2009-2010 Michael B. Keegan Traveling Fellowship

Inconspicuous Intended Outcomes

2011-03-30T21:15:00.000-07:00

So it’s my last post.* I won’t go into the obvious stuff like the culture shock (airport bathrooms in D.C. with auto water, soap, and towel…needless to say running water!), or even how blessed I feel to be from this great country of ours. And I’m not even going to talk about poverty.

That’s because poverty is not what this fellowship was about. It never was intended to be, but I didn’t know that at the beginning. Thinking back to Bangladesh, I can recall sitting in one of the few modern cafés of Dhaka, racking my brain over tea after tea, trying to figure out what I was going to produce from this fellowship. What tangible thing was going to be the outcome? Along the way I would explain to expats what I was doing, and of course, one of their first questions would be, “So what do you have to do? Is this for a degree? Do you have to write a report?” When I told them, no, I only had to blog, they didn’t get it. Their next question was, “No, I mean, don’t you have turn something in?”

Even though I knew I didn’t have to create anything, I still, for some reason, felt I did.

And so, I sat in Dhaka, thinking that if I was going to do something, it needed to be comparative and a consistent theme, and so it needed to start here, country number one. Would it be a book? A photo journal? What would be the angle? Mega slums? Social enterprise? Big aid? The fellowship proposal I had written seemed like a guideline enough when I composed it, but now that I was actually carrying it out on the ground, it became more of a tenuous concept than a clear roadmap. Time was running out – I had to leave Bangladesh soon.

I was consumed with self-doubt. I really couldn’t think of anything – I was interested in all the areas of poverty and all the areas of development. Since I knew I wouldn’t be able to cover it comprehensively, I couldn’t tie it together. Here I was, I felt, with this golden opportunity that so many people would kill to have, and it looked like, if I didn’t act soon, I was just going to wing it.

And that’s pretty much what I did.

I tried to set things up along the way in terms of volunteering or some sort of network in each country of which I could be a part, but these plans really had no consistent theme except it was all stuff I was just really interested in. Often, such as in South Africa, I would just hitchhike around a country doing outdoors activities or, like in Zimbabwe, I’d just walk up to the border and see if I could get across to talk to people and see what was going on with the farmer situation.

This is when I started to think. Smashed between sweating Malawians in the back of a minibus that never seemed to move. Speeding through rice fields in southern China on a mountain bike under clear blue skies. Spending New Year’s Eve alone in northern Mozambique, knowing really no one in the city. Though not all of these were the most pleasant experiences, they are some of my fondest memories.

It was during times like these that I really started to understand myself and how I see the world, as cliché as it sounds. My thoughts rather exploded – I had scraps of paper with ideas to explore and write about a later date when I was not traveling. Even now, back home and not completely back in the mix, my corkboard has become a holding pen for notes bearing one random thought or another.

All throughout college, and my life in fact, I’d been producing, pushing, trying to get to the next level. College entrance. Scholarship applications. Getting internships. Admission to societies. Meeting after meeting. Rinse and repeat.

But I never really stopped to think about what it all meant, or how I fit into the bigger picture. Of course, much of this was self imposed, but I’d wager to say that many people, especially those at top-20 colleges, have had similar experiences at some point. A lot of this, I think, has to do with the way the system is set up: to value lines on a resume much more than creative thought.

When I got back Stateside, I was able to catch up with the other Keegan Fellow from my year, Kathryn Moreadith. It was shocking how similar our reflections were. Talking over Skype, the essence of our conversation was as if we were both saying, at the same time, “Can you believe what just happened?! It never was supposed to be about the project!” The creeping feeling of failure that I felt, even after I was back, was something she could understand. But now, having had time to reflect, that feeling of failure is gone. I realize I’ve succeeded in ways valuable beyond measure.

*I will technically post a few more of my thoughts from the trip on my main fellowship site. In fact, I’ve already published one about Chinese social enterprise, a piece I was working on while abroad but never published. Go here to see this first piece.

In-Flight Entertainment

2011-03-28T21:51:00.000-07:00

Exhausted, 10 pounds lighter, and wearing a tan that almost had people mistaking me for a Liberian, I sat between two massive engines laboring for the Boeing 767 that was carrying me across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States.

As I sat there, almost two days after I had left the village, I was still running through everything that had happened in the last two weeks.

There were certain events that simply showed the amazing obstacles these people confront too often: for example, watching (and shortly after joining) Game pick up rice that spilled on the ground, grain by grain in the dirt, or when I went with Esther to see her home, slogging 20 minutes through thick mud and water over my knees. She goes through this every night, except she carries Ma-Mary on her back and pots on her head.

And the end was typical enough – they were sad to see me go, I was sad to go, I promised to come back. Some of them gave me gifts, which was really uncomfortable considering how much they had already given me.

But beyond this one of the real takeaways of the two weeks was seeing how people handle poverty across the spectrum.

During my trip, I’ve come to poverty largely in terms of opportunity. Under this definition, a villager with a small house, little money, but a technical degree and many friends in government agencies or formal companies would probably be less impoverished than a villager with lots of money, a big farm, but no schooling or outside contacts.

So, how do you get opportunity?

If we’re talking about the impoverished, you either WAIT for opportunity to come to you, or you SEARCH for it. Examples could be working extra jobs for tuition and being accepted to college (searching) or waiting for the country/economy to structurally improve and bring your standard of living with it (waiting). My arrival to the village was, in a sense, a convenient proxy for an opportunity.

Then, the question becomes: what do you do with it once you get it?

You either CREATE more opportunities for yourself and/or others, or you CONSUME it. For example, do you just milk the NGO that’s come to your village for all it’s worth, or do you try to capitalize on the program offered and/or the Western connections?

On the plane ride home from Monrovia, I sketched a diagram out, which I later altered a bit with the help of my cousin, a sociology professor. First off, I’ll admit it’s not the most simple and sexy diagram. I’m not a theorist. More technically speaking, a couple notes:

1) The pyramid is not indicative of ranking but rather of quantity (like the food pyramid). The middle “?” indicates that not all “Searchers” will be “Creators” and vice-versa.

2) The wave indicates that a person’s status as a “Searcher” or “Waiter” is not static, and is influenced by various things throughout their life like cumulative capital (financial, social, human, etc.) and dependencies (career, family, etc.). Perhaps I’m more of a searcher now, but check back when I’m married and have kids and see how willing I am to take big chances.

OPPORTUNITY DISCOVERY AND ACTION BY THE POOR

The reason I started thinking of it in these terms is because this is exactly what I saw in the village. On one hand, Togbah was comfortable to use me like a pocketbook throughout my entire stay. Conversely, Amos never asked me for money or for me to buy anything for him. He’s not content to wait and wants to create businesses that will have impacts far beyond himself. He’s already started saving, but I’ve offered to partially fund one of his businesses, which we’re discussing now.

James and Goma fall somewhere in between. They really valued me as a friend, I believe, and wanted to convert this friendship into support for themselves and for their children’s college. They’re a bit harder to characterize because I saw varying tendencies.

So what’s the point?

I think this has a lot of indications for development organizations/businesses and where they intervene. One school of thought is that if you have a limited number of aid dollars, to get the largest social return per dollar, spend the money on high potential villagers (creative searchers) and let them be examples to the others.

However, perhaps these people will be creative on their own, and maybe the people you really need focus on are people like James and Goma, who risk becoming a complacent waiter/consumer.

And this doesn’t mean that waiting consumers can be ignored – certain Bottom of the Pyramid approaches and business ideas, such as launching a product, really needs to pay attention to these consumers and what they want.

It’s not a perfect model, but thinking back to people like Josue in Mozambique, Sihphiwe in Soweto, and Anis in Bangladesh, it creates an interesting lens through which I can see how people handle poverty.

DIY Infrastructure

2011-03-24T21:29:00.000-07:00

In my small hometown, in terms of infrastructure and specifically roads, city officials often consider things like whether to repave a road, install a roundabout in place of a stoplight, or alter speed limits. Rural Liberians in Bong County were faced with a similar dilemma on a slightly larger scale: their government, out of lack of will or capacity, had failed to provide a road connecting their villages to the city. I talked with Amos Mulbah, one of the villagers (not the Amos previously mentioned) who explained the problem was that pregnant women had to endure many pains over the footpaths that made villages accessible only by foot or motorcycle. Yea, I think a road connecting my home to modern civilization is probably pretty important, too.

Villagers are taking matters into their own hands. When I first heard them talk about this, I envisioned them uprooting stumps or something of the like to make it more passable. Instead, they are essentially hacking through the forest to build their own road from scratch. Follow the road far enough from Kpellemue as I did one Friday, and you will run into about 25 people, five or so of whom have axes and are chopping away at trees, while the rest are destumping, clearing, and smoothing the road. A group of women come out to provide food for the workers.

They’d been at it since January 2010, and when I talked to them in November they estimated they would be able to finish the last two miles by last month, February 2011. They let me take a few swings of the axe, and it became pretty obvious why it was going to take them over a year (I didn’t get an estimate on the distance).

The effort was started in Gbanga, the county capital, and most villagers worked as much as they could until the road reached their village, meaning there were many more working early on. There was no formal structure in place, and I even had trouble identifying who was in charge – it was as if everyone rolled up their collective sleeves and said, “Well, we’re not going to wait any longer”. Every Friday, people would take off time from their farm or job to work on the public road, and even a few like Amos Dolo (the aforementioned entrepreneur) have continued to help after the road passed their villages.

Similarly, at Amos Dolo’s school, he showed me another problem. The national government mandated a cap of 35 students per class, but failed to provide the funding necessary for additional buildings. Whoops. Though school officials have voiced their concerns to government, the PTA decided they were going to do something about it themselves. Subsequently, they have been going out to find “contracts” – essentially agreements with people who need brushing done, need fields harvested, or have other labor-intensive jobs in need of completion.

He showed me the extension, which only needs funding for the zinc roof before completion. In the meantime, they’re using a one room church and have divided it into thirds with tarps and stand-up dividers. Technically they’re separate rooms, but when I tried giving a short lesson, it was a bit distracting, to say the least.

They expect their government to provide the infrastructure and social services – that they were vocal about. But given these examples of collective initiative, it seems they understand the nation has just emerged from years of war and recovery will be slow. In the meantime, they can help too.

While I won’t compare apples with oranges – Liberia and the US are in two completely different development situations – it is tempting to envy this combination of urgency and will. Writing this from back in the US, where years of spending beyond our means and gridlock on issues such as healthcare and social security have produced one of the most pressing situations in recent history, it sure seems we have the former but not the latter.

Amos' Vision

2011-03-22T21:13:00.000-07:00

Walking the main path through Boi Town and Kpellemue during the early morning hours and dusk hours is like going to a small town grocery store just after 5 p.m. It’s hard for me to get very far before running into someone. One day I stopped to talk with middle-aged man caring a bundle of sticks on his head. He let me try it out. The load must have weighed over 50 pounds, as I could barely make it up the hill. Somewhat amused, he took it off my hands and continued on his hour-long trek.

On several occasions I also ran into Joseph, a young man about my age walking village to village to sell medicines in order to save money for college. On average he estimates that he walks about five hours a day.

Then there’s Jacob. A friend of mine who’s often around the farm, I asked him to charge my phone. The village is off the grid, so he had to go in town. The transport to get there and back, at 40 Liberian dollars, was almost the same cost of actually the phone. Assuming you walk, that’s a half day of work you’ve missed.

I met many shopkeepers in the village, such as Niepoo, who kept me satiated with the delicious, peanut buttery Liberian snack, kanyah. Others sold small consumable items like matches and cigarettes. But I only met one entrepreneur (or maybe more accurately, one entrepreneurial family). This was Amos, who I’ve previously mentioned briefly.

Amos is an elementary teacher at a nearby school that I took a half day to visit, and almost every afternoon you can find him on his porch, in his dusty Florida Marlins hat and running shorts, working on tomorrow’s lesson plan. He’s one of the few people in the village with a concrete home and one of even fewer who have completed high school. His responses to questions can be slightly curt, but at the same time he’s a bit of a jokester. In his spare time he works on his rubber and rice farms, and recently has been vaccinating children in the village for polio on behalf of the World Health Organization. His wife, Framadah, runs the only “restaurant” in town, and is a local to Kpellemue (Amos is from out of town). Amos explained that she didn’t get very far in school – he tried to teach her the ABC’s and she only got to K – but she’s quite the shrewd businesswoman.

Amos is even more enterprising. After I got to know him a bit better, he told me about some of his past failures with fish farming, but also how he has other plans. Particularly nagging him is an idea to bring electricity to the village. He wants to save enough money to buy a small generator to charge cell phones, which are growing in number in Kpellemue and surrounding villages (no nearby villages have electricity either). He would use Framadah’s restaurant as an anchor point. He envisions the restaurant extending service to dinner time, when the generator could be used to power a TV and VCR to screen football matches and movies. During the screenings for which he would charge admission, he could charge phones and serve meals, coffee and tea.

He’s thinking bigger, too. His next idea after that is to start a rubber purchasing/consolidation depot. Currently, most villagers individually take their rubber into town and sell it to the traders in the market, getting middleman prices. His plan is to buy up any rubber in the village at the going rate that traders are offering and take it in aggregate, to save on transport costs, directly to Firestone, the multinational company. The villagers would benefit because they wouldn’t have the added transport costs, and his transport costs would be covered by the higher margins at Firestone.

He went on and on like this in priority order – next it was poultry farming, then pineapple. As with anything entrepreneurial and especially agricultural, there’s an enormous amount of risk. Exhibit A is his fish farm, which crashed when the region was hit by a drought. But still, I can see the opportunity: I bought a pineapple in the village for the equivalent of 35 cents, while I saw the same pineapple in the city a week later for around $2.50.

And it seems like he’s not the only one of the family. His brother-in-law Anthony is planning to start a pharmacy, giving the aforementioned Joseph a run for his money. I can only hope that Amos and others like him hang around and hang onto these visions. He’s one of few who are really leading by example.

Where’s the Corn?: Thoughts on Idea Spread in Liberia and Beyond

2011-03-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

Staying on the topic of rice, as I swished through the rice fields day after day, I started to wonder: Where is all the corn? In Southern Africa, corn is everywhere – everyone eats it as a thick porridge, and as a result grinding mills are ubiquitous. Maize is present in Liberia, but it’s much less available than rice is in Southern Africa. It’s not the case that corn can’t grow in Liberia (see chart...no data available for Liberia). It seems, rather that Liberians haven’t developed a culture of consuming it as a meal. Something happened – and I’m not sure what – but the idea of rice as the country’s staple food above corn spread long ago and has cemented itself.

What’s interesting to me here is how ideas and customs spread or don’t spread, and what this means for a diversified, and thus more stable, economy (and more diversified diets in this case!). Something as culturally distinct from traditional African customs as spaghetti – which I loved to eat at the many roadside stands – has taken off in West Africa and specifically Liberia. In contrast, corn is still relegated mostly to a grilled, midday snack.

So why didn’t corn establish itself originally in Liberia and why has it still not?

On one of my days off from harvesting, I was chatting with Cooper, a teacher at a nearby school. We talked about idea spread in Liberia. Cooper thinks that part of the corn absence might have to do with the fact that no one has taken up corn on the processing side. Currently, there are few grinding mills for corn, and almost as few people know about them. He told me a story of an entrepreneur who had brought a pineapple processing business for juice near to his home, which created a huge jump in pineapple production. People need to see that you’ve built a factory, and they want someone before them to test the waters.

He continued, “We only know two ways to cook cassava [another staple food] – boil it and pound it.” No one had hit upon the idea of grinding the root and then frying to serve as a topping on foods like they had in Ghana (they do grind it, but don’t fry it). Certainly, you can’t treat Africans as one homogenous group, but many ideas can be and have been transplanted from other neighboring countries.

It’s conversations like these, and observing how certain products spread like wildfire throughout a country but stop immediately at the border – like boat shoes in Cote d’Ivoire – that underscore the huge opportunities for entrepreneurial activity. These open market gaps can be filled. Consider poultry in northern Mozambique, which I worked on in Mozambique with TechnoServe: people are getting into all aspects of the industry – growing, processing, trading – largely because it’s simply an available, profitable option. Along the same lines, NGOs have found “look see” demo plots to be one of the most effective ways to convince farmers to adopt new agricultural practices. In Africa, more than in the West, seeing is believing.

Without digging around for different studies online, just being in Africa I get a sense that there is an almost “if you build it they will come” size of an opportunity. Of course, there are many complications that need to be carefully navigated, such as politics and quality control. If you could do that, and determine WHY certain products hadn’t reached a consumer segment, I’d bet there are many untapped pools of producers to ready to work and customers waiting to be served.

Models for Governance in the Rice Fields of Liberia

2011-03-16T20:37:00.000-07:00

The primary work I came to do at the village – and by “work” I mean that I owned the dead-weight title for the duration of my stay – was rice harvesting. It was harvest time and so much labor was needed.

From a high-level perspective, the way it works is that for every day you work on someone else’s farm, they owe you a day on your farm. So you end up with about 15 or so people, whose farms you’ve already worked on previous days, assembling at your farm on one planned day to knock out most or all the field. It’s much more efficient than going on your own because you have a couple young men collecting the cut rice from behind the line of attack (see last picture), and I can attest there’s strength in numbers. (In this first picture I'm getting ready to haul the rice back to the farm kitchen in typical style - on top of your head with cutlass under your arm.)

The first day was a grand failure, as everyone showed up to Togbah’s farm, but soon after left when they realized Togbah had not prepared the ties (vines) to bind the cut rice. In following days, as I joined the team and went to other fields, I never saw anyone’s field unprepared and thus realized the blatant lack of preparation by Togbah.

But eventually it was our turn again, and Game and Esther, as is custom, prepared a big midday meal for everyone, which the workers devour in quantities I’ve never before seen. The meal is much needed because it’s tough work. Ten solid hours under the blistering sun, hunched over the rice, day after day, is difficult when you don’t have any climate-controlled refuge to return to or any Western amenities. The irony is that to cut the rice almost everyone uses the same paring knife bearing the brand name “Enjoy Living” on the handle.

As we cut, we would do rhythmic chants to propel the work along. It was usually one person leading, and then everyone chanting a complimentary phrase, with me somewhere in the background trying to sound like I was saying the right thing. Seeing as how Liberia was founded by freed American slaves, I couldn’t help but consider the unsettling possibility that I was singing along with them songs that were once sang on my country’s southern soil.

But what is most intriguing about the harvest itself is the developed leadership structure and well-defined schedule of fines for those who don’t follow the rice harvesting rules. I talked with the friendly Superintendant James Flomo about this. His position is supported by a Secretary and Solider, and as the leader, he is in charge of organizing the group and recording fines. A line leader with a whistle indicates when the group should move to a new section of the field.

The fines are rather strict – 5 Liberian dollars for talking during a song, 20 dollars for leaving rice behind you, 10 dollars for leaving the area without telling anyone. All the money goes in a pot, primarily used to help the family pay for the food and purchase palm wine that is consumed throughout the day. I took a few swigs but being the nice guy that I am, I saved the rest for them.

In a country where corruption and leadership is so poor that the president dissolved her entire cabinet save one minister, next to neighboring leaders who alter election results to their liking, this village governance is impressive to me. Why can’t policy makers take a hint from the leadership and discipline from their constituents in the village? To be certain, there is much less power at stake in the village, but my experience in the rice fields makes it seem that the raw capacity is there.

Why Do Resources ≠ Riches on the African Farm? Pt. II

2011-03-14T17:14:00.000-07:00

So why have Africa's resources not been turned to riches?

There are many compounding factors, and I won’t go into them all here, but near the core is lack of stable property rights, which in turn translates to people finding little gain from investment, and in the end few companies find an incentive to be there to buy the raw materials of people like James.

Without enforced property rights, two key things can happen, which have interrelated effects:

A strong-armed government, such as Angola or Zimbabwe, can capture export rents and fail to spend it on the public, alienating business and not supporting public infrastructure and social goods. Botswana’s equitable partnership with De Beers, the diamond company, is one reason for the country’s success.
The mindset of people like James becomes consume now, save later. As higher demand chases a constrained amount of goods, inflation ensues, and the central bank raises interest rates to combat it. This high cost of capital, a key symptom of weak property rights I’ll hit upon next, compounded by corruption, lack of infrastructure, and other factors, isn’t the most inviting scenario for investors, foreign or domestic.

When at a USAID conference in Mozambique, I remember the Standard Bank official tell the delegates, point blank, something to the extent of, “There’s no way we can give your farmers lower rates than 16% or reduce the 40-60% equity requirement. It’s just not possible.” At the root of what he was talking about was property rights: in Mozambique, the government owns all property, so private individuals have no equity in their property with which to take out loans.

As a result of these factors, the cost of capital in Sub-Saharan Africa is enormous. The average commercial lending rate for all SSA countries with data available is 17% (CIA Factbook, 2010), and you can imagine that countries without data likely have higher rates.

Business investment is sorely needed, for both agricultural innovation (higher yields for farmers) and to serve as an outlet to which farmers can sell. When I was in the village for those few weeks, I almost ran out of money from people trying to sell me things – pineapple, pumpkin, fish. I was like the United States of village trade – heavy on the imports.

It’s also no coincidence that while doing my work with TechnoServe in Ghana, I heard villagers singing the same song, telling me they loved having a “ready buyer” in Guinness Brewery, even though the price was slightly lower.

The villagers need agricultural business to start up, and it’s starting to happen in Liberia. Attracting large commercial investors can be a powerful way to grow an economy and help people like James, but if property rights and cultural traditions aren’t respected when business comes, as this NY Times article points out, it can lead to foreign companies and dictators running away with the loot. In a few posts I’ll talk about people in the village who are looking to serve the business need from the ground up on a much smaller scale.

Why Do Resources ≠ Riches on the African Farm? Pt. I

2011-03-11T21:00:00.000-08:00

I split time between working with Togbah, and James and Goma (pictured with our dinner), a wonderful couple who graciously opened their home to me (they had a couple homes, and I stayed in their Boi Town home). By the time I visited James’ primary home in Jaimue, I had already learned how to make and sell charcoal, source homemade alcohol, and watch as Togbah instantly closed my cut with the juice of some random blade of grass he found in the brush. Our meals come from the rice of the fields, and the bitter ball in the garden. I bathed either in a small stream under the expansive stars or just went outside and stripped down when the thunderous rains poured at night. It’s amazing to me how much the land has to offer. Unfortunately it also offers dirty drinking water, which led to a short speed bump in me getting giardia and a complimentary sleepless night/painful day.

I want to digress briefly and explain the generosity of Goma, who in addition to offering her home, ran errands into town for me and routinely brought me dinner, even despite the 45 minute roundtrip walk (not fun after a hard day’s work in the field, I can attest). She first met James during the civil war while they were hiding out in the bush from 1990 – 2003. For 14 years they were on the run, moving occasionally, pounding rice in the swamp so as not to be heard.

Goma and her young son had been abandoned by her husband, and James stepped in. Their two children, Naywa (pictured) and Matu, grew up on the run. In the community, James has been somewhat of a leader, doing things like building a public bridge across a river to many farm plots, and also spearheading construction of a public palm oil “factory”.

Which brings me back to the resources of the land. One staple of West African diet and agriculture I haven’t mentioned is palm oil. The first day I visited James and Goma in Jaimue, a village about a 20 minute walk away from Boi Town, we went hunting for fresh fruit bunches of palm kernel.

When I was in Ghana with TechnoServe, I was looking at palm oil from the NGO’s side, doing an oil palm market analysis. Now I’m sweating in the bush with the farmer they are trying to connect with. Full circle, indeed.

It started by James finding a “wreath” in the woods, which was essentially natural ladder. He rigged this 25-foot ladder with a sickle-like hook on the top, and pointed it up in the oil palm tree over one of the branches. Once up among the branches, he’d knock the fresh fruit bunch down, and I would gather it up. Tree after tree we did this, and I’m not ashamed to say that I never volunteered to climb.

From there, back at the farm house, I chopped the bunches apart and manually processed them with Goma to create a sweet oil, a sample of which I was able to take back home. The meal of plain rice and oil is probably the Liberian equivalent of spaghetti and sauce in the States. A guy’s go-to.

I’ve often explained to people the potential for African agriculture. After working on the farm for just a few weeks, that only becomes clearer. It is true that Africa has a more difficult agricultural environment than places like Latin America and infrastructure such as roads is lacking. But it’s also true that there are opportunities in terms of increasing yields and increasing the amount of land that those yields are on. Right now 60% of the world’s uncultivated land is in Africa, and average yields stand at only 1/3 of those of South Asia, according to the World Bank. There’s room to improve, and in the next post I’ll attempt to explain where past failures have come from in as simplified and entertaining manner as possible.

Solving the Conundrum of Poorly Planted Fields

2011-03-08T20:56:00.000-08:00

"A visitor is a guest for two days. On the third day give him or her a hoe."

-Swahili proverb

For a long time I’d been trying to solve what I termed to myself the “Conundrum of Poorly Planted Fields.” When in Mozambique working with CLUSA, I wondered why nearly all soybean fields had been planted by farmers just scattering the seed, leading to poorer yields. Economically speaking, the poorer you are, the more willing you’ll be to trade time for money. Thus, wouldn’t these farmers, who have much more time than money, make every effort to plant correctly to maximize yields? Seeing the poorly planted fields, the only logical answer was, they’re lazy. But I didn’t believe them to be lazy. Hence the conundrum.

The simple answer is that there’s a certain point where the amount/difficulty of work outweighs the additional financial benefit. Though I thought this to possibly be the case, I never really believed it until I did the work on the farm myself. I suppose I was holding them to a higher standard than myself. This became evident when I got to try my hand at their work:

Checking and setting traps: on a couple of mornings we went around checking both water and ground traps for any catches. This required us to trek through the woods and wade through the swamps to find Togbah’s hidden traps. A few crabs were all we came up with during the two weeks, which we ate shells and all.

Weeding the bitter ball crop: this was absolutely back-breaking labor. What I initially thought would take me a half day ended up requiring two days. I had the help of a few of village kids, about whom I inquired why they were not in school. No real reason. (Bitter ball is a tiny eggplant with a self-explanatory taste.)

Building a rice kitchen: when families harvest, they have to store it to eat it later – most people don’t commercialize, since the quantities usually aren’t that enormous and trying to fetch a good price when the markets are flooded is pointless. So, a stilted structure made entirely from wood, vines, and palms is constructed to protect the rice from rain. This required Togbah and me to collect and form together a wood structure entirely with without nails. Huge market opportunity for nails here, I’m thinking.

Brushing: to brush means, essentially, to clear brush. On the face of it, chopping away at grass is no problem, until you realize that there are thorny vines and sawgrass that rip away at your hands (or my hands…theirs were hard as rocks). By the end of it, gripping a cutlass with hands covered in razor thin cuts was less than enjoyable.

But by far, the most intensive – primarily since we didn’t finish the rice kitchen – was making the charcoal. During the building process, the rain started to pour, and the rest of family retreated inside. What took us an entire day to build, the charcoal pit – a pile of wood, dirt, grass, and palm – was lit to slowly burn over the course of two days.

Once the burning started, our work wasn’t over. You have to closely monitor it all times so that it “doesn’t spoil”, in Togbah’s words. This meant that he, Game, and I had to sleep in the kitchen – an all-thatch structure about 7 feet x 5 feet – to check the coal every few hours and watch for “rogues” (Liberian English) trying to steal the rice, which I’ll talk about later. The bugs living in the thatch bed combined with the rain dripping through the ceiling cracks didn’t make for a pleasant sleep.

