Avoiding the Rut and a Mozambique Exodus

“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

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

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

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

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)

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

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.