The plan we arrived with was tidy. The plan the women drew, sitting in the shade of a mango tree, was better. They knew which grazing survived the dry months, which families could share a herd, and which animals to sell before the market thinned.
So we handed them the plan. Two hundred goats, distributed through the group, with the rule that the first two kids from every animal passed on to another household. The herd was designed to spread, not to sit.
Three dry seasons later, the forecasts we were given have all been wrong, and the herd has not. It has grown, split, and reached families we never registered — because the women kept passing it on.
You brought the goats. But we know this land. Let us decide where they go, and they will not die.
Grace, group leader
Resilience, it turns out, is not something you deliver in a crate. It is what happens when the people who know the land are the ones holding the plan.