It wasn’t until that night, in the middle of my dinner of dry rice, that I found out it was Liberia’s Thanksgiving Day. The contrast to the American Thanksgiving experience and even the urban Liberian’s Thanksgiving experience is striking. As I settled into bed, we could actually hear blasting African pop music from the nearby city. Togbah said to me, “And you see how they are enjoying?”…”Do you think, if I was having money, I would be sleeping like this?”

Ironically, on a day that should be for acknowledging what you have, the poor are reminded of what they are without. It doesn’t seem, for most of them, it’s for lack of effort.

Development Choking Points

2011-03-05T13:43:00.000-08:00

Let me first clarify the initial post “Living Their Life” and preface subsequent posts. In reference to the villagers, by saying I was “living their life”, I was being quite presumptuous – certainly for journalistic reasons and not to mislead. A dominating characteristic of their experience, one which I would NEVER be able to comprehend regardless of the time spent immersed, is a feeling of perpetuity. For most villagers, things will never change; there is no escape in sight. For me, I know in X number of weeks I escape to a better place. This is one reason why I’ve come to accept that I will never fully understand poverty – I can only get close. Having said that, in two weeks in a village, you can pick up a lot, and that’s what I hope to share with you.

So getting on with it.

I want to continue where I left off, with what happened next with Togbah. The next morning circa 7:00 am, after a night of powerful rain that shook the house, we went to the farm to tap the palm wine. The wine was extracted from the base of the overturned palm and handed to me in a never-washed cup complete with dirt, bark, and all manner of insects floating in it (pics 1 and 2). I went back for seconds, but not because I liked it. From there we went to a bar in the next village for “7 cent gin” (the name I gave it), and then purchased a bottle of fiery home brew moonshine to split back at the farm. When I went for my lunch, which was just oranges, he questioned why I wasn’t soaking it in alcohol. So my lunch was a gin-soaked orange, and by around 11 am I was a bit tipsy.

It didn’t take long to confirm that yes, I had somehow been paired up with the village drunk, for lack of a better descriptor. Many people claimed there was something wrong with his head – a claim I initially thought to be an exaggeration or slight, but became increasingly convinced that that might actually be the case.

This alcohol problem, combined with his personal mindset, did two things. First, he killed any opportunity for himself in terms of work and impressing me, someone who could probably really help him. He spent more time drinking and talking than working which, at least to me, doesn't seem like the best course of action when it’s harvest time and you have free labor on hand. Second, he killed opportunity for his family and those around him. Which leads me to Esther.

Esther is 18 years old. She’s in 5^thgrade and has three classmates. This isn’t unusual for Liberians, especially rural Liberians, who have had schools disrupted for years. She’s the daughter of Gamay, but not of Togbah, so he tells me often (“she not born to me”, he says). As such, he really doesn’t care at all for her.

Still, she’s studious and hardworking. To fund her education, every Saturday she heads to market to sell cassava leaf. I noticed that she was always carrying around this tattered World Book – the “T” section from sometime during the Clinton administration. Since it was the only book she had, and I understood there was another she wanted, I offered to buy her the new one once she could find out the price.

This was a problem with Togbah. He warned me, “And you don’t give her money [for the book]. Don’t ever try. Don’t ever try, I tell you…Whatever I tell you to do, do; whatever I tell you don’t do, don’t do.” Admittedly, I should have checked with him first. Yet, this was a consistent pattern throughout my stay: any money I wanted to spend had to go through him, and he always had to benefit first. He essentially wanted to use me as his personal pocketbook. Needless to say, this created an interesting dynamic throughout my stay.

The problem with this is not primarily that he is difficult to help get out of poverty, but that he serves as a choking point for impacting others – his entire family. In thinking about how to impact a community, people like Togbah create very difficult situations. In Bangladesh, I met many female entrepreneurs whose husbands had been supportive of their home business. Would Gamay ever be able to start a business? Would I ever be able to mail something like books to Esther? It’s not impossible, but when need is great and resources are scarce, you go for the low-hanging fruit.

(I did, by the way, buy her the book before I left, and proposed to Gamay that if she made it to college I would fund it. To my knowledge, Togbah still doesn’t know.)

Overview of the Villages

2010-12-29T10:26:00.000-08:00

Before I go any further in documenting my time in the rural hinterlands of Liberia, I thought it would be helpful to give a quick tour of the villages, Boi Town (pronounced "Boy") and Kpellemue (pronounced "Belly-moo"), which are nearest to Gbanga city in Bong County. I did this walkthrough at the end of my stay, and planned it so that it was midday when people would be working and I wouldn't be ransacked by each and every villager eager to say hi.

From village to village it's about a 15 minute walk, but I've condensed it (and added music) for your sanity. Along the way I point out a few key people and places, some of which I'll refer to in subsequent posts. You'll also notice me repeating the same several phrases - I had the greetings down pretty well, as well as commonly used items for me like "cutlass" and "country axe", but beyond that I pathetically defected to English. Needless to say it led to some interesting, if frustrating, conversations.

Living Their Life: Entering 2 Weeks of Immersion and Uncertainty

2010-12-11T22:57:00.000-08:00

I was probably scared, early on in my trip. Since I set off I’d wanted to live in a village, but I've balked. I’ve lived in South African slums for several days, had a few nights’ stay in Bangladeshi villages, and trampled around countless times for hours on end through ghettos and rural communities in the world’s poorest countries. But I wasn’t living their life. I was observing, interviewing, walking around, going to social events – and my Western preoccupations were never really checked at the door. I was always planning, producing, multi-tasking.

Finally in Liberia everything came together: a harvesting season (where labor is needed and I could be used), an English speaking country, and a connection to a villager. So, a friend of a friend of a friend said sure, his father would put me to work. Not knowing any of these people, as usual, I just took their word and snagged a free ride one Saturday morning, heading several hours over crumbling roads into the war-ravaged interior of the country.

Arriving in the small town of Gbarnga, I met my friend of a friend, Johnny, at his Carter Center office. An impressive individual, Johnny served as my contact in case anything went wrong. He introduced me to Cooper, the son of the old man I’d be working for. I hopped in the back of truck with Cooper and his friend, and we drove through a light rain shower off to the village. I was nervous. Two weeks, alone in the bush, as an outsider to a bunch of people with whom I have nothing in common. What would we talk about? How awkward would it be living with the old man? What if I got sick? (I brought no medicines, no water purification, nothing) And perhaps my biggest concern: what if I was just bored all the time?

When we arrived, some half hour later (not far, but far enough to see no trace of modern civilization), we were in solid bush. The village was Boi Town. I hopped out of the back, and met Togbah, a short, scruffy old man with graying hair, a strained face, and condemning eyes that were initially hidden behind a big grin and welcoming attitude (pictured in orange shirt). He insisted I call him his Papa (pronounced “Pap – A”), as he was known in the village as the Papa. My things were dropped off at his house, which was quite impressive, and then we walked to his farmhouse, five minutes away. His daughters were pounding rice and his wife was busy at the fire. From his farmhouse we made stops at every home and person, introducing me. Finally we came to the village “restaurant” that serves breakfast and lunch, run by the wife, Framadah, of Togbah’s younger brother Amos.

“Do you want to bath?”, asked Amos. “What?” I asked, bewildered. In hindsight, it was really dumb for me to assume I’d bath at the house, since the village has no running water. Next thing I knew, I found myself stripping down by a murky puddle next to an old guy I’d met 30 minutes prior so that we could cup water from the puddle and splash ourselves clean. So much for small talk.

That night dinner was delivered to me and Togbah at his house. Everyone else claimed they had eaten, so his wife Gamay (pronounced “Ga – may”), his 18-year-old daughter Esther, Ma-Mary the 2-year-old toddler, and others including James (in red hat) and Goma (pronounced “Go – ma”, pictured in orange shirt helping to find a creative way to hang my mosquito net) who were somehow related to Togbah, sat around watching Togbah and I eat this large portion of rice, greens, and fish. It was very awkward – almost like the white man and alpha male got all the food and everyone got what was left over. Had they really eaten?, I wondered. After dinner we sat around, in the dark, passing a bottle of hard liquor between Togbah, James and me while everyone watched. Two sips later I was already feeling the buzz. Looking back, that first bottle was a warning sign of things to come from Togbah.

Punk'd: Liberia Style

2010-12-04T12:24:00.000-08:00

What works for development? One of the main problems with development is that in many cases, we simply don’t know. Failed approaches get tried over and over again by different organizations or even the same ones – in Ghana, an organization with which I worked was planning a community grain storage scheme in the same manner that had previously failed. When I got assigned to the task, I started asking questions, doing interviews, and digging deep for data – at least in the handful of organizations with which I worked, there wasn’t any organized manner for looking at past results (partly due to digitization only since the late ‘90s). And there certainly isn’t any database between organizations to document past experiences. So, most of the records are either buried deep in the archives, found in some long chain of emails, or recalled only from the memories of development workers who may or may not still be with the organization.

Compounding this problem is that even when you do find the records, it’s almost always a self-evaluation. What a breeze Vanderbilt would’ve been had I been able to grade myself! I was actually brought on with TechnoServe in Mozambique to gauge the impact of its poultry project. I tried to be objective as possible, but when the organization that you’re evaluating is paying your bills and giving you all the contacts, there will be some bias. And there’s pressure to paint a positive picture, because that improves your chances of getting a gig at another project, as it did for me in Ghana. Most NGOs are guilty of this.

Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) is trying to change this. Based out of Yale, the NGO and its sister organization J-PAL at MIT are conducting randomized controlled experiments to test and improve the effectiveness of poverty alleviation interventions. So, they will generally go to an NGO that has or will have a program soon starting, take a baseline survey of random villages both included and excluded from the intervention, and after the intervention administer the same survey to the same villages.

IPA interested me because of its unique role as an NGO that supplies the implementing NGOs with the information they need (though IPA has recently started doing implementation itself). To get to know the organization better, I volunteered just for a week and a half helping design a very small part of a survey that was to determine whether peace education was worthwhile (peace education is big in post-war Liberia). The UN and Liberian government had implemented a huge program to train communities in conflict resolution.

For my part, the setup was that after the team had finished administering the survey to the entire village and right before they were to leave, several enumerators were to get into a staged fight in the presence of the village chief. How would the chief respond? Had the training improved his “conflict resolution”? I was tasked with designing the skit and training the enumerators to act it out. Not the budding Shakespeare everyone believes me to be, I asked for the help of some locals in writing it. Training them was hilarious – when they practiced it out in the church (above), several unknowing pedestrians came by to try to mediate the fake fight. Liberians (and I tend to believe Africans in general) are amazing performers, at least when it comes to getting in fights – I think because they often do get in real fights themselves.

It really got fun when we went to local villages to practice on unsuspecting village leaders. We first asked permission to act it out, but this didn’t work since they knew what was coming. I did a quick 180 and in the next village we did a fake mini survey as a pretext for being there. I excused myself to go to the bathroom so that I – as the survey team leader – could not be assumed by the chief to take action when the fight broke out. I took a video, which was previously posted but had to be taken down in response to IPA's human subjects liabilities. The chief comes out saying, “We don’t fight here! I will fine you!”, and the village chair soon after runs out too. From there we go to the palava hut, and evenutually reveal the skit as a fake. There’s a moment of disbelief and then everyone just starts laughing hysterically. Invariably this was the response of the villagers. Everyone was a good sport, and the chiefs were especially interested to know how they performed.

(Ivory Coast Update: On Thursday the election results were announced with opposition candidate Ouattara winning in a 54% to 45% margin. On Thursday night, incumbent president Gbagbo's ally in the Constitutional Council called the results announced by the Independent Electoral Commission null and void. Gbagbo has instituted a curfew, closed borders, and threatened to kick out the UN envoy. Gbagbo's henchmen are patrolling the streets of Abidjan, and on Thursday night they opened fire at point blank range, killing 8, at the opposition party headquarters in Youpougon, the exact compound I spent time interviewing opposition supporters. Riots have broken out across the country. As I write this, both candidates are being sworn in as president, and the country is on the brink of civil war. International community supports Ouattara, and the African Union is holding an emergency summit to decide a course of action. The news is coming out by the hour. For a good article and stunning pictures, go here.)

Effects of War

2010-11-26T22:22:00.000-08:00

Civil wars are not created equal. When you hear about different African countries recovering from civil wars, the degree of healing varies. Liberia makes Cote d’Ivoire look like a Sunday warm-up. Nearly everyone you talk to here has been affected by the war, usually directly and severely. Joseph (on the left), who I had lunch with one day, had just two weeks ago returned from a refugee camp in Ghana after being there for seven years. In his room, I saw his few personal items still half unpacked. He recalled back to 2003 when, with the war closing in on him and his family, they spent their last $200 to pay for a motor canoe to flee the country. After a less than fun week of vomiting, eating and drinking almost nothing, and relieving oneself in front of everyone (50 people packed onto a small canoe), they landed in Ghana. Seven years of living in a refugee camp and he was forced to come back when the school at which he was working in Ghana was cutting staff and he couldn’t get a ticket to the U.S. It’s hard not to run into someone who doesn’t have a similar story.

His brother Emmanuel (to the right of me in the picture) was currently in university getting his B.A. He is 30 years old. On average most people I met were years behind their grade level, due to the schools shutting down in most areas during the war – 12 year-olds in 1^st grade, 20 year-olds in 5^th grade, etc. I had the chance to visit the University of Liberia for the day, arguably the country’s best university. The teaching was, in my opinion, pretty subpar, though the professors may not have been at fault. It seemed like they were reading a lot of definitions for the students to copy down, something they should have covered in their preparation. But then I found out that books were too expensive for the majority of students to purchase. One of the interesting things I saw was that they were covering indifferent curves in their economics classes; granted it was something I learned in my first year at Vanderbilt while they were just getting to it as juniors, but they were covering it nonetheless. Now that schools are back open, the classes are heaving. The classes I saw were spilling out into the pathways, and students searched for anywhere to sit, while those less lucky had to stand for the lectures. Large populations of students are pressed into a limited number of schools – roughly 70% of schools were damaged or destroyed during the war, and 35%, of the whole population has never attended school, according to the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper. Until education improves, it’s unlikely that many of the top jobs in these big MNC’s like BHP Billiton will be able to go to Liberians.

Liberia: The Other Lone Star State

2010-11-18T12:49:00.001-08:00

After an epic two-day overland trip involving motorcycles through the bush, creaking minibuses aboard which I garnered the name “Obama”, sleeping in a village at the border, and over 20 police checkpoints (and 4 forced bribes on the Cote d’Ivoire side), I found myself in Monrovia. If the capital city sounds vaguely presidential, it’s because Liberia is one of only two African countries with American ties (the other being Ethiopia).

Liberia had been on my hit list for a while because of its US connections, but more due to its being a reconstruction economy. Ranked 162 of 169 countries on the UN’s Human Development Index, Liberia is a country starting from scratch. Two brutal civil wars in 1989 and 1999 (to be detailed in a following post), which basically spanned from 1989 until 2004, left over 200,000 dead and the country’s infrastructure in shambles (the Guinness brewery, which I toured, was left alone, unsurprisingly!). When I told a US Foreign Service Officer that I was interested in development and wanted to meet USAID officials, he asked what part of development, and explained, “Liberia is rebuilding literally everything. Everything is in development.”

He was right. But it’s not just thephysical guts of the country, but the human capital. Over 1 million people fled from a country that only has 3 million to begin with, and as of 2005 half of those remained to be repatriated. Many are educated Liberians. On a flight, I happened to sit next to one, who had left before the war and only been back three times to see his grandparents. He said something interesting about Red Light, an area in Monrovia with which I was familiar, and which was notorious for muggings. It’s one of the trashiest places in the city – the side of the road seems like a soggy landfill. Being in Africa for nearly a year, I dismissed this as just another African street, but he explained in 1980, when he left, it was never like this. Liberia, he said, was like “the United States of Africa”. It was one of the shining stars of Africa, years ahead of now prominent countries like Ghana.

So Liberia has gone from African standout to devastated failure. What to do? The country made history in 2005 by electing the first, and still only, female president in Africa – and a sharp one at that. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (pic above, credit: myhero.com) is a Harvard-trained economist and former director at the UN and Citibank, among other institutions. She has a stellar resume and Western connections and support rarely privileged to African leaders. The US Ambassador to Liberia, in a fascinating NY Times article I suggest you read, explained, ”We see her as one of us.” Much more than other African politicians, she takes a fiery, no-nonsense approach. Fed up with corruption that was proving difficult to stem, just two weeks ago she dissolved her entire cabinet except one minister.

Mama Ellen, as she’s affectionately called, is known for being a tireless worker, even at age 72. I had the opportunity to have dinner with one of the directors of Liberia’s Philanthropy Secretariat. The unique unit resides in the Office of the President and is tasked with helping attract and channel philanthropy money from private donors (like Gates Foundation, not USAID) to on-the-ground projects. The employee I talked to explained that there is almost never a night when he leaves and Sirleaf’s office light is off, and he works late hours.

Her hard work seems to be paying off, at least internationally. She has attracted big MNCs like ArcelorMittal and BHP Biliton, two of the world’s largest steel companies, and has renewed contracts with Firestone, there for the country’s rubber trees. Her biggest accomplishment has been convincing the World Bank and IMF to cancel the country’s $4.6 billion debt (the country’s GDP is $876 million). Most Liberians I talked to felt she was doing a pretty good job and some even spoke overwhelming positive about her – they couldn’t come up with much negative, except for her work on the domestic front, which they say has taken a backseat to her focus on international relations.

What is most clear, though, is that these people have hope. They believe things are getting, and will continue to get, better. This was quite the opposite of what I saw in Mozambique and Zimbabwe. I suppose this shouldn’t be a surprise when you’ve hit rock bottom.

(Note: 3rd picture is cassava leaf and rice, which I ate a lot of.)

Amidst the Mob at Alassane Ouattara’s Election Kickoff Rally

2010-11-13T15:35:00.000-08:00

Apologies for the two-week hiatus. I was away in rural Liberia for an amazing experience that will be documented shortly. But before that I need to wrap up my experience in Cote d’Ivoire. During my stay in Yopougon neighborhood and interviews in the same area, I befriended some of the leaders of the local headquarters of the Rally of the Republicans (RDR) party, who asked if I wanted to meet the presidential candidate Alassane Ouattara. Unfortunately one opportunity was missed when I went north, but I was invited to the kickoff rally on the first official day of campaigning.

When I arrived with Cisse to the muddy, open area the size of two football fields, the crowd was already buzzing with energy. A crowd of youths ran through the streets chanting “Ado is the way!” (Alassane Dramane Ouattara takes the nickname “Ado”). We were able to maneuver our way into the VIP/journalist area quite easily with our connection and my skin color (Indeed, I never saw another non-black the entire day), and found some standing room within about 30 feet of the stage.

There were people on top of people. As far as the eye could see, there were people – on top and inside of buses, hanging on to old billboards, finding space on distant unfinished construction projects. I was wearing many people’s sweat. We arrived around 2:00 p.m. and Ouattara didn’t appear until after 6:00, during which time the crowd became increasingly crazy with anticipation like a little kid waiting for Christmas. As each of the prominent party members came on stage, I could feel people closing in on me. The fence behind me separating the masses from the VIP/journalist area bulged and looked like it could give way at any minute. People were forcing themselves over the fence, despite the efforts of security. (The amazing thing is that by all accounts, no one was drinking, which is interesting in that 1) this was raw enthusiasm and 2) I’d be afraid what might happen if there had been alcohol involved.)

My experience at election rallies is very limited, but the atmosphere, when Ouattara finally arrived, was pure electricity. Not a citizen of the country, even I had chills running down my back. You could sense this was a country ready to move on, enthused about what’s next. Some journalists insisted that I get up close to the presidential candidate for pictures, like they wanted me to show the world that Cote d’Ivoire is ready for change. Ami, one of the party staff I knew, texted me and told me to come sit in a section neighboring Ouattara’s platform. With all the commotion, I wasn’t to get any personal time with him, but when he did make his way for the main stage, I had the opportunity to shake his hand and wish him the best. Having played his part on stage, Ado retreated and left the stage to a band for an all-night concert. Cisse and I, likewise, moved to the outskirts of the rally area, before heading to a nearby bar for drinks to reflect.

All this comes back to my unanswered question: Does democracy promote growth in ethnically diverse countries? Research has shown good governance to have a positive, significant effect on growth. But as far as I can tell with a cursory view of the literature, whether “good governance” is a proxy for democracy is still open for debate. In some cases, some research found that political institutions such as dictatorships or democracies were not important, but rather political stability was.

(Note: The elections went off peacefully, with a voter turnout of 83%, one of the highest ever recorded for a multiparty election in Africa. Incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo received 38% of the votes and Alassane Ouattara received 32%. The runoff is slated for November 28.)

Fed Up, Yet Hungry at the Same Time

2010-10-30T07:14:00.001-07:00

"I think that today, it is the population, the citizens, who will impose peace to [the] politicians [and elections]…People will kill each other never again."
--Acouba Outtarra, Bouke city school teacher

Anticipation. If I had to describe the atmosphere of the country right now in one word, that would be it. Ivoirians are nervous about the potential for violence, but excitement to exercise their right to vote outweighs any hesitation. A very watchful international community, including the large UN and French contingencies on the ground, is keen on seeing this election happen peacefully.

The excitement is pervasive. Everywhere you could hear people talking about the election, and go by almost any school and you’d see snaking mob lines of people waiting for their identity and voting cards, which the election commission is furiously trying to get distributed in time (I say "furiously" half laughingly, because of the African context). I went with Cisse, my translator, to talk to some of the waiting citizens (see pics 1 and 2). One woman had waited in line for four days, each day being turned away. This was par for the course. And people arrive early. Cisse’s sister was sent at 4:00 a.m. to wait, and was replaced by Cisse’s 70+ year-old mother, Salimata Bakayoko, when Cisse’s sister had to go to school. For four days Salimata waited in the heat, finally getting the cards. I am expecting a very high voter turnout.

At the root of the country’s excitement to vote is that they are simply fed up with instability. It’s impossible for a country to plan when the administration in power doesn’t know if there will or will not be a presidential election in one year's time, and the effects are compounded when this happens every year, for five years. And it shows in the country's infrastructure and business activity. No foreign business, or local business for that matter, is willing to make any investments until the elections happen, and happen peacefully.

This became very clear when I took a trip to Yamoussoukro, the official capital. There I stayed with Regis, a

really cool Ivoirian working in a bank. He made me feel right at home at his place, organized group dinners with his Ivoirian friends (who could also speak English!), and connected me to Kinda to serve as my translator. Kinda had been an English teacher at a local university, and introduced me to the director, a very traveled, educated, and impressive guy. He explained that he went ahead and began funding the school himself because no investor was willing to put in their chips until the election. As for Kinda, we quickly became good friends, and I could certainly write an entire post just about him. Abandoned at birth and adopted by American nuns, he has been in and out of jail five times for being an outspoken supporter of foreigners’ right. Two years ago he walked for eight months from Cote d’Ivoire to Mali to raise awareness for a proposed UN commission to support foreigners’ rights. Immensely fascinating guy. As a side note, I even had time to see the basilica, which is the largest Christian place of worship in the world (bigger than the Sistine Chapel).

From Yakro, as they call it, I hired Kinda and went to Bouke, the stronghold city of the rebels in their once northern-controlled area and one of the most affected from the wars (last pic: weeds and brush now growing in the abandoned structure of one of the city's most prominent hotels). Most people advised me not to go, which is exactly what drew me to the area. Plus, I generally think hospitality wins out over hostility. During my time there I heard incredible stories about schools closing for years and people scrapping by during the war, and now how excited they are to vote.

But the most interesting thing about Bouke might have been the large security presence, which is most evident at the city’s entrance. Arriving into the city, I was confronted with the biggest security checkpoint I’d ever seen. Fifty or so armed soldiers patrolled the area. Kinda and I were told to get out of the gbaka and funnel through a large hut, almost like we were at a border to another country. There we met an officer. He demanded a "toll" for us to get through, much higher than ordinary

Ivoirians because of my status. "Why?" I heard Kinda ask in French. He responded, "Here you don’t talk much. You give or you don’t pass." When we were leaving the city, an officer, wearing a ragged, badge-less but official uniform, begged me for some money. These soldiers are mostly former rebel soldiers who failed to make the cut (e.g. they were illiterate) to be absorbed into the national forces. The government’s employment project for them didn’t pan out as planned, and so many are forced to take tolls at the city gates to survive, or in some cases, beg.

From Bouke, we headed back to Yakro in a horrendous gbaka ride (a story in its own right) just before I jetted off to Abidjan for an amazing opportunity to be part of the election activities.

(Note: I have been behind in posting because of my travel, and am no longer in Cote d'Ivoire. The election takes place tomorrow, and of course I am excited to see the outcome.)

Identity Crisis: Does Ethnicity Kill Growth?

2010-10-28T17:36:00.000-07:00

Over the course of my trip I’ve thought a lot about ethnicity, democracy, and their relation to poverty – from hearing an Indian friend in Pune tell me he sometimes wishes there was only one party so the newly elected would stop filling its pockets every time, to Mozambique, where a close friend was an organizer for the opposition party – but I’ve never really put together coherent thoughts. These barely qualify as such.

The primary issue behind the civil wars and postponed elections in Cote d’Ivoire is one of identity, and thus who is allowed to vote and stand in the elections (above, citizens are finally getting their voting card and IDs after years of using expired ones...more on that later). Immigrants have come into Cote d’Ivoire for years from neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso to work on cocoa plantations and live mostly in the Muslim north. They primarily support opposition leader Alassane Ouattara (a former IMF director...a smart dude), a Muslim himself who has had his nationality questioned by President Gbagbo, preventing him from running in the past and serving as the root cause of the civil wars. Outtara has since proven his Ivoirian status and is now allowed to run in this election, to the chagrin of Pres. Gbagbo. The minorities have their man.

I snooped around the slums of Yopougon for several days with Cisse, my translator, looking at the issue and how it has affected the growth of the country and the lives of average citizen. Taking specifically the case of minorities and the surrounding discrimination, I met one individual named Bakayoko Moussa. A Muslim northerner from Boundiali, he moved to Abidjan in 1978. But, he explained, “In 2002, everything changed. People started to point us out as foreigners.” Despite being an Ivoirian, his ethnicity made him stick out, so much so that at highway police checkpoints he was accused of providing false papers.

But Bakayoko’s experience goes much deeper than that. After my interview questions were concluded, as usual I asked if he would like to ask me a few questions or add anything. He had apparently lowered his guard to me. He said, “I will add something important that’s on my mind. For this problem, the identity crisis, my younger brother was killed. He was 21. He was among the martyrs [who died because of being a foreigner or being perceived as a foreigner]…They took a knife and wrote his name on his body and then they took a hammer and broke his knees. This happened in the streets.” Bakayoko explained that with the police out searching for his brother, “he crawled and got under a car. He wasn’t dead overnight”, but after being rushed to the hospital by his family and receiving a transfusion of blood Bakayoko thinks may have been purposely tainted by the government hospital, he died shortly after.

I heard other stories like this of wrongful persecution, of neighbors turning on neighbors, like Djakaria Outtara, pictured with his son Peledene. Still patriotic about his country, he is now trying, for the second time, to get a green card to the U.S. The first time he failed it cost him the $140 application fee, which took nearly two years to save for. I met a surprisingly large amount of people trying to emigrate to the U.S. and Canada, more so than in other African countries I’ve been. It’s amazing to me what Ivoirians have been through and what they’re willing to do for any opportunity.

