Photos of Life In Bole

Troy and I traveled 75 km north to a town called Gindabo to stay with a friend of Troy’s named John, his wife Esther, and their three children, Pheobe, Williams and baby Patricia.  
John fought his way into school and taught himself English at age 19.  He is one of the smartest men I have ever met.
John grows sorghum for Guiness to turn into their famous beer and a popular malt drink.  He is a great example of how private enterprise can help local farmers earn a decent wage.  But in true Ghanaian fashion he doesn’t save any of his money - instead all the children in the village know they can come over to John’s to get a good meal if there’s not enough food at their house – he invests in his community, not the stock market. 

The photo to the right shows Troy helping John unload Guiness-quality sorghum seeds to plant on his farm.   
Below is a card my best friend Jacquie made me that now hangs on our front door.

Above is a picture of me building our wardrobe. We’ve been fixing up our house little by little with pictures on the walls and crazy-luxurious things like table cloths. I love it; despite the green paint it’s wonderful place to come home to. 

We’ve had a lot of dinner parties at our house too.  Thanks to spices my mom sent and recipes from my uncle Craig, our Canadian cooking has become quite famous around the  neighbourhood.

In the photo above, from left to right is Shafiq and Haki who live in our compound, Troy, Sarah, our fearless EWB leader who came to visit us for the weekend, me, Jody, an EWB volunteer placed with the district assembly in Bole, and Sherifa, my dear friend and the wife of Shafiq.
Sherifa and Shafiq invited us over to celebrate Eid Al Adha with them.  They fed us until we nearly burst and then we all relaxed watching the Miss India South Africa competition on TV. Not the highest quality programming but Sherifa and I had fun imitating the dancers.

This is the volleyball court near our house.  I invited three friends from work (in red, yellow and purple) to join in on our regular game and we had a blast.

 

 

Sherifa came out to join us too.  Yes, she played volleyball dressed like that and still kicked my butt.

 

So that’s what our free time looks like these days.
Truly, the fun never stops in Bole!

Scorpion In My Bedroom

I came home last Friday to find a scorpion crawling on the wall just above my bed.

 

I was not pleased.

 

 

The scorpion did not live for much longer after that.

This is what a dead scorpion looks like – scraped off the wall by the cover of the book that killed it.

And my bedroom is a safe place once again, thanks to Troy and his steady book-swinging arm.

I Love My Work: Seeing Beyond Agriculture As a Business

Skepticism, not the desire to do what is needed most, seems to be the only thread that unites all of development.

Each NGO is critical of all the other NGOs. This prevents the collaboration that is so crucial in the development sector to help us collectively learn from our mistakes and not repeat or do overlapping work.

I think the skepticism stems from the belief that your NGO is the only one that understands how to do development; you are the only one doing it right. Everyone else is doing it wrong. In reality, everyone is trying to achieve the same goal – improving the livelihood of others – and collaboration would go a long way to help us navigate the complexity of the work.

This is why I love what I’m doing.  The Agriculture As a Business (AAB) program that was developed by EWB and the Ghanaian Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) isn’t another microloan program. It doesn’t give boreholes to communities, food to students, or combines, tractors or fertilizers to farmers. It doesn’t offer vocational training in soap making or leadership training to youth. It doesn’t introduce villages to new seed varieties or technologies.  It doesn’t ‘sensitize’ farmers to proper pesticide use. It doesn’t put girls in school or buy produce from farmers at high prices. It doesn’t do any of these things that most NGOs involved in agriculture do.

What AAB does, is support them all. That’s the beauty of it! 

The program is designed for farmer groups.  Almost all NGOs in Northern Ghana work with farmers in some way (not surprising as farmers make up over 85% of the population); many use MoFA to do the implementation of their project.  Almost all NGO projects work with farmer groups instead of individuals because it’s a more efficient way of reaching lots of people.  Almost all projects rely on the farmer groups to be strong for the project to succeed but rarely does project implementation invest in strengthening the farmers – they expect and depend on the groups to already be strong. 

AAB actually focuses on strengthening farmers and farmer groups. The curriculum itself focuses on group meetings, record keeping, finances, planning a group project, marketing and evaluating but the outcome of AAB goes well beyond these simple business skills. 

In the two months I have been implementing AAB I have finished the curriculum with four farmer group. (See the post entitled “Let Me Introduce You to My Farmers” if you would like to read about them.)

When I started, most of the groups did not hold regular meetings, have any savings, nor do any work on a group farm. In short, they were not really groups but they called themselves such because they know NGOs only work with groups.

Now every member of the group speaks up in their weekly or bi-weekly meetings, all the members contribute to their savings, they have planned a group project together that will earn them all some extra money, and they are confident in their abilities as a group to maximize their profit by planning their ‘farm business’ and negotiating a good price for their produce at market.   

Even better is that through AAB the farmers have built a solid, trusting relationship with their MoFA Agricultural Extension Agent (AEA). The AEAs respect their farmers more after hearing their insights instead of always closing their ears and mindlessly disseminating technologies from NGO and government projects.

