EDITORIAL

At the close of 1999 many good wishes were exchanged. Not only did we wish each other happiness and prosperity in the year to come, but also in the new century and even the entire millennium! That may have been going a bit too far. We’d do better to limit our ‘great expectations’ to the present decade!

Great expectations: the title of a novel by the famous English writer Charles Dickens, in which he recounts the trials and tribulations of a young boy named Pip. It is thanks to Dickens’ mastery of the word that we see the nineteenth-century world through the eyes of Pip. He is a poor orphan brought up ‘by hand’ by his brother-in-law Joe Gargery. Dark romanticism colours the opening passage of Great Expectations, when we see Pip in the graveyard where his parents and five of their infant children are buried. There he meets up with a Convict, a terrifying figure wearing a leg-iron, who turns Pip upside down to empty his pockets, which contain only a piece of bread. The Convict gobbles up the bread and then forces Pip to help him get rid of the leg-iron. It is clear that Pip lives in a harsh world, but there are two things that keep him going: his own good intentions, and the good intentions of the down-to-earth people he meets along his path. They are people like the cheerful clerk Mr Wemminck and his delightful old father, ‘the Aged P(erson)’, who have an innate dignity and—whether they know it or not—a sense of humour. This helps them to view the world as a good place to be, in spite of setbacks and disappointments. Let us hope that all of us, no matter where we live and no matter how difficult our circumstances, have our own great expectations. And that with any luck, they will be realized in the course of the first decade of this new millennium.

Here at Nuffic-CIRAN, we have our own great expectations—for the new Indigenous Knowledge Information System, for example. You can read about it on the inside front cover, in the new Focus. And of course great expectations are also to be found in the other pages of the issue of the Monitor before you. There are three articles: Hilde van Vlaenderen examines the problem-solving solutions used by young people in South Africa. Understanding a problem and devising your own solution is the first step towards true independence (see article).

The article by E.U.U. Ituen and I.V.O. Modo also has to do with a problematical situation, but at the same time it points the way to great expectations, too. The authors examine which of the various methods of palm oil production are the easiest or most efficient under the given circumstances (see article).

The third article takes us to India. Authors Parvathi, Chandrakandan and Karthikeyan map women’s knowledge and experience in the area of post-harvest operations. They focus on the search for more efficient methods of preparing the dryland produce for storage, and the need to key the improvements to the ‘great expectations’ of the poor farmers who eke out a living on these lands (see article).

The other features and communications in this issue contain news on the theory and practice of harnessing indigenous knowledge to sustainable development. At the end you will find a remarkable example of IK in practice. And not only practice, but policy as well! Guest columnist Dr Z.E. Nyiira relates how delegates from various Ugandan organizations joined in a workshop last December in Kampala. Their aim was to formulate a national strategy—and a framework for practical action—designed to place IK in the service of the search for sustainable development (see article).

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