As I walked around, two questions kept coming into my mind. The first was: Does ethnic diversity harm growth? I did some reading, and without jumping to conclusions about causation, we can say that yes, the more ethnically diverse a country is, the lower the growth rates. Moving from complete ethnic homogeneity (think Korea and Hong Kong) to complete ethnic heterogeneity means a drop in annual growth of 2.3%. Fourteen of the 15 most ethnically diverse countries are in Africa (Cote d’Ivoire has 60 tribes), and eight classified high-income countries by the World Bank are among the most ethnically homogenous. Economists William Easterly and Levine found not only this, but that “greater ethnic diversity increases the likelihood of adopting poor policies and underproviding growth-enhancing public goods.” In other words, bad governance.

With that, my next question was: Can democracy improve on this standard of governance and promote growth in ethnically diverse countries? I’ll touch on that in an upcoming post.

The Unluckiest Chicken

2010-10-22T14:04:00.001-07:00

"Sometimes I wonder why God put me in Africa."

--Felix, my Ghanaian friend and current footballer

It's funny how some things work out. I arrived with no contacts, no hotel, and no French in a country that is exclusively Francophone. At the Cote d'Ivoire border, the Ghanaian sitting next to me asked me for $3 to buy a vaccination card that he didn’t have but needed to buy in order to cross the border. I gave it to him, only half expecting to get my money back as he promised.

Walter, which was his name, turned out to be a great help and even better friend. After I got into the capital Abidjan, he and his cousin Felix helped me get settled into a cheap hotel for the night. Hours into a new country, I wandered around that night for food, eventually using more body language than a mime to order the dish, which was an amazing braised fish covered in a pile of stuff (I love any food covered in "stuff").

The next morning, Walter and Felix (in pic 1, Walter onthe right, Felix on the left) directed me over to their neighborhood, Yopougon, one of the rougher slum areas but definitely the liveliest. They helped me settle into an $8 "hotel", which was basically a bed with a sheet (that I declined to use), a bucket of water, and a fan.

It was right around the corner from their home, so they basically looked after me for the week while I lived in Yopougon. They invited me to meals, which were mostly Ghanaian, cooked by Joyce, Walter's mother (pic 2) and her sisters living there. It was basically a bunch of Ghanaian sisters who had come to Cote d'Ivoire to trade. Really nice people.

Outside of them often forcing me to eat at their house (I didn’t want to impose), Felix invited me his “academy” – not a soccer club buta bunch of soccer players who are looking to get managers and find a club. Felix sees soccer as his gateway to prosperity – he has the skills “but if only I could get a club”, then it would be easy, according to him. He decided to pursue soccer rather than college, and while I admire his ambition, I wonder how much better his situation will be five years from now.

As a token of appreciation, I purchased a chicken for the family, under the condition that I would be able to kill it. Killing a chicken in the slums or the bush with a local family, as savage as it sounds, became a fellowship goal somewhere around the mid-way mark. Of course, I had to go shirtless and with a headband in order to set the scene, which gave a kickto the family and half the neighborhood’s population. That wasn’t the only comedy – apparently my skill set extends to Microsoft Excel and data analysis but not beyond to killing a live chicken with a rusty old knife. As I was trying and failing miserably to kill it, I could almost hear the chicken insulting me for cutting with the dexterity of a four-year-old wearing oven mitts. Felix’s mom claimed I was trying to cut it too close to the head, but I maintain it was the extremely dull knife, which I saw just minutes before it was given to me being sharpened by Felix on door frame.

Just as I finally thought the bird was mercifully dead, and posing for a picture with it, its bloody half-dead body flapped out of my hands. I argue that it would’ve died anyway, so I chalk it up a victory.

Felix, Walter and I also spent time watching movies, chatting about and watching soccer, and helping me to find a translator. Things move slow in the slums. We’d lose power, and you’d basically have nothing to do, at least until it came back, which would elicit thunderous cheers in the streets.I also helped get Walter set up on email – not only had he never used email, he’d never used a computer. I had to teach him how to click a mouse. This is not like working in a low-income school in the US, like I did at Vanderbilt. This is a whole new level.

What finally did me in was the food. Fighting sickness I had to move out and into a nicer apartment with a really cool Ivoirian named Erikson. Not that the food was bad tasting, but rather just a tad unsanitary (That last picture is black eyed peas, random item #1, onion, random animal meat, noodles, and no, that’s not sour cream but mayonnaise – I had to try the dish). You tend to get that feeling when your beans and rice crunch with grit.

Border Blunders in Côte d'Ivoire

2010-10-16T10:45:00.000-07:00

I’ve long since given up trying to plan my trip continents at a time. The whims of the world create too much uncertainty and opportunity. Cote d’Ivoire was originally nowhere on my radar, but now I find myself in the country for the exact same reason that some expats are booking flights out – the upcoming presidential elections of a country mired in 15 years of instability.

Cote d’Ivoire has not held presidential elections since 2000. Those elections happened after a 1999 coup by military leader Robert Guei, who won the election. Opposition candidate Laurent Gbagbo claimed they were fixed, and took power after a revolt. The next elections never happened in 2005, because it was deemed unsafe without full disarmament of the rebels. Oh right, I forgot to mention that there was a coup attempt on Gbagbo’s government, which led to a civil war in 2002 that pitted the government’s army in the south against the rebel soldiers in the north. Other issues such as a misguided airstrike (according to Ivoirian officials) that killed French soldiers, the breaking of a peace accord by the rebels, and the alteration of the constitution to prevent opposing candidates from running have been side dishes in this all-you-can-eat buffet of typical African politics.

Since it was deemed unsafe to hold the 2005 election, they extended Gbagbo’s mandate a year through 2006, when the election would then take place. Disagreement between candidates on the date and general ineptitude of registering voters led to the elections being postponed again until 2007, 2008, 2009, and now, finally, 2010.

Before this trip to Cote d’Ivoire I found myself in the TechnoServe office, trying to figure out logistics. “Don’t you want to pick another country?”, asked a Frenchman and former Cote d’Ivoire resident who was at TechnoServe, and from who I was trying to get contacts. Cote d’Ivoire is the first country on the US’s warning list I’ve ever visited and the first in which I’ve ever registered with the US embassy, but I believe that people generally overreact to security issues. I was right about Cote d’Ivoire, though this is the most extensive use of a spike strips I’ve ever seen, and never have I went through more police checkpoints and been questioned more.

I will say that the border was thick with tension, though – the most I’ve ever experienced. After I finally woke up from my slumber six hours later on the bus from Ghana, I soon after found myself trying to maneuver the Ivoirian border. It seemed like it was the officials’ first day on the job – no one seemed to know what they were doing. And I know it wasn’t just me because a smartly dressed British guy, who spoke fluent French and who I first mistook for an Ivoirian, was also lost with me. We scoffed at how amateurish the whole operation was.

My scoffing stopped shortly after. Nearly home free, I was actually on Ivoirian soil when police were hauling me back by my shirt, yelling at me like I’d just killed someone. Apparently I’d just walked right past them without knowing. It was a pretty easy mistake – they were saying “come here”, which I ignored, but they were all dressed in street clothes and only wearing a plastic laminated badges that looked like something I could’ve made in 3^rd grade art class. And it’s not like I don’t get hassled by hawkers who are always telling me to “come here”. Even the guy who dragged me back was wearing tennis shoes, jeans, and a somewhat grungy-looking white Umbro shirt with red piping.

Scoffing at the amateurism would have recommenced had Umbro shirt and other police not dragged me into an interrogation room and started yelling at me, in broken English corrected for your readability: “We are the police! What do you think you are doing?... You think because you are from America you are better than us? You can just walk right through here?” A full-body search ensued, including everything in my bag. I realized I had on me over 700 USD I hadn’t claimed because I didn’t want the hassle or the potential bribe they might take. As Umbro shirt was searching , the British guy came back to the door and he said, “Don’t let them take any money!” That set them off. Accusation of bribery always does. During the commotion I slipped my money in my pocket that they’d already searched. We hurried up the rest of the search to make way for the British guy, who was now their prime suspect. As I was leaving, Umbro shirt spitefully remarked, “We do our job.” I was quickly escorted out and told to walk to the bus, which was about 500m ahead waiting for us trouble-making foreigners.

I won’t even go into the many accounts of blatant bribery I witnessed between the border and Cote d’Ivoire’s capital, and the skirmishes it caused – it’s like people changed instantly when we crossed the border. Rather, I’ll better explain why I’m here: I’m planning to interview people about their perceptions of the upcoming election, the development of democracy in Cote d’Ivoire, and how the political instability has affected the development of the country and their lives. How democracy relates to poverty is an issue in which I’ve yet to deeply delve. And, it will be fascinating to be a part of what may later be considered the rebirth of once prominent nation.

Dancing My Way Out of Ghana

2010-10-13T07:27:00.000-07:00

When I arrived in Ghana, I was told by everyone and their mother I would have a blast here. It’s lived up to the hype. There’s been great food (the best I’ve had in Africa), hilariously awkward situations, and memorable nights. But beyond the pure fun of the place is how I’ve developed scholastically, professionally, and personally.

I’d say, probably for the first time all trip, that I am beginning to feel my fellowship goals are bearing some resemblance to completion (note that my goals are to better understand poverty and development approaches…I don’t expect, as a Western male Caucasian, to ever fully understand poverty). At the same time, after volunteering with TechnoServe, I am more confident in my skill set, yet just as keen to improve upon it. I have a better idea of what I want my future to look like in terms of what purpose I have in my life, and what that looks like as a career. Personally, I am more confident than I’ve ever been in who I am and who I’m not. I know better what I want in life and what I don’t want, but of course answers still remain.

Another volunteer had, a few days after my TechnoServe contract finished, moved into my room, but my flatmates, who are now great friends, were willing to put up with me crashing their couch for a week. Not wanting to overstay my welcome and giddy to trample the red soil of some other African country, I booked a bus ticket to Cote d’Ivoire, the once regionally prominent neighbor of Ghana.

The bus had a departure of 5:00 am, meaning I had to be at the station at 4:00. Jana, my flatmate, noted that given the night’s planned festivities, the only logical thing to do was to not sleep. That wasn’t a hard sell for me. The night started out at a cocktail at a couple of Swedish guys’ apartment who worked for a telecom company implementing a mobile cash platform in the country, a concept that is sweeping Africa. As someone who has dealt with the hassles of a cash-based society, I can attest their work is really valuable. They’ve rearranged their living room to include a ping pong table and have commissioned a local painter to paint “the best” person in each field, including the top Swedish ping-pong player and Jay-Z so far. “Are you a big Jay-Z fan?” I asked. “Not particularly,” one of the flatmates answered. Cool guys.

From there we headed to the beach for my last glance at the Ghanaian ocean and the last supper – a delicious meal of chicken and rice. We met up with friends who worked for Innovations for Poverty Action, and my Ghanaian friend Isaac, who I met through the reference of fellow Vanderbilt friend Jessi Solomon, who’s a rock star in her own right. A college student studying business at one of Ghana’s top universities, he’s worked extensively with autistic children and is currently doing an internship with IBM in partnership with German university students. Later this month he’ll travel to Germany to present his work. Extremely friendly and speaking fluent English, Isaac has been an invaluable help and friend to me during my stay in Ghana. Oddly enough, while at the beach I ran into a random Ghanaian who claimed he remembered me from weekends before in another town. This was the second time this had happened in the same week. Apparently I make an impression on some people.

The night finished – or rather got started, at Bella Roma, where a friendship I’d previously made with the bouncer Cyborg (awesome) got us in for half price. The dance floor was pretty empty when we arrived, but Ariana, Jana, Isaac, Richelle, others and I got things moving in no time. Perhaps it was my terrible dancing that made others lose their inhibitions, but more likely it was just the alcohol. That’s one great thing about traveling internationally – as big of a fool as you make yourself out to be, you’re probably never going to see 99% of these people again. At 3:00 am, soaking from sweat (that picture was just the beginning) and entirely exhausted, we headed home so that I could pack (Apparently earlier that day I’d used my standard reasoning of “I’ll let Future Rob deal with that”). I said my goodbyes and darted out the door, arriving at the station with plenty of time since – like anything in Africa – the departure wasn’t on time. I fought exhaustion trying to make sure both I and my bag made it onto that bus, and when I finally did as the sun started to rise, I did the impossible, and passed out cold on a low-budget African bus.

Cut Africa Some Slack

2010-10-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

In everlasting memory of the aguish of our ancestors.
May those who die rest in peace.
May those who return find their roots.
May humanity never perpetrate such injustice against humanity.
We the living vow to uphold this.

--Memorial message created by a 1992 convention in New York of African and Caribbian leaders to commemorate St. George’s Castle

I recently had the chance to visit St. George’s Castle in Elmina, the oldest and arguably most prominent slave castle in the world. It was controlled by the Portuguese, the Dutch, and finally the British, though by the time the British got it slavery was petering out. Probably the most ironic part of the experience was the prominent Portuguese church right in the center of the castle. I saw nearly the same thing when I visited the apartheid museum in South Africa – how a group of individuals, convinced of an idea, could do something so morally wrong while at the same time claiming it was God-ordained.

There really are few words that could adequately sum up my experience. It was overpowering, enlightening, and a smack in the face. To stress the latter, and to be perfectly honest, it felt like a tour-de-blame. If seemed like they were saying “Look what you did, white man.” Does that bother me, being blamed for sins of my ancestors? A bit. It’s impossible for me to equate what Africans feel to a white male’s perspective, since we are basically at the top of the world food chain. But, pulling from the only example that bears any resemblance for me, I don’t blame Muslims or Middle Easterners for what happened on 9/11, and that only happened a few years ago, not centuries.

Still, the destruction of the Twin Towers didn’t have the same debilitating ramifications on my country’s economic and political development as slavery and colonization did on the African continent and blacks in worldwide. Just a couple days ago I was doing an interview with an average local about Africa’s development and democracy, and I asked if he had any more comments. Usually they say no, but he had a question: “Why do you in the West always portray Africa negatively?”

On the spot, I had to come up with an answer, so give me a handicap. Now, I’m not a journalist or politician, I told him, but I would surmise there are two major factors. The first being that the media, in general, prefers to show negative stories, and there is certainly no shortage of them in sub-Saharan Africa, a region in which Ghana is the only country to have two back-to-back peaceful transitions of power from one party to another. The second factor, I think, is that for a continent that is arguably the most abundantly endowed with resources in the world and in which has had billions of Western aid dollars poured, it still is home to the world’s greatest population of people critically struggling with poverty (To be fair, I added, the West is certainly partly to blame for the results of this aid).

Sub-Saharan Africa has underperformed, and the West is great at showing how it has screwed up. But should Africa’s underachievement be unexpected? It seems to me a bit unfair to expect that African countries immediately become civilized, developed, and forward thinking, when they have only had independence for less than 50 years. Look at Western countries, those who are giving the blame. Our own United States, a few decades after our 50-year mark, got into a civil war over how we had been treating people as property. The French had a bloody revolution about the mode and form of government and society. And less than a century ago, the now economic powerhouse and progressive Germany was “cleansing” its population.

Certainly, Africa should learn from our mistakes to as great of an extent as they can, but maybe holding them at a bar as high as or higher than that to which we hold ourselves is unfair. For example, we stress we won’t give aid, by George, unless they adopt free market policies like liberalizing their markets, while at the same time slapping huge tariffs on their agricultural products, which make up the vast majority of African economies.

I think the young age of their democracies and thus the need to give them time was made clear to me when I asked a local civic leader (and others) why African leaders just won’t give up power when they are voted out. The answer: When you come from humble backgrounds, as many of this first crop of African leaders do, hell no you don’t want to give up your power. As these countries develop, and more young, progressive-thinking, and well-off politicians take office, it’s probably more likely that they’ll give up power peacefully and less likely they’ll espouse country-killing corrupt policies. At least, that’s my optimistic hope.

(Note: the last pic is me peering out of the single person-wide exit door to slave ship)

Two Sides of the Same Coin

2010-10-03T10:21:00.000-07:00

Finished with TechnoServe and with the last days of my Ghana stay winding down, I decided to take a quick trip to Kumasi, where I previously visited just for an evening on work for TechnoServe.

I had two invitations: one to check out Suame industrial magazine and the other for a tour of the Guinness brewery. Since I’m a sucker for tours and experiences at factories, farms, slums, and any other place where I can see people in their day-to-day lives rather than talked about in a museum, this was an easy sell.

I first trotted into Suame on an invitation from my friend Bessam who works at SMIDO, the locally-run NGO that works to organize the magazine (a magazine meaning a collection of businesses in which each does complimentary services) into a cohesive and more technologically-advanced industrial estate. Bessam was cool enough to not only give me a solid tour, but also let me shack up for the night at his place – though I did somehow manage to lock myself in my room, which made for some funny-in-hindsight stories when I had to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. I chalk it up to faulty doors rather than stupidity.

Anyway, Suame was overwhelming, smelled like sweat, and was wonderfully filthy (kinda sounds like a whorehouse). Recent estimates vary, but one study says there are about 12,000 enterprises here, roughly grouped by function, so you’ll have the car mechanics in one area, scrap metal processors in another, the spare parts people in another area, and itgets even more specific. In the second picture are crushed cubes of scrap metal that are shipped to Accra to either be melted down for reuse or exported to China to feed its insatiable demand for resources.

One of the several businesses I looked at and whose workers I talked with produced circular discs for gold hammer mills. You can see them pouring the discs with the molten sand in the first picture. From most places in Suame you can see plumes of smoke coming from this foundry and the workers – who have little formal education – can tell if it’s hot enough just by the color and form of the smoke. Though of about the same functional quality as their Indian and Chinese counterparts, these discs lack the nice polished finish and so only fetch about 1/3 the price. This is one of the major difficulties for Suame – it doesn’t have the technological capacity to produce nice finished products.

Almost as interesting, but more tasty, was a night at the Guinness brewery bar and a tour of their operations. Right after Suame I met up with Prosper, a head Guinness employee and friend I made through TechnoServe.

Before continuing, I want to take a minute to go through the hierarchy of awesomeness of Ghanaian names. At the bottom you have the nouns – for example, Princess, Success, or Felicity; second best are the adjectives – Perfect is a good example; but the best, hands down, are the verbs – Prosper fits the bill. You just can’t top those. Splendidly, I didn’t make these up…I know people with all these names.

Prosper and I had a great time chatting about everything from the appropriteness of Ghanaian funeral "parties" to the growth of Ghana over free beer that’s part of Prosper’s monthly allotment. Three hours later and to the increasing annoyance of the bartender who stayed an hour past closing to serve us, we were finishing our drinks. And, the bartender was cool enough to help me get home on tro-tros in time to meet Bessam for drinks and a street food buffet.

The next morning Bessam and I got the official brewery tour from Prosper. To see such a sophisticated production process – one that can crank out 350,000 liters of brew a day – in a place where villages without electricity are just kilometers away, is mind-blowing. The entire factory can be operated nearly with the click of a few buttons on the computer; product problems that surface months later can be pinpointed to the exact location, batch, time, and who was working; samples are taken to make sure the labels are affixed exactly.

Suame has done some work for Guinness in the past, but mostly small stuff like spare parts. The difficulty is that big industrial producers like Guinness need consistency, and this is hard for Suame, which is composed of many individual actors. I find myself becoming increasingly interested in informal economies: how the function, how they can function more efficiently, if they should and how they could be linked into formal supply chains, and what effects all this would have on the poor and the overall national economy. I could easily see myself doing an MA thesis on this stuff.

Finish Your Beer, there are Poor People in Africa, Pt. II of II

2010-09-17T16:15:00.000-07:00

“Here we just plant anyhow.”

--TechnoServe-supported farmer explaining the typical unorganized farming method of villagers

Each morning around 5:30 am, 42-year old Grunja Jamomi wakes, and after eating a traditional breakfast made from black-eyed peas, heads out to his fields of yam, peanuts, and now, four acres of sorghum. This past year he harvested 875 kg of sorghum on one acre (that's a lot), twice what non-TechnoServe-supported farmers are getting. Regardless of what feelings you may harbor about the poor having too many kids, with the $360 he earned from his harvest, according to him, he’s able to send all seven of his school-age children to school (In total he has 10…count ‘em, 10 children!). Grunja, pictured with his wife and…well…some children, told me, “Before I went into the program, whenever I harvested, I would only sell in bits…I couldn’t use it for anything concrete. Sometimes I would run out of money and I couldn’t exactly tell what I had used it for.”

I met Grunja, in Tindando village, two hours west of Tamale in the Northern Region. After a couple days in Wa, Steve and I headed out to the capital of the region and set up camp at a nice hotel, from where we made our way to Tindando over some roads nastier than month-old hair clogged in a drain into one of the most isolated places I’ve ever been. There I met Kingsley Kayan, the animated nucleus farmer, and George Biligon, his miracle-worker who does all the ground-levelwork with the outgrowers. In the picture in the previous post, I’m pictured with Kingsley on the left and George on the right in front of Kingsley’s second tractor, which he purchased without TNS support to increase his profits and better serve his outgrowers (in the first pic in this post I'm with George who, as the only person who speaks English in the village, is my translator).
Kingsley, however successful, is where the shortfall of the project is centered on. These nucleus farmers are still not at a point where they can supply direct to Guinness. TechnoServe still acts as the aggregator and single marketing point, and is in effect a crutch. Said Steve, “The project is successful, but it’s not yet sustainable.” Guinness doesn’t want to deal with 13 small nucleus farmers for one raw material, a very small portion of its overall production (the brewery produces three beers, plus other beverages). The next steps in the project need to be to attract bigger commercial farmers and/or group these nucleus farmers together. Anticipating this, Kingsley and others have already started doing this on their own, as six of them have formed a marketing company.
From Tamale we traveled to Kumasi to visit the Guinness brewery, where I chatted it up with employees about the project and even got to hang out at the company bar (see pic). Employees get a monthly allotment of beer – not a surprising, or bad, perk. That night, full of Guinness suds and exhausted from a week’s work, I spent some time out and about exploring the city’s nightlife before flying out the next day.

Despite the project’s shortcomings – they wanted it to be self-sustainable after five years – I like the approach of the project: linking the poor into supply chains with commercial entities that have a vested-interest (profit) in seeing them succeed. 1/3 of the funding for this $3 million project is coming from Guinness to develop this supply chain, and if the project is extended they are expected to put in a larger proportion. This is opposed to disconnected efforts like village-level standalone businesses which, certainly, have their own merits.
And supplying to a company like Guinness isn’t the only way this approach of plugging the little guy into a larger system can work. In another project I’m working on, TechnoServe’s Cocoa Abrabopa (meaning “A Better Life”) project, an input company (fertilizers, fungicide, insecticide) is selling its products to enlisted farmers. The company has an incentive to train the farmers to make sure the inputs are applied correctly to attain the huge yields that are possible, which in turn convince the farmers to keep buying more. Some farmers claim the inputs are too expensive (those who leave often come back), but in the end it's the best option when they get the enormous net profit increases. I’m not at liberty to say how big they are because the results aren’t yet public, but man, it’s incredible. It looks like the input company will fund most, if not all, of the project’s extension.

As Steve explained to me on one of our many drives, in the late ‘90s there was a big shakeup at TechnoServe as they made this change in organizational direction. People with open minds like him stayed; the stubborn ones were asked to leave. I think efforts on standalone businesses are probably more worthwhile when dealing with promising, high-powered entrepreneurs doing something bigger than village-level business, more like SMEs. When dealing with the small guys, it might be better to plug them into a system – not all of them have business capability, though certainly some should be given a shot (read: microfinance). I’m not going into the microfinance question, again. I think we’ve worn the tread off those tires.

Finish Your Beer, there are Poor People in Africa, Pt. I of II

2010-09-15T18:09:00.001-07:00

NGOs won’t touch tobacco – Mr. Billy Gates couldn’t honestly try to stamp out smoking in China while funding tobacco farming for the poor in Africa – but apparently booze is cool. That’s an oversimplification – rather the attitude is “Beer is gonna be brewed, let’s just brew it with something different that helps the poor.” That something different is sorghum, which is produced strongly in Western Africa. Guinness Ghana Breweries is using sorghum supplied by 7,000+ TechnoServe-supported farmers in the northern regions. Over the past 5 years, TechnoServe farmers have supplied nearly 7,000 tons of sorghum to replace 40% of the barley in Guinness’ Foreign Extra Stout, a meal-in-a-glass that I’ve taken to drinking to help the farmers (it even lists sorghum as one of the ingredients on the label…really cool stuff). Guinness is saving money by not having to import barley from Europe and is supporting local farmers, which has that nice corporate image thing going for it.

I was brought on at TechnoServe (TNS) – partly…this is one of my four projects – to document the project’s successes (and failures). TechnoServe recently sent me (way) up north for a week to drive around to villages and interview farmers on what impact it’s had on them. Throughout the time I was with Steve Mwinkaara (pic 1), the amazing sorghum project director who’s one of the most impressive individuals I’ve ever met. He reminds me of Gerson from CLUSA in Mozambique – a no-nonsense local who works his behind off and isn’t all starry-eyed about big aid plans to save the Rest. He just wants to pump out sorghum.

We started in Kumasi, where he picked me up from the airport and drove us up to Wa, about as far away as you can get from Accra. We stopped for lunch and met a friend of his who was looking to start up a commercial tomato farm and was looking at possibilities for sorghum to rotate with it (why he wanted to meet Steve). Two equity investors, both bankers, one of which was from the US, were also there to look at investing in the tomato farm (equity is pretty much the only way to go when loans bring interest rates of 15-20% or more). It was really cool to see how business deals get done.

In Wa we went to several villages where TNS had organized focus groups, and I was blown away by the response. When they ask farmers to come out, boy do they clear their schedules. At our first group in Sabuli village, I counted at least 50 people. At the second group, we were late and they waited over two hours for us. I got to try pito (not too bad), the local brew made from fermented sorghum. They were really talkative too. Person after person kept saying the same thing: We have to have this program. The guaranteed buyer (in Guinness) and bulk payment is key. Explained outgrower Francis Vuurong, “And these school fees – I have three brothers in secondary school. Now, with this project, when you get the money you immediately just go to pay the fee, and then you are free, waiting for the next year.” With bulk payments they can do something substantial instead of spending it bit by bit on things like pito as they wait for the price to rise.

TechnoServe has also made available over $3 million of credit through a microfinance organization. This has allowed bigger farmers to buy tractors and provide fertilizers and plowing services on credit to the outgrowers, who sell their sorghum to the bigger farmers who in turn sell to Guinness. Says nucleus farmer Augustine Sandow,“With [the tractor], I have now increased the acreage on my own. Initially, I could farm maybe 10 acres, 20 acres, but now I farm up to 100 acres on my own…And I’ve got workers under me who are paid monthly, men and women.” I made a comment about the credit being provided in the form of inputs, not cash directly to the men. Steve and the women joked that the men would just go and buy another wife. All the men laughed. They knew it was true.

Needless to say, I've been pretty impressed with the project thus far. I'll explain exactly why in the next post, but I'll also talk about the major failing of the program. As this project is ending next March, I'm preparing this report as a guide for what the next steps are Guinness meets with TNS and other stakeholders (I hate that word) later this fall. How this major failing fits into that is pretty important.