I see the AEAs now working to help their farmers because they want to see their farmers succeed. When AEAs listen to their farmers it means that farmers have a voice within their government and this can help change government projects to better address real farmer challenges. These are amazing changes to witness that will continue to help farmers long after I have left Ghana.

For the reasons mentioned above, I am convinced that AAB on its own does great things for farmers, farmer groups, and their AEAs but I come back to my original point that AAB also has the ability to support projects from other NGOs.

I like to think of AAB, and the strength it builds in farmer groups and AEA-to-farmer relationships, as the first rung of the development ladder. Other NGO projects that come to MoFA or directly to farmer groups with microloans, training, technology, etc. are the second rung. But without that first rung the second is unreachable. It’s too high up and the projects fail because the first rung isn’t there; the groups aren’t functioning or the extension from AEAs isn’t focused on the best interest of the farmer. 

Thus, AAB works in two ways. It builds farmer groups up so they can make a good profit without outside help but it also prepares groups to succeed with other projects if an NGO decides to work with them. It’s a great feeling to know that no matter what happens next, these farmers will be better off.

Let Me Introduce You to My Farmers

Monday to Thursday of every week I travel to a different village to meet with a farmer group. All four groups have spent our last 7 meetings learning how to plan their farming activities to make the most profit possible through a program called Agriculture As A Business (AAB) that was created by EWB and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA). This week, all four of the groups finished the AAB program and I am so proud of their accomplishments I just have to share them with you!Monday is Esunga Farmer Group in Mandari, a village 5 kilometers from the Black Volta and Cote D’Ivoire border. The AAB program has helped Esunga plan their 5-acre rice farm.  The group will likely get a loan from the central government to cover the cost of inputs (about CAD $1000). After expenses, they expect to earn a profit of $830 but don’t know the interest rate on the loan so that could not be factored in. Typical interest rates for farmers range from 15% from internationally supported banks to 35% and more from local institutions. The banks justify the high interest because of the tragically low repayment rates. In an average situation, Esunga will walk away with about $600. But the group knows loans from the government typically show up late, if at all, so they have a contingency to plant only 2 acres and pay for the cost of inputs with their bi-weekly contributions and group labour. Tuesday is Nyorpeo Farmer Group in Jama.  Nyorpeo is scaling-up their 4-acre maize farm to 8-acres this year and are paying for the scale-up with money they earned selling sheep to be slaughtered for Eid Al Adha.  Their MoFA Agricultural Extension Agent (AEA), Ditcha, encouraged them to wait to sell until Eid when prices would be highest and the group earned an average of $100 per animal – a huge sum by Ghanaian standards. They expect to earn a profit of $1250 from their maize next year.Wednesday I meet with Nuoriyeni Farmer Group in Seripe.  This group has no start-up capital but wants to sow 2 acres of peanuts. The costs of the inputs is about $400 but they plan to do all the labour (ploughing, planting, weeding, harvesting, drying) themselves so they only need to come up with $75 to pay for seeds.  They have devised a plan to get the money in time for planting which sees the members making 75 cent contributions every two weeks and working on other people’s farms to make up the balance. They expect to make $320. And Thursday I meet with Awuladese Farmer Group in Bole. This group has an unpaid loan from 2006 with the Agriculture Development Bank but, thanks to encouragement from their AEA, Eugene, they are now starting to pay off the remaining $275 they owe.  When they do, they will be able to get another loan from this forgiving bank at a 15% interest rate (thanks to IFAD) and will use this money to plant 20 acres of peanuts. Their expected profit is $2000, even after including the interest. That being said, they know there is always a chance they won’t get the expected loan so they have a contingency plan.  Each member will contribute 37 cents per week to cover the costs of planting just 2 acres of peanuts which will earn them about $350. 

$600, $1250, $320, $2000/$350 for one year of farming. They are insignificant sums to a Canadian audience but to a Ghanaian farmer, who usually just produces enough to live on through individual subsistence farms, this money means that they have a tiny bit to line their pockets if bad luck befalls them. 

And while getting farmers to keep records, plan ways to market their goods and think about costs and benefits probably seems a bit immaterial to a Canadian audience, believe me, these are HUGE steps forward.  Most of the farmers I work with have never gone to school, and those that have are still illiterate. Most of the groups were haphazardly thrown together by MoFA to get NGO agricultural projects into the district. And most of the groups struggled to make a profit from their group activities or had simply abandoned their group work all together.

Two months of Agriculture As a Business training later, illiterate farmers are now keeping records with creative uses of stones, beans, marks on the wall, etc. which means they are much less likely to get cheated; the quietest members feel important enough to contribute to group discussions and decision making; and groups know they are powerful enough to negotiate fair prices with buyers and make a profit they are happy with.  These are all small steps that form the foundation of huge change in the lives of the farmers I have had the pleasure of getting to know.