When all the crops of farmers in a rural community suddenly dry up at the stage of sprouting, meaning that, the entire season is lost, when the cows on which the entire family of a Mbororo herdsman depends for survival begin to become thinner, and thinner, skeletal and start dying one by one for there is little or no pastures, and when both the cattle herdsman and the farmer are all helpless in the face of the mishap, the situation becomes really dramatic and deeply traumatizing for the victims of climate change impacts. This situation is fast becoming a living reality in the North West Region, (NWR) of Cameroon. It was for this reason that, in 2015 Change Communications designed: Climate on Air Project and obtained funding for its implementation from INTERNEWS-Earth Journalism Network (EJN) based in Washington DC, USA.

Twenty community radio journalists drawn from effects 10 stations in the Region were trained on the basic concepts of climate change, and on basic techniques of reporting it. At the end of their training which held in Bamenda in March 2016, they were expected to produce carefully tailored programs and professionally sound news reports on climate change issues in their respective localities. Although the actual production and broadcast has gone on only for slightly over three months, there is evidence that, the project was indeed necessary as village listeners are indicating that, the information and messages contained in the programs produced so far are timely and useful for them.

Today, the villagers acknowledge that, “we listen to more programs on radio on why places are so hot today, why water is drying up everywhere, no grass for cows, and why we can no longer know when rains will fall. Last year, the people of Sop, (neighboring village) performed lots of sacrifices to the ancestors so that rains will come in time. But nothing. Rains still came very late. The rains even fall in a funny way. They fall and stop. Fall again and stop even for weeks. And when the rains fall, places are still hot and the ground dries up very quickly. Our crops are not as healthy as they used to be when the rains behave in this way. So they [the journalists] have explained that, it is not our ancestors who are causing this terrible problem”, a village listener explained.The ancestors are NOT THEREFORE TO BLAME. And this is the central achievement of this project so far which is that of creating awareness, providing more information and knowledge on the phenomenon of climate change so that, the village people can change beliefs and practices which cannot help them cope with the changing climate for their own individual and collective survival.

Another villager adds: They [journalists] “are telling us what to do and what not to do on our farms as things [climate] keep changing today. In one program one man (guest on the program)told us that, when rains come, we should not just rush to plant our crops. We can plant only when we deep our middle finger, [long finger] into the soil in 5 different spots on our farm and notice that our finger is wet and soil is sticking to it when we remove it. If we deep our finger and remove it and discover that it is still dry with no soil hanging to our finger, then, it is not yet time for us to plant.”

Some Mbororo cattle herdsmen confessed that, “we did not know that, Guatemala grass is good pasture. That grass does not get dry in the dry season. And they (radio journalists and their guests) say, when cows eat that grass, they produce much milk. So as from the next season, we are going to plant our own Guatemala. It means that, that grass is good grass you know”, confessed one Mbororo man, with a smile on his lips.