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Uganda, it attracted great interest. Before joining the Barbets Duet, Ugandan farmers had taughtAfrican methods at Woodland Valley Farm after Chris Jones converted farm buildings intoaccommodation for school groups and others interested in ecology and organic farming. Oby and HildaObyerodhyambo are now thinking of ways to adopt his ideas.Introducing African Ideas in the WestThere has been routine documentation of what is being done and agreed. This has been posted on theweb for wider dissemination, creating an archive of the learning experience behind the Barbets Duet(Heinzen, B. n.d.) There has also been an on-going effort to “make our thinking familiar” as MagodeIkuya put it. Much of this has taken place in individual meetings or talks given to various groups. Thesetalks have often served to introduce African ideas into western societies, with Mosaic v Column Rightsresonating quickly and provocatively with many audiences. While African partners are used to adaptingto the unpredictable events, the metaphor of “feeling for stones” has been especially useful in Westernsocieties more accustomed to ‘command and control’ management, often divorced from the logics of thenatural world.Utu Net BenefitsDuring their meeting in August 2010, the partners used the phrase “Utu Net benefits” to describe thewider value of their work to their immediate neighbours and the local environment. 1 The water dams atLukenya and Seme are used by local people and not just the owners of the land. In Molo, Uganda thereare plans for restoring riparian vegetation. As fences are too costly, clan agreements will protectreforested communal land and decide its uses. At Mlingotini, Tanzania earlier conflicts have beenreduced as fishermen now appreciate the value of seaweed cover for spawning new populations of fish.Lukenya offered the best example of Utu Net benefits when the first dam for harvesting water failed.When Sammy reported this to his partners, his dismay was clear to all. “I sat there. It had just rained.It was big, it was dug humanly ... and then it rains and I lose all the water. … the guy … comes to showme where it ends up. So that place is green in the middle of nowhere.”Oby looked at the leak from another point of view: “It is a wonderful metaphor for the communalthing, because nature will conspire to redistribute resources. The man knows the source and he isgrateful that he now has a wetland.” There was another result. Noticing a better dam site on hisneighbour’s land, already in use by local people, Sammy arranged to improve the dam, but shared thecosts and benefits with his neighbours, creating a new mosaic rights agreement in the process.1Utu Net comes from the SID Tanzania exercise. “We could be described as a network of connections andrelationships, of rights and obligations to each other: within our families, ethnic groups, beliefs, neighbourhoodsand at work. These relationships of interdependence might be called our ‘utu’. … We are also a people with a strongconnection to the land and its life – plants, animals, fish, and birds. With more than two-thirds of us still living onthe land, our net also includes this wider world that supports us.” (Society for International Development, 2003).103