The findings in this paper are based on field research. A case study of a chosen mine in Zimbabwe was done. Previous research on water quality at the mine showed that the mining activities had an effect on the water quality, through both seepage and direct effluent discharge into waterways that reach the dam. No research had been carried out to investigate community knowledge of the impact of mining activities.

Data was collected using structured interviews, group discussions and observations.

Interviews were carried out at the four mine villages whose resources of water are the dam and the addict. Group discussions were done with surrounding farm communities. Although they used borehole water they were close enough to the mine to make a c ontribution. Observations were made by selected school leavers who had a formatted report back method.

From the research findings, it is clear that there is need to develop collaboration between researchers and communities in order to empower the community thus decentralizing concerns on water quality. Also partnership should be developed between mines and researchers to design strategies that reduce the impact of mining activities on water quality.

Water pollution is an increasing issue of concern in Zimbabwe. Increased water pollution has resulted from the nation's desire to meet the agricultural, energy and commercial needs of our growing country. Practitioners and theorist have grappled with ways and means to solve the water pollution problem. One approach which is enjoying vogue is to organize communities to formulate their own strategies to redress the issue through environmental education. This type of study was carried out at a chosen mine in Zimbabwe.

Cap Mine (not the real name) is situated close to Harare in Zimbabwe. This area was chosen because the researcher's previous experience on water quality issue is based on this mine. In addition, there are three different studies that have been carrie d out to assess the impact of mining activities on water quality, in this area, (Zaranyika et. al. 1997). The mine can also be reached easily because it is near Harare i.e. about 30 kilometers away.

In this area, there are a lot of agricultural activities and in the rainy season, agrochemicals can be washed into the river and finally reach the dam. The mine is surrounded by dam settlements where farm workers reside. The mining activities in the area have resulted in the mine dumps. Both seepage from the mine dumps and water from gold processing get into the river and eventually the dam which supplies drinking water to the people. The sewage tanks are sited up hill with respect to the river and dam. Seepage from the sewage may contaminate river and dam water.

The dam supplies water to the mining community and the surrounding farming community. Research has been done to assess the impact of mining and agricultural activities on water quality (Zaranyika et. al. 1997).

It has been found that seepage from the slime dam has a very strong influence on the levels of all the parameters studied in the stream and reservoir.

These studies have facilitated certification of university graduates and have excluded local community participation, yet the community has a wealth of knowledge that has developed slowly through experience, which can be used by researchers. The major ity of this community is illiterate and yet the research findings are communicated in scientific language and at conference venues they cannot access. Research should examine what local people already know and treat them as partners in research (Lengwati 1995), if recommendations are to be applicable to the community.

In this project, interviews were held with people who live on the mine while group discussions were held with people who live in the surrounding farms. Summaries of findings were compiled and discussed. School leavers were used to record signs of pol lution in the area. Their findings were used to determine the feasibility of a participatory water management program.

In Zimbabwe, researchers on the impact of mining activities on water quality liaise with mine authorities before carrying out impact studies. The miners give a brief outline of their practice which help to guide the researchers on possible pollutants to analyze and give appropriate recommendations. The local community is not consulted through out the study. There are low levels of implementation of arising recommendations due to various factors.

Some of the reasons for these low levels of implementation include:

• the dissemination of research findings may not be effective;
• the environmental effects may be long term and may not be treated as urgent;
• the mine authorities may not have readily available technology to check on pollution levels; and
• community awareness to pollution issues maybe too low to initiate action.

Community participation in assessing pollution levels will be pursued as this study emphasizes nonformal adult education.

The challenges of teaching chemical pollution to community members are many. Adult nonformal chemical pollution education does not create job opportunities, in fact, if not carefully addressed, it can lead to closure of mines and industries offering j obs in an attempt by the government to enforce the laws on water pollution control. Nonformal chemical pollution education does not make persons rich and it involves sacrifice in terms of time and effort by all the participants. First, it is taxing for the researcher to discuss chemical pollution with mine communities because they may not understand the required chemical principles. Some researchers also fail to appreciate the importance of sharing research findings with the mine residents. Second, th e mine communities may not have the time needed for them to participate in such a non-income generating activity. As a result of these and other possible reasons, the majority of mine community remain illiterate to environmental concerns (Camozzi 1994), and to water pollution in this particular case.

Communities must be educated on the negative effects of chemical pollution. For example, that continuous pollution of water by mining activities allows accumulation of hazardous chemicals in water and fish (Duddridge 1981)which eventually accumulate i n people through the food chain. There is need to develop a system that effectively enforces the Water Pollution Control Legislation in order to protect people and the environment. Community awareness is one way of establishing such a system, which star ts by developing collaboration between chemists and the community. A common language must be developed that is based on water usage experiences of the community. Such community based descriptors are understood by communities and should be incorporated i n reports directed to them. Such knowledge allows them to be involved in discussions on water quality issues.