Absurdity in Ada Foah

2010-09-05T17:57:00.000-07:00

This post has been a long time coming and mostly concerns one particular weekend adventure, rather than an attempt to say something smart about poverty...maybe I'll work something in to justify its existence. On a recent weekend I loaded a tro-tro to Ada Foah, a beachy place two hours east of Accra. I traveled with five Germans, only two of which I knew (and not very well...that's the nature of traveling), so you can imagine how disconcerted they were when a tall, goofy American showed up sporting board shorts, a Stars and Stripes bandanna, and a bright yellow Barack Obama family (yes, the First Family) sleeveless shirt. Oh yea, it was game time.

The occasion was a festival of some sort, and while we never really found out what the purpose was, there were cold drinks, food everywhere, jamming rap music, and as an added bonus people were hoisting the village chiefs up in chairs. It didn't really matter.

Another thing big crowd events bring is pick pocketers, and like most foreigners I'm sure I appear to be sweating dollar bills. It happened when I was taking a picture of the ceremony with my right hand. I felt a slight tug on my right pocket. That doesn't feel natural. I looked down to find a hand halfway into my pocket, and quickly connected it to the person to which it belonged. Without thinking I shoved him almost to the ground. Having been robbed and nearly robbed on multiple occasions over the course of my trip, I had a sudden urge to take out all my aggression on this one punk kid. It wasn't necessary. After finding out what had happened, the crowd, feeling extremely shamed, took out some kind of beating on this kid. Then they dragged him over to the cops. Meanwhile, Julian, one of the Germans I was with, just realized his camera was gone. Apparently it was a group effort.

I was asked to join in the police vehicle with Julian, another German friend, 10 heavily armored Ghanaian police (looked like a riot squad), and the kid who was now pleading his innocence to me, literally in tears. Oh, and this was after those police had roughed the kid up.At the police station they stripped the kid down to his boxers and threw him in jail, pretty much no questions asked. Oh, and this was after these police had roughed him up– slapping, hair yanking, and shoving included.

Two interesting things came out of this. First, there was an overwhelming sense of shame among the Ghanaian people that one of their own would steal. This was as opposed to Mozambique where, having been nearly pickpocketed during the middle of the day on more than one occasion, no one batted an eye. Secondly, the police just seemed like they wanted to assert their authority, show they had power. They didn’t even take the time to get straight that the kid had tried to rob me, not actually robbed Julian. They didn’t care. In Africa and most third-world countries, I’ve become very aware of the need for people with power and wealth to flout it. It doesn’t seem to be as prominent in the States, where many more people have it.

And I can’t talk about robberies without the recent rash of incidents. My friend is now heading home to Canada after multiple robberies (cellphone, purse, laptop, etc.) and sexual assault. My flatmate and her friend had a machete put to one of their throats by a group of guys on motorcycles, which resulted in the loss of everything they were carrying. And these machete-motorcycle robberies have been happening a lot lately.

We told the cops to let the kid go in a little while – he’d learned his lesson. The whole pickpocket incident didn’t really bother me, and it was quickly in the past when I was called on-stage to a Coca-Cola promotion. They said they wanted me to say something about Ghana and Coke, easy enough.

Well that quickly escalated into a dance-off against Julian with two rando Ghanaian girls who were clearly excited to be booty dancing with white boys. This was not in the contract. My attitude for on-stage dancing is a lot like that for karaoke – white boys can’t dance, so let’s not try (my German friend in the crowd actually overheard a local rhetorically ask “Do no white people know how to dance?”).

So instead of trying to look like a passionate first-round American Idol contestant who was clearly riding the misguided encouragement of his or friends, I tried to be silly and energetic (not hard), and just get the crowd into it. They got into it for sure (see crowd reaction pic), but when it came time to voting they weren’t picking up what I was putting down. Julian won the honor of “best of the worst” and an epically annoying Coca-Cola vuvuzela. Thank God I didn’t win that.

I have the full movies of the dance-offs, but I'm saving my last shreds of dignity by withholding this evidence.

That night brought more shenanigans which I won’t go into here and all in all it was a solid weekend, culminating in an entire tro-tro filled with whities headed nonstop back to Accra the next morning. Like most of my weekend endeavors, I was left with lots of memories in stow and little of my reputation still intact.

Microfranchising: Depth and Breadth in Development, Pt. II of II

2010-08-30T19:33:00.000-07:00

(this might make a bit more sense if you read the previous post first)

Getting on with it, one way I like to think of development is in terms of breadth – how many people it can reach; and depth – how much it can really impact the poor at the ground level. Grassroots or bottom-up approaches generally have impacts that are pretty profound on a limited number of people. One organization with which I worked – Ashraya Initiative for Children (AIC) – touches 12 children in its orphanage and another 200 in its educational and health outreach. They are doing amazing things in the lives of these 12 kids and doing much good for the others, but is this really changing the face of poverty in a country where 450 million live on less than $1.25 a day? You need a lot of AICs. A lot.

On the other hand you have top-down approaches, which tend to reach many more people but individually aren’t as impactful. A CLUSA management director explained the top-down push and resulting dilemma when we chatted last December: “A lot of donors are pushing us and myself included, and they said ‘Steve we need 50,000 farmers.’ ‘Well what can I do with 50,000 farmers? Yea I can make a little bit of an impact, but really, if Rob goes there, he can’t actually see it.’” This was contrasted to another NGO which I won’t name, who’d been there for 10 years and had gone pretty much nowhere with the traditional top-down approach – it was, in his words, “doing everything and nothing at the same time.” If you're trying to think in terms of government top-down, think of liberalizing trade between two countries, which may make prices slightly cheaper or products more available to all locals throughout the country, for example, but it’s not going to be hugely detectable per person.

This is one reason I like microfranchising. It has a wide-reach business approach that directly puts money in the pockets of the poor. In Ghana, FanMilk employs 7,000+ agents currently, and the company is also operating in Nigeria, Cote d’Ivore, Burkina Faso, Togo, and Benin. And this is just 7,000 at this given moment – the company has been operating over 40 years, with agent employment averaging eight years. This is all profit-driven: It has cost you, the Western taxpayer, nothing.

Microfranchising also works well for development for another main reason. The poor lack basic education and are, I’ve come to believe, generally uncreative. Expecting them to design and manage a profitable business is pretty unrealistic. For someone who is just trying to sustain oneself, I don’t think this should come as a surprise. I saw this with microfinance in Bangladesh – with the small-size loan groups, you see a lot of reselling. There wasn’t much value-added. Microfranchising takes the guesswork out of it.

So am I bashing microfinance? Only partly, because it’s a bit like comparing apples and oranges. Microfranchises and microfinance institutions (MFIs) are two different concepts. An MFI is more like the franchisor in the microfranchising approach – it’s the central business unit. The microfranchise is more like group lending in the microfinance approach in that it’s the distribution channel for the products – ice cream and loans in this post, respectively. In this way, I think they are both quite effective. Yet, coincidentally they both usually result in microbusinesses, and this is where I think microfranchising has the upper hand. With microcredit, rural villagers are, as I already noted, not adding much value and not able to take advantage of scale economies. They are producing a very inefficient product, and often diverting resources (credit) away from more appropriate SMEs. At the same time, a microfrachising approach is very scalable or easily replicated, though the MFI’s microbusinesses aren’t (though the lending is…so again I’m comparing apples to oranges).

There’s a lot more to microfranchising, and I’m hoping to look into it more here since there are a number microfrachise schemes operating, like CareShops, but I’ll spare you the details and only suggest that if you’re in NYC, try to get your hands on that FanYo.

Microfranchising: Depth and Breadth in Development, Pt. I of II

2010-08-29T20:58:00.000-07:00

“One problem with development is that you have to figure out what’s your focus. Do you want to work with a million farmers or do you want to work with a thousand farmers and get it right?”

--CLUSA Mozambique management official, during a conversation last December

Meet Kwame. For the past three months on his summer school break, he's been spending his days, from about 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning until sometimes as late as 9:00pm, selling frosty yogurt, flavored ice, ice cream, and other refreshing cold items (Tampico, below) which sell well (I can attest) in the brutal Ghanaian heat.

What’s different about Kwame than other street hawkers is that he’s selling a branded item. These refreshments are produced by FanMilk, a Dutch-founded Nigerian company. FanMilk recruits the poor to sell their goods to thirsty guys like me, pretty much anywhere hilarious English is spoken in Ghana...which is everywhere (post coming soon). They’re dispatched on bicycles or with a walking cart, like Kwame, and are always honking their bike horns to get attention (in fact, I can hear one as I type this). Kwame said he can earn up to 10 GHC (~$7) in a day, but had to deposit a down payment of 30 GHC to as collateral against the cart. His brother helped him with this. And all franchisees are required to save 10% of their profit, to be returned to them when leaving the company. You can probably imagine how this extra money is helping himself, his education, and/or his family in pretty tangible way.

FanMilk is a for-profit business that uses the conceptof microfranchising – somewhat like McDonald’s, but for the little guys. It uses pre-prepared business templates that allow it to scale quickly. For Kwame, he didn’t have to think about which products to sell, how to distribute the product, or what price to charge. But, he’s responsible for running his own business – he knows how many items he needs to sell to break even and has a selling strategy to accomplish this (e.g. where to take his cart and when?).

I finished my last post before the caveat post by saying I was going to talk about a development approach that’s pretty near the junction of top-down and bottom-up development approaches. I was misleading – rather I think it’s an approach which has results that correlate well with results of top-down and bottom-up approaches simultaneously. It’s the end, not the means. I've broken it down so as not to strain your eyes - I'll get into it next post.

A Response: Is Top-Down Development the Answer?

2010-08-22T12:46:00.000-07:00

I was planning to talk in my next post about an approach that I think sits at the cross hairs of top-down/bottom-up. But, the provoking comments and emails on the last post proved to be a heavy helping of mind fodder, it got me to typin’, and eventually the response took a life of its own like my tomatoes in the back of my fridge. Shame...tomatoes are expensive here in Ghana.

To sum up the comments on the last post: Do I buy top-down approaches to poverty alleviation?

The post takes a one-sided perspective, I suppose, to play devil's advocate. Perhaps killing the suspense (I know you were on the edge of your seats), I’ll go ahed and tell you that I buy Kofi's argument, but only conditionally that it is one component of a broader arsenal of poverty alleviation tools, and should be paired with bottom-up methods.

There have been some successes of top-down approaches to development, aid-driven or not. To give a couple examples, China's SEZs and big government initiatives have made substantial inroads, though inequality is staggering and widening (however this is generally what we see when countries become more capitalistic - see Russia). “Poor” in China is not the same as “poor” in Africa – I’ve found this out when visiting villages in China and digging deep to see what injustices the government had done and how overwhelming their poverty was, coming back mostly empty-handed. And I noted Ghana's success with the banking sector as another example.

HOWEVER, I think Jes and Thomas, the commenters, are right too – top-down approaches (talking aid now; I'll get to business separately) have overwhelmingly failed to distribute wealth evenly. But I think, at least for the big aid side, it's because they've been sending the wrong incentives. What I didn’t tell you about Ghana’s success story was that it came after 19 adjustment loans (loans based on policy conditionalities) from the World Bank/IMF tag team. Adjustment loans were based on governments promising to change, rather than a proven track record. Thus, the worse a country’s policies – which you could see in high inflation rates, high black market premium (manipulation of exchange rate), etc. – the more money it received. I’m not saying give the money to rich countries, but rather tie the aid to the track record instead of promises to change (fortunately, this is starting to happen).

And, the entire incentive system of donor organizations is misguided – how many industries are there in which your goal is work yourself out of a job? As I realized after meeting with a World Food Program director to discuss the extension of WFP’s support in northern Mozambique, the people deciding to continue the NGO programs, at the end of the day, are mostly the same people whose jobs are at stake.

Looking at top-down business aside from top-down aid, I think it only gets you halfway. Providing income and job security is where big business can thrive in poverty alleviation, but simply having a low-wage job doesn’t ensure that your family can escape the poverty cycle.

Bangladesh has been largely transformed by the textile industry, which arrived when foreign investment by South Korea’s Daewoo started up one plant in 1980. Now the textile industry employs 3.5 million people and accounts for 80% of the country’s exports. When I was staying in Dhana’s industrial area, I’d watch every day as women in their colorful sarees would head to work, and I even visited one of the factories (and got kicked out when they thought I was asking too many questions). When I went into the slums for interviews, I found that textile jobs were helping, but workers weren’t escaping the cycle.

This is where there are opportunities for grassroots NGOs and bottom-up approaches. Bottom-up approaches, by definition, build on local capabilities rather than trying to overcome their weaknesses. Grassroots organizations can provide things that normally aren’t offered to the poor, like access to credit, which uses the local characteristic of the poor placing a high value on reputation. And big businesses, geographically speaking, don’t reach everyone. People flooded to Dhaka – the textile industry and other job opportunities weren’t in the villages. This is where NGOs can do things like helping develop village enterprises or cottage industries, in which they help the poor make and market handicrafts for high-end markets.

I don’t think this answer of “both” comes as a surprise to many people reading this. It’s pretty clear that there’s no single answer to poverty alleviation, especially with the poor at varying rungs of the economic ladder and countries in varying stages of development. Again, I appreciate the comments and emails – it keeps me thinking. If only getting side-tracked could always be this productive!

Which Came First: the Economy or the Education?

2010-08-14T11:43:00.000-07:00

Most of the people reading this blog, including its author, probably think education is pretty important in battling poverty. It’s the first thing many people list when talking about solutions to poverty. I recently had the chance to have lunch with Vandy grad Kofi Dadzi, who made some compelling arguments about education, big aid NGOs, and how you make a country grow.

Kofi is an incredibly sharp and fascinating guy. A computer science graduate and former Dell employee, he and a friend co-founded the Ghanaian tech company Rancard Solutions that links international media companies to telecom companies in Ghana. They create the platform that allows things like those annoying ESPN text message updates that my friend Justin gets every time Derek Jeter so much as yawns. It’s a pretty impressive company he’s built. Eventually we got talking about how to solve poverty. Education is like the flour in the cake, right? – it’s the main ingredient. The more educated a person is, the more empowered (us poverty people love that word) he or she is. However, Kofi echoed a view I’ve heard before when he said, “Education doesn’t matter unless you have the economy that can absorb the newly educated workforce.” What he’s basically saying is pretty important: if we’re talking about priorities, let’s forget about education and just get this economy humming.

Once there are jobs opportunities, people will demand education. In Zimbabwe right now, I wouldn’t say educating oneself is pointless, but when you don’t know what policies will be different each day when you get out of bed, how compelled will you be to invest in the future, to demand education? And even if you think someone would be motivated to get educated to leave the country for jobs, well, that furthers the point.

So how do you get a country to grow? Kofi thinks NGOs for the most part have been prohibiting Ghana from developing its own capacity. All of NGOs’ nice little “micro” ideas – a word donors round the world love to hear – just aren’t going to get a country’s economic engines going. He thinks bigger. What Ghana needs are big industries, or pro-business reform like the liberalization of Ghana’s banking sector that saw the number of banks increase from 7 to 143. The proliferation of banks and inflow of capital required banks to lend (at more competitive rates) to survive, in turn spurring business activity. In a relatively natural progression of growth, these domestic businesses grow, saturate the local market, and then look outside the country for more opportunities. This brings that outside money back home, like Kofi’s company is now trying to do in Nigeria. Helping companies enter foreign markets – like the Ghanaian government didn’t do for him in Nigeria – is another way to foster business growth. With all this business growth and new job opportunities, people want to get educated. And fostering business growth, I argued, is what some NGOs (like TechnoServe) are helping to do. NGOs aren’t pointless. I think it was a point taken.

Let’s go back to this assumption that growth comes before education. Is this really how it is? From 1960 to 1999, economist William Easterly notes in The Elusive Quest for Growth, there was an educational explosion from 1960 to 1990. Primary education reached 100% in half the world’s countries by 1990, compared to only 28% of the countries in 1960. Meanwhile, secondary education quadrupled from 13% to 45% over the same years. Studies conducted have found no association between education growth and economic growth per capita. The graph pictured bears this out pretty clearly. But there is a relationship between initial schooling and subsequent economic growth, perhaps because if you know growth is going to be robust in the future, the skilled wage will be growing faster, and so people have incentives to invest in education. Easterly notes, “The magnitude of the relationship between initial schooling and subsequent growth is more consistent with the story of growth causing schooling rather than schooling growth.” Plus, if a country is poor because of lack of skills, the few skilled workers should be earning a lot. But then why are all the educated Indians going to the US (this trend is not as solid as before)? Wages for the skilled are much higher in the US than India. It doesn’t pay to be a big fish in a little pond.

Education is good, but only under the right circumstances. There needs to be job opportunities. The way Kofi explains it, getting this going sounds more top-down. My Ghanaian colleague at TechnoServe agrees. But what about bottom-up/grassroots approaches? In the next post I’ll talk about an approach I think hits them both.

Creative Solutions for the Poor (an engineer wouldn't hurt)

2010-08-11T11:33:00.000-07:00

Along with current Vanderbilt student Ari Herrick and two of her friends, I traveled seven hours in a series of tro-tros that took us to the bustling fishing village of Akwidaa, located a few hours west of Cape Coast (the notorious heart of the trans-Atlantic slave trade). On our last tro, I met a man Stephen Apwidaa, who was a primary teacher in Akwidaa and soon became known to me and my friends as “Stephen the Teacher” (my friends in the back of the tro met “Charles the Goldminer”). Stephen and I chatted it up, and he invited me to his home. He passed the this-guy-doesn’t-just-want-to-be-friend-for-money test, and so I said maybe I’d wander over tomorrow.

We stayed at the idyllically set Green Turtle Lodge at the cost of $4.50 a night and a butchering of our ankles by mosquitoes that had us itching late into next week. We had a great time, but after laying on the beach for a whopping total of 20 minutes and wearing out myself bodysurfing, I got curious and tired of being a “tourist”, so partner in crime Ari and I moseyed on over to Akwidaa. We inquired for Stephen the Teacher, and it didn’t take long before 12-year-old Joseph led us to him, with children swarming and holding our hands to guide us.

Stephen took us to a chop bar, where we enjoyed Fantas and talked abouthis family and the village. A father of four, his oldest son had just completed high school, and though he wanted to send him to a university to pursue his son’s interest in land economy, finances didn’t allow it. His son would stay home to work until next year, when Stephen would look at the possibilities.

We talked about several topics, including jobs. It seemed like fishing was still intact, but coconut sales from the palm trees were starting to drop off and as a result that form of livlihood. He pointed to some nearby brown palm trees, according to him affected by water pollution from oil – possibly the recent oil spill near his community. “They will not produce again,” he explained.

At the same time, they have no electricity. He pointed out the door to a nearby steak in the ground which demarcated the future installation of a light pole, but the government had not yet acted. Even if the power grid were to be extended to them, it’s a wonder how consistent it would be and how many people would benefit. Ari and her friends live just two hours outside of Accra and say power outages are common.

The most compelling problem was that of rubbish (don’t worry, I’m not coming back a Brit). They piled a lot of their garbage on the rocks very close to the water (see pic), and when the tide came in with bad weather, it would wash a lot of the garbage inland to the beaches of their estuary that bisects the town into New and Old. Why they couldn’t pile it somewhere else got lost in translation – maybe it was because no one wants to live next to a landfill. As a result, they were burning the trash or burying it in the beach, and the garbage that was washing up was having to be raked up by government workers (see pic).

So, taking all this together, there are job, energy, and waste problems. This may be just optimistic thinking or actually an opportunity for bottom-of-the-pyramid engineering (or both), but wouldn’t it be amazing if the trash, or at least some of it, could be converted into energy? It could help light the town. And trash might then become, in an odd way, potential revenue. It could employ collectors or pay people small fees for bringing it to the conversion center, where employees could convert it. This is almost certainly wishful thinking, but just because it hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean it can’t be done at all. And at the very least, thinking creatively about solutions for the poor gets the ball rolling. For proof, see here.

Would You Pay to Save?

2010-08-04T02:58:00.000-07:00

That’s not how it’s supposed to work. Banks are supposed to pay you. But a lot of people here in Ghana (the poor), are paying in a system that’s called susu. The origin of the word is debatable, but it refers to rotating savings. The way it works is that a Susu collector comes around the village and collects a daily or weekly installment, usually a very small sum, from his agreed-upon customers that have formed a group. At the end of the month (or whatever cycle they are doing), the Susu collector keeps one installment’s worth as his wage. Each time the group members make a payment, someone in the group receives the full sum. So if there were 30 people in the group making payments of 2 Ghanian cedis (1 cedi = $1.4), each time the entire group makes a payment someone would get 58 GHC. The susu would earn 60 cedis in the month.

It might seem counter-intuitive to pay to save, but the kicker here is that for those who receive the first payments, it’s basically an interest-free loan – they only had to put in a few cedis to get the 58. But for the later ones, it’s like forced saving with slowly decreasing interest rates (I'm not yet sure how they decide the order and how it is made fair the next cycle). This creates an opportunity for people to access savings schemes and credit in deep rural areas that wouldn’t otherwise have it. Seven out of the 13 banks in Ghana's north region have no banks. Susu collectors generally take the pooled savings and put it into a rural bank – with the money pooled together he (typically they’re men) can access banking products for the group that no individual member could. The Susu collectors usually have anywhere from 200-500 customers, according to Kwaku Akwetey, the General Secretary of the Ghana Co-op Susu Collectors Association (GCSCA), who I recently met for discussions about using susus in an upcoming project for TechnoServe.

So what’s the difference between microcredit and susu? From my understanding, and it’s still very basic, is that the susu system is focused more on savings – having a secure place to save – with the benefit of having access to cheaper credit. Microcredit in the Bangladesh form, on the other hand, focuses more on lending, and operates on the principle of peer pressure that access to credit is only open if everyone is making a payment on their loan. The peer pressure component is present in the susu system, but rather peer pressure that compels you to save. For Ghanians, the microcredit loans done by the rural banks are at annual interest rates of about 30%, and are given to the entire group. Susu collectors do offer loans outside of the typical rotating savings payments (at similar interest rates), but they go to the individual.

Of course, this type of informal banking can be rife with fraud. The Susu collector might not deposit the correct amount collected, for example, or one of the first people to receive the payment could just stop making installments, causing the rest of the members to lose part of their savings. I assume this works better in villages where everyone knows everyone. I recently visited a village (which I'll talk about later) and my friend and villager Stephen explained that crime is never an issue. Because of the fraud, there's an effort being made to formalize it, which is what GCSCA is all about.

This is another prime example of how the poor have to pay extra for the same products we take for granted. Sachet marketing - the strategy of selling small amounts of things like Head 'N Shoulders shampoo - is huge in every country I've been to. And pay-as-you-go cell phone schemes are comparatively expensive - in less than three weeks in a country 67 times poorer than the US, I've already dumped $15 into phone credit compared to my monthly US bill of $15, and I don't even know many people here!

Ghana: The Scent of Asia and Musk of Obama

2010-07-26T13:03:00.000-07:00

My first thought when I arrived in Ghana was, "This place smells like Asia." I can't really explain why. Maybe it's the tree-covered sidewalks with open drainage ditches that reminds me of China. Maybe it's all the wonderful street food and the culture of eating out that makes a quick bite on the road a cheap and tasty option. Maybe it's the insane Accra traffic that's resulted in traffic jams unseen to me since Bangladesh (I thought Africans don't own cars?!).

Accra (pop. ~4 million) is the bustling economic and political capital of the country nestled in the armpit of Africa. In the World Bank's latest "Doing Business" report that looks at the ease of doing business, Ghana ranked behind only Kenya, Tunisia, Botswana, South Africa, and Mauritius within Africa. Possibly as evidence, there are six cell phone companies competing here, easily the most I've seen in Africa, and even Asia. Driving around you can see construction sites of towers and office buildings going up that bring me back to India and China. The locals, as the country director of the NGO I'm volunteering with explained, carry a "sense of arrogance". But it's a good arrogance, something you don't see too often in Africa. They don't want pity. I've been trying to collect flags in each country I travel. Mozambique was a pretty hard find, as was Zimbabwe, but you'd have to be legless to not trip over a "Black Star" flag here. They are proud to be Ghanian.

And if Africa is the land of Obamarama, then Ghana is ground zero of this stars and stripes lovefest. Typically, in a tro-tro (the local minibus transport I take around), hanging on the rear view mirror is a Black Star flag and an American flag air freshener. Or, there will be an American flag on the dash with a big Obama face over the background of stripes, exactly like this one. It doesn't stop there, of course - lines of products have been released. I was pretty amazed when I drove past this the other day. The love for Obama stems primarily from his visit to the country just over a year ago, and the President's African roots.

Then there's the friendliness of the people. From my travels there seems to be two things that are almost universally the same across countries (at least poor countries). The first is that when locals are trying to sum up a country, they talk about how the X people are "very social". This isn't really unique to a country. The second thing is that X people are very friendly. I haven't been to a country yet where I didn't think the people were friendly. But here is where Ghana stands out - like in Bangladesh, random Ghanaians have actually sent me messages on CouchSurfing asking me to visit them. This has happened in no other country than Bangladesh for me.

So what am I actually doing here? I'm spending about a month and a half with TechnoServe helping them with a proposal for a project that will potentially work with rural farmers in norther Ghana. While I'm not at liberty to say much more than that, I can say it has been really challenging and extremely interesting to learn about different approaches to agriculture and eradicating rural poverty. And, in the meantime I'm learning about different aspects and approaches of poverty and poverty alleviation unrelated to my work, and of course sampling some of the best that Obama has to offer.

The Haves and Have Nots of the World Cup

2010-07-21T03:18:00.001-07:00

Two nights in the wonderful 5-star Lagos, Nigeria airport terminal and a week in South Africa later, I'm now in Ghana. Horrible visa complications prevented me from ever boarding in Lagos, and I endured a two-day Tom Hanks-like festival during which I was patted down enough times by security for it to be considered a mild form of sexual harassment. By the end of it I knew not only which crackers were the best bang for the buck or where to find free internet, but also how to sculpt my McDonald's-French-fries-greasy hair into different works of art.

To make a long story short, they kicked me back to South Africa, almost unwillingly. At one point there were threats to send me back home. I went immediately toPretoria to get things sorted out, and was able to stay two nights with an Afrikaans couple. The first night there was a braai (like a BBQ) at their neighbor's, an extremely nice native South African

couple who were best friends to my white hosts. This was indicative of the composition of the rest of the guests. Considering that even in the US de facto segregation is alive and well, it was inspiring to see this in a country which has emerged from apartheid less than 20 years ago. Of course, with this diverse group of individuals, I had some extremely stimulating conversations about race, politics, and poverty.

With a few days to kill until my flight, I tried to make the best of bad situation and grabbed my vuvuzela and headed to Durban for the Spain/Germany game. The beach-front city was exploding with energy, and I can't honestly say I focused too much on poverty over those two days. The game experience was amazin

g, even if the play wasn't too inspiring. One interesting thing is that vuvuzelas aren't as annoying in person as on TV - there's no constant buzz. Instead, there are single blows and coordinated chants - all jumbled up it just sounds like a buzz on TV.

