The excavator working at one of the sites
When I look at the excavator that Andiamo Youth Cooperative Trust (AYCT) has, I am lost in a reverie. I remember those days when I was doing my primary school education.
When it was close to the rainy season, the government used to send graders to shape the roads that were impassable. On our way to school, we could meet this giant machine working on the roads.
John Kadango complementing what the excavator was doing recently
Inquisitive, as I was, I couldn’t just leave this machine do its work. It needed company. So, together with my friends we couldn’t reach the school. We could spend all the morning hours watching this big tractor. Some of us made decisions that when we finished school we would want to be operators of this big machine. On our way back, having not gone to school, we met the wrath of our parents!
Today when I look at this machine many things come to mind. Has this machine come to replace the work that people used to do and get their bread and butter at AYCT? Is this the end of the hoes that have built what we call Andiamo Youth Cooperative Trust?
Looking at what the excavator has done for the past week I am left to conclude that the excavator is not substituting anyone but it has come to complement what men and women of AYCT have been doing.
We are living in an era where land is no longer cheap. Neither is it found in abundance.
How AYCT started
The land that has been left uncultivated is that land that people have failed to cultivate using their bare hands.
I have watched the excavator constructing what we call a road now on a place nobody could have dreamt of before.
The excavator has in the past week dug a 6 metres by 1.8 metres pit which is 4.4 metres deep just in hours. A visit to the place, one quickly notices how rocky the place is. This could not have been possible without the excavator.
Hours of working
The other good thing about this machine is that it will not only wait for the volunteers from Italy for it to work, Bertin Kamanga, one of the longest serving member of AYCT has already taken the challenge.
By Patrick Bwanali