Community experience can also be translated into scientific parameters and then used to guide or complement university research findings. Using such descriptors, the communities can also initiate research.

The feasibility of a participatory water management program is investigated in this study. This promotes continuous monitoring of water quality by the local people themselves, without waiting for external researchers. Through such a program, they can initiate research and the implementation of arising recommendations.

The above problems have led to the following research questions:

Many studies have been done on indigenous knowledge and development as will be discussed later. The findings and recommendations may be useful for other projects aimed at incorporating indigenous knowledge in development programs. Some related projec ts will be reviewed.

A study has been done to establish the factors behind the paradox of continued deforestation despite reduced population pressures and intensified forestry extension efforts in Chinyika, Zimbabwe (Hanyani-Mlambo 1995). Some of the methods used included participatory rural appraisals and questionnaire surveys as will be done in this research.

Forestry extension was found to be based on Transfer of Technology (TOT) model, in which recommendations are dispatched from researchers through extensionists to the farmers for implementation. Due to a lack of feedback and consultation in the TOT mod el, indigenous knowledge has not been incorporated into research and extension. This resulted in inappropriate recommendations and low levels of adoption by individual farmers. For example exotic trees have been introduced but they are not compatible wi th the sociocultural life of the local people. Indigenous trees which extensionists say are difficult to propagate are what local people want for use in various traditional ceremonies. The study showed that a successful forestry program could be achieve d if formal and informal knowledge networks are integrated. It is therefore important to integrate the results from chemical analysis and community experience to come up with recommendations that are more acceptable to policy makers.

Participatory action research was (PAR) used in the development of indigenous medicine and its integration within the framework of the scientifically-based health care system (Giarelli 1996). Traditional birth attendants and traditional healers worked together with medicinal personnel to effectively deal with the basic health problems in the area. An understanding of the nature and characteristics of local knowledge contributed to the success of the project. Similar research is being proposed on eth noveterinary medicine (Mathias 1995). The research proposes collaboration of practicing veterinarians, researchers and communities, to promote effective use of ethnoveterinary medicines. Researchers in water quality should also use PAR approaches like t hose in medical field if their recommendations are to be implemented to any significant level.

Local knowledge has successfully been incorporated into development action in northern Pakistan (Langendijk 1994). The project aimed to develop alternatives to existing technologies concerned with water supply and sanitation with special emphasis on p articipatory and sustainable methods of implementation. The research methods consisted of interviews with key people (teachers, village leaders, doctors), group discussions with villagers and observations. Attention was given to views of villagers on ca uses of diarrhea, the concepts of bacteria, water management and community organization. These activities established a partnership between the village communities and the project. The partnership was instrumental in getting activities like latrine cons truction and health education accepted within the community. The presence of multi-disciplinary teams helped to improve the quality of data on indigenous knowledge and to develop appropriate plans. It is hoped that sustainable methods of implementation can be developed by designing localized water quality management programs.

The study of indigenous economies is at the basis of more informed development agendas (Mazzucato 1997). If any sort of development agenda is to be accepted in a given society, there is a need to first gain an understanding of the indigenous economy h ence the need to develop community based water quality descriptors. The study revealed that it was inadequate to analyze aspects of indigenous economies on basis of Western criteria. Indigenous economic systems had to be analyzed through indigenously de fined criteria. The study examined whether economic concepts like benefits, insurance and risk were locally meaningful concepts. The survey questionnaires brought out issues like the way farmers calculated how much they produced by counting the number o f days that they could eat from the harvest. Such data when used by economists produced more socially relevant development plans.

This study is based on participative inquiry approach specifically participatory action research (PAR). PAR utilities the lived experience of people. It aims at producing knowledge and action directly useful to a group of people through research. P AR values the people's knowledge, sharpens their capacity to conduct their own research in their own interests and allows problems to be explored from their perspective (Reason 1994).

A participatory approach empowers the community (Reasan 1994) by improving their understanding of pollution issues as they participate in the problem solving process. The following problem solving approach should be used by research teams composed of scientists and local community members (Camozzi 1994), to instill a sense of ownership of problem in community members which will result in sustainable implementation of recommendations:

• Recognize and define problem;
• Collect and analyze data;
• Design a plan of action;
• Implement the plan; and
• Evaluate the plan of action.