On my last day I headed back toJourg to catch my flight, and with time to kill I went to Soweto to check on my friends. I had no one's phone number, so I just popped into the Motsoaledi neighborhood. At first it seemed a hero's welcome. Everyone still knew me. Even people I couldn't remember. They asked, "Are you looking for Siphiwe?" But it wasn't that positive. Not much had changed for Siphiwe. World Cup hadn't brought as much tourism to him as planned. He had stopped going to church but said he would soon, now that the Cup was finished. I popped in to see Sandy - the welcome was warm, but I didn't stay for long. While I was there she talked, between taking pinches of snuff, about how the World Cup really hadn't helped her shebeen much at all. Then I went to see to Nessie's bar and, of course,

found Patricia and everyone else. I don't think they ever expected to see me back. Again, I saw that nothing much had changed, except Junior quitting his restaurant job and becoming unemployed because he thought it was too much work for too little pay.

In just a matter of days I saw the best and brightest of South Africa on display for all the foreigners like myself, while just next door in Motsoaledi things are going nowhere fast. What will be the legacy of this World Cup? Will it bring more attention to the plight that the majority of South Africans find themselves in, even whites? Will the government use revenue and goodwill of the world earned from a Cup well-run to improve access to opportunities for people like Siphiwe? Or will it be just another big glamorous sporting event for "haves" like myself? I shudder to think of the likelihood of each.

The Taking of Summerhill: A Story of Race, Injustice, and Corruption

2010-07-13T09:49:00.000-07:00

“’Look, if you’re going to take the farm, and that’s inevitably what’s going to happen, you can have the second farm.’ And they [the Zimbabwean government] said, ‘Well that’s not enough.’ So, they said, ‘We’ll take some of your main farm,’ which was Summerhill.”

In an office in Harare, I listened to Myles Hall explain how the Zimbabwean government had first taken his second farm and then the first piece of the Summerhill farm that I visited a few days later.

This was only the beginning. Eventually they took more. Myles explains this in the clip below his encounter with Kindness Paradza.

The ironic thing is that Kindness' surname, Paradza, means "to break up/destroy". Myles just laughs about the whole situation. From there Myles and his family moved into his parents' home on the last remaining piece of Summerhill. Nomhle Mliswa had been trying to get the last of his farm. During the course of over a month in 2007, Myles' workers stood their ground to security guards and their large dogs - partly out of loyalty and partly because they hadn't been paid for that month - to protect the farm. They guarded in 12-hour shifts at the gate. As the niece of Zanu-PF henchman Didymus Mutasa, Mliswa finally made it happen.

Said Myles, “And while I was in town one day she moved into my house and I never got back in again. That was on the 20^th of September, 2007.” But even then his workers didn't leave. Now on the outside of the gate, they stayed to make sure no equipment was stolen.

For close to a month I traveled the country talking to farmers and workers, and this is only a sliver of what I found. I could write an entire separate blog on the stories of injustice and brutality toward (and sometimes killings of) farmers, their workers, and especially farm animals. And it's still going on. Once, when trying to travel to a farm in Chipinge, my host told me we couldn't go because there were fresh attacks. Only later did I see this news report. Farmers and their workers have an amazing memory of how the events unfolded for themselves, and a disturbingly sharp recollection of exact dates, kind of like how you remember exactly what you were doing on 9/11.

But this isn't just about the white farmers, many of whom have seen their entire life savings dry up in the government's inflationary blunders and lost their livelihoods. It's also about the millions of people they employed directly and indirectly. John Mbewe, after losing his job at Myles' farm, came to community farmer Dave Fortecue (a friend of Myles) with no options. "It was July 28th," he recalls. "When I started working with Dave, there was a big problem for me...I was left with only two buckets of maize," and "I use two buckets of maize per month with my family.” Once down to his last month of food, John is now succeeding with Dave's help. But it's not that way for all the former workers. Shaddai Kumiti, who herds what's left of Myles' cattle, explains in the video.

And what is happening with this land now? Not much. Many of the farmers who took over, with their political or big business jobs, live in Harare. Farmers and their workers derisively call them "cell phone farmers". Shaddai and Clever Kudenga talk about what's been going on at Nomhle Mliswa's farm and Paradza's farm. (note: when they talk about Nomsa, they're referring to Nomhle)

It's a sad state government officials have driven Zimbabwe into. What was labeled on paper as taking back the land for the common black natives has instead turned out to be an all-you-can-grab land buffet for government officials and their kin. With new policies and corruption happening all the time, no one can really plan for the future. And when you can't plan, it's hard, or maybe more accurately - silly - to invest, which is the main way to get a country to grow. With the incredible brain drain happening (I recently sat on a flight next to an Egyptian ear and throat doctor, who is now the only one in all of southern Zimbabwe), it's tempting to think that if things don't turn around soon it could be all but over for Zim. But, as one farmer explained to me, "It's never too late."

Mountains and Oceans after a Year’s Travel

2010-07-05T06:47:00.000-07:00

I recently gave up a chance to hike Kilimanjaro. I have the money and I was only a bus ride away. Tight timing and friends in Ghana were the deciding factors, but I could have still probably worked it out. What I’ve come to accept – as if to steal a hackneyed adage from “Into the Wild” – is that happiness is only real when shared. For me, enjoyment comes best when an experience is shared with someone. Kilimanjaro will wait.

But, traveling alone does have one huge benefit – it allows you to learn for yourself. For me, it has allowed me to – as I explained before – better understand myself and, as naïve as this sounds, the meaning of this whole life thing. I don’t claim to completely understand either, but I know I’m closer than when I started.

I suppose that it’s somewhat odd that I’m talking about life on the one-year anniversary of launching off first class to Bangladesh, since my project is on poverty and development. Take a look at my proposal and you’ll find nothing about fluffy things like self-realization or the meaning of life. That’s not to say I’m not fulfilling my goals set forth in my proposal – I’ve done amazing things and have learned more about development and the challenges to overcoming poverty than I imagined. But I think when the wonderful people at Vanderbilt set up this fellowship, they probably had an idea that there would be this added benefit.

During the past year I’ve experienced extraordinary highs (none drug-related, just to be clear) – an early run through the crisp mist of rural China; meeting some of the leaders in social business arena; sleeping in one of the oldest slums in South Africa; getting one final rickshaw ride from Anis; poking around Zimbabwe to get information about the brutality toward farmers and their workers, without getting the government’s wrath myself.

And I’ve experienced extreme lows – lonely, depressing nights in the hotel room; occasional feelings that I’m not achieving my objectives; getting robbed $2,000 shortly before tripping and injuring myself on a run (stupid potholes Zimbabwe government never fixes…); two plus days in the non-air conditioned Lagos, Nigeria airport where by the end of it, my hair was so greasy I could sculpt it; wondering if without deadlines, I really have lost all my discipline.

One of the most depressing things has also been one of the most important – something I can’t get out of my head. Everywhere I go I see people going through the motions: 9-5 job working for someone, make enough money to pay the bills, have a few kids, relax on the weekend, repeat ad nauseum for years, then retire and die, usually pretty close to where they were born. Nothing very extraordinary, so it seems. I see it in every country I go to. Two things come out of this for me. First, I’m not trying to be condescending. Extraordinary, I think, is a self-defined word in the sense that I'm talking about it. Rather, I’m concerned that a life which falls below my personal expectations could happen to me. An average life scares me, and it seems like it can happen so easily.

The second thing is that logically, there seems like there has to be something more than this routine the majority of us are boxed into. I’ve spent a lot of time with Christian farmers, and so you know how their perspective goes (our time here on earth is a testing ground). I hope and plan to spend some substantial time thinking, talking, and reading about this issue.

As I move into the second year of my fellowship – no, I don’t know when I’m coming home – I already have things I want to explore upon my return, many new friends to reunite with in the States and abroad, and plenty more experiences on deck for the rest of Africa and South America.

Seeing Victoria Falls from another Perspective

2010-06-25T05:38:00.000-07:00

A trip to Zimbabwe would not be complete with a stop in Vic Falls. I settled into Shoestrings Backpackers with a couple guys I met on the bus. I can’t seem to totally recall Niagra, but the sheer spray from these falls soaked me to the bone. Then there was the sunset cruise on the Zambezi River, where we saw elephants, hippos, and crocodiles, and obviously jumping on one of the highest bungees in the world (which was petrifying and amazing at the same time). Multiple people told me about detached retinas resulting from jumping, but I say it was a retina well worth it.

During my wait to hitchhike to the next destination, a skinny young guy named Stanely struck up a conversation with me. We talked for a bit and he said he wanted to show me his art, but I had to wait for a ride. He went home into the bush, and never came back withthe promised art. So as I had been waiting for over an hour with the sun beginning to set, I decided to try to find him. Walking into the abyss of the bush made me feel a bit like Kevin Costner in a corn field. I followed random paths for about 75 meters of thick bush. Then suddenly it cleared, with an entire colorless community of gray cinder block homes in front of me.

Why I did I walk in after this guy, who was probably no different than the myriad of hawkers on the street? I did it partly because I wanted to see his art, but mostly because I wanted to see what life was like over here. I’ve come to realize that I care pretty little about the tallest building, wildlife parks, old temples, etc. I certainly would never give up my Great Wall or Taj Mahal experience, but you don’t understand a country and its people on guided tours or viewing monuments. Give me a cup of coffee with local or a couple nights stay in the slums any day of the week. Anyway, after clumsily asking around for a guy named Stanely, two round, jolly women helped me out. Word got out that a white guy was looking for Stanely, and it wasn’t long before he found me.

Within in half an hour I had two offersof places stay, and decided on Stanely. I was ushered into his three-room home that was only slightly bigger than my room back home. As I sifted through his keychain art (he carved some out of cow bone from beef his family had eaten), we chatted about himself. He was a Rasta (he must have lit up close to 10 times during my stay), and sells his art at a local market, though he is trying to learn Spanish so he can become a tour guide. The house was his uncle’s, a war veteran who received it free, and most of the houses in the community were free as part of a vote-getting strategy. Stanely would be attending a meeting the next day to sign his name for his house. Married to his wife Philani, he has a 19-month-old baby named Patience (last pic), who was busy wearing more food than she was eating. I don’t blame her – it was some of the nastiest okra I’ve ever had.

After dinner we walked around town looking for the two jolly women I owed a drink for helping me. The community was eerily quiet for a Saturday night. Before this fellowship, I thought the rural areas and slums were full of activity, and people were toiling to make every penny. The pace of life is very slow, not because they are all lazy, but because they don’t have many options. Stanely summed it up the next day when I asked what his plans were for the day. “I have no program. Moving is money.”

Shortly after we went to bed, I heard clapping, whistling, and yelling. From the other room I heard Stanely whisper something like, “There’s an elephant.” The full-grown male elephant was less than 50 feet away from the house, eating a neighbor’s bushes. Some of the neighbors were trying to scare it away and/or agitate it. Stanely said they usually come at night, and this is when they’re most dangerous. I grabbed my camera and ran after the elephant as it walked down the street chowing on bushes. Elephants are an enemy of the locals – they destroy houses, eat crops, and in some cases kill people. I eventually got within 30 feet of the elephant, but once it turned and faced me, I ran pretty quickly in the other direction with all the other locals.

My perception of the poor is a summation of all the people I’ve read about and, most importantly, met. Stanely adds another piece. I wonder about some of his reasoning: That he has no money saved for the Spanish classes, which he needs to get ahead; this is because he’s not earning enough currently to cover his family; but he has enough to pay for marijuana. If you were backed up into that position, would you give up those types up habits and do everything to get ahead? Or does everyone have his/her breaking point or weaknesses? More likely, I think, it’s impossible for me to conceptualize this because I haven’t grown up in the same context as him, where success probably isn’t expected and life is just about getting from one day to the next.

Ostriches, Farming, and the Education Magic Bullet in the Poverty Fight

2010-06-21T02:39:00.000-07:00

After Mutare, I crammed into a bus and headed to Bulawayo, the second largest city in Zimbabwe. I spent the weekend (before last) in the city center, which was surreal. The whole town was essentially empty, the streets were par for the course in Zimbabwe nowadays – badly potholed (Q: How do you tell a drunk Zimbabwean?, A: He drives straight), and there was no power for the majority of the day, which got eerie after nightfall. It felt like traveling back in time or into a zombie movie, or both.

On Monday I was finally able to get in touch with Peter Cunningham, whose name is one of the most recognizable in Zimbabwe for his family’s vast farming enterprises. My stay with the Cunninghams turned out to be interesting for more reasons than just my investigation into the land seizures of Zimbabwean farmers. Peter and his family are very strong in their Christian faith, so this was a great opportunity to bounce some thoughts off him and do some deep thinking about religion.

More importantly for this post, however, what I found interesting is how the Cunninghams are pushing education that has applicability rather than a typical elementary NGO school. Peter and his family are involved in large amounts of agriculture, poultry, and ostrich farming, which was fascinating to say the least. I also got to visit their tannery (80% of their hides go to the US, used mainly in boots). In addition to these business endeavors, they have also started two social organizations, one of which I visited called Ebenezer Agricultural Training Centre. At Ebenzer, which has been running for three years, students undergo a 2-year program in which they learn sustainable, efficient farming (for example, how to use different fertilizers, like ant hill). Each student gets three small plots where they plant things like cabbage, potatoes, and onions, to be sold on the local market as part of the business component of their curriculum. This is paired with class “room” learning (as the picture shows, Ebenezer purposely keeps the conditions very basic).

I think in at least one other post I’ve talked about how I feel education is one ofthe keys to combating poverty. As someone who has been schooled for 19 of my 23 years of existence, I’ll admit that this is probably a biased view. But it wasn’t until recently when I was reading “The Elusive Quest for Growth” by economist William Easterly that I had to revaluate this belief. The book is a pretty dry read and never fails to put me – someone who majored in econ and is interested in poverty – to sleep, but it has some good information. Calling out the World Bank and other organizations who trumpet for universal education, he explains the facts are that there is no relationship between growth in years of schooling and personal income growth, and that actually “world average growth decreased from the 1960s to the 1990s [the time of the education explosion] despite the increase in education levels.”

What Easterly is getting at, and what I think Ebenzer understands, is that there needs to be an incentive to invest in the future. What’s the point of investing in your education if the knowledge gained has no chance of being utilized? As Easterly puts it, “Creating people with high skill in countries where the only profitable activity is lobbying the government for favors is not a formula for success. Creating skills where there exists no technology to use them is not going to foster economic growth.”

Here in Zimbabwe, corruption is rifeand many if not most of the opportunities to use high levels of education have dried up, as most of the expatriates will attest. You will only invest in your education/future if you have a chance of using that education. The country still runs on agriculture (and maybe increasingly so, as industry has sadly left or shut down), and so Ebenzer’s education is very applicable for the young rural farmers who attend. It seems to me that education is a very good thing, but only under the right conditions. More things have to happen than just the education magic bullet.

How Zimbabwe Created the Biggest Dollar Store Ever

2010-06-14T01:47:00.000-07:00

I knew Zimbabwe’s inflation rate was high. I’d seen the bar on graphs breaking off the page in The Economist reports. I knew that the hyperinflation had caused prices to change very often. And I also knew that this had caused them to move to the dollar. But I never really thought deeply about it all.

It didn’t really hit me until I was in the Spar grocery store. I wanted to buy a $1.25 bottle of shampoo. I handed the cashier two dollars. She asked, “Do you have 75 cents?” After I said no and she explained she had no change, she said, “What am I supposed to do?” To me this was the most bizarre question.

“Haven’t you run into this problem before? What is everyone else doing?” I asked. “They are using notes.” Then I saw these paper slips, essentially IOUs, with Spar’s logo – I guess that works because people buy groceries often. I went around asking other cashiers whether they had change. Nope. Apparently bills have made it into the country, but coins have not. As a result, the bills get used a lot – just touching them makes you want to wash your hands. A local farmer named Danielle said she and her six friends did an experiment – they put a little black cross on a dollar, and within six weeks they had all at one point had it in their possession. I’m sure the locals are happy to get their hands on my crisp newbies.

Then I started noticing things. The majority of items were one dollar, never less. You could buy 10 pens, a whole sack of apples, two yogurts, etc. On my trip to Bulawayo, I turned to barter. I traded a half a loaf of bread for three bananas, which I used for my peanut butter and banana sandwich. The situation is bit better here in the second largest city Bulawayo, which seems to have more South African rand in circulation. You can give someone dollars and get rand coins as change, like I did two nights ago for my meal over the UK/USA World Cup game. You might find prices in rand right next to dollar prices (pic 3). Apparently, at Victoria Falls, because of the tourists they are using rand, dollars, Zambian kwacha, pounds, and euros. Perhaps the funniest thing is that the Zimbabwean dollar is still the national currency.

How did they get to this point? I’ll save you the history lesson, but basically the Zanu-PF government headed by Robert Mugabe has decreed economic (e.g. printing money) and political policies (e.g. land seizures) in order to maintain power. It started in 2000 and reached its worst in 2007-2008. Some of the guys at the bar recounted how they would come in with plastic bags of money to buy a few drinks (though they couldn’t get beer, only spirits). My friend Dave said he would go into the TM grocery store, and the entire place would be empty save a couple shelves. Bread was a very rare find. When you could find it, you were talking billions or trillions of dollars (see pic 4…that one cent bill is apparently the lowest denomination bill ever made in the world). People eventually turned to the black market – everything everyone was doing was illegal. I asked Natalie, who had lived in Mutare the majority of her life, how she survived when prices were so high and earnings so low, as she had explained to me. “You don’t want to know,” she said laughing. There was plenty of government tampering along the way, of course. Dave explained that he found rice packaged in 10kg sacks that read, “A gift to the people of Zimbabwe from your friends in India.” The intended aid food had been intercepted by the government at the border and was being sold for $50. Those who had a car would go across the border of Mozambique or South Africa with four people or so (200kg quota of food per person), and buy food for several months.

The stores still look empty to me, but everyone says it’s much better now. Moffat, a store owner I talked to, said his entire stock was wiped out when Mugabe ordered a price cut of 50% in mid-July 2007. People ransacked his store. “In 10 minutes, everything was gone.” He’s still recovering. I noticed that the shelves in the back of his store were about 15 feet from the wall because of lack of stock. People still live in fear – they say that they can’t plan for the future when you don’t know if Mugabe will wake up and create or remove a regulation. And, as a result, the country’s population has fallen by 25% as the educated and capable flee. It’s a sad predicament the country once known as “the breadbasket of Africa” is in.

Avoiding the Rut and a Mozambique Exodus

2010-06-10T02:55:00.000-07:00

“I hate routine. That’s how you fall into a rut.”

--Alwyn Viljoen, a South African I stayed who was replying to his wife’s comment that he wasn’t sitting at the usual dinner table seat.

It’s easy to get complacent. Working in an office with AC and fast internet, personal driver, and a comfortable place to sleep in a city and country you feel like you know like the back of your hand is great. You’re efficient in your efforts, you know what you’re talking about (or at least most of the time…), and you don’t have to interact with strangers if you don’t want to. But, after 6 months of working with TechnoServe and CLUSA, I was starting to get comfortable. It was almost too routine.

So, with my contract up, I headed south in a plane to Beira, the middle of the country. All I knew is that I was heading west toward the border of Zimbabwe. At the Beira airport, I kept my ears open and maneuvered my way into a free ride to a town 60km from the border. After two nights stay at the CLUSA office in a bed I had to somewhat construct myself in the office kitchen, I hitched the rest of the way to the border town of Manica, trading phone credit for one ride (when would I need it again?) in a car that was cruising at over 100 mph down the ragged Mozambican roads. Spending my last 5 meticais on a piece of bread that was my lunch, I remembered I had some South African rand left over from my previous bout in that country, which I traded for a minibus ride from Manica to the country line. Wedged into the back seat with all 40 lbs of my luggage in my lap, I could only see to the left and right of me, where two large women were painted on me and a baby took turns crying and wet-coughing on my arm.

I finally crossed the border with easily the most hassle from the border police I’ve ever received (usually, they see a white foreigner and usher you in to spend your greenbacks), and by my wonderful planning it was now almost dark. Alwyn, the South African who supplied the quote at the beginning of this post, also told me that his #1 rule of travel is to always figure out where you are staying before nightfall. Fail there. Not even that, I didn’t know very much about the country or city (Mutare) to which I was going, in general. This seems to be my style. All I had was a reference from a friend that there was a girl at a restaurant which I thought was called The Cooklio (actually The Green Cookel), and a bar called The Legion, which is where a lot of white farmers went.

I jumped in a truck heading toward Mutare, and since “The Cooklio” didn’t ring any bells with the driver, I had him take me to The Legion. It’s now 6:30pm, pitch black outside, and I stumble through the door, barely able to fit through with all the luggage dangling from my body, and find about 10-15 farmers with beer and whisky in front of them, in pure silence.

The Zimbabwean farmer circle is quite small, and it turns out the folks at the bar know the guy who was referring me and they had the number of his daughter, who I was supposed to fetch at The Green Cookel. Four beers later I was feeling much less stressed, I’d made 7 or so new friends, and the bar manager had offered me a bed. We headed back to his place where we cooked steak and potatoes and I listened to his stories. I am definitely not in the rut.

Updates from the Trail

2010-06-06T06:41:00.000-07:00

When I received the fellowship just over a year ago, I did all kinds of planning beforehand. I did more planning than schoolwork and running combined that last semester. Planning helps me keep my sanity, most of the time. But for all of the planning I did, my fellowship has been very much on the whim, and I think I'm becoming more comfortable with this. I think when you try to plan an itinerary for an entire year, you don't account for people, or at least I didn't. My itinerary was full of places and organizations. But then people happened. My itinerary changed (if you want proof, go look at the original here). A lot of these people I'm fortunate to still be in touch with. Here's some updates just from a few:

Bangladesh
Anis the Rickshaw puller: Through my translator-turned-good-friend Omi, I got an update on Anis (remember, we tried to "loan" him money for rickshaws) in late December. He finally heard back from Anis, who said that he wasn't able to pay because his dad got into a quarrel in his village over a family feud (too long to tell that story) so he had to leave for the village, and because his wife went into early labor, causing hardships on both his wife and child. Omi said Anis was implying for me to give him more money. To me, this is sad. Like many slum dweller I meet, no matter how much I try to be their friend, their equal, or even their partner, they still see me as a rich white guy. As a foreigner trying to be culturally sensitive, I try hard not to be patronizing. But when the poor corner you into that position, that position where you are the one with not only all the money and power, but also all the ideas, how can a person like me actually expect to have an impact on someone with that mentality?

Basic Needs School opening: A couple of posts titled "This is Rural Bangladesh" found me out in the backwoods of northern Bangladesh. I was visiting the community supported by Basic Needs Program, an NGO I mentioned before that was started by my good friends Richie Hubbard and Sohan Rahman. I was happy to hear recently that about two months ago their school opened (I stole the picture, but I don't think they'll mind). When I visited it was built, but had just bare rooms. Great to see their progress.

China

Mei Xiang Yak Cheese: I have been in touch occasionally with the workers at Mei Xiang Yak Cheese, and things seem to be going relatively well. My work there certainly wasn't a "game changer." But, I was happy to receive an email from a Ventures in Development/Mei Xiang representative about another cheese sale in mid-April. Mei Xiang had been supplying the JW Marriott, with which I had been working with, for the past month and half. Thank you, Ritz-Carlton connection.

India

Mahindra the fisherman: In late October I was in the slums doing research when I met Mahindra. I don't believe I wrote about Mahindra, and I don't have enough space to explain everything here. However, I will say that after the first occasion I went back and checked on him. Both times he was very down. His back was severely injured when he fell from a coconut tree, which gave him a hump back and decreases the time is able to work on his fishing. In his late 40s, he is destitute, still single, and living with his parents. With his injury he has no chance of finding a wife. At one point during our conversations, he started crying. Maybe worst of all, his own cousin is trying to take his home and turn it, and the surrounding homes, into a parking lot. In late January I talked with Manish, who had been my translator. He has since went back a number of times, and the visits seem to lift Mahindra's spirits. Unfortunately, meeting Mahindra in the tail-end of my stay, I wasn't able to do anything substantial, but if Manish can bring a bit of light into his life, that's a start.

South Africa

Siphiwe in Soweto: I heard back from Siphiwe who, in the email, referred to me as Sipho, the nickname given to me by the other people I met in Soweto because I was spending so much time with Siphiwe. Communication with him is not excellent, as his income level doesn't allow him to access the internet much, but I did hear that business is unfortunately not good. I hope it picks up for the Cup.

Mozambiqe

From Chicken to Teaching: On my second to last day in Nampula, I got a surprise call from Mussa Saide (pictured), my former translator during my poultry project. He dropped by my office and we chatted for an hour or so. He had been successful in passing his teaching exams and was now teaching in the little town of Ribaue. Maybe it was the time alone in a small town, or that he had taken his 7-month-old child to live with him, but he seemed more adult. In his teaching position he is now earning over 3 times more than he was earning at Chicken King selling feed. However, he wants to come back to Nampula to be near to his family, and he still has a desire to start chicken farming while he teaches.

Soy Foods and Josue: With my recommendations submitted and the soy project wrapped up, I was pleased to learn from CLUSA's country director that CLUSA will be acting on my recommendations. In my last couple days I made the introductions of the key people to CLUSA, including Josue to the country director. It looks like CLUSA will be supporting him, and I am excited to follow the developments.

Bananas and Taxpayer Dollars at a Big Aid Conference

2010-06-03T01:50:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am still in Mozambique. You know you've been in a country too long when people start asking, "You're still here?" Actually, I don't think my friends hate me, but rather they ask that because I had planned to leave (and told people so) a few weeks back. Another indicator that you've been in a country too long is when, walking home, you think to yourself, "We needed rain," or when texting in your cell phone, the T9 automatically predicts Portuguese words before English words.

At any rate, I am leaving soon, but I extended my stay to help USAID with a big international fruit conference. I had the duties of PowerPoint clicker, name tag designer/cutter and, most importantly I think, composing the conference summary document to be sent out to all attendees. Over the past six months, I have been fortunate to experience the "big aid" side of development, and attending one of these conferences was the icing on the cake, or the cherry on top, if we're trying to go with a more appropriate analogy.

Basically, the setup was a two-day gathering of about 150-200 big shots in the industry, from large-scale seedling producers, to the governor of Nampula, to the director of the Port of Nacala. The head of USAID Mozambique opened the conference, and several of my former bosses at TechnoServe came up from Maputo. TechnoServe is one of the primary facilitators,

along with USAID, in this big fruit industry push. It was one fantastic reunion for me.

The first day was spent at the conference complex. There were presentations and panel discussions. My first impression was just how bad some of the presentations were (though some were great). We're talking excessive text, redundant information, and no illustrative graphics. I had to actually show one presenter how to move to the next slide - he had clearly had his presentation prepared for him. The second thing that really struck me was the overall grandeur of the entire process. Between the coffee breaks, gut-busting buffet lunch, little pastries, and desserts, by the time we got to the cocktail party at the end of the first day I was too full to put down any more than a couple of these amazing appetizers they were relentlessly walking around with. One of the Mozambican USAID workers with who Andrew and I work asked, "You guys don't tip the bartender?" Our response was something along the lines of "We already did, and paid your salary. It's called US tax dollars." However, thinking more critically about it, I think it would be hard to do it any other way - you probably need to have things done up nice when you're flying in the chefies and trying to launch an industry.

The biggest takeaway for me was that there seemed to be a lot of fluff thrown around, lots of general comments without substance. I took some choice quotes, such as "To produce and to be competitive, we have to be efficient," and I found myself often wondering if people would just fly back to Maputo and forget about all this.

