“Donou” Finds A WayA Japanese NGO uses an old road-building method to extend by passes in developing countriesBy Yas Mamemachi
It was in the early’90s in Kenya. A “straight shooting” professor of a leading Japanese research university met a Japanese aid worker who had been assigned to the African continent. Their partnership led to a small NPO soon thereafter which has been changing the remote areas of the world with locally made “donou” bypasses ever since.
The name of the NPO is Michibushin-bito [a coined Japanese term=michibusin (community-led volunteer activities for road maintenance work)+bito (people)]. One of the original members is Makoto Kimura, a professor of Kyoto University, one of the leading research universities in Japan, which has produced several Nobel Prize laureates. Professor Kimura had been to Africa 32 times, 25 of them to Kenya. However, he disclosed that he was not interested in Africa or international aid activities until 1993, but he did travel across the Sahara by bicycle in 1984. In 1993 he was dispatched as a short-term expert on university management to a newly-developed university in Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, thus affording him a rare opportunity to work for a Japanese governmental aid project in Africa for about three months. “To me, that was an eye opening experience,” says Kimura. “I had never imagined anything fun out there away from Japan. I felt as if I’d been allowed to draw whatever I wanted on a white canvas” Also, the three-month project gave him the chance to meet Kiyoshi Kita, another founding member of the NPO and a supervisor for the university farm. He is from the city of Takamatsu, Shikoku, which is one of the four large islands of the Japanese archipelago. Kita came to Kenya as a Japanese governmental volunteer in 1970 after graduating from his hometown university with an agriculture degree. He worked there for a UNICEF-sponsored soybean project for three years. After returning to his hometown in 1973, he settled down and raised a family while making a living as a supervisor of a local supermarket and the owner of a flower shop named AFRICA. In 1988 he received an unexpected phone call from his university supervisor, asking him if he was interested in a vacant position to work for a university farm in Kenya. Kita had a wonderful wife and family and his flower shop was making a good living for the family. However, he missed Africa and Africa missed him. In fact, his wife understood why he thought so deeply about the opportunity, and encouraged him to return to the African continent. He assumed the position in May 1988. Kimura’s first impression of Kita was that he was “a different kind of person among the project members.” Back then, the professor was not necessarily positive about the project, saying that the four-to-five-year project would be wasted on less satisfactory achievements, since it might take 20-30 years to develop a university system. “I was encouraged to work in this new field by Kita’s passionate views and work ethics in international aid business,” says Kimura. In turn, Kita says he instinctively thought that Professor Kimura would be a person with great talent and charm. “I remember I said, ‘Gone forever because your time was over does not sound like you, professor. Won’t you work with me for the further development of the local university?’” With Kita’s support, Kimura decided to make an earnest effort for the sake of the university. He knew that some local researchers in the university were less passionate about their academic work, but some were very serious and hungry to learn anything. “All right, I will do it my way,” says Kimura. Directly and independently The professor had been back and forth between Kyoto and Kenya to support the university within the framework of the Japan aid project 11 times from 1993 to 2003. During that period he was wondering if he could have worked more directly and independently for poverty reduction in Kenya off campus by maximizing his expertise, which is civil engineering.
He realized that the lack of maintenance on dirt roads between rural villages and neighboring markets discouraged many farmers in the villages from delivering their products to market. However, the related local government office was not expected to take action on road maintenance due to financial constraints. Kimura, who had studied locally feasible civil engineering with local materials for years, had the idea of applying “donou” technology to Kenya and other developing countries whose rural villages have similar types of road maintenance problems. In 2003, one of the leading senior researchers in a related Japanese academic circle published a research paper on how “donou” technology or so-called geo technology works scientifically, reinforcing Kimura’s vision and giving him a green light. The maintenance of dirt roads with the introduction of “donou” technology was conducted in several steps. First, the impassable sections for rural access roads were identified. Second, the impassable sections were excavated according to the intended number of layers of "donou" to be used when repairing the road. Third, 45 cm X 60 cm plastic bags weighing 25 kg each were used as “donou” bags. Fourth, the bags were filled with a recommended amount of either soil or sand or gravel. Fifth, the open ends of the “donou” bags were secured using twine. Sixth, the bags were laid in rows within the excavated section of the road and compacted. Seventh, when applying more than one layer of “donou” bags, the space between the compacted bags were filled with soil and the process repeated to the last layer. Eighth, a five-centimeter thick layer of gravel was applied to the final layer of compacted “donou” bags. A problem in civil engineering using “donou” is that they require a great deal of manpower, since each cloth bag is packed with soil, sand, or gravel by hand, which incurs high labor costs in Japan. According to Kimura, using a single “donou” costs about 500 yen (about US$5.6), though the price of a single plastic bag costs only 20 yen (about US$0.2). However, “I was pretty positive it would work in Kenya because the rural area of the country was a labor intensive society,” says Kimura. A person from the ILO or International Labor Organization cynically asked him how many village people could work on road development without any pay, he discloses. “If they think they provide their own labor force for the project, then they need to be paid,” Kimura replies. “But if they can be motivated to work for themselves and such work can be done in a short time, I believe they should be happy to participate in the project without any financial reward. “ For fun in Kenya In 2007, Kimura decided to establish an NPO, Michibusin-bito, and asked if Kita, who was working for a Japanese governmental aid organization in Kenya, would become a core member of the NPO. The NPO started with this odd couple. The NPO’s first and foremost assignment was to encourage local villagers to engage in road maintenance work using “donou” by themselves and for themselves. That meant Kimura’s theory of volunteer work by locals for locals was tested.
In 2008, the NPO set up its Kenya office as a locally registered NPO named Community Road Empowerment, or CORE, with Kita as head officer. This was Kita’s opportunity, maximizing his networks with the local agricultural ministry’s officers, established during the years he had stayed in Kenya. However, Kita needed to talk patiently with local farmers, the main stakeholders of the project. “I told them something like, ’Do you really think that the local government office is working on maintenance of roads to the village?’ ‘I think it won’t be happening for the next 100 years.’ ‘Why don’t you work on road maintenance by yourselves? I can teach you the easiest and most effective way to pursue it in about 30 minutes.’ ‘But I won’t pay you because this is your road.’” “They replied that many foreigners came to help them, but nothing had changed on the road to the village in the beginning,” says Kita. “Then, some of them came to see us working on road maintenance with ‘donou.’ Once they realized we could be successful, some of them come to us for help.” “I’m not making a living in international aid. This is basically fun to me. That’s why only we can be working on this type of niche business in aid,” says Kimura. “And because it may be a niche, we and the locals can share in the action. I think that’s very import.” The niche project, which started in Kenya, has progressed to other countries, including Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, East Timor, Cambodia, Tanzania, Uganda, the Republic of Congo, and Cameroon. For the last few years, active social contributors in Japan have been interested in supporting the project. “‘Donou’ may soon become another globally recognized Japanese word, like sushi and tsunami,” says Kimura. |
he Japanese word “donou” means a natural cloth (or plastic) bag packed with soil, sand, or gravel, which has been used in road maintenance work for hundreds of years in Japan.
