Photos!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thoughts On Development: A Five-Part Post

I’ve spent almost an entire year in Ghana and with my date of departure back to Canada fast approaching I’ve been doing some serious reflecting on the development industry and the many challenges it faces.

I’ve brought together my observations and learnings from the past year into the following 5 posts.

With any luck I’m hoping these stories get us all thinking more critically about agricultural development and how we need improve this industry make sure our efforts are having the most benefit possible for the rural farmers we’re trying to support.

Happy Reading!

1. Strong Groups = Strong Projects

Quality farmer group capacity building is a corner stone to development project sustainability and efficacy. But why then, are the time and resources required to effectively strengthen and develop groups routinely underestimated?

A typical approach for a project is to ask the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to find them groups to work with. The sentence “I need 20 groups who are willing to farm cashew with 25-30 members each and there should be a gender balance” is one example and “We want to work with only extremely hard working poorest-of-the-poor farmers” somehow, is not seen as an unreasonable request.

These requests neglect the needs and circumstances of the actual farmers, and instead put the needs of the donor and the project first under their mandate to execute a particular task.

But with the promise of a bonus from the project, the Extension Agents go out and often have to throw together farmer groups for the project because none of their existing groups fit the project’s specifications. Then project staff show up and expect the groups to be fully functional and ready to receive both complex technical training and a huge loan.

From what I can tell there are two basic reasons why projects insist on working with groups and not individuals. In the eyes of the project staff, if they give a loan to a group, repayment will be better; if one farmer defaults, the other group members can be forced to pick up the slack. In a newly formed group, this means each member is liable for the mistakes of the others whom she may or may not trust.

In addition to the “better” loan repayment rates, development projects are always going to want to work with groups because it is simply too time-intensive to work with each person individually. If we accept this, then we must look at how we can make groups more functional.

First we must recognize that groups are always in flux: They are constantly being formed in response to donor project demand; members are added or drop out for countless reasons; and they often change crops, processing activities, and other farming activities based on fluctuations in the markets (which is a good thing!).

To make the best use of development projects and to be prepared for them when they come, the best thing an Extension Agent can do is consistently work at strengthening the groups she/he has. And the best thing a project can do is allocate enough time and resources in their planning and budget to allow the Extension Agents to do this job effectively.

Proactively working with the members of farmer groups ensures the groups have high trust, good decision-making processes, business skills, and a solid relationship with the Extension Agent who will inevitably be implementing many of the project activities.

Project success (i.e. improvements to farmer livelihoods) relies on initial group strengthening and skills building that can help the group decide if they even want what the project has to offer and make the most of the project support when it comes.

2. The Numbers Game

Project documentation has a funny habit of over-estimating the number of households the project will be able to reach. When questioned on the achievability of the 372 000 households one project was expected to reach, an employee of the donor agency responded “Oh, that’s just a number that was estimated as the project was being designed. Don’t worry about that.”

But I do worry.

To give you an idea of how outrageous this number is, here’s a little math:

One Agricultural Extension Agent (AEA) using EWB’s Agriculture as a Business program can do a good job of effectively strengthening about one farmer group every two months while still carrying out their regular work. If we estimate that there are 250 active AEAs in Ghana’s northern region, and 10 households represented in each group on average, it would take 24.8 years to reach 372 000 households assuming every AEA worked constantly until the job was done.

Obviously, taking the EWB approach is not going to fit the requirements of most projects. Instead, to reach all these households, I’ve seen most projects adopt the Training-of-Trainer approach to outreach.

What this looks like on the ground is that the project hires an agency, who recruits multiple local NGOs in all the project’s operational areas. Then the agency trains the local NGO employees to train MoFA staff to train farmer groups.

After this training of trainers, the local NGOs go into the districts and train the MoFA staff to strengthen farmer groups. Then the MoFA staff head to the field to meet with and train the farmers.

Each step in that long chain takes a chunk of the project’s budget thus diverting donor funds away from the intended beneficiaries. In the end, the result is:

§ Very little money is left to pay MoFA and the AEAs to get to go the field and actually train the farmer groups;

§ Training techniques and topics that are mandated by the project are diluted at each level as the skill and understanding of the facilitator decreases; and

§ The training farmer groups receive is time-limited due to the emphasis on quantity over quality.

So what’s the answer to all this? Simply put, projects need to do a better job of setting goals that are in line with the time, people and resources available to them instead of trying to make the project sound better than is realistically possible.

For example, this could mean limiting the geographical area covered by the project to maximize field time and make sure it’s spent with intended beneficiaries instead of on the road.

Additionally, projects need to have stronger ties to the ground to ensure quality. One way is to hire enough field staff to work directly with the intended beneficiaries and/or management could make it their core responsibility to understand what’s happening on the ground and push for constant improvements and changes in implementation based on what is learned in the field. To impact a household, field staff need to have a connection and understand the beneficiaries. Their strengths and weaknesses should be well known and accounted for and the overall strength of this connection needs to be valued by management.