Chiquita and its local producer/partner Matanuska were one of the few to actually keep it real. Chiquita buys top grade bananas from Matanuska, which took a lot of risk as the first company in Mozambique to pioneer the fruit export business in northern Mozambique. On day 2 we visited the Port of Nacala (pic 2) and, more interestingly, Matanuska's farm (pic 3). Chiquita and Matanuska explainedthat EU tariff advantages for African countries on fruit (esp. banana) were being phased out over the next six years, so Mozambique didn't have long to become competitive. Chiquita/Matanuska didn't want excuses, and it got a bit heated. When the port director explained that their efficiency shouldn't be compared to India but rather other Mozambican ports, Chiquita, Matanuska, and others said absolutely not, we need to be compared with the world's best. And Chiquita argued with a research institute and the government, let's not wait for this training center that you are two years behind in completion. Bring the trainees to Matanuska's farm. I liked those guys.

In the end, I had to compose the summary document, and most of the outcomes I found are still being threshed out. They don't happen at the conference, but at arranged meetings, through phone calls, and via emails. What conferences like these do well, I think, is bring a lot of people with similar interests together to exchange business cards and get them talking.

When Africa Raids Africa

2010-05-23T04:52:00.000-07:00

So often there is a lot of attention on the Chinese here in Africa as a country that is here to loot and plunder, thinking little about environmental or social concerns. I remember an Economist issue I received one week in college that presented on the front cover China to be "the new colonists". In a lot of ways this is true, as I noted in a posting in late January. In Maputo I talked with John van Duursen, a co-founder of the BiD Network who has recently started up a business-driven conservation challenge in partnership with World Wildlife Fund. He explained the unsustainable logging practices in Africa by the Chinese - for example, clear cutting entire 100-year-old mahogany forests that he has seen.

About a week ago, during a game of pool in which I was teamed with my flatmate and was an utter embarrassment, we met Abou (pronounced like the monkey in Aladdin), "Cool", and one other guy whose name I can't recall. They were all involved in gemstone mining. Apparently, Mozambique has recently come into the spotlight for gemstones like ruby and tourmaline. They kept talking about aquamarine. They were explaining to us that they've only been in town for a few weeks and said, basically, "once I get that score, I'm out of here. All it takes is one rock." They've got Mozambicans out in the bush looking for them.

Now, I don't know what kind of practices are being employed in this mining operation and if or what kind of concessions are being given to the government, but what makes this all the more interesting is that they are all Africans. Abou is half Malian, half Zambian; Cool is French but both parents are from Zambia; and the other guy, I believe, is Mozambican. All with some connections to Europe, they carry a European sense of sophistication, though at the core you can tell they are African. They complained about life in the West, how they didn't feel "free", and their desire to come back and live in Africa. To me, gemstone mining comes with negative connotations. But as I said, I don't know if they are doing this legally or illegally, so all else being equal, I have no qualms with Africans (or those with African heritage) getting in on the loads of opportunity here. Right now, the vast majority of businesses here are owned by Indians or Indian-heritage Mozambicans, with the black Mozambicans serving as the workers. The Chinese, of course, are here too. Maybe gemstone mining isn't the ideal industry, but the country could definitely use more examples of native Mozambicans to serve as entrepreneurial examples.

We caught up with them this weekend, and made plans with Abou when I saw him in a restaurant. He greeted me in a hilarious white shirt studded with shiny fake gemstones in place of buttons (it was kind of like a banker wearing a tie made from stitched-together dollar bills). They had still failed to find anything, but remained hopeful. Regardless of whether there is even a serious moral question to be posed here, it is so fascinating to see yet another avenue of opportunity in Mozambique that is just now becoming explored. A 2-gram ruby, they told us, would fetch you $72,000 in the States, and Andrew and me, holding US passports, were in the perfect position to get into the trade. We'll see how my other job prospects pan out first, but hey, it's always good to have options.

Josue

2010-05-14T03:02:00.000-07:00

On a late March Saturday morning around 11am, I found my way to Hotel Milenio, decked out in a red Mozambican Mambas jersey. A good Mozambican friend of mine, Josue, had invited me to go with him to the Mozambique-Malawi soccer game that was being played in town. A couple of my friends were quick to jump on the opportunity and tagged along. Josue, having lived most of his life in Malawi, actually once played on the U-17 national team for the Flames. He thinks he had a chance of going pro had he not decided to quit after his friend died on the field and his mother feared for him. Yet, Josue still knows a lot of the national team players he once played with. And so we set our compasses in the direction of Hotel Milenio, where the team was staying to join the pre-game shenanigans. A bunch of Malawians had flown in for the game, and you better believe that any fan who flew in to support the team was going to be nuts. Of course, I didn’t know we were going to be Flames groupies for the day, so I felt quite embarrassed by my jersey. Amidst a hoard of riotous Malawians, we watched as Mozambique won the game but Malawi won the series by goals. I think my favorite part came when a Malawi chant started up: “I…want to be…nakedie!” As this happened, two men, and unfortunately one large women started stripping down to their underwear. Could have done without that.

But our relationship isn’t all about fun and games. I first met Josue back in January while working for TechnoServe on the chicken study. He works for New Horizons poultry company and was part of my study, and out of our work together he invited me into his home and has even taken me to his church little one-room cinder-block church in the bairro (suburb). Getting to know Josue has been great – he’s an extremely fascinating and impressive individual. He and his wife Sakina have a 3-year old girl and an adopted son (you don’t see that often in Mozambique). Prior to working at New Horizons he worked at World Relief while taking college classes. He’s currently involved as a forming member with Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), which is an emerging party trying to take down the dominant FRELIMO. He comes from a political background – his father was captured during the civil war by RENAMO, now works for the Mozambican government, and while previously working for the Malawian government, was in the committee that wrote the national anthem.

Currently, I’m trying to push the few buttons I have (being American) to get Josue funding for a training trip on soybean processing and poultry in Minnesota, but most of our interactions now are actually about an idea he shared with me in January. At New Horizons he has worked in the feed mill (dealing with corn and soybean) and as I mentioned, he lived in Malawi, which is basically where corn-soya blend (CSB) was invented. Out of these experiences has come his desire to start a commercial CSB company (he's holding his product in the picture, and man does it taste good!) to not only earn money but also combat malnutrition. So now, as I am working with CLUSA on soy foods, Josue is one of our potential entrepreneurs. Josue and I bounce ideas off each other almost on a daily basis – me helping him with his business plan or machinery costing, for example. The past week or so we have been preparing for a test marketing trial run of his CSB in the Nampula bairros with the help of local university students. This is a very exciting time to be in the thick of launching a business in a developing country.

I am already beginning to think back on my experiences on this fellowship. What really sticks out are not the tourist shops I wandered in, the amazing beaches, or even the baffling vistas gazed during a difficult mountain hike. It’s not the countries that stand out to me (though I’m constantly craving Indian food). Rather, it’s the one or two people in each country who have become quite good friends, and from whom I learned a lot. Josue is one of them. And when I say learning I am not talking just about poverty, but about who I am and who I want to be. In college and at home, I’m around people who characteristically are quite different: we don’t have the same career interests but share the same behavior, which is great for enjoyment but not for understanding other lifestyles. But abroad, my friends are people who have such varied personalities. Through living with them I’m learning with who I mesh well and through their personalities understanding my own. And, we simply have some great times together. I won’t go back to visit the countries; I’ll go back to visit these friends.

The Beach Means Business (and pretty good times)

2010-05-09T03:10:00.000-07:00

Riding along a bumpy dirt in the back of a covered pickup truck, crammed in with pumpkins and a big pile of wood, we were excited about our bolea (means “hitchhike” in Portuguese, or “ride” when it’s thrown around informally in English). My colleague Andrew, our friend Toan (pronounced “Twan”), and I were heading to Carrusca, a little beach resort (pic 1) a few kilometers down the road from the nearest town Chocas. Andrew and I have been taking weekend trips to different Peace Corp sites to visit our friends (which has given me a pretty good idea of whether I ever want to do Peace Corp), and this one happened to be right next to probably the nicest beach I’ve ever been to. Sand as white as pearls, water so clear you can see to the bottom, and enormous palm trees heavy with coconuts. Seven of us found our way to a couple little huts for a genuinely good weekend.

But I’m getting sidetracked. When we got out of our bolea, with my butt in pain from the pile of wood and Toan and Andrew pretty soaked with sweat, we chatted for a minute with the driver. She was a young Dutch woman who happened to be starting a 5-star resort right next to Carrusca. The resort was done, but the staff was still being trained, and they would open in a month.

It seems like every day I run into someone starting a business, whether it’s agriculture, industry, or tourism. This might be because my consultancy position puts me in an environment that makes exposure more likely, but even regardless I think there are a lot of people who are just starting to dig into the loads of opportunity here. I’ve been to places like yogurt factories, feed mills, poultry farms, soy foods factories, chili pepper farms, cashew factories and I’ve talked with all kinds of business owners, from those at bakeries to trading companies. I’ve seen a LOT of new business activity, so I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.

My basic premise here is: So what if it’s a for-profit business? Can’t that work for poverty alleviation? I’ve always (trans.: since early college) thought that someday I would possibly start an NGO or a “social business” – something with social objectives, a good motto that talks of “empowerment” or “sustainability” or something like that, and maybe a website that shows how much the poor we work with have improved their lives. And maybe I still will. But regular for-profit businesses, if run in a respectable manner (i.e. paying fair wages, pollution control), can also have a big impact on the poor.

Novos Horizontes poultry company, which I visited numerous times, is doing great things for the poor, all while competing as one of the top two chicken companies in northern Mozambique. They have over 100 “outgrowers” (see pic #2) who raise flocks at their homes, which brings in much needed income to these subsistence farmers. Nutriset in France, is a fabricator of Plumpy’Nut production lines (see last two pics), which are used to produce the peanut-based therapeutic food that is used to help severely underweight children. Nutriset wants to make boatloads of money, but its product (the production machinery) is sold to NGOs, who then use the end product in development efforts.

Businesses, we know, cut the crap and get to the point. They don’t mess around with fluffy goals that can’t be measured. They’re scalable too, which means more jobs. And if you run a business in a place like Mozambique, especially if it’s related to agriculture or industry, you’re going to be employing at least a few poor Mozambicans (maybe the devil is in the details). And who are your customers? Mozambicans, of course, and they are generally poor. That 5-star resort that’s opening up – think of the workforce: I’d bet at least some of the managers and all of the attendants are locals. They’re probably not the poorest people, but I think this is how knowledge transfer happens.

Maybe I’m being naïve or stupid, or simply playing devil’s advocate. Maybe you can’t run a company honestly and still expect to compete with all the dirty business that goes on in a place rife with corruption like Mozambique. And maybe the way I would run the business would just put it right back into the category of “social business”, since I don’t’ want to become rich – I want my employees to become rich. There are a lot of holes in this composition, which I could object to myself, but I welcome anyone to point them out and discuss them. It would save me some thinking…I need to get back to the beach.

Back to the Future

2010-05-03T04:07:00.000-07:00

On the morning of Monday, April 26, I woke up like any other morning. A quick 5-miler, a strained Portuguese conversation with our friendly maid, and a bowl of maize meal porridge before heading to work. When I got to work, I noticed the internet wasn’t coming through. This happens sometimes, and I just have to adjust some settings on my computer or unplug and re-plug the router. Fast forward a week, and I still don’t have internet. I tried calling my colleague upstairs to see if he had it. No cell service either.

Rumors have been circulating, but it sounds like 13 kilometers (I’ve also heard 130 kilometers…the tales grow by the day) of fiber optic cable have been damaged in the Indian ocean, taking out all telecom in north and central Mozambique. The only ways to communicate are land line phones and text messages (God help us if we revert back to letters). Even text messages didn’t initially work, but the two major cell companies got their satellites up and running on Tuesday. There’s little communication to the outside world. I was finally able to get online via satellite internet. Talk about a diamond in the rough. I can’t find any information on how the damage occurred, but I’ve heard that business is experiencing a 70% slowdown and the cell companies mCel and Vodacom could lose (or are losing?) $7 million dollars a day , which is big money in Mozambique.

So what is everyone doing? It seems a lot like when the power goes out. We’re waiting. Who knows if everyone is waiting on someone else to do something, but I have to believe that there’s too much money on the line for even the government to be twiddling its thumbs (the current and former presidents have big stakes in the cell companies). Still, every prediction I’ve heard has been that it will be 4 weeks before internet is back in over two-thirds of the country. Mozambique. Where Amazing Happens.

Malawian Hodgepodge

2010-04-16T12:44:00.000-07:00

I usually try to write posts that have some underlying theme which require a lot of thinking (kinda shows how empty-headed I am), but there's just too many things to think about as I dive headfirst into Malawi for 4 full days (count 'em).

Why am I here? Well, as my study is on soy food products, one such product is called corn-soya blend (commonly known as CSB). It's basically a - you guessed it - blend of corn and soy flour and nutrients that can be made into a porridge when water is added. It was invented in Likuni, Malawi, and has since been adopted world-wide by UNICEF, WFP, and other NGOs as a crucial tool against malnutrition. In fact, the porridge is known as Likuni Phala (phala=porridge). From what I understand, it's commonly consumed in Malawaian homes, so why not Mozambique? Right now it's only used in feeding program in most places, especially Mozambique, but I want to also look at the potential for commercialization. In addition to touring the factories and meeting with the directors of CSB companies, I'm also checking out other soy foods producers and soybean suppliers. Oh, and my one month Mozambique visa expires soon, so that's just another reason to go out and re-enter.

Outside of my work, which has been a whirlwind and consumed most of my time, I've been blown away by the green space here and the civility of the cities. I've been in the largest city, Blantyre, and the capital city, Lilongwe. What has struck me are the tree-covered (and smooth) roads, shaded pathways, and progressive feel of the cities. Maybe I've been in Mozambique too long, but there is a sense that the infrastructure here is being looked after. In Nampula, Mozambique, some of the potholes are getting so deep that after rains you could probably go fishing. In Mozambique, the attitude is to cut down the trees - often it seems for no good reason. What has resulted is dust, in the wind, and everywhere. It's a rarity to see roads in Mozambique that don't look like the beach. There's even an exchange that Mozambicans have: Someone will say, "How's it going?", and the other will say "Poeira", which means "dust"...kind of like the conventional (and pointless, in my opinion) greeting response of complaining about the weather.

There's also the English speaking population (former British colony) and cool weather that are really making it a pleasant stay. It's amazing the different perspective you get of a country when you're not miserable from heat and unable to have meaningful conversations with anyone.

They also figured out bread here. They put Mozambique to shame, which is ridiculous considering it seems that bread makes up about 1/3 of the urban diet in Moz. They do bread and they do it big. I bought a bagel-like bread about the size of my head. Oh dear it was wonderful to dig into that. Other than that their fare is pretty uninspiring - the usual xima, chips (or who are we kidding, they're French Fries), or rice is paired with chicken, beef, or assorted meats that came from parts of an animal you don't want to hear about. That's the cheap stuff at least - that's what I go for.

I'll update you with some more later, but I just wanted to let you in on some of the happenings. (And if you were wondering, it's nice to stay at decent hotels instead of sweating or getting bit up at hostels...just don't try to book a hotel the day before your stay in the capital on the weekend when the president is getting married. Apparently 20 heads of state are here. Stupid.)

Crutches for Beggars

2010-04-12T02:54:00.000-07:00

I don't like beggars. I don't like seeing them and I don't like dealing with them. In fact, my life would be a whole lot better without them. In economic terms, I'd say that their presence decreases my overall welfare. And, if you live in a big city, I bet you feel the same way.

I don't dislike beggars because I think they're the scum of the earth. Rather, I hate seeing the human race in that sort of condition. Beggars, and poverty for that matter, are something I want to see eradicated not just for their sake, but for mine too.

Interacting with beggars is tough, and I don't know if I've gotten any better at it. In Dhaka, Bangladesh, I was almost mugged by them. Ten hands would be grabbing my arms as I walked through the more commercial Gulshan area. Eventually, I started walking around that area altogether. In Mozambique, they are more resigned - and maybe because they have resigned to their situation. They will ask you for money, but only if you make eye contact and only if you walk close enough. It's almost as if they are calculating whether or not the potential payoff is worth the effort. As a personal rule, if you're an able-bodied individual (especially if you're a male), don't bother asking me for money. I also rule out children.

I work in the only real office building in Nampula, the Girassol building which houses USAID, TechnoServe, and most of the other development organizations in the city. It is also home to some nice tech shops and one of the fanciest hotels in the city. Thus, it's a prime spot for beggars. Every day I walk past them in my khakis, button-down shirt, and laptop in stow. I usually do this while trying not to look at him (we'll use "him" for brevity's sake), and every time I feel guilty. Generally, when I am confronted by a beggar, I try to acknowledge him, even if I don't offer anything. I don't know if this makes any difference to him, but maybe it does.

The kind of interaction I have in Nampula is different than most I've had with beggars elsewhere. Here it isn't a one-time thing where I can just blow them off and never see them again. I see them every day. What is my responsibility, as someone on a fellowship to research poverty? Should I give more or less than another foreigner here for a different reason? Should I take time to talk to them? Do they even want to talk to me?

Recently I was sitting in a company truck with a couple colleagues and potential partner who operates a yogurt factory. An old man who was missing his hands limped over to my window and asked for money, in more of a sad mumble than actual words. I didn't give him anything. He went around to the other side of the truck. The factory owner handed him some change. I don't know if he did that out of personal nature or in an effort to show off, but it made feel like crap regardless.

Sometimes I wonder what's the point of giving them money. I think to myself that the few coins I offer up will never change their lives. Maybe this is because I'm an all-or-nothing guy. I want to find a solution to problems, not a crutch. But it also might be because I know how hard it is to help even the moderately poor and able-bodied, much less the maimed and mired. Grameen Bank in Bangladesh has one partial solution (I don't think there's a such thing as a "full solution" when it comes to alleviation efforts) with the Struggling Members Program, which offers a $9 interest-free loan with payback to be decided by the beggar, and with coaching to come from another one of Grameen's less-poor microfinance members. I'm a little skeptical, but Grameen says it has graduated over 10% of its members.

My flatmate and colleague Andrew tried to help the young man who you see in the picture sitting outside our office building. Andrew went to the market with him and purchased a cart (or the parts needed, I can't remember) for him to get around on. Andrew said he's never seen him on it, and when he asked the young man about it, he said that he leaves it at home so his begging is still effective. Who knows the validity of his claim, but sometimes, maybe all we can hope to offer is a crutch.

CLUSA, Soy Milk, and a Second Helping of Moz

2010-04-04T13:10:00.000-07:00

Apparently, even after three months in Mozambique, I still haven't caused enough damage to warrant kicking me out of the country. Back in Maputo after South Africa, I spent St. Patty's Day night at a restaurant/pub catching up with a lot of friends until late late. It was a coincidental going away party, since I probably won't be circling down to Maputo again. The next day I boarded a plane for Nampula, where I spent about a month in December/January doing my chicken research.

I'm a big fan of flying, at least anything less than 8 hours. It usually means the beginning of a new chapter of my life - however short it is - and that's always exciting. It might be a new semester at college, a job interview in Chicago, a weekend at Gasparilla in Tampa with all my high school friends, or, more recently, a new country on my travels. In this case I was flying to Nampula to start a 2-month consultancy position until mid-May.

Normally, I wouldn't be choosing to stay in a country for another two months after already being there for three. On my fellowship I've tried to keep my time in each country to about two months. But this project is way too cool and the organization I'm working for is covering my costs, so it was a no-brainer. For the next month and a half with CLUSA (Cooperative League of the USA), I'll be doing a feasibility study on the potential for soy food businesses in the Nampula area, and whether or not CLUSA should provide assistance and funding to emerging soy food businesses. This is actually very connected to my work with TechnoServe, when I was looking at how soybean farmers have benefited from the emerging poultry industry. In the map overlay that I did for my poultry project, you can see the various soybean projects by CLUSA and TechnoServe in light and dark blue, with their magnitude according to the circle size (red is poultry producers).

Why look into the possibility of starting soy-based food businesses? Here's a few reasons:

All milk products and wheat flour (Mozambicans love bread) are imported here
The byproduct of producing soy milk is okara, which can be used to make breads in proportions up to 20%
Locally-produced soy flour is much cheaper than wheat flour and soy milk would likely be cheaper than imported cow's milk (the key is to get the taste right)
And, of course, soy is extremely nutritious, which is good for a country where 41% of children under 5 have moderate chronic and severe malnutrition

These are just some of the reasons, but needless to say, there are huge obstacles, such as the high startup capital needed to produce milk. To sort out whether these obstacles outweigh the potential, I'm doing things like meeting with potential entrepreneurs to develop their business models, pricing production machinery from South Africa, India, China, and elsewhere, and talking with street kids who sell fried doughnuts to learn about how they operate their "businesses". It's a pretty broad scope. Hopefully by the end of it I'll be able to determine the potential, but I'll certainly be able to tell you everything you might need to know about soy foods, which I know you're dying to know.

Weird, Cool, Unexpected

2010-03-31T00:12:00.000-07:00

Ever had anything really weird but really cool happen to you? Like taking your best friend's girlfriend to the prom (guilty), but more unexpected? I just did. As the capper to my amazing SA experience, I found myself in a grocery store with two packets of Raman in my hand and caught in an endless debating between two pieces of bread, at a price difference of just over a rand ($0.12). It was a sad sight.

Then, out of the blue, a South African women with dark hair walks up to me. She says, "Can I give this to you?" A hand outstretches with 20 rand. "Why?" I asked. Saying I was confused would be as big an understatement as saying that Brett Favre comebacks are annoying. "I don't know," the woman replied, "something is just telling me that I need to give this to you." My jaw was laying on the ground. I didn't know what to say, and I'm not even sure if I said anything. With that she turned and left, and was out the door in no time. I think I said thanks, but who knows.

For the next five or so minutes, I looked really awkward, walking around the supermarket, looking for nothing in particular and just replying the scene in my head like a rejection by a girl who was out of your league to begin with (also guilty). I probably looked like I was lost. Or a little slow. I just kept asking myself, "Really?" Do I look famished and hungry? Homeless? Did she steal something out of my bag at the front and feel bad about it?

After checking out, instead of listening to my planned "This American Life" podcast on the long walk home, I just walked in silence. I thought about what had happened; how nice the people of South Africa had been to me. I thought to myself: "Wouldn't it be absurd if someone offered me a ride?" 30 seconds later, without me even trying to flag anyone down, a white BMW pulls up. "Do you need a lift?" said the female driver, just a few years older than I. My jaw had broken off at this point. This is stupid absurd. But, looking back, it was about par for the course after the amazing hospitality I received while in the SA.

To me, it's amazing the amount of impact you can have on someone for the price of $3. Not only did I immediately become a life-long fan of South Africa, but I also felt something really unexpected. I felt ashamed. Ashamed that I had never done something like that for a stranger, at least not that I can remember. Was I too selfish? Was I too busy to think about others? Or, was I in such an insecure financial position that I never considered just handing out money?

That was about two weeks ago (yes, I'm now back in Mozambique). I didn't really think about the occasion too much since then, until just yesterday. That movie Pay It Forward got in my head somehow, and while I've never seen it (I think that little kid is kinda creepy), I understand the concept. So, I took the 20 rand now converted into Mozambican meticais, divided it three ways, and added a little to make it substantial enough. And I started handing out money. It's not as easy as it looks...try it and you'll understand...but it's great fun. And even more fun to wonder what they're thinking. I already gave out one of my three sums, and I'm waiting for the next two opportunities to arise. Something will tell me when the time is right.

Hitching in Mpumalanga

2010-03-27T15:34:00.000-07:00

Not only is Mpumalanga one of the coolest names for a province (ma-pu-ma-lang-a…I couldn’t stop saying it…was just randomly blurting out for no reason), but it is also home to some of the most beautiful landscapes I’ve ever seen. Beautiful scenery is good and fine in and of itself, but I like to experience the scenery, not just look at it. Hence, I took to hiking, mountain biking, kayaking, swimming, rock sliding, running, and hitch-hiking my way through the vast province. And I ate my way through province too, which is known for its pancakes (see the pancake filled with pork and peaches in Graskop) and biltong, the fatty dried meat that makes your veins pulse with grease.

After leaving Siphiwe and all the others in Soweto, I headed on an overnight train, on which I was pitched a poetry book by a Nigerian missionary (he was very nice, though). Over the next week, in Waterval Boven, I lived with Alwyn, his wife Reetha, baby son Luke, and quasi-neighbor Armand (he's basically part of the family). They took me in for 5 days and cooked me hot meals, gave me a bed, and let me mooch off their internet and other facilities. During the day I would rock climb on some of best climbs in Southern Africa and kayak and do other things, like hiking through the ruins of a lost civilization. I called Waterval Boven a small town, but Alwyn corrected me with "village". Conspiracy theories were big - 9/11 came up and shape-shifting reptiles in US public office was a topic of conversation.

From WB I hitched the rest of the way, first to Sabie, a pancake-laden town known for its mountain biking trails and waterfalls. Accordingly, I biked about 50 km the next day, stopping for swims at the various falls. Next I found myself in Graskop, which I planned to use as a base for a three-day hike in Blyde River Canyon, the third biggest canyon in the world. Unfortunately, the canyon was closed for "upkeep"...which sounds as ridiculous to me as it does to you. If I got caught without a permit, I could be arrested. So, instead I biked and hiked my way around the beautiful area...just a thought: don't try to hike 25 km without socks. I'm a moron.

From there I started hitching my way back south to Nelspruit and then to the border. The entire experience was extremely relaxing and liberating - definitely what I needed after being cramped up in an office. You lose your humanity. Some of my best times in the past several months came on this bout of hitchhiking. There was Alan, who bought me a Coke and then took me on a tour of the sugar factory to which he sells drives and said that if it was a week later he'd take me to the others he sold to. And there was "Hippie Dan", as I call him, who picked me up in his beat up work truck just as he was cracking a Black Label, continuing to explain to me that he tried to get a few beers in on the way home because his daughter didn't like him drinking at home. Apparently he wanted to get a cigarette or two in as well, as he was rolling them on the steering wheel as he drove. At the same time, I was holding a sheet of glass because the back was full with his tools and a couple of his black workers. I was quite lucky to catch him at the beginning of his journey. Hippie Dan also told me that he hadn't paid taxes in 12 years - the "stupid" government was too inept to come after him in his home in the hills that didn't have electricity.

It's hard to explain the freedom you feel standing in the bed of fruit truck, traveling 50 mph through the curvy roads that cut though the mountains and low-lying clouds. Wind in your hair. All your belongings in your pack. No laptop. No cellphone. No responsibilities. No idea where you will be staying once you land in the next town. At that moment, life seems to make sense. It really makes you ask yourself, "What am I doing with myself?" It makes life in the office, student loan payments, that latest report that was due, and the next project, seem pretty insignificant. For that moment, it is insignificant. I get nostalgic when I watch movies like Into the Wild, where people are just living with no worries but their bed and the next meal.

Part of me wants that life, to leave this constant obsession of thinking about my next move in life - what company to work for, which people to network with, how to target my resume. But I think the daily hassles and "career" stress that I'm sure are not unique to just me are what make this freedom so significant. If I lived like Hippie Dan (minus the job, hence even hippier) every day, I bet it would lose its luster. I think I'm the Type A crazy who needs to be busy or I get bored - I need to be producing something, having some impact. At least this is what I've found so far. Some people can change the world "spreading love and peace" and disengaging from mainstream society. That's great. I don't think I'm that guy. At least not yet. Give me some more months tramping around Africa and South America and I'll get back to you.