Non-participatory approaches are highly prevalent but are of limited effectiveness (Camozzi 1994). They do not instill a sense of ownership of the problem in the community. The problem remains the scientist's who the community believes should push fo rward the frontiers of knowledge and develop new technologies, in isolation (Hanyani-Mlambo 1995). These methods include radios and press articles which fail to reach the affected communities because of socio-economic reasons, as shown under sample descr iption.

To answer the raised research questions the following methodology was used. The research design was a case study. What can be learned from the case of Cap mine can be generalized and applied to other mine communities (Stake 1994).

A total of 166 interviews were held with the mine residents whose population is 500. Such a large number assisted to get those descriptors commonly used by communities as future plans require use of these. The majority of them were women (80%). The major reason for this was that most men go out to work during the day. Also women were more informative than men because most questions were on water usage in homes. Most persons interviewed (72%) had lived elsewhere and gave responses in comparison to places they had lived before. Such participants gave comparative information on water quality. The population involved in the research was young, 70% being between 15 and 35 years old. 25% of the population never went to school, 27% had primary educat ion 31% secondary education and 17% tertiary education. The rest of the descriptive data is as given in the table 4. There are four villages at the mine and they all participated. Residents in village 1 had the addict as their water supply while reside nts in villages 2, 3, 4, used dam water.

Two group discussions were held with participants from the farm compounds. About fifteen people constituted each group. Farm A had more female participants than males while Farm B had almost an equal number of males and females. Residents in Farm A entirely used borehole water while residents in Farm B used both dam water and borehole water. By estimation the age range of the participants was between 35 and 40 years old. Informal discussions indicated that the majority had not attended school at a ll.

Two boys and one girl participated as village researchers. They were all 18 years old and had 5 'O' Levels, to enable them to record their observations in notebooks.

Three different approaches were used in the study, structured interviews, group discussions and observations.

Structured interviews had sections on participant's details and general water quality parameters. It also had sections on experience of water usage in cooking, laundry, bathing, gardening and health. The respondents were chosen by convenience samplin g because women were more informative than men, in the presence of local health workers who broke the "culture of silence" in the villages. The responses were recorded by the researchers.

Group discussions were used to obtain information from the farm community. Questions taken from the questionnaire were used to introduce discussion to the group. The group method was used because the workers were released by the employers at the same time for a limited amount of time. All the four farms close to the mine were supposed to participate but permission was obtained from only two farmers. Farm A relatively far from the mine was used as a control. Farm B is very close to the mine and the farm workers live very close to the dam. The discussions were directed towards getting the same information as that obtained from structured interviews and lasted for about one hour each.

Local school leavers were trained briefly then participated in the research by recording observations on general water resources utilization in the area and vegetation, as distance from the point sourced increased. Their note books were collected afte r ten days due to limited project time.

Data collected was analyzed and recorded in Tables 1, 2, and 3.

The communities described their water usage experiences that were recorded under color, taste, smell, cooking, laundry, bathing, gardening and health (Table 1). These responses given were obtained from structured interviews and group discussions. The causes of water pollution and possible solutions to pollution problems were also extracted from the interviews and group discussions (Table 2, 3). The observations recorded in notebooks were studied to obtain significant data on water quality issues in order to determine community participation in monitoring water quality.

The community related their experiences on water usage in the area. The summaries for each section are given in Table 1. These results show that the community has a way of describing water quality which may indicate water pollution. The community mem bers gave water quality descriptors some of which could be explained by chemical water quality analysis. Analysis of data recorded by villagers showed that they could meaningfully participate in monitoring of water quality.

The color of the water was described as reddish especially during the rain season or soon after water tanks were cleaned. The dam water was described as greenish throughout the year.

The taste of the water was described using various words and phrases as given in the table. Some of the residents said the water was very bitter when the dam was drying up may be due to concentration by evaporation.

The smell of the water was described as normal by some residents while others said it smelled like medicines e.g. chloroquine or like stale food.

Cooking related experiences were mainly given by women and are as given in the table.

During laundry, large amounts of soap had to be used by most people. Terms like clots and hardening were used to describe the water that had been used for laundry. The rest of the descriptors are given in the table.

For those who had gardens, they reported that while precipitates remained on the soil after watering. The garden soil was different from the soil outside the garden. There is no significant effect on vegetables as responses were highly varied and dependent on individual practice but residents in Farm A reported occurrence of stomach aches in their area after eating rape from mine vendors.

The questions under health were not answered by most participants. Stomach aches was the most common response given. Given the complexity of factors causing illness, further detailed and focused research would be required before any conclusions are made.

Most participants believed that the effluent from the mine was causing most of their water problems. Responses like 'cyanide' from mine was causing water to be 'hard' were common although on further probing the participants did not give the scientific definition of 'cyanide' and 'hard water'.

