- Enriched Porridge: This was the project started by Jaren several months back which has since morphed into what we hope will be a cross-sectoral triumph. Drawing from the problem of rampant Kwashiakor (kind of astonishing having protein deficiency in cattle country, but more on that later), Jaren explored ways to introduce different yet culturally sensitive foods into the diets of children under the age of five. Excluding the breast milk they’re given up to six months (when most mothers abruptly stop breast feeding and start force-feeding a cornmeal porridge down their infants throats), kids here have a near exclusive carbohydrate diet. Protein in the form of meat is the providence of papa and mama and whatever is left gets spread out among the children based on seniority. Thus the pot bellies, red hair and sunken eyes (not to mention below average neurological development) are so common they’ve been misappropriated in local culture as signs of good health.
That’s where we come in. Jaren embraced the idea that if mothers started feeding a protein-enhanced porridge to their kids it would be the most effective preventative measure against malnutrition (not rocket science by American standards, but if you’ve been reading this blog long enough you know by now we’re not exactly in Kansas anymore). Where it got tricky was convincing the women to do it – “because I said so” isn’t exactly a universally appreciated change agent and besides it’s a pile of extra work and expense for each woman to prepare the porridge. That’s where Steve stepped in (rather butted in, but who’s keeping track?) with the idea that if we could set up enriched porridge vendors with a sustainable business model and taught them to market the “value-add” by disseminating information about protein deficiency, we would have a pretty nifty project to fight malnutrition AND help develop small businesses.
And so we are. In the past few weeks we have worked to teach a woman who lives on Jaren’s morning running route named Amoudatou how to make enriched porridge by mixing equal parts ground soja and corn flour, calculated with her the costs and per bowl pricing (even as global commodity prices shoot up, she should be able to turn a good profit), taught her how to regurgitate key talking points on protein deficiency when prompted and even made up a sign for her to illustrate the differences between healthy and unhealthy kids (picture below and we’ll let you guess which is which). Jaren even spent last Friday weighing all the kids that live in Amoudatou’s neighborhood for a baseline against which progress can be measured. First batch should roll out this Friday morning, and first weigh in is in a month so we’ll keep you posted.
- Combating Child Trafficking: Following last month’s wildly successful concert to raise awareness about child trafficking (quite modest, aren’t we), Jaren is now organizing the follow up recording session for the winners. Winners in the poem, sketch and song (reggae, rap, soul-chilling ballad) will record their winning performances in French, which will then be distributed to local radio stations, relevant NGOs, gendarmeries/police, social centers and Peace Corps volunteers nationwide. Steve’s even got delusions about sending a few tracks to the BBC “Wake Up Africa” morning show’s daily musical showcase feature (sadly, not as a replacement for the record scratch/rooster crow combo that launches the show every day just after the actual roosters in our neighborhood have finally shut the hell up).
- Sex Ed Presentations: (Parental Advisory: Not for readers with tender sensibilities – feel free to the accounting roundup.) Jaren was contacted by fellow volunteer Lizzy to come lead a presentation of the myths, realities and consequences of le rapport sexuel. A middle school English teacher in Ouesse, a town some 60 km south east of Tchaourou, Lizzy had seen three girls get pregnant in the matter of a few weeks and decided the kids mostly aged between 12-18 needed a good talking to about responsibility and the realities of sexual activity. However, being a teacher in the school and living in the community she was a bit uncomfortable leading the conversation herself so she called Jaren in as someone who could speak openly with the kids without all the baggage of having to ever see these kids again.
The pair divided the kids into gender specific groups. With the girls the conversation focused on the choice to have sex or not, including a review of the “pressure lines” that boys tend to use and how they can respond (evidently hormonally-handicapped teenage boys are the same the world over as they use the same crap to convince girls to betray their better judgment). The discussion also touched on the consequences of sex (unwanted pregnancies, STDs, getting kicked out of school, etc) and a condom demonstration was given. With the boys the speech was a little different, addressing the consequences of having sex and the responsibility to protect themselves and their partners. Condom demonstrations were also done, and thanks to Population Services International they were able to give each student a few condoms to take home. Hopefully they’ll be smart enough to use them.
- Accounting Classes: Six local artisans were trained in basic accounting and how to teach it. While we still haven’t been able to schedule a second wave class (some conflicts unique to this time of year including the testing out of apprenticeships and the beginning of the rainy season), there are over a dozen who have in principal signed up. In the mean time a few of the teachers are “freelancing” a bit and have taught colleagues and neighbors how to keep a cash ledger. Not the sexiest project in Peace Corps but if any business development is going to be done we had to have the foundation of objective information and transparency.
- Identity Card: This is Steve’s baby. The government and the international community have made all sorts of support programs available to artisans – rent-to-own equipment loans, export/ import supports, banking and legal supports, really anything you can imagine. The problem is the artisan needs to have a national ID card -- think Social Security card with a photo -- to take advantage of these programs and wouldn’t you know it, little to nothing is done to help artisans get that one little piece of identification (one thing there is no shortage of here are cart-drawn-horses). It’s not a tough process but it involves two or more bureaucrats so the likelihood of it being needlessly opaque and possibly crooked increases exponentially. If the artisan already has a birth certificate, it’s a matter of doing a little paper work and paying a processing fee at the mayor’s office. Without a birth certificate it involves going through the provincial court in Parakou to obtain one – simple, right?
Thus, Steve has resolved to put together a program where all administrative procedures are handled en masse, forms are standardized and simplified for the user, and all the interactions take place in a public or semi-public venue. He’s spent the past month going to all of the association meetings to take relevant information from artisans in need of ID. He’s banking on good relations with the Chef d’Arrondissment and with the mayor’s office to help things move along, and is going to be putting together a Peace Corps Partnership Proposal to cover 75% of the costs (PCPP’s are the mechanism for volunteers to fund projects via their communities back home . To check out the current list, click here).
And here’s the best part – on the day cards are distributed there will be a little “party” where representatives from all the artisan support programs will come present, give examples of successful applications of their service and have on hand all the relevant forms to start a request.
Nothing says sexy development work like ID cards and service provider conventions, eh?
- CAMEC/ Strategic Management: Another one that is growing into a joint project. In the past few years the Millennium Challenge Corporation has helped