Shacking Up in the Slum - Pt. III of III

2010-03-21T13:23:00.000-07:00

The next morning Siphiwe (pictured) and I met at the shebeen to go to church – his invitation. Most of his friends were there already, having a Hansa. They gave me the local handshake like we’ve known each other for years, and I didn’t really feel much like a tourist anymore. It was an odd sight: Siphiwe and me, in our clean church clothes drinking Lemon Twist, and the others in the clothes from the day before, passing a bottle of Hansa between them.

On the way to church, children tugged at the leg of my pants and women looked out from their homes, concerned that I was leaving for good. I admit that some people did just see me as a walking pile of money, but as the days went on this seemed to dissipate. People were starting to accept me.

The service was good. Being there was like gasping for air filled with hope, in an atmosphere filled with so much futility and negativity. Over the days I’d learned a bit about Siphiwe, and on Sunday we talked more. About a month ago he pretty much stopped drinking. With a sense of sadness, he is now trying to distance himself from his friends. He explained to me, “These guys (his friends), they have no hope. They don’t think they will achieve anything in their lives.” Talk with most slum dwellers in Soweto, and all you will hear is “no jobs” in refrain. But most of them aren’t looking, says Siphiwe. Instead, they expect jobs to just fall into their laps, and often jobs for which they’re not qualified.

Siphiwe is now going to church regularly and has joined a weekly Bible study group. He has recently started a small tourism outfit, after leaving another one that also operated in Motsoaledi. He had a dispute with the owners, who only wanted profit, while Siphiwe wanted it to be a community project to help the children. Siphiwe is trying to get out.

As I went to leave Sunday afternoon, I stopped by Patricia’s to say bye, just as she had vehemently demanded the night before when she was, quite frankly, hammered. Laying on her lawn, nearly passed out, she barely acknowledged me, not even getting up. This was coming from someone who had said that our simple stop by the shebeen on Thursday made her want to cry.

Three days, while not sufficient, is much more revealing than 15 minutes on a tour. You get to see people more for who they really are. Sadly, Patricia and most of the others, it seems, are just passing their days with the help of alcohol. A rare few I met, like Siphiwe, are trying to claw their way out. As Siphiwe helped me into the minibus with my bag and said goodbye, I handed him some money, unsolicited, and promised to stay in touch. Hopefully in the future I can help him in bigger ways. It’s people like him who really need our encouragement to keep moving in the right direction.

Shacking Up in the Slum - Pt. II of III

2010-03-18T00:46:00.000-07:00

The next morning, minutes after 7:00, I was woken by blasting reggae music. I staggered out of Patricia’s and saw a huge black Miller truck at Nessie’s shebeen. But that wasn’t the source of the music. Half asleep, I bumbled over. Tobekho (with the dreads on the right), Nelito, and the other regulars had already gotten the day started with some Hansa. First, who’s up at 7 am on Saturday? And second, who’s up at 7 am on Saturday and drinking heavily?

The rest of the day I hung out at the shebeen, passing the time like anyone else in Motsoaledi would on a Saturday. I also interviewed some people, one of whom was Sandy, a gregarious woman who always seemed to be wearing a smile, and her husband Victor. Sandy operated a shebeen, a fact confirmed by the 10 or so people sitting almost silently in a room in her home, drinking – an odd sight to say the least, but typical of shebeens. Music's not necessary. I asked Victor, the inebriated electrician, how many kids he had. 33. Only four belonged to Sandy, the others to mistresses, he said with a smile. Sandy was standing right next to him. “He’s a womanizer,” she said. I remarked that she was still with him. “What can I do?”, she implored. Plus, she said, he’s “a good man.” Personally, I have no illusions that men, especially in the slums, sleep around, but that it is this blatant was appalling. I’ve heard this especially in Mozambique and now South Africa, which accordingly has the largest HIV population in the world.

Later that evening, Siphiwe grabbed me and tells me we’re going to a party. My dinner goes cold on the table. When we get there, we find a space jump and hoards of kids, grilled chicken, beer, and dessert. In no time a drink and slice of cake are shoved in my hands. I'm a big celebrity, pulled in every which way by people. Siphiwe says I have a few admirers in the group of women I talked to when I entered. And who is there? Sandy and Victor (with the blue shirt and jeans in the second picture), the latter of which is even worse than before and now basically physically harassing me. Major man crush. Siphiwe, meanwhile, drinks Coca-Cola.

That night we found ourselves at, you guessed it, Nessie’s shebeen. There was a soccer match, and I split the bottle of wine gifted to me by a neighbor. Again, amazing hospitality from the South African people. Patricia hated the strong taste, but had a second and third glass because, she said, “I can’t afford any Hansa…I have to drink this.” She talked as if it was punishment, yet she drank more than anyone else. I thought this was terribly rude, and her drunkenness seemed a bit in appropriate, especially for her age. But, this is all learning for me, so you accept things as they are. After all, I am intruding on their lives, so I'm probably not one to talk about rudeness. The whole night Siphiwe had a glass of my wine, but otherwise, nothing.

Shacking Up in the Slum - Pt. I of III

2010-03-16T02:57:00.000-07:00

If I went home today, I would have to tell you that my fellowship has been a failure, as amazing as it has been. Maybe “incomplete” is a fairer evaluation. I think I am getting a pretty good handle on the tools – sustainable or not – to fight poverty. But in terms of my other goal – to understand poverty – I score a big incomplete. What good is understanding the instruments available if you don’t have a grasp of the problem?

I want to know what it’s like to be poor, and the countless interviews and endless readings I’ve done only get me halfway. The best way to close the gap, I think, is to live with the poor, but this far I’ve found this very difficult to arrange. Our social circles generally don’t overlap, and language is a considerable barrier.

That’s why it was very fortunate that I met Patricia (pictured), who I met when we stopped for drinks at a shebeen (an unlicensed neighborhood drinking establishment). I remembered from our conversation that her mother had passed away and she had an empty room. So, on Thursday, in the pouring rain, I walked to her front door, full of trepidation. God I was nervous. This was the first time I’d invited myself over to someone’s house since my best friend in middle school. Okay, high school. She wasn’t there. I went to Nessie’s shebeen across the street, where we had hung out the day before, and found her there. She agreed to my offer of 70 rand a night, which is what a hostel would’ve cost me. For the next three days I got to live with the locals, doing pretty much what they did. Doing my laundry, bathing the "South African way" (bucket of water and washcloth), sharing meals, and drinking…a lot.

After putting my bags up at Patricia’s (whose real name is Nomthandazo, or Thandi for short), I joined them back at Nessie’s for some Hansa, the beer of choice for Motsoaledi, the slum I was in. A little later Siphiwe, the tour guide from the day before and local resident, took me to three of his favorite bars. It was the beginning of a friendship. At the bars I found instant celebrity. I was introduced to all of Siphiwe’s good friends, and it seemed like there wasn’t a minute when less than two people were trying to talk to me at once. Giving the incumbent pool shark a run for his money didn’t hurt my reputation either. Siphiwe, I noticed, didn’t drink the entire night.

Soweto

2010-03-09T08:51:00.000-08:00

How have things - race relations, poverty, the economy - developed since the end of apartheid? To answer this question, it's impossible to avoid Soweto, the name which became an amalgamation of "South Western Townships". Established in 1904, Soweto was the epicenter of black resistance during apartheid. Its Vilakazi Street is the only street to boast two Nobel Peace Prize winners - Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu.

I wanted to get a feel for what life was like there, and ended up with something closer to groping. You'll better understand why in the next post, but first I need a short lead in.

I tagged onto a couple people at my hostel who happen to disdain museums and just want to interact locals. Perfect. Did I mention I love hostels? The tour was informational and a good start, and led to an important lead which I'll discuss in the next post, but the short hour in the slum wasn't overly revealing. The end, though, led us to Kliptown, the oldest section of Soweto and the birthplace of the 1955 Freedom Charter.

Here we were led to the Soweto Kliptown Youth (SKY) center. When we entered, some 50 children were doing a coordinated dance and song, the power of which gave me goosebumps and send shivers up my spine. It was amazing to see such happiness amidst gripping poverty. I think about this often - the smiles on the faces of poor that seem to trump anything I've seen in the States. Perhaps it's just because I'm analyzing things closer here, and perhaps these smiles are just mirages of frustration and sadness that they won't reveal easily, but still I was impressed.

As I am traveling uninhibited during these two weeks - no laptop, no certain places to lay my head, and no upfront plan, I brought my bag along with me, looking for a place to stay somewhere near the slum. Finding out that SKY allows people to stay, I jumped at the opportunity. Concerning the cost, I asked Bob, the director and easy-going Rastafarian who I swear is the reincarnation of Bob Marley. He said, "It's not about the money; it's about the soul connection." At that moment "No Woman, No Cry" started playing the background and the faint smell of ganja could be detected in the air.

For the rest of the night I hung out with all the children (and young men/women) learning about where they came from and SKY. The interesting thing about SKY is that they are more famous abroad than in Soweto. Take for example their ties with the NBA. Every year for a week they host the likes of Dirk Nowitzki, Dikembe Mutombo, and Dwight Howard. Victor, who I talked with, starred in HBO movie named Ithuteng and is pals with Chris Tucker.

The next morning, shortly before the breakfast of white bread and French fries (I said I wanted local, and that's what I got...it's best to put the fries in the bread, topped with cheese and ketchup, and consume like a sandwich), there was bathing time. 10 minutes after asking about a shower, Wise Man, in whose bed I was sleeping, plopped down a plastic basin of water. I asked if I should take it into the bathroom, which left him perplexed. We were both looked at each other like dumb freshmen in a graduate level course. Pretty confused. When I finally explained I thought I would be using the "bucket method" (which would've been luxury), he said no, "you can learn to bath the South African way." The "South African way", I learned, is basically a bucket of water, always in your room, that you use with a wash cloth as you stand naked. How you are supposed to rinse your body with the same water that rinses the wash cloth I have still yet to figure out. Washing (and properly rinsing) is light years beyond me. I asked Wise Man if he had a wash cloth, and as if he or anyone else had never taken a bath, he starts searching through the dusty boxes of donated clothes in his room. A couple minutes later he came up with a small, dirty rag. It would do, though I can't tell you if I actually got cleaner or dirtier after that exercise. Next, on to the real immersion...

South African Sidewalks

2010-03-07T05:09:00.000-08:00

Packed into a seat next to a passenger overflowing into my seat, I endured the 9-hour ride and a Madea Goes to Jail movie that was on repeat, finally arriving in Johannesburg, South Africa at about 3:30 in the a.m. I'd been on the fence about going to South Africa because of the high standard of living (I didn't want to be back in the US), but the political and racial history and how it relates to poverty was too intriguing to pass up. (The pic, by the way, is nuses seen in the apartheid museum...it's blurred because the museum workers were yelling at me that pictures weren't allowed...whoops...and I was pulling away, but I think it's kinda stylistic as it is)

My good friend and former cross country teammate Thomas Davis, in a wonderful article, points out the many different definitions of poverty, and how insecurity from high levels of crime can serious affect standards of living. Having more money probably doesn’t mean as much in a place where your mobility is curtailed, where you fear being robbed every time you go out. Hence my decision to skip Cape Town - which is further away and a place I’ll probably visit in the future - and start in Joburg, the crime capital of the world. I’ve heard too many stories of cloned credit cards, car jackings, and warnings just short of “You will die.” Sounds fun.

I wanted to feel what it was like, and feel I did. After a first night at Diamond Diggers (DD) hostel, I went for a run to the left, heeding warnings of the hostel owner. DD has the unique position of being right on the edge of wealthy suburban Joburg and the poverty-stricken industrial center.

The first thing I noticed were the sidewalks – uncracked, unobstructed…a first since being back in the States. Manicured lawns and canopied streets were the backdrop for razor wire and electrical fencing, stark reminders of the criminal threat.

The next day I went right (I’m an ambi-turner). Skipping over potholed and half-destroyed sidewalks, I was immediately surrounded by liquor stores, auto repair shops, and abandoned warehouses. However, the people were friendly, telling me to “keep it up” and helping me with directions when I found myself lost. The next morning I went back for more.

After the run that day – Thursday if you’re counting – I rode a local minibus into the center of town, the “no-go zone”, to just walk around and chat with people. I had some breakfast on the street, watching people go by. I ended up talking with a legal street DVD seller named Jabu. I was excited to see this, and hear him rationalize to me that we need to support actors and producers. The 42 year-old father of five lamented to me that before he was a carpenter, but because of the cheap foreign labor, he has lost his business and no longer employs his two employees. Cheap temporary laborers from Zambia, Mozambique, and other nearby countries, he said, are willing to work at a fraction of the price of locals. That money will mean much more back home. “These foreigners, they’re killing us. They’re killing us,” he said. This job/labor problem would be a recurring them, I've found. After an hour of talking and striking up a friendship, I told him I would contact him when I was in hometown of Soweto, the historic apartheid township and my next stop.

So far, the South African natives have been extremely kind to me, and rarely did I feel insecure. Certainly, I was only in the center of town once, not a 100 times – something might happen then. And the racial matters seem to be quite improved from what I’ve heard from people. But something I just couldn’t get out of my head was that if we are always looking, walking - and running - the other way, never mingling, will racial differences ever be eliminated?

Out of Office Reply: Guess Where I'm Going...

2010-03-01T00:56:00.000-08:00

Wow. The only thing going faster than time lately has been my cash on the weekends. After a long week of trying to pull every little thing together and countless edits (thanks to all those who helped), I gave my final presentation and handed over a 40-page report on my work. From what I understand, it went well enough, and they are pretty pleased (that's me with the head of R&D at TechnoServe, Higino...he's basically a rock star...just go to the mall with him and you'll see he knows everyone). When it gets finalized and released by TechnoServe, I'll let you check it out. Now, after a weekend of celebrations (but honestly, which weekend isn't?), and three months of pretty solid work. I'm ready to get out of this bubble.

The insight into aid-development, large-scale poverty alleviation, and business-based approaches I've gained has been amazing, but beyond all of this is the enormous detachment I've felt from the local population and what reality is for the majority of Mozambicans. Here I am staying at a three-star hotel, buffet breakfast, going AC-to-AC everyday with a driver, working 10 hours a day on a laptop speaking all English all the time. I've fallen into the (very small) expat circle, going to Sunday night local music concerts, and chatting ad nauseam about everything US and the good, bad and ugly of Mozambique. The only respite I get is when I travel in the local minibuses or go out to eat by myself, and since I'm pretty cheap I usually hit the roadside stalls. This kind of stuff is pretty much out of the question for most of my Western-wage-earning friends here.

Being abroad this long (8 months now??), you long for some stability or normal routine - somewhere that you know your footing. You want to know where you can grab a beer or some cheap good food, instead of going on a mad hunt everyday. But now, I'm tired of this stability. I'm ready to get dirty, be uncomfortable, and run into awkward situations (that's kind of the definition of my life, but we're going to try to take it to a new level). So I'm off. I'm not going to tell you where until I get there and find a computer, which could be in a day or two, so I welcome your guesses. Bonus points if you guess the city.

Don't Bring the Power to the People?

2010-02-15T12:20:00.001-08:00

Decentralization is a key part of Mozambique’s strategy to reduce poverty…To improve governance and accountability, the government should empower communities as local agents of change.

--Beating the Odds: Sustaining Inclusion in a Growing Economy, World Bank, 2008

Sounds good. I found this digging through one of many (insert sarcastic tone) enormously fascinating World Bank papers while researching for my TechnoServe paper. As an American and staunch believer in democracy, I love to hear this kind of stuff. I mean, if you get past the cult of personality, what do you think the average Cuban would have said about whether to overthrow Castro back in the day? What would a regular Zimbabwaen say about Mugabe and the power he wields from his office in Harre? Let’s spread the power out, bring it closer to the people. Empowerment, right?

Wrong. Maybe. I’ll admit, these are just a few pieces of anecdotal evidence, but when my American friend, who will remain unnamed but we’ll call Ben, told me what he experienced in a government planning session, I was quite shocked, and it got me thinking.

Ben, who works for the Ministry of Development & Planning, went to Xai Xai (pronounced “shy shy”) to help with the three year budgetary planning for 2010 – 2012. Mind you, Xai Xai is in the bordering province to the capital Maputo AND we’re already in the new year AND this is the provincial not district government, so one would think the officials had already done some prep work and Ben was just coming along to finish the job. One would think, and one would be wrong. When I asked him how Xai Xai was, he basically said something to the extent of “That place is f****ed for the next 100 years, or at least as long as I’m alive.” He sadly related the provincial government to his sister’s high school. She went to a mediocre high school in Omaha, and he surmised that the middle 50% of her class, not even the top quarter, would do a better job than the people he met with there. When Ben tried working with them in Excel to figure out how they got certain numbers, they pulled out their cell phone calculators.

Not only had they not really done anything, but as Ben explained, they “didn’t budget for anything that would provide any public good.” It was all for things for the office. Either they wanted AC or new computers – things that would ‘help them do their job’. At one point he saw they had budgeted 1,800,000 meticais (or $60,000) for a new office vehicle. He brought up the fact that this sum would buy a Mercedes SUV, but seemed to be the only crazy one in the room.

Sitting around the pool one weekend at Clube Naval, this development topic came up, and I haven’t heard people rip into local government quite like these experienced development workers did. When I was doing interviews in Nampula, I talked with the District Administrator, who was happy to report that with the new decentralization in the past two years, they had been given $300,000 to use for community projects. Only later did I learn from a local that these ‘community projects’ become homes and other pet projects for the higher ups in the district government., rather than engines for job creation.

This last point, to me, is compelling. Personally, I have always envisioned corruption on the grand scale, stuff like embezzlement, Swiss banks, and the prime minister. But it seems it might be more widespread on the local level, where oversight is thin. In local government, as Ben explained, things like building a house for the provincial doctor are legitimate expenses. Houses, cars, trips - all fair game. Jobs for friends happen all the time.

But beyond the corruption question, what if local governments simply aren’t ready for decentralization? I’m not espousing Communism, but maybe top-down planning has had something to do with China’s success. Their local governments may be inept, the country knows it, and the guys at the top are quite sharp. Ben admitted he was twiddling his thumbs in Maputo working with federal government; he said he was embarrassed to be taking another Mozambiquean’s job. There were competent people around him, unlike at the local level.

Sure enough, the World Bank report admitted, "Weaknesses in capacity—within both the state and civil society at local levels—threaten to undermine reform’s potential benefits." So you need to build up capacity. Training is good, but it only goes so far. Maybe the decentralization thinking goes that at some point you just have to accept that you’re going to have some rough early years, but in the end you’ve got to learn by doing. When the citizens see who is in power and how things have changed for better or worse for the local populace, will they connect the dots and demand more competent leaders? Let’s hope so. Decentralization is happening regardless.

"I like to spend some time in Mozambique"

2010-02-09T03:15:00.001-08:00

Bob Dylan put it well - I'm having a good time here. I'm past my planned two months in the country. The posts have been slow coming lately because I've been putting in some sleepless hours trying to finish my poultry paper. Pretty soon I think I'm going to start sweating feathers. Fortunately, I've taken a few breaks and been able to take in Mozambique. A few of the highlights over the past 10 days or so:

Weekend at the beach

I like the beach, but as I live on one I don't go crazy over it like some people do. Still, Mozambique's beaches are some of the best in Africa, from what I hear. I went to one of the crappier ones, but that's a relative term. The water was crystal clear and 20-foot waves were breaking right at the beach, which made for some fun jumping into them and getting spit out like a rag doll. Most everyone else didn't think so. We met some crazy South African guys who lived there, and basically said, "There's about a 90% chance you'll get stung by a jellyfish." The truth feels like burning. A few cold beers solved that problem.

There was about 25 of us there in a few beach houses. Other than body surfing and jellyfish, the weekend was filled with barbecuing, passing out on the beach, reading, a couple parties, beach football, passing out on the beach, a crazy game of charades (see my flatmate Carlos getting it), passing out on the beach, etc. And ole' Bobby D was right, "There's lots of pretty girls in Mozambique." But he failed to mention that they're all prostitutes. On the first night, a couple guys and I went to a club, and by the luck of the draw, the three girls I danced with turned out to be there for something other than a twirl, dip and drink. After dancing with the first, my friend from Amsterdam, who I won't name here because he works for int'l aid organization, turned to me, "Uh Rob, you know they're hookers, right?" "Oh yea, I know." Riiight.

Not your average safari

This past Saturday two other TechnoServe guys, Steve and Mike, and I hired our TechnoServe driver to take us to Kruger National Park on the border of South Africa, arguably the best animal playland in southern Africa. We were so tired from a cocktail party/fund raiser the night before that most of us were falling asleep (fortunately not the driver). The animals kept us going - from impala, giraffe, wildebest, warthog, monkeys, zebra, buffalo, and so many impala that we eventually didn't even stop for pictures. We saw an impala hanging in a tree, but not the leopard that others saw drag it up there and eat some, saving the rest for later. Apparently you're not supposed to lean out the window like Steve and I were doing to snap some killer pics of a heard of elephants crossing the road. Some Safari Nazi lady started yelling at us and honking her horn from behind us. I think she scared the elephants more than we did.

It wasn't really how I imagined a safari. I always thought we would be in a rugged jeep with some crazy local guy wearing a hard bucket hat and all decked out in gear, a gun to his side. We'd be speeding through the wilderness, splashing through water with mud splattering on our vehicle while the driver yelled something intense at us and tribal music blared in the background. Instead, we were in the company truck, cruising on sealed roads (sometimes dirt), picking up a local radio station that was playing a "Best of America" mix. It was all over the map. Four consecutive songs might be "Tiny Dancer", Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind", "Hit Me Baby One More Time", and "Dark Side of the Moon". The lions, unfortunately, were hiding that day.

Super Bowl and the sunrise - the perfect pair

Like any American worth his salt, I found a way to watch the Super Bowl. The kickoff, though, turned out to by 1 am our time. Steve, Mike, another TechnoServe gal, and couple Peace Core volunteers got together around 11 for a 7-hour battle against sleep. It was great getting to watch football after all the soccer and cricket I've seen the past months - although we got the international broadcast, which meant we didn't get the commercials and the broadcasters gave definitions for everything. Quote: "A touchback allows you to take the ball to the 20-yard line." But then again, I guess John Madden calling the game wouldn't be much different. In the end, the team we were behind came out on top, and just as the game was finishing we watched the sun come up. I don't think everyone else in Maputo had been watching - the only streets more silent than Maputo's were probably Indianapolis's. By 6:00 am I was back home and getting to bed.

Now back to chicken...

Selfish Giving and the Implications for Altruism

2010-01-31T12:32:00.000-08:00

Perhaps you've seen Disney's commercials on TV offering a day to one of its parks in return for a day of volunteering. Sounds good. I even sent the link to my friend on Facebook. But it wasn't until my cousin sent me an article from a sociology blog and struck up a discussion that I actually started thinking about the implications of this "selfish giving" on altruism and development.

In the article, the author basically critiques development approaches that tie consumerist behavior to giving - cause-marketing strategies like the Red Campaign and Shopping For A Cure. She talks about mandated volunteering (an oxymoron if there ever was one, she notes) like racking up community service hours to satisfy graduation requirements or being sentenced in court to community service. Her own research tells her these people aren't any more likely to see this as a way to enrich their lives. Her argument is essentially: "That such (social positive) activities are increasingly tied to commodity exchanges cheapens and demeans not only those activities but also leaves our society much less enriched since those behaviors are not seen as life-long pursuits."

For me this raises two questions: Does altruism exist and, more interestingly, does it even matter for development? I think the former question is a bit easier. I would be lying to you if I said I wanted to get into development purely for altruistic motives. Simplistically put, I want to be successful, I have an interest and concern for poverty, so that's why I am getting into it. I am expecting things in return - a living, fulfillment in life, etc. But I think this interest and concern for poverty probably is some form of altruism (Self-promotion is another interest of mine...). I also think altruism is much easier to identify on a smaller scale - "random acts of kindness" are one example. In China I had one lady help me with my bags off the train, book a bus ticket, and show me around town, just because she wanted to help.

But do we even need altruism for development? Can't we just use incentives, like salaries, Disney tickets, or even just the experience? I'm a just-get-the-job-done kind of utilitarian, so my gut instinct was no, we don't need altruism. After all, some of the ex-McKinsey and investment bankers who volunteer with TechnoServe come for a resume builder, to make contacts for a job opportunity, or for a new experience. Not everyone who comes to TechnoServe wants to save the poor from the clutches of poverty, but they are very talented people and in the end create big impacts. We need these people in the fight. Thus, perhaps incentivization of volunteering is the way to go - we don't need altruism.

But then I thought about the situation more. I tend to think of the poverty problem as a bunch of smaller, inter-related problems. As such, right now I think that perhaps in the short term, altruism might be less important. TechnoServe can bring in consultants, regardless of their feelings about poverty, and help get the poultry industry launched, for example. Smaller battles can probably be won without altruism. But the bigger war probably requires altruism. When you're trying to develop an entire country, you need committed people to stick it out to the end.

When you add business to the mix, I think the picture becomes clearer. I've seen a ridiculous amount of money-making opportunities while I've been abroad, from bars to hostels to farming. But anything I formed would be a social business. I want to create change in people, not just make money. Similarly, my friend Gustav here in Maputo is starting a social venture capital fund - every project he invests in must have a social impact. I think this is the kind of thinking - evidence of altruism - that is necessary in the long term.

So should you volunteer and go to Disney? I'm torn. Perhaps this is one of the short-term opportunities that I'm referring to. But if, like she says, the message we're sending people about giving and expecting to receive has negative repercussions down the line, maybe it's not the best way to go. Or is it too idealistic or esoteric to think about possible long-term repercussions on the mentality of a rich population when you have over 30,000 children dying every day from preventable disease and starvation? Should we just try to get these problems under control now, mentality be damned? Or is the development picture bigger than that and should we really be concerned about the possible dearth or death of altruism?

The West or China: Who Should Save Africa?

2010-01-25T22:39:00.000-08:00

I hate using the word “save” because it smacks of patronization, but I think it encapsulates the intense outside assistance that the continent needs to get its economic engines going. So who should be their Clark Kent?

The US and other developed nations have been in Africa for decades, trying various development efforts but making little headway. On the other hand, you have the Chinese, the new kids on the block. I’d read a bit about the Chinese in Africa before coming, but it wasn’t until I got here that I realized their pervasiveness. Even in Mozambique, not one of China’s most favored nations (Sudan, Angola, and Congo), it’s not hard to run into them. They’ve helped construct the Mozambiquean Parliament building, the Foreign Ministry, and are currently building the new national soccer stadium, just to name a few. Not only are the companies Chinese, but so are the cheap Chinese workers they bring. In the mornings I run past these workers waiting for their shifts to start, and just outside our TechnoServe building a Chinese construction project is going up. Rumors go around that the Chinese workers are convicted criminals, but it’s more likely that they are just a part of China’s need to feed its growth and keep unemployment down.

I’ve asked various people about the West vs. China question. Development agencies like USAID and the World Bank come into African nations and tag stipulations of “democracy” and “transparency” with almost any inflow of money. Some people argue that it’s almost colonialism in itself, and others have pointed out that we are treating them like children. The Chinese, they say, don’t try to impose their ideology – they are just here to do business, like adults.

