel at 2am, after driving for seven hours through the Rwandan countryside - for the record, the Burundi / Rwandan border, beside a river sweeping through banana groves, takes the not very hotly contested biscuit for most scenic border crossing I’ve ever crossed - and a delay to the morning’s programme would at least have meant a lie-in.

Instead we were up early and scrabbling to get to Giti Kinyoni: a large open space just outside the city, whose name translates as the place of the birds, after the enormous tree that used to provide a home for many different species.

The tree was cut down long ago but as we arrived we met hundreds of people streaming down the hillside who had been planting trees since early that morning, in a ceremony in honour of the caravan. Among them were local farmers, activists, politicians, police and soldiers, some carrying tools still muddy from their work.

At the foot of the hill, they gathered in a circle and as a precursor to the main ceremony, at least half the group began to dance. There was whooping, clapping of hands and uluating – the soldiers were trying to outdo the policemen, children trying to upstage each other – and only when the dancing scores had been settled did the speeches begin.

After just two days of the caravan, the messages are already starting to feel repetitive - the responsibility of industrialised countries, the hardships that Africans are already facing, the importance of solidarity on the issue.

But that doesn’t make them feel any less powerful. By being repeated over and over, in ten different countries along the 7000 km of our route, in different languages, and before different audiences – the hope is that they will become impossible to ignore.

Today, the Caravan of Hope rolled out of Bujumbura in Burundi and set off on the first leg of our 3000-mile journey. First stop, Rwanda.

At the launch, held in the presence of the vice president, the head of PACJA who have coordinated this initiative, described the growing sense of solidarity among African campaigning groups on climate change. In ‘Africa, we are united by one spirit to find a solution to this problem,’ he said – and if the caravan is about anything, it is about embodying that spirit.

I'll be writing again soon, in the meantime please take the action to demand justice for the world's poor on the link below, and I hope you’ll continue to follow us as we move from the hills of Burundi and Rwanda to the open plain of east Africa and further south.

We're off!

Listen to Ally's podcast as the Caravan of Hope pulls away from Burundi and heads to Kigali.

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