Related to the above, there needs to be more emphasis on knowledge management and upward feedback. No, this doesn’t mean more forms and reports for field staff to fill out but rather management needs to push their staff to share what they are learning and ensure they fully understand what is working and what isn’t, make informed decisions based on this information, and remain flexible to changes as implementation realities at the field level are better understood.

“If a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well.” – This is the attitude we need to adopt. So let’s forget about trying to impact hundreds of thousands of people and doing it poorly and instead focus on doing a great job of supporting a few.

3. Treating the Symptoms

The small holder farmers of northern Ghana are not known for their diligent dedication to recording their farm incomes, expenses and related activities. But it is easy to see how keeping records could really help farmers plan their farming activities to maximize their profits, especially with regards to calculating profits from costs and incomes and using this information to make decisions on investments which continuously improve profits.

To address this gap in record keeping, one project created a workbook to be distributed to farmers throughout northern Ghana that would act as a template for documenting this important information.

I have no doubt that this book will be put to some kind of use. Indeed, even my empty floss container was picked out of my garbage and put to use by the neighbour’s children. But let’s take a moment to consider the core issues affecting farmer record keeping and I think it will become obvious that the efforts behind the farmer workbook treat the symptom but not the cause.

From my field experience, literacy and education level are the biggest hindrances to farmer record keeping. The majority of farmers didn’t regularly attend school so the instinct to record things is completely foreign and takes time to build. But the farmers also need to know how to keep such records and see the benefits of doing it. Once all that is in place, then there will be a need and a use for a workbook and perhaps a pen. But if all that was in place, the farmer would already know the value of keeping records and simply go to a stationary store and buy the pen and paper.

To its credit, the development industry does invest heavily in education and huge improvements in literacy can be seen across northern Ghana. However, there’s still room for projects to encourage record keeping by taking the time needed (i.e. multiple meetings throughout the year) with farmer groups to demonstrate practical tracking of expenses and incomes for profitability analyses and why such records are useful for decision making.

But I don’t just mean explaining how to draw tables and subtract expenses from income; I’m talking about using beans in a jar, marks on a wall, knots in a rope, or any number of other creative ways the farmers I have worked with envisioned to overcome their illiteracy and keep business records for their farms.

We can’t just distribute a workbook, hope the farmers see its function and have a literate neighbour nice enough to fill it out for them. After all, the point of keeping records is for farmers to refer to the records they took in the past and use them to make decisions to improve their farming business. Indecipherable script will not help a farmer remember her past farming activities.

Instead we need to think about the root causes behind the challenges faced by rural farmers that development is trying to address. The example above shows how the inappropriateness of paper and pen documentation, and especially the need to understand the benefits, prevents farmers from keeping records more so than the lack of paper. If we dig below the surface and try to understand and define the core issues, then development projects can begin to address real challenges and make development sector interventions as useful as possible to the farmers.

4. Paper Tigers

As a general rule, the development industry has figured out how to prepare exceptional project planning documentation. It is detailed, compelling and after a critical read through, the reader is convinced success is inevitable.

However, after working closely with one such project for four months I see the reality of paper-based development: these documents can create inflexible and impractical structures and expectations that prevent projects from identifying and adapting to emerging opportunities or necessary changes to field implementation.

We know - everyone knows - that development is complex and entails a lot of failure and iteration. It is impossible to predict what these failures will be and what will be learned until projects are implemented. Yet project plans rarely allow for recognition of, and adaptation to, failures or new knowledge. The result is that project interventions are confined to activities and expectations that frequently prove to be impractical or unconstructive, regardless of what might be learned along the way. Allow me to provide a couple of examples:

Like almost every other project, the one I’m working with wants to engage and strengthen the capacity of farmer groups. The project plan calls for a needs assessment of a sample of farmer groups. This looks great on paper and gets approved with the thought that the project will use the results of this needs assessment to base the training on what farmers really need.

But, in reality, the needs assessment is resource and time-intensive. When it is finally performed it is surface-level and unrepresentative of real farmer challenges, which should come as no surprise. After all, how can an outsider come in to one village for half a day and determine precisely what knowledge, skills and attitudes all the farmers in the entire district need to succeed?

As an anecdote to prove my point, a JICA-sponsored yam project came to visit one of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) district offices. It was the start of the rainy season so the MoFA staff were very busy but, unwilling to disappoint the visitors, they took them around the district to perform a needs assessments of rural yam farmers. The JICA staff categorised all the different yam farming activities, found who did them, how they did them and made suggestions on what was needed to improve that specific task, promising that more thorough training was to come.

At the end of the day, when the JICA trainers had gone home, the disgruntled MoFA employees complained about what a waste of time the needs assessment and training had been. The farmers (and MoFA staff) already knew everything that had been taught and, for various reasons of their own, had made the choice not to perform the task in the prescribed way.

It was very evident, to both MoFA and the farmers, that the visitors only scratched the surface of what was actually needed by the yam farmers. The needs assessment wasn’t able to determine what was needed in this complex situation faced by people they had never met and whose livelihoods they didn’t fully understand.