In some respects I agree with them. True to Chinese form, when they say something will get done, it gets done. My friend Gerson of CLUSA said he had talked to a Chinese contractor, who told him something to the extent of, “I would love to employ Mozambiqueans, but my guys already know the system and work twice as hard as the locals. It’s just not cost-effective.” I also recently spoke with a former USAID employee, who I won’t name here. Commenting on USAID strategy, she said, “Nothing is ever done for the right reason. You don’t plant bananas in a particular place because they grow well there. There’s always an ulterior motive.” USAID is in the same building as TechnoServe, and there’s a large banner out front showing the Mozambiquean and US flags, with the words “25 Years of Progress & Partnership.” I know development is a difficult thing, but it seems odd to me that USAID would brag about being in a country for a quarter of century, when the nation still remains one of the 10 poorest on the planet. For an entertaining slight of development, read "Bring on the Chinese".

They have a point, and the evidence provides a compelling argument, so I’m not completely decided. However, I’m leaning in the opposite direction. It seems to me that China is here for more than business – in some cases they are using manipulation for exploitation (Admittedly, the US’s record on this front is too spotless). For evidence check their funding of the war in Darfur. Rather than training African workers up and promoting knowledge transfer, China seems only interested in the bottom line. I talked recently with a couple of experienced TechnoServe leaders. They explained that the Chinese investments do in fact come with stipulations – tax breaks or free land, the latter of which they are getting in the Beira Corridor in the middle of the country.

One of the two TNS leaders, a Mozambiquean who actually previously worked for the government, said he saw no problem with treating the African governments like children – they are acting like children. He said that politicians often spend more time in the air than in their offices. The ceiling on government salaries has caused their travel per diem to skyrocket. The Director of the National Agricultural Survey, he said, had just a year or two ago requested over 400 days of travel in a year! Either that’s a blatant attempt at corruption or this guy should be on Heroes. In The Bottom Billion, a book I just finished, Paul Collier continues this thought by arguing that we’ve already went through the experiment of giving African countries a huge, no-strings-attached injection of budget support (i.e. aid). It’s called oil. He cites Nigeria, which has received around $280 billion in oil revenue over the past 30 years. Most of it has ended up in the government’s budget. How are the Joe Everydays of Nigeria doing? Exactly. Collier goes through each country that has had a similar large injection and finds no difference in growth rates between countries with and without large inflows.

For a big China fan like myself, this talk may come as a surprise to some people. The verdict is still out in my mind, so over the next few months I’m sure I’ll get to talk more about it and perhaps share with you if I find anything interesting.

Chronicle of a Mozambiquean Bus Trip, Day 2 of 2

2010-01-20T02:58:00.000-08:00

So, to continue the story...

Day 2, 9:40am: The Indian-esque men get off the bus and into a minivan. It turns out they were Pakistani. The bus comes alive with chatter and laughter. Someone says to me, “Two days, they eat nothing.” And he was right – the entire trip I hadn’t seen any of them eat anything, say anything, or get off the bus even briefly. Bizarre.

Day 2, 1:20pm: Bread and bananas. This time though, I go crazy with some cashews. Lunch is served.

Day 2, 2:30pm-ish: I notice for the first time how the dirt is caked on me thicker than a notebook. I can rub my skin anywhere – face, hands, arms – and watch as the dirt comes off in rings. It becomes a game after a while. Again, you run out of things to do.

Day 2, 4:23pm: Stopped for the umpteenth time. The stops are getting ridiculous. This time, however, it is the police. Our crew gets off the bus and there's a lot of talking. Somehow we are back on the road in 10 minutes.

Day 2, 4:40pm: That didn’t last long. We end up at the district police station. This is absurd. The driver and his crew are taken inside. Apparently, the driver didn’t have any documents to drive a bus! I assume the situation was amended with a bribe of some sort because we’re back on the road in a half hour. Like an eager dog, I’m the first one on the bus.

Day 2, 5:15pm: The stout Mozambiquean passenger who has been inhaling cheap gin like it’s air is starting to get a bit out of hand. He’s hitting on women, grabbing babies, making loud and obnoxious comments about the driver, and harassing me to buy him a beer once we get to Maputo.

Day 2, 6:36pm: The police stop us again. They start questioning the crew. I start (continue?) questioning my decision to take this bus. People on both sides have their cell phones out. Meanwhile, a drunkard on the bus is being helped off the bus by the other aforementioned stout drunkard – they both make their way to the bathroom. I’m watching this spectacle just as another passenger is yanked off the bus and quarantined by several militarypersonnel. They have him surrounded and are questioning him behind a military truck. Then, just as I'm watching this, another officer hops onboard and comes straight to me, asking for my passport. He looks at the cover and says “America”, before barely taking a look inside and handing it back to me. “Have a nice day” he says to me.

As soon as he gets off the passengers in the back shout “Vamos!” with a sense of urgency that seems to say they just want to get out of there. As we start going one of the women on board says “America!” and is echoed by another man who says, “Obama, Mozambique. No problem!” It’s at this point that I become known as “Obama” to all the passengers. Everyone on board seems to be having a pretty good time with me, the token foreigner who has no idea what’s going – the deer in the headlights so to speak. The passenger who was pulled off is left behind.

Day 2, 7:05pm: Stopped by the police again. An officer gets on and says rousingly, “Bon dia!” The passengers all reply back with excitement. I’m thinking, “Shut up and just drive.” Now I learn why all the police stops: they’re looking for illegal immigrants. The guy who was pulled off was Somali and the Pakistanis were immigrants leaving the bus for small vehicle to take back roads. So we’re transporting illegal immigrants.

Day 2, 8:00pm-ish: We make a big stop in the suburbs of Maputo, and because of all the luggage being unloaded, we sit and sit. Eventually I grab my bag and take local transport.

At 9:20 (6 hours late), I finally ended up in my cozy apartment. My roommate is out with friends, but since I look and feel I’ve been run over by a semi I decide not to join. At final count, souvenirs from the trip include: two phone numbers, stench and filth that would make my younger brother look like a princess, the early stages of a beard, a short-term aversion to bananas, 4 hours of sleep, a digestive system that feels like it’s had a roto-tiller taken to it, a raging migraine, and what seems like a minor sprained ankle (I have no idea how). And I wanted to see the countryside…dumb.

Chronicle of a Mozambiquean Bus Trip, Day 1ish of 2

2010-01-18T11:41:00.000-08:00

This past Friday I returned from a 2-day bus ride spanning pretty much the entire country of Mozambique north to south. Not only was it a 2-day bus ride and not only was it in a 3^rd world country, but it was the cheap bus in a 3^rd world country. When I told people here I was taking the bus, especially the TechnoServe people (who were willing to pay for a flight), I received responses just short of “You are going to die.” Here’s a few of my notes from the trip:

Day 1, 1:30am: I arrive at the “bus station”, which is essentially a bus parked at someone’s house. By this time the bus is almost completely full and someone’s in my seat. After franticly searching for bus management in fear that the bus might take off with me seated on the floor, I find out that they sold two seat #37s. Convenient. I get moved around and end up in an aisle seat rather than my ticketed window seat. The bus, mind you, looks like something out of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and sitting in my seat instantly blasts me back to the 1940s. I’m concerned we may not make it around the block.

Day 1, 2:12am: Our bus makes the move. But out of nowhere comes about 9 Indian-looking men. It’s odd: all 9 of them board at the last minute, all wearing thick clothes like heavy woolens and scarves wrapping their faces to go with their expressionless faces. It seems as though they paid informally because they take their seats in the aisle, on the floor and on little stools. The one seated to my right and the overweight Mozambiquean taking up 1/3 of my seat to my left create a space for me tighter than Dolly Parton’s face. Taking something out of my pocket requires that I stand up in my seat, and sitting down becomes a human game of Tetris, where I have to contort my body into exactly the right position to fit between them. The layer of sweat coating all of us makes this considerably easier.

Day 1, 2:30am-ish: The driver starts blasting Portuguese reggae. Are you kidding? It’s 2 in the freakin’ morning! Meanwhile, two babies are already crying and the smell of chicken, French fries, and sweat wafts through the air. In a duel of shoulders, I jostle with the Indian for space, and pray by the grace of God that I might be able to fall asleep.

Day 1, 7:23am: We pull up on the side of the road and are bombarded by hawkers. I buy bananas and bread, two of the few safe, non-messy eatables. I estimate that the night before I “slept” for about 1 hour. My shirt is already soaked through with sweat, and on we go.

Day 1, 1:18pm: Bananas and bread for lunch – watch for a recurring theme.

Day 1, 5:37pm: We are stopped at the first of probably 10 or so police checkpoints. It’s at this point that I notice how bad the BO is without any car breeze. I’m sure I’m a contributor to this.

Day 1, 10:40-11:45pm: The bus has “mechanical problems”. I hear words like “screws loose”, but no one seems to really know, including the guys trying to fix it. Passengers chat and sleep on the road while it’s being fixed, while I delete old contacts in my cell phone. You run out of things to do and people to talk to…

Day 2, 1:23am: We pull over and the lights come on. I suddenly get a nauseous feeling. An announcement is made. The ticket man says the driver is tired and wants to sleep. I’m thinking, “What are we paying for?” Realizing I probably won’t be able to sleep and haven’t eaten since the banquet I had for lunch, I start walking down the highway into the dark with about 10 other passengers. I felt like I was searching tirelessly in the desert for water, just with the lights out. We finally find a little foodstand and I tell them that yes, I will absolutely have the chicken and rice. That sounds delightful.

I’m quite confident that by this time my stomach has consumed itself. The chicken was cold and the rice was as gritty as my skin at this point, but there could’ve been rocks in there and I would’ve eaten it. I ate with some passengers over conversations about Arnold Swarzennegar (an all-time favorite abroad) and then headed back to the bus. Finding that we had an hour to kill before 4am, I laid down on the road and stared up into the stars. It really is everything it’s cracked up to be. Out there in the bush with no lights, the African sky is a vivid canopy of constellations extending all the way down to the horizon. I fall asleep briefly and am woken up only by the headlights of oncoming traffic.

Haiti and the Fleeting Nature of Consciousness

2010-01-16T08:42:00.000-08:00

The destruction and suffering in Haiti is incredible. The images are quite simply gut-wrenching. That much is obvious. But the more mind-boggling prospect to me is the thought of such an earthquake hitting a country that already has nothing. Now that I've seen the (lack of) infrastructure and personnel present in countries like Mozambique, I don't know what would happen if a cyclone or earthquake hit. Heck, some places look like they've already been hit.

In Haiti, and other developing nations during times of crisis, the aid is sorely needed. This is not a time for business approaches. This is not a time for sustainability or scalability. Expedient food, shelter, clean water, and medical assistance are simply what's required. In this respect I've been impressed by the American and international response. Perhaps because of a new American president, learning from past mistakes, or a desire to right the wrongs of Katrina, aid seems to be pouring into Haiti. This is a good start and it will save lives.

My bigger concern is what's in store for Haiti for the future. In my inbox over the past two days I've received 11 emails from people telling me how I can help. This is great: people are coming up with all kinds of ways to raise money. But it's also a time for glitz, glamor and fun. I've been invited to backyard barbecues, dinners at chic restaurants, and movie nights. iTunes and Wyclef Jean are also gunning for my dollar. I love the creativity, but my concern is what happens when when the peer pressure is gone. What happens when it's not "cool" to text in your donation to the Red Cross? What happens when the 3-second attention span of Americans like me is diverted by something like, say for example, Michael Jackson dying? (And I'm not downplaying this, so don't throw a fit) When it gets down to the actually rebuilding a nation, who will be left?

This is where I think business will be important. Certainly, support will need to come from all angles - foreign nations and aid agencies need to apply pressure for an efficient and transparent government, for example. But when there is a profit profit incentive, you can be sure businesses will stick around. Rwanda is an impressive example. Its government has worked hard to welcome businesses, and while all the credit isn't due to foreign business investments, a lot of the recent 8-10% economic growth is. The country's president has been welcoming to companies like Costco and Starbucks, both buying Rwandan coffee. The laws are accommodating to domestic business too - you can open a business in three weeks, quicker even than in Japan.

I like this thinking by the government. I believe it can happen in Haiti, and I hope the pressure and attention can continue from the US and abroad. My friend Richard, who I met in Bangladesh, visited Haiti a couple years back. He said the poverty he saw there was the worst he's ever seen. He said the population just wanted anything they could get for themselves, almost like survival of the fittest. Things seemed desperate and heartless - the people needed hope. If we stick around, maybe they will have hope.

Where that T-Shirt You Donated Actually Ended Up

2010-01-11T06:21:00.000-08:00

Remember those clothes you donated to Goodwill or maybe threw in the donation bin around Christmas time? Where exactly did they go? After only a few days in Mozambique, I began to realize that although everyone was speaking Portuguese, Mozambiqueans all seemed vaguely familiar. I guess it's easy to get that impression when they're all wearing the clothes you and your friends sported just a couple years back. Recently I was with a group of about 15 Mozambiqueans, and asked how many were wearing 2nd hand clothes. Everyone raised their hands. Here's a few shirts I noticed just in the past couple days:

"Got Your Tickets to the Gun Show?"

"Don't Mess with Texas"
"Nuva Ring" (worn by a man)
"BE THE TROUBLE YOU WANT TO BE IN THE WORLD"
"Y Basketball" (YMCA)
Huge American flag with bald eagle in the foreground

Super Bowl XXXIX: Jacksonville, FL (I was pumped to see this one)

(On the back of the shirt of the kid in the picture it was all Sharpie'd up with notes like "Have a great summer!")

I'm still waiting on the Vanderbilt Cross Country shirt to turn up. Anyway, intrigued, I started asking some questions. As someone interested in development, I've thought a lot about whether clothes donations are in the end good or bad for the country. Do they help clothe people or are they really killing the textile industry and in effect the economy and potential jobs?

What struck me the most was how big of a business it is. It's not how I envisioned a bunch of people just getting hand-out shirts and shoes from the back of a truck in an isolated village. Instead, the owners of the for-profit resellers ( there are 8 in Nampula alone!) are often foreigners, driving Land Rovers like Bilal and Akram, a couple of Lebanese I interviewed. When your clothes go to the NGO donation boxes, a large portion of the articles (the good quality ones) are sold by the NGOs in the US to fund their other activities. Bilal and Akram speculated that only 20% of the clothes actually make it abroad. They then go through suppliers in the US to the port of Maputo, and eventually to large cities like Nampula.

Once they arrive here, they are packaged into 45 kg "mystery bundles". People like Mussa Xavier, a seller I met, dig through the bundles. They aren't allowed to open them, but amazingly they can get a feel for what's inside (see pic 2 for how just alittle bit of the clothes peeks through the wrapping). I talked to a group of buyers - the sought after items are athletic wear, or anything with a synthetic feel to it, and speficially size 40 or above. Laughing about the specialized nature of these resellers, Akram said, "They can know just by feeling. It's surprising." Mussa said he and most buyers prefer to sell shoes though, because with the high profit margin, 3 or 4 good pairs would cover the cost of the whole bundle. I asked what my shoes (retail $100) would fetch - only about $20, or half the price of a "good" pair. I guess that's what happens after 6 months of trekking in 4 different countries.

Mussa has a tiki-hut shop and has recently expanded his business to another nearby city. Withf our employees now under him, he said that 2nd hand clothes have greatly changed his life. “These days business has been increasing more than ever…Last year I bought my motorbike, and this year I was able to buy furniture and improve my home. I had money to buy a refrigerator, but I used it to buy a cell phone for my wife.” He says he will find a way to buy the refrigerator for his family.

It's easy to see the effects of the industry on people like Mussa. There are countless people in the market doing exactly as he. And it's not just the resellers - even the uneducated people loading the bundles into trucks were making decent money. In short, there's a lot of jobs created.

The more difficult thing to gauge is what could have been. Bilal and Akram explain that importation of 2nd-hand clothes is only allowed in countries where there is an absence of a garment industry. But could it be preventing the birth of an industry? My gut tells me that given the domestic political roadblocks and fierce competition from established textile countries like Bangladesh and China, it would be highly unlikely without a big external push. It wouldn't just happen on its own. At the same time, cheap clothes make the consumer happy, and after talking with many people I learned that remaining tailors make a good living repairing damaged 2nd-hand items. Still, something bothers me about promoting a practice, an industry if you want to call it, that really has no value added component. No one is producing anything. Just reselling. For a scathing critique of clothes donations, see this Washington Times article.

With my limited reading on the subject, I can't come to a conclusive conclusion. What I do think is that what is happening now is better than just handing out free t-shirts to every Dick and Jane that wants one - that's good for disaster relief but not for creating an "industry" like this. In a week or so I'll be chatting with a member of Parliament, so I'll be sure to get his thoughts.

Born into Religion, Ignorant of the Path?

2010-01-07T07:45:00.000-08:00

I don’t usually open myself up like this. Especially about things I don’t know that much about, like the topic of this post. But I do know myself, and the questions that have been raised from my past experiences.

After visiting four countries focused on four major religions – Islam in Bangladesh, Buddhism in China, Hinduism in India, and now Christianity in Mozambique – I’ve seen how people and cultures have been transformed by and, specifically in the cases of India and Bangladesh, governed by the ethos of the dominant religion. The pervasiveness of religion has engulfed me. Abroad, people take their faith more seriously than Americans take the NFL, American Idol, and credit cards combined. I experienced an 8-hour Hindu dowry proceeding in India, which was only after extensive preparation, including careful purchasing of gifts, blessings, and song. If that was the dowry, Shiva only knows how long the wedding was. In Bangladesh I wanted to kill myself every time the public morning prayer blared right outside my window at 5am, but I know all the faithful Muslims were up performing their duties. In Mozambique I’ve been continuously impressed by all the Christians AND Muslims who can recite The Bible better than me.

I put out all these anecdotes to suggest that the intensity by which these cultures zealously follow their religions is praiseworthy, though the origin elicits questions. (And as a side note, I certainly don’t consider duration of ceremonies or numbers of prayers as the definition of religious intensity) If you’re reading this post right now, chances are you are BOTH American and Christian. That’s where I’m going with this. If someone asked me why I am Christian, the answer I wish I could give is that Christ died for my sins and that I am trying to follow the example set by him here on earth. The answer that probably gets more to the root is that, quite simply, I grew up in the US. My parents, family, and friends were and still mostly are Christian; I was baptized before I was cognizant of what was going on; and at an age when Power Rangers was still too violent for me, I was ushered into Vacation Bible School (which was awesome by the way, at least until I got a bit older and it was kind of awkward).

All this happened before I really even knew other religions even existed. My first substantial perception of Islam was that their holy book was instructing people to ram planes into buildings. Only later did I learn that the root of religion's name means “peace”. But by then, Christianity was cemented in my head as “the right way.”

But which religion is “the right way”? If you’re talking to the screen, “Come on Rob, Jesus is the only way”, I’d bet there are a billion Chinese who’d argue otherwise. And even if there is one right way – we don’t have to agree on which one – does that mean that the geographic lottery of birth has more to say about the post-mortem outcome of our soul than the intensity by which we praise Jesus, Buddha, Allah, or whoever? Of course, you can pick up a copy of any of the religious texts to compare, but how many people actually do this? I’d suggest the social and cultural forces are just too strong to compel the majority of people. My translator here in Mozambique, Mussa, is currently reading The Bible cover-to-cover to compare to the Qur'an, the book of his previous religion. This is laudable, but he has had to take great lengths to hide this and lie to his parents to accomplish this. His mother thinks he’s reading it for the English practice, so she bought him The Qur'an with English translation. Families, and cultures, don’t take these things lightly (see Bangladesh-India, the Gaza strip, and essentially the entire Middle East).

For me, my religion is something I’m now uncertain about. I’ve posed the above dilemma to many people, including pastors, but have never really received an answer that satisfied me. Though I wouldn’t be so crass to suggest that all religions are the same, I do think there is a lot in common that I’m trying to incorporate into my life. While by denomination I am a Methodist, I think to call myself a Christian would be a disservice to the faith. So right now, I’m simply trying to live my life in a good way and have the greatest positive impact on those around me, whether that is socially, culturally, or mentally. In high school, I was ardently religious, but in college the piles of homework left until the last minute on Sunday became an easy excuse out of church. While my faith has faded, I consider myself a much better person today than ever before. Today, I’m less judgmental, more open-minded, and seek social goals rather than monetary goals. And, (I think) I’m just a more fun person to be around…one of my friends is going to throw that one back in my face.

I don’t put out this post to attack Christianity, religion, or your beliefs, but rather to explain where I am in my faith journey and to invite anyone to suggest sources of information or inspiration.

The 6 Month Mark

2010-01-01T01:38:00.000-08:00

Today marks 6 months since I took that debauchery-filled first class trip on Etihad Air after spending a night on the cold, tiled floor of JFK airport with my bags tethered to me. The time has flown by. I could go on about everything I’ve learned relating to poverty, but you’ve already read most of that and it would probably bore the majority of you anyway. Instead, I’ll list a few random comments/things I’ve learned about myself and other countries in general. But first, before I do that, I want to thank everyone who has supported me up to this point: those who have donated money, people who have given me great contacts, locals who have provided me with amazing guidance while in my target country, and all my friends and family who keep me in the loop enough so that I don’t come back completely socially awkward. I also want to stress how much I appreciate the comments and the lively debates they create. I enjoy the learning. Oh, and I suppose I owe that Michael Keegan guy some thanks as well. I can’t do this without you all. Anyway, on to my thoughts:

Bashing your own country helps. Forget complimenting my country, bash your own! There’s few things that bring me closer to a person than when he or she bashes his own country. Like when my friend Zhang complimented my laptop and explained how Chinese computers were complete garbage – I wanted to go have a beer with him. I think it shows a sense of open mindedness, a willingness to accept one’s (country’s) faults. Americans could take a hint here. So, following this example, I’m more apt to propound the US’s faults, for example our terrible health care system or deterioration of the family unit, than to brag about our successes. When I tell people I’m from America, they often say (insert Borat accent) “#1 country!” I tell them, “Sure, something like that. But really it’s a boring place.” (which it is on an everyday level…you know things will probably go as planned…in India, for example, you might get one thing done during an entire day because of some freak marriage parade in the street or stranger taking you to his house in the slums…not that those happened to me…)

You’re more likely to regret the things you didn’t do than the things you did. Like any good college senior I put this adage to good use last year. However, I think as post-grads a lot of us (myself included) tend to forget this. We take fewer chances. Things are less interesting. I’ve fallen back to this default on occasion during my trip, but I keep pushing myself to take chances. And it doesn’t have to be big things either. Just yesterday I broke the ice with a Kenyan couple who I’d seen for days at my hotel but never talked to. We ended up chatting for a good while, and later that night they invited me dinner, where we enjoyed pasta while nit picking all the things we find ridiculous about Mozambique. It was great fun.

The availability of toilet paper = level of development of a country. One easy way to judge the standard of living in a country is the check a stall in the nearest public bathroom. The more often you find TP, the more developed a country is. If even the company or NGO office doesn’t have any two-ply, then by God do not drink the water. Chances are you are in a really backwards place. There should be an index to measure this – I bet it would roughly in line with GDP per capita. You could even break it down to quality of TP, like number of ply, softness, etc.

Staying with the bathroom realm, finding a public toilet is like finding an oasis in the desert. It’s a beacon of hope. I say hope because even if you find it, you may have to attempt to sneak in (for example, at Pizza Hut), it may be closed down or locked, or you might be asked to pay when you don’t have any money on you. But at the end of the day, as long as it’s not #2, pretty much anywhere will do.

Does sarcasm exist abroad? I still find myself asking this question. I don’t know. My foreign language skills aren’t strong enough in any country to pick up on it if it does in fact exist, but I don’t think it does in Asia. Asian humor, from what I can tell, is over-the-top-not-funny humor. I think Africa might have a fighting chance. People in Mozambique seem to have a drier sense of comedy. Anyone have an idea?

I miss my family and friends more than I thought I would, and I feel closer for it. To be sure, I’ll hate my brothers within a week’s time of being home, but right now my ears are itching to hear one of their tasteful “that’s what she said” jokes after every sentence at the dinner table (or maybe that was my friend Matt).

I’m more excited about my travels now than I was even at the beginning. This is a bold statement, because anyone who talked to me before my trip would tell you that I would have tried to get a pilot’s license if it would’ve put me overseas any quicker. As geared as I was then, my excitement has only escalated. Assuming some freak accident doesn’t drain my bank account, not only do I not plan on coming home in under a year of travel, it could be a good bit longer. I think I’ll be riding this out as long as I can.

And, today also marks the day before my 23^rd birthday, so if you’re still feeling thirsty after New Year’s, tip one back for me!

"Stop complaining and just do something."

2009-12-29T12:04:00.000-08:00

The quote above was taken from Gerson, one of the most inspiring individuals I've met in a while and one who really had some interesting thoughts on romanticizing the poor. Gerson works in Gurue with CLUSA, which is trying to ramp up soybean production with farmer associations (soybean is important for poultry feed), and I was able to tag along for a few days. Gurue, by the way, was called by Gerson's boss "the Garden of Eden", and he wasn't far off. But man is it rural.

There's only one paved road and late night entertainment consists of Laurentina beers and a plate of chicken at the only restaurant open after dark.

Anyway,Gerson has a lot of experience in development, on the ground and in management, so he had unique insights into what is actually happening in both arenas. His attitude is one of put up or shut up. He's sick of aid organizations talking, advertising, and getting so little done. Riding through the villages you notice the pervasiveness of aid organizations by the signposts at every corner. But you won't see any signs for his organization because they're not looking to be flashy - they just want to get stuff done.

After I really dug deep, Gerson - shy about his accomplishments - admitted that although he has only been here 10 months, he has already legalized nearly every farmer association (the number escapes me but it's something like 150). Why this wasn't done before baffles him - rather, it was just a bunch of farmers together with no legal status. At a recent meeting of local NGOs, a World Vision official said he wanted to do some work making sure all of the associations were actually legalized. The certification has been done, let's move on to bigger issues, Gerson says. He believes World Vision is looking to certify one or two associations and then claim it was an equal partner to CLUSA. This, Gerson says, is how a lot of development work gets done, or rather reported.

And he hears the same excuses, things like "It's Africa man, you can't change it." This is echoed not only by foreigners, but also by Mozambiqueans, citizens, and the government. The civil war is another common cry. Gerson argues that it's not a problem of the war or even an endemic African problem. Rather, he sees it as a problem with attitude. He said, "The war was over 16 years ago and still they use it as an excuse. I mean, come on, do something. Stop complaining and just do something." We talked about how there was so much untapped opportunity in the country, from tourism to agriculture, and why people were just sitting on their hands.

What I like about Gerson is that he doesn't get romantic about the poor. He stays practical. He's only willing to help those who are willing to help themselves, yet he understands when something goes wrong because of a factor outside of a farmer's control. And he only comments on things he has knowledge on, so when he refused to give an answer on a few topics, it made me feel more confident in his other opinions.

I also see a lot of me in him. I like how he works at the intersection of management and field work - probably a direction I'm headed if possible. And even at the bewilderment of his family and friends, who wonder "what are you doing in the bush?", he is committed to bettering his country. He's not yet looking to settle down like most locals: I asked when Mozambiqueans get married, to which the 29-year-old responded, "By now, I should have two kids." And also just like me, he can't cook. His game plan is to just throw things into a pot, entire tomatoes and onions without even dicing, and hope for the best. The dinner he made for me when I was over was pretty decent though, but then again I go for quantity over quality. He shared that when he had a big donor over one night at his boss's request, instead of cooking he ordered Chinese take out, topping it off with a roll of toilet paper in the middle of the table for napkins. It was funny because I wouldn't have done any different. But hey, don't get romantic, stay practical, right?