Belmundo Festival

“Waynaabe” shows the life of nomadic Wodaabe livestock keepers through the eyes of the young mother Mooro. Her unmarried niece Mariama explains the worso, a ceremonial gathering of their clan in Akadaney. The film highlights how the Wodaabe value their cattle and deal with the challenges of gaining a livelihood in the drylands of Niger. It was commissioned by Vétérinaires Sans Frontières (VSF) Belgium to show the setting of their work on animal health.

This video on their struggles for land rights was made by six community members from five Maasai clans in northern Tanzania during a training by InsightShare in participatory video (PV). In 1992, a hunting company from the United Arab Emirates occupied 1500 sq. km of village land in Loliondo to set up a private game reserve beside the Serengeti National Park. Since then, Maasai have been denied access to vital pasture and waterpoints for their herds. The people suffered mass eviction from their villages within the disputed land. The PV training strengthened the Maasai’s own advocacy to resist landgrabbing by foreign investors.

The Karamojong are herdsmen in the North-East of Uganda and guardians of their landscape. This film illustrates how the Karamojong herdsmen make productive use of the highly variable landscape, turning even the driest plant fibers into meat and milk, whilst simultaneously dealing with frequent animal disease outbreaks and intertribal conflicts in the region.

This film was produced in collaboration with a CELEP partner, DADO (Dodoth Agro-pastoral Development Organization). It is part of a documentary series ‘Herders – Guardians of the Earth’.