The fact is that it’s virtually impossible to know what the real issues are when you plan a needs assessment or plan the resulting training; they simply can’t be figured out from an afternoon sitting with a group of farmers. The issues are complex and reveal themselves slowly through trusting relationships and genuine desire to understand rural livelihoods. It follows that project activities should be open to changing as understanding of the issues evolves throughout implementation.

As another example, the project I’m working for calls for the establishment of Inter-Professional Bodies (IPBs) which is a fancy term for associations comprised of different stakeholders affiliated with the same commodity (e.g. input dealers, farmers, traders, processors, exporters, etc.). The project supports these IPBs by funding the meetings and workshops that bring all the actors together.

Again, as the plans are written, this seems like a winning approach. An efficient and functioning commodity chain depends on long-standing and trusting trade relationships. It seems an IPB would give all the actors a forum to build these relationships and work out common challenges.

But long-standing and trusting trade relationships are built from a history of mutually beneficial transactions not by sitting in the same room at a meeting. You can’t force actors in a commodity chain to collaborate and talk about their challenges openly. And you certainly can’t expect competitors to give up whatever advantages they have in the market to make it more fair and equal for all.

So how does the development sector go about sculpting a more efficient and functioning commodity chain for the benefit of all? Well, because constraints and opportunities differ for each commodity in each location the answer is case-specific but here I’ve listed just a few (extremely simplified) examples of interventions that have been tried and tested. While not perfect, they can at least illustrate what is possible:

• Help the producers improve the quality and/or packaging of their product to appeal to higher end consumers thus attracting more up-scale buyers and expanding the market
• Support an input supplier to manage their inventory better so that they can profitably operate stores in more rural locations (improves farmer access to inputs)
• Link farmer groups to a buying company that needs a specific quality of product and is willing to provide the training and the market for it
• Initially buy-down the risk to rural banks (with cash or, better yet, with activities such as building trusting relationships with the farmers and/or supporting extension staff to provide quality collection services) so they become more willing to lend to farmers at reasonable interest rates
• Provide tools or methods to help farmers practice good money management and investment of their own funds where applicable to reduce the interest payments from loans which cut into their profits
• Expand the market for locally grown produce or products by helping a company develop an informative radio advertisement campaign
• Expand the market and promote proper use of fertilizers and pesticides by cost-sharing an educational promotional event for an input supplier
• Support a private company to supply reasonably-priced veterinary services where government support is inadequate or unreliable

The point is, you can’t know that these opportunities exist when the project is being planned. These are market opportunities that appear during project implementation and require projects to be adaptable to take advantage of them.

So, if any of the well-intentioned folks who make their living writing project planning documents happen to be reading this, I would love to know if it’s possible to hold a project accountable to it’s flexibility and responsiveness to market opportunities instead of basing the evaluation of project success on how many needs-based trainings and IPB meetings it holds.

In conclusion, let’s avoid implementing the ‘Paper Tigers’ that get approved solely on the merits of their written participatory and sustainable approaches. Practicality and flexibility, especially with regards to recognizing and responding to failures, learning and opportunities, are just as vital components to a good project plan.

5. We’re in Business

Despite the rhetoric and philanthropic characterization of international development, the development industry is just like any other. While they may never admit it, every NGO, donor and government program is a business in the business of staying in business.

And like every other business, development organizations need a steady inflow of money to remain operational. Competition for this income amongst development ‘businesses’ is just as fierce as the battle for customers between warring fast food giants. However, for development, this money doesn’t come from customers but rather is supplied by donors – those good people, companies and agencies dedicated to distributing the world’s foreign aid.

But here is where we find a problem. You see, in a normal business, companies will do whatever it takes to better serve their customers because it will improve their profits. But in development, the customers (i.e. intended beneficiaries) don’t supply the organization’s income so there are no pecuniary incentives to serve them better.

Projects habitually do a better job of serving donors than their intended beneficiaries. I don’t suggest that development is bad because it has capitalist values but I do think it is important to recognize when those profit-driven values are hindering the industry’s ability to help its intended beneficiaries.

As a means of illustrating my point, let me describe a meeting I had just a few weeks ago with another NGO (which I still like and respect and so have omitted their name) who was hired by the same agricultural project (the Project) as Engineers Without Borders Canada (EWB).

The NGO had already been working for the Project for two years before EWB came on the scene. However, EWB had done some cutting-edge work on value-chains and farmer group development and could bring innovation and fresh ideas.

Seeing a perfect opportunity for collaboration I set up a meeting to talk about the work the NGO had already done, what they were hoping to achieve, and the potential for us to work together to make sure our organizations were learning as much as possible from each other’s strengths and past mistakes.

During the otherwise amicable meeting, the NGO politely and diplomatically declined the request for information because:

• They had been involved in the Project for many years so they didn’t need anyone else’s ideas;
• They were competitors with EWB because EWB was awarded responsibility for a large portion of the project that should have been theirs; and
• If they were going to collaborate with EWB, they would need a very clear Terms of Reference formulated to spell out the responsibilities of each organization in the collaboration.

I was a bit confused and told them, honestly, I just wanted to learn more about the NGO’s work to see where I should start from; I really had no interest in competing with them. I believed by sharing our respective strengths we could make sure both organizations did the best possible job at improving the livelihood of the small-holder farmers the Project was targeting to support.

