Sam Bueno de Mesquita, ActionAid web editor

On our way out of the village today, we picked up the village teacher and his two children. They needed medical care, and the nearest clinic was on hour's drive down the road to the capital city. This was yet another broken promise - in exchange for their land, they had been offered a clinic in near the village, which would mean that children could get medical attention when they needed it, instead of having to wait for a someone to be passing through who could help.

The land was taken years ago. There is no sign of the clinic.

Sam Bueno de Mesquita, ActionAid Web Editor

It's been strange to be out here in East Africa while back home the rest of ActionAid have been working flat out on the East Africa food crisis. But this story of a village is part and parcel of the reason that these tragedies have become ever more common.

There have been no failed harvests here in the last few years, but every mother we have talked to here has been struggling to feed her family. Their land is now being used to grow crops for export to Europe.

And, although some this particular country has not made the British news as a part of the food crisis, the front cover of a main English-language newspaper yesterday read 'looming hunger'.

In a place that is vulnerable to hunger, growing crops for export is a dangerous thing in the first place. To take the land and not pay compensation adds insult to injury. This story of a village is going to lead to a major campaign in the UK.

If you have donated to the food crisis appeal, thank you. If you want to stop the crisis spreading round the world, watch this space, and follow #landgrabs on Twitter.

Sign up to campaign with ActonAid, and in a couple of months time we'll tell you what you can do to help build a world free from hunger.

Sam Bueno de Mesquita, ActionAid web editor

When they made the agreement to sell their land the company, the villagers were promised new water holes, 86 metres deep, so that they would have water even in dry season. So far, 5 years on, the most impressive excavation the company have done is a 10 metre-deep hole that looks like this:

(That's my hand holding a pen in the picture, just to show you the scale).

Three of the village's waterholes are in the land that has been grabbed by a European company. The villagers told us that the distance to the only waterholes they can now use in the dry season is OK if you have a bicycle but a problem if you don't – this turned out to be a massive understatement of the problem.

On our way out of the villages today we used the milometer on the jeep to measure the distance to the waterholes. It's 4 miles, own a steep, rutted dirt track. If you have a bicycle, that's a quick journey down, but the way back, with 40 kilos of water on your bicycle, up a steep hill is unimaginable. For the people who don't have a bicycle, it's a 4 hour round trip, half of it carrying two huge containers of water.

It is easy to understand why the village jumped at any deal that would get them access to fresh water all the year round. It is impossible to understand how a big European company feels that it is OK to make that promise and then not keep it.

Sam Bueno de Mesquita, ActionAid web editor

Our jeep has broken down on the way to film the plantation, so we're stuck by a dusty road, 2 hours out of the capital city. As always, when you chat with people here, the conversation has turned to food prices: a pack of sugar has gone from 800 schillings to 2000 (about 80 pence) in the last few months, and other staples have risen just as much.

This is the global food price crisis – and the reason why land-grabs are both so serious and so common. In Europe where many people spend less than a tenth of their incomes on food, ordinary families are feeling the pinch. Up in the villages here in East Africa, where they often spend 80 or 90 per cent of their income on feeding their families, it is a terrifying problem.

When they gave a 99 year lease on their common land to a European agriculture company, the villagers believed that the it might save them, giving them the cash and work they needed to free themselves from poverty.

Instead, they have found only broken promises.

Sam Bueno de Mesquita, ActionAid web editor

We learnt a new word today: 'Hakuna'. It means 'there is none', and it is the answer that the villagers give when asked about any of the promises that were made to them by the agro-giant that has taken most of their common land.

Where are the schools they said they would build? 'Hakuna'. Where are the wells they said they would dig? 'Hakuna'. What happened to the compensation they saiff they would pay? 'Hakuna'. The medical centre? 'Hakuna'.

What happened when the company actually did do something was even worse in a way. They promised not to touch the places where the villagers buried their families. Tis was a promise they kept to the letter of – but not rthe spirit. The graves remain unplanted, but since they are surrounded by land that the villagers are no longer allowed onto, they can no longer visit their relaytive's final restin g places.

The common land was the heart of the village's prosperity. It was where their children played, where they collected herbal medicines, where they cut timber for the wooden frames of their homes. Most importantly, it provided them with an income beyond what they earned from growing cassava. The hard woods from the forest were made into traditional handicrafts, the mushrooms that grew there could be sold by the roadside, and as a last resort, when the cassava crop failed due to disease or drought, collecting and selling timber would provide them with just enough to get by.

They sold the land because they were promised the schools, wells, and money that they needed to build a better future for their children. Instead, what they got was 'hakuna'.

Sam Bueno de Mesquita, ActionAid web editor

The global land-grab is an extraordinary phenomenon. An estimated 4.4 trillion dollars has been spent by rich country governments and multinationals on buying farmland in poor countries. Sometimes, it's a fair investment, providing good jobs to local people. More often there are broken promises, ruined lives and outright bribery involved in pushing poor farmers off their land to grow crops that will be sold to rich foreigners.

We wanted to know what that meant for real families living with the threat of losing their livelihoods. Over the next few months, we'll be reporting from a village in East Africa that has lost a huge chunk of its land to a big European company, and is desperately fighting to preserve the rest.

We can't tell you the name of the village r the company yet  - hence the title of this post. We need to check that villagers won't be at risk of reprisals from the company that now controls so much land in the area.

But I'll be sending blogs, videos and tweets from the ground over the next few days as a first introduction to the village that lost its land. If you have any questions, drop them in the comments below and (internet connection allowing), I'll try and answer them. You can also Tweet me @buenosam.