Some participants believed that there was nothing they could do to solve their water problems since they depended on the mine for a living. But some suggested rechannelling effluent from mine to other places not their dam. Some suggested more efficie nt water purification systems at the mine considering the amounts of pollutants that had to be removed.

The feasibility of community participation in water quality management was investigated using school leavers. Useful information was obtained from the youth's note books. For example, that fish in the dam died towards winter. Gold panners used dam w ater to wash their samples. Mist was produced close to the settling pond each time there was release of effluent from the mine. Some of the information was similar to that obtained from interviews and group discussions.

This study shows that community based experiences can be used to complement university research. For example, deposits in cooking pots, precipitates in water after laundry and white deposits on dry black clothes confirms high hardness levels that have been found (Zaranyika et. al. 1997). Other complementarities can also be drawn.

Community experience can also direct laboratory research. Some of the descriptors given by the community require further chemical analysis in the laboratory to get the relationship between chemical parameters and community experience. For example, he avy or bitter taste of water and grime getting attached to the skin when using the water for bathing.

In some cases, conclusive relationship can only be drawn after further tests. For example milk precipitates in tea probable because of acidic pH values. However actual measurements would confirm the cause.

The participatory water quality management program raised issues that interviews and group discussions did not raise. It is not easy for people to discuss the activities of the gold panners in the area especially with reference to use of dam water bec ause most gold panning activities are illegal. Such information can be used to explain unusually high heavy metal levels in the dam water, besides pollution from mine.

This research indicates that it is possible for scientists and community members to collaboratively work together in water quality issues. The research has shown that the community members have useful information relating to water quality. It has als o shown that common indices can be established to increase communication levels between scientists and the community. The pilot study on feasibility of participatory water management program showed that the community is capable of generating data that ca n either compliment university findings or direct laboratory work.

Document analysis of water quality research at the mine (Zaranyika et. al. 1997) should be done in light of the descriptors given by the community members. This will explain the community experiences using chemical parameters. However, in some cases, conclusive relationships cannot be drawn and further confirmatory tests will be required. New investigations would be designed to explain all the outstanding descriptors. The integrated report arising from such a study would be presented to the mining authorities.

Participatory water quality management programs given more time and training can generate useful data because in a short time and with little training the youths managed to raise important issues e.g. activities of gold panners that can compliment univ ersity findings or direct research. Such collaboration helps to empower the community and help decentralize concerns about water quality issues.

Mathias, E. (1995). How Can Ehnoveterinary Medicine Be Used in Field Projects? Indigenous Knowledge and Development Unit. Vol.4. Issue 2.

Muzzucato, V. (1992) Indigenous Economies Bridging the Gap Between Economics and Anthropology. Indigenous Knowledge and Development Unit. Vol 5 Issue 1.

2. Marital Status:

3. Status of Respondent: (i) Occupation:

(ii) Age:

(iii)Gender:

(iv) School:

4. Is this your home area?

5. Have you always lived here?

Where else have you lived?

Was this rural or urban?

Where is your home area?

Is this a rural or urban area?

6. What source of water do you have?

7. How many families use the water source?

8. Number of family members benefitting from this source:

9. List the uses of water at home:

10. List the uses of water at work:

Taste/Color/Smell

1. Does the water have any characteristic color?

If so, describe the color:

2. Does it have any taste?

If so, describe the taste:

3. After boiling do you ever notice any deposits on the base of the boiling tin or pot?

Could you describe the appearance:

1. How many people do you wash clothes for in your family:

2. How often do you wash clothes per month:

3. What do you use for laundry in erms of soap/surf:

4. How many bars of soap do you use per wash:

5. How much surf do you use per wash:

6.(a). Does the soap or surf you use produce enough foam for washing the clothes:

(b). If not enough, what do you assume to be the reason for the nonfoaming of the soap?

7. What efforts have you made to improve foaming of soap:

8. When clothes are dry do you notice any change in their appearance?

Describe the change:

9. After washing clothes, what observations do you see in the water you used for the washing:

1. What do you use for bathing:

2. How long do you take with one tablet of soap:

3. Does the soap produce enough foam for bathing:

4. What efforts have you made to improve foaming of soap:

5. (a). Does the water have any effect on the skin:

(b). Does the water have any effect on the eyes:

1. Do you own a garden:

2. On watering the plants, do you observe anything after watering, especially when the soil has dried:

3. Does the water affect the plants in any way:

1. What diseases are common in babies in this area:

2. (a). Do you have a problem involving the gut, e.g. diarrhea?

(b). Does this occur seasonally:

3. What surrounding factors could be causing these diseases?