The NGO employees were quick to point out they were not against collaboration, they just required formality around their contributions and this is when it became clear what the problem was. You see, the NGO wanted to make the collaboration with EWB formal and documented so that it could obtain funding from the Project for the “support” it would give to EWB.

Really, it was doomed from the start. A formal Terms of Reference for collaboration would take months to finalize and I wasn’t prepared to sit idle and wait that long to start my work. Besides, how could I concede to such a time-intensive process that would take away from the honest efforts of both our organizations to actually help the small-holder farmers we were targeting?

Overall, the situation was incredibly disappointing. Not specifically because of the NGO’s reaction but with the system of development that makes something easy and sensible, such as teamwork and friendly cooperation, logistically impossible.

Ultimately, what this experience has shown me is the majority of development workers genuinely want to help improve peoples’ livelihoods but they also work within this industry and so face the two conflicting motivations of wanting to help people while, at the same time, wanting to keep money coming into their organization to keep themselves in a job. So now it’s up to us to switch the trend of giving precedence to the latter over the former. Let’s take a lesson from the private sector and put our customers first!

Challenges In Development

Let me set the record straight from the beginning by saying that I love my work. I’m well aware that it’s entirely likely that I will look back on this experience for the rest of my life and think of this as the best job I ever had. 

I also love working with NRGP and its staff are amongst the most talented, hardworking, intelligent people I have ever met.

Okay, with that disclaimer out of the way, now I can feel okay about what I’m about to write.

Just another day at the office: I’m getting schooled at the game of Warre Warre with a few women from the village of Azowera (the game board is dug into the ground between us). 

 

The thing is that development is fundamentally flawed. Excuse my huge generalization and simplification of the issues but basically, I see money being spent on ineffective activities that serve the needs of the donors not the beneficiaries. And it almost feels like projects spend money as if it didn’t belong to anyone (and, in a way, that’s how it is). Inefficiencies persist, decision making staff have very little understanding of the field-implications of their project during both design and implementation, and collaboration and learning for improvement is virtually impossible.

I bring this up only to commend the folks in Canada working hard to advocate our government for better development aid. Yes, there are challenges but there are a bunch of people messaging these challenges to CIDA, MPs, donors, and projects. And from what I gather, some of them are starting to listen to us! 

For more on how EWB is trying to make Canadian international development aid more Accountable, Creative and Transparent check out these links: 

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/820885--goar-how-to-move-ahead-on-foreign-aid#article

http://www.ewb.ca/en/whatsnew/features/100610_torontostar.html

And for more field-level insights from EWBers working with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in Ghana you can read out team blog:

http://innovationswithfarmers.wordpress.com/

Photo of the Week #10 – My Bathroom

The Ghanaian 5 pesewa coin (less than 4 cents) has a special role in my daily life: 5p is what it costs me to use the public toilet across the street from my house. So, in Canada, I don’t think I EVER talked about toilets, or anything even remotely related to the bodily functions that require their use. In Ghana, that all changed; these subjects frequently come up as normal dinner conversation. And I’ll warn you now, it’s not pretty.

The public toilet building is known as a “10 seater” (even though there are no seats) and was built by the Christian Children’s Fund of Canada (illustrating how omnipresent development agencies are in Tamale). There are 10 holes in the ground on both the men’s and women’s sides separated by concrete walls on three sides (like a line of bathroom stalls with no doors).

 

With no exaggeration, the first time I went inside I nearly threw up. There was shit everywhere. Everywhere. 8 out of the 10 holes were full and the centimeter long maggots that characterize every latrine on earth were having a freaking field day. I’m sure you can imagine the smell. When I went to use one of the not-full holes, maggots crawled up and swam about in my pee.

There were flies landing on me and all I could think about was what those flies had landed on before they got to me. Oh, it was horrible. I made a mental note to scout the nearby fields for potential “free-range” locations telling myself it would be like camping.

About a week later (after using my free range spot under cover of darkness), a man started sitting out side of the toilet and charging 5 pesewa for its use. In the light of day I had no other choice so I went to see him, paid my 5p and was OVERJOYED at what I saw: A (relatively) clean toilet. The shit was gone. The smell was better. The flies were barely noticeable. And only 5 of 10 were full. And I’m thinking “Wow, buddy, I will happily pay you whatever you want as long as you keep these toilets looking like this!” And this is why 5p will always hold a special place in my heart and my intestines.

As a dénouement to this tale, I see this guy on a (hopefully) regular basis. He always smiles and tries to get a conversation going (“Ah, I didn’t see you yesterday, are you constipated?” or “Second time this morning. You are running.”). It’s a bit strange, I mean, considering the circumstances, and often I’m in a bit of a rush but I think it shows how not self-conscious Ghanaian culture is about bodily functions that Canadian culture is really uptight about.

Another way to illustrate this is through how many breasts I have seen since arriving (sorry guys, no photos for this one).

Breast-feeding women have no shyness about suckling their baby in front of you and even absent-mindedly leaving their breast hanging out of their dress after the baby is done. To me this is an un-self-conscious acceptance of the reproductive role that women play and I see it as a real freedom to publically display this maternal ability. 

Any chance of this becoming more accepted in Canada any time soon? <<Sigh>> Probably not, eh?

Ghanaian Cuisine!

It’s really hard to describe the food here so I figured I’d let the photos speak for themselves!  Below you will find a little taster of what’s been filling my belly these past 9 months.

T.Z. and okru stew (maize and cassava flour boiled and beaten and formed into a soft dough dipped into soup made from bean leaves and okra).

In the photo I’m trying to pretend I know how to beat the boiling T.Z.

As is true for most of the tasks women perform, it’s harder than it looks!

T.Z. is a favourite of the Dagombas (the main tribe in Tamale) and many families here will eat this for breakfast, lunch and dinner. To be honest, it’s not that great. The T.Z. dough is gooey and virtually tasteless but I guess the stew is pretty good once you get used to it.

Fufu with light soup (boiled and pounded yam formed into a dough ball sitting in soup made from tomato, egg plant and hot peppers - served here with goat meat): I like this one as the soup is really healthy but even after 8 months my digestive track still just doesn’t agree with the Fufu dough. It’s a shame really.

Red Red (fried yams and plantains with hot pepper sauce and beans): I eat this for lunch nearly every day. It was the first Ghanaian dish I was able to eat and digest comfortably and I haven’t messed with success since!

 

Banku stew (fermented maize flour formed into dough balls dipped into a tomato and fish stew): My favourite! The banku dough is a bit sour – kind of like how sour dough bread is sour. And the stew is rich, spicy and full of flavour. It might be the only food I will actually miss when I go home.

Koko (breakfast porridge made from cassava): This is one of the first dishes I tried when I arrived and I swore I’d never have it again; it was so awful. Yet somehow I’ve grown to really like it. I often have this one when I’m running late for work and can’t be bothered to prepare breakfast. It’s a bit sour but with a heap of sugar and some peanuts thrown in it’s actually pretty good.

And, just for a laugh, here’s a picture of some typical table decor… Hungry yet?

Choices In Development

Ahmed is an executive member of the National Association of Shea Nut Farmers, Processors, and Buyers of Ghana and after meeting with him and his Association a few weeks back I was faced with a serious question of values. Let me explain.

Ahmed and the rest of the Association’s executive nearly demanded the meeting with me and it became clear quite early on that this Association was expecting NRGP (the project I am working with) to support them and had no qualms about being pushy.

Considering Shea is a women’s crop I thought it curious that, of the 10 or so attendees of the meeting, 8 were men. And the two women present were the same ones that I’d met at another meeting for the Shea sector.

As I’ve found with many groups in Tamale, the Association seemed quite practiced at seeking out NGO projects and ensuring they are among the beneficiaries. I don’t blame them for this at all. The fact that they actively seek out meetings, can claim a membership of over 2000 men and women, and do everything from nursing seedlings to large-scale trading makes them attractive to just about every NGO interested in Shea.

However, it occurred to me that they are unlikely to be the neediest and, whatever project support was delivered was unlikely to be controlled by the women pickers and butter processors but rather would end up in the hands of the male executive members and traders that attended the meeting.

Ahmed, a Shea nut trader, dominated the meeting at one point and said that traders need to be more directly linked to the buyers and NRGP should foster the relationship building between their members and nut exporting companies. He gave me his business card and told me he already submitted a business plan to NRGP and spent a good deal of time pushing me to get his plan approved.

As a side note NRPG project documentation sets an objective of reaching 372 000 households.

To put this figure in perspective, I did a quick calculation to see how long it would take EWB’s Agriculture As A Business Program to reach that many households. It would take almost 25 years and that’s only if ALL the extension agents in the north worked NON-STOP for all 25 years.

(Don’t worry, this story will get to a point soon.)

So, having an association with 2000 members is good for reporting to donors that you are reaching the number of households they are expecting (and requires a heck of a lot less work than organizing 100 groups of 20 women to reach the same number). Also, the group is self organized, experienced and (if you can judge from one meeting) seems to do good work. BUT the fact that Ahmed even HAS a business card tells me he is not who the project should be targeting. He also prefaces his name with Alhaji, meaning he has been to Mecca – a highly revered but incredibly expensive religious pilgrimage.

So, and here comes my big question of values, should development take the easier route and work with the capable, pushy, seekers of aid who are less needy but often higher skilled or should we continue to target the poorest of the poor even if the project doesn’t reach as many people, change is much more difficult, and the resources required are that much greater?

Writing this I realize this question is far too complex to try to put concisely. For example, by helping Ahmed maybe he could improve the livelihoods of the women Shea pickers he buys from more sustainably than an NGO project could. And while the only real success I’ve seen has been from small-scale projects, working at that level rarely creates the systematic change the development sector is seeking.

So I’ll leave you with a bunch of unanswered questions.

Photos of the Week #9 - Warm House Party!

A house warming party didn’t seem quite appropriate considering we’d already been in Tamale for two months. But a WARM House party definitely fit the bill as the temperature has been 40+ for months and the expected rains not yet arrived.

The big draw was the promise of Canadian-style eattin’: Sushi (made possible by Barrie-Chong-Ping generosity) and beef burgers!

 

What’s a party without a theme?  The evening was in honour of the beach. See if you can spot the rippling waves, anemone, snorkeler, tourist, and seaweed.

 

 

As can be expected, the sushi made us all a little giddy and shenanigans ensued.

1. Workin’ the Shea Sector

Never mind that cream you find in the Body Shop; this is the real pure, unrefined all-natural stuff! (However, Body Shop does source all its Shea butter from Ghana which has huge benefits for the local women.)

Shea butter is made from nuts that are picked, boiled, dried, cracked, crushed, grinded, and beaten, separated, heated and finally re-cooled into a pale yellow butter by the amazingly hard-working rural women of West Africa.

All of the steps mentioned above are done by hand except for the grinding which is usually done at a grinding mill. It is hard, hard, hard work and if you look at the butter makers’ arms you’d think they were weight lifters – serious guns!

Shea butter is gaining a lot of popularity in Europe and America for use in luxury cosmetics but in Ghana it’s still used in the rural villages in its unrefined form for its skin healing and protecting properties.

“How does this link to your work?” you ask. Well, since March 1^st, I have been working with a HUGE project ($103 million dollars of funding by IFAD, Government of Ghana, and the African Development Bank) called the Northern Rural Growth Programme (NRGP). Simply put, my job within NRGP is to try and make these hard-working Shea nut pickers and butter processors more money.

The district I’m using to pilot my interventions is Bawku West and I have three pilot interventions that I’m testing out.

One has nut exports training local women to produce higher quality nuts that they would receive a premium (above market) price for.

The second intervention is working with groups producing soaps from the butter to determine their constraints to selling more product. For a constraint of supply then we can help by training more women on soap making to help expand existing businesses with recruitment. For the constraint of demand (i.e. the products don’t sell well) then we determine why the products aren’t selling and address with support for improving the quality of the product, efficiency of the process, and marketing (signs, packaging, promotional events, etc).

Finally, the third intervention tries to get suppliers of gum boots, gloves and cutlasses to travel to local villages so the women have an opportunity to buy these goods that are generally only available in larger towns and cities. These items help protect the women from snake bites (snakes go after the fruit that surrounds the Shea nut so the women’s hands and snake mouths are often in the same place). The going estimates suggest 1% of women are bit and 10% of those bites are fatal. With 600 000 women picking Shea nuts, you do the math.

Story Time – A Trip to the Emergency Room

A fellow EWBer fell on her moto and cut her knee up pretty bad. She called me right away crying and in pain and I rushed to the hospital to meet her. By the time I arrived three doctors were standing around her asking questions, filling out forms, taking blood pressure, and doing all those other things doctors do. Her jeans were cut to the thigh and the gruesome wound exposed but cleaned. Honestly, I was a bit surprised at the speed and quality of care she was getting.

But, with the initial care complete and her wounds deemed not critical the true nature of the Tamale Hospital was revealed:

$10 for an identity card she already had
+ 2 hospital attendants asking for my number
+ The same attendants not knowing where surgery was and then playing with the sensors in the door of the elevator in an apparent attempt to demonstrate bravery in the face of the door closing on his arm
+ Being turned away from surgery to go get an x-ray
+ Being turned away from x-ray because I had to pay first
+ No one knowing whom I should pay or where
+ $16 for x-rays from a cashier on the other side of the hospital who couldn’t accurately subtract 16 from 20
+ 3 hours waiting to get an x-ray everyone knew would prove nothing was broken
+ A trip to a washroom with no lights, no doors, and no running water (At least I couldn’t SEE how unsanitary the place was.)
+ 20 minutes getting the anaesthetic right and listening through the door to sentences such as “OWWWWW! Yes, that still f*&%ing hurts!!” and “Did you dilute the last one?”, “I don’t know”, “How much have we given her?” And my personal favourite: “Do you know what you’re doing?!”
+ 4 stitches
+ Not waiting in the endless line up at the pharmacy because you pay in cash, not with the government insurance plan
+ Encouraging your friend to swallow her painkillers and antibiotics with a healthy sip of beer
= One fun-filled day!

Seriously though, while I greatly enjoyed the quality bonding time with my friend and can laugh at some of the antics, it was a sad, sad place to be. The picture of one middle-aged woman still comes to my mind.

She was naked lying on her side on a rolling hospital bed in the waiting room outside surgery. Someone had thrown a piece of cloth over her but her back side was still exposed and caked with a white powder mixed with the women’s sweat. Her eyes showed she was awake but completely unresponsive – I got the immediate sense that she didn’t care if she lived or died. Distracted by her expression, it took me a long time to notice her foot was bandaged.

Unable to suppress my curiosity, I asked a passing nurse what was wrong with her. She said her foot needed to be amputated. “But why? What happened?” The nurse gives me a defeated look and says: “Oh, you know these village women. They get a small infection but they leave it, afraid to come to the hospital. By the time it gets so bad they come to the hospital, we can’t do anything about it but cut off the rotten bit.”

It occurred to me then that the white powder was probably just to relieve bed sores after spending months lying down in pain, unable to walk with the badly infected foot. I can’t even imagine what that must have been like to endure. How was her poverty and fear so great that it prevent her from coming to the hospital sooner?

Photos of the Week #8 – Tourist!

It’s not all work and no play all of the time!

Over the past 8 months Troy and I have taken a few days here and there to make sure we see the sights Northern Ghana has to offer. 

Many slaves from further north (Mali, Burkina Faso, etc.) were taken and held in Upper East Ghana before being bought and walked the 1000+ km to the coast.

This photo is from Pikwuro Slave Camp. It’s now a tourist destination and these folks treated me to a song and dance made by banging small rocks against the boulders – exactly how the slaves used to keep themselves entertained while awaiting their fate. 

When the village of Sonyo was being built there was conflict between tribes in the area.

For protection, the people of Sonyo decided to build all their homes attached together.

To get around the community you walk along the roofs and up and down ladders made from felled tree trunks that take you from the rooftops right into people’s houses.

They xylophone is a traditional instrument for the Gonja people. One household I visited had a xylophone band all ready to play for me when I arrived.

For a time, I joined the children as they danced around in front of the musicians.  The dance involves seemingly impulsive stomping of the legs while flailing the arms in a kind of crazy chicken-dance style. 

It looks amazing to watch these experts do it. And while they were delighted at my attempts to match their movements, I’m glad I was the one with the camera. 

View Full Album

Mole National Park.  It’s probably the biggest tourist destination in Northern Ghana and with good reason! The baboons join you for every meal; you can watch the elephants bathing in the watering hole below while you eat at the outdoor restaurant; the warthog knocked on our tent to get us up in the morning; and we went for a twenty minute stroll through the forest before literally bumping into elephants! Hakuna Matata.

Photo of the Week #7

It hasn’t rained in 6 months.
When the dry season first hit, bush fires swept every open space in Bole.

Very few are started naturally; most are lit by farmers trying to kill “bush meat” to supplement their diet, burn diseased crops or incinerate garbage.

The District Assembly (local government body) is trying to inform everyone that the damage caused by these fires outweighs the gains.

That didn’t stop this fire from mocking the Assembly’s efforts by charring the earth around their sign.

Photo of the Week #6

Just before the Easter weekend I made a quick trip back to Bole to visit some old friends and colleagues. 

I left for the Tamale Metro Mass Bus station at 5:00 AM which is usually early enough to get a good seat on the bus which can leave anytime between noon and 4 PM.  But when I arrived I couldn’t even see the ticket booth through all the students crowded around it hoping to get a ticket.

Easter is apparently a popular time to take a break from school and travel back home to see the family.

I waited in the mob for two hours before I pushed my way into the office only to be told they sold out of tickets at 4:00 AM. Thanks for letting me know.

Later that morning, through the rumour mill, the Bole Director of Agriculture found out I had not been able to get a ticket.  From 300km away he made a bus ticket materialize for me, as if by magic. All I had to do was go back to the bus station, drop the name of the Union Chairman, and the ticket was mine.

Within the hour I find myself sitting in the best seat on the bus (front row behind the driver with lots of leg room) and feeling incredibly guilty and lucky in equal measure as I watch the desperate students swarm the bus, yelling and crawling over one another in a violent effort to secure a standing space in the aisle between the seats.

As we pulled away there were students clinging to the outside of the bus holding their grip with one arm through an open window. One small boy who had a ticket couldn’t get through the mob to the door and chased the bus down, struggling to keep a hold of his suitcase and weeping. The bus driver, frustrated by all the attempts of others to enter the bus nearly ran the boy over and but eventually realized he had a ticket and let him on.

Amidst this unfavourable showing of humanity the young woman beside me was overcome with an angry sadness. She confided in me through tears that she hates how in Ghana there never seems to be enough to go around; someone is always suffering at the hands of another. Finally, she gave in and put her head in her hands muttering “People care more about money than people these days.”

Photo of the week #5

My landlord, Alhassen, is a successful shop owner, school teacher, loving husband and proud father to three adorable children (the youngest of whom is still a little terrified of me).

When I asked the question “What motivates you?” (to help a colleague with a photo project) it sparked a long discussion about the drive to succeed, taking pride in the work you produce and preserving your integrity along the way.

I truly admire this man. He spoke of how hard he works to make sure the job gets done, even when all others have gone home.  This is likely the reason he is one of the only people to accumulate the wealth needed to move out of his village and into the city to pursue his academic and commercial aspirations.

His shop is extremely popular and well run and he finds creative ways to invest his money to ward off the double curse of rampant inflation and hundreds of distant relatives all asking for a piece of his wealth.

More important than his hard work and business sense, I admire him because he has shaken the traditional dominant male role and treats the women in his life with love and respect. His wife is his equal in all respects and he is insistent that his daughters receive the highest quality of education to help them succeed. 

Through his deep caring for those around him, his entrepreneurial nature, and the integrity and hard work that characterizes every thing he does, Alhassen shows me everyday how bright the future can be for Ghana.

Photos of the Week #4 - Mali

In the country most known for Timbuktu and the best in traditional West African music, I saw a world of contrasts.

A group of Tuareg nomads travelling the Malian desert in the same fashion they’ve done for the past century.

  

The border from Burkina Faso into Mali is, um, basic.

 

 

 

 

Crossing a bridge over the Niger River into downtown Bamako, opened the door to a world of urban affluence that was in brutal contrast to the sparse and neglected desert to which I had become accustomed.

View Full Album

Photo of the Week #3

My brand new Indian-made, motorcycle-in-a-box inexplicably stopped working for a few weeks.

This skeleton of a car, however, runs as well as the day it was made. 

Life is not fair.

Photos of the Week #2 – Good Bye Bole, Hello Tamale

One slaughtered goat +
three jugs of homemade honey wine +
two smocks (the woven shirt I’m wearing) +
good friends and colleagues =
one perfect goodbye party.

 

My new office. 

It’s 45 degrees every day and I have air conditioning.

Life is good.

 

 

Our new home in Tamale! 

Troy rented a truck and our stuff bounced across the country along the expansive stretch of dirt road.

Now our place looks identical to our old home but with a completely reasonable colour of paint on the walls!

Photos of the Week #1 – Women at Work

Intro:

Inspired by a heap of letters from the EWB UBC Chapter, emails from recently departed volunteers: Jody and Nadia, and the imminent departure of my good friend Meghan, I have vowed to do a better job at updating this blog.

So, here is the first installment of the “Photos of the Week” posts.  As the name insinuates, I’ll do my best to make this a weekly endeavour.  Overall my goal is to paint a fair and honest picture of the beauty and challenges of living in Ghana.

Women at Work:

“Research on the gender division of labour in Africa reveals time and again that, within rural society, the work of women is thought of as subordinate to that of men, despite the tremendous - and often greater – contribution it makes to material provisioning and well-being…Women’s economic disablement derives from the uneven terms of resource access and control, limiting their rights to land, labour and livestock compared to men, while allowing men to make claims on female labour and output. So positioned, with few resources and little authority, women share a common status as an underclass.” – Brenda Chalfin from Shea Butter Republic

I see evidence of the aforementioned subordination every minute of every day but what I want to demonstrate with these photos is the complexity of the power divide.

View Full Album

For instance, women have absolute power over the markets.  Women like Afisa (dressed in white and black) and Ruby (pouring peanut butter) run every stall and sell every item available.  Women decide what the price of their produce will be, who is allowed to sell at the market, who gets a table and who has to set up on the ground. They are the traders between the farmers and the market women who sell the produce. Commerce is completely in their hands.

Women also have complete control over the harvesting, processing and selling of so-called “women’s crops” like shea nuts and sesame seeds.  In the case of shea, women often turn their households into a little business and workshop where every female member of the family has a role in producing the shea butter that will earn the money to keep everyone fed through the lean dry months.

The gender roles are strictly defined and, while women have control over the market and the income from a few crops, they still know they’re getting a raw deal.

A man in our compound got married last Sunday.  After working all day Saturday on the preparations, the women got up at 3am on Sunday to cook rice, stew, and hard boiled eggs to serve to the 200 expected guests. I woke up at 9am, just in time to help peel the eggs. As we worked I heard the women grumbling about how “the men just get to show up; they expect us to do everything and don’t appreciate how much work it is!”

While I was inside helping the women with the meal, the ironing, tending to the children, and cleaning the compound, Troy was sitting with the men outside under a rented shelter enjoying the soft drinks that were served to them by the women. When questioned about the subordination of women, an influential, elderly man responded to Troy that “We men, we don’t want to change the rules.  The way it is, our women can’t take us to court. If they got more power, they could take us to court.” 

Troy insisted that the man seemed quite intelligent with the exception of that comment, but all I see is an old man admitting that men get away with doing things to women that should land them in jail. 

The last picture is of a farmer group I have been visiting the past few weeks as their Agricultural Extension Agent (AEA) helps them learn basic business skills through EWB’s Agriculture as a Business program.

They are the first women’s group I have worked with and I have seen how a little encouragement has given these uneducated and illiterate women a heap of confidence. But today I was disappointed. When asked how they will record their expenses, income, loans, etc. most of these women said they would use the records of their Secretary: a literate man who only occasionally shows up for meetings.

By contrast, illiterate men who have been asked the same question have come up with amazingly creative solutions to their illiteracy: everything from marks on the wall, to beans in a jar, to tying knots in rope.

The AEA told the women they should keep records for themselves incase the Secretary wasn’t around. To this a few women conceded they would get their children to write the records for them.

And that is the best I can ask for because while none of these women went to school, most of their children do. So, at the very least, future generations of mothers and daughters won’t have to rely on a man; they will be able to keep their own darn records. 

Christmas Travel Photos

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

View Full Album

Links to Troy and My Online EWB Profiles

http://www.ewb.ca/en/whatwedo/overseas/people/volunteers/overseas/ashleygood.html

http://www.ewb.ca/en/whatwedo/overseas/people/volunteers/overseas/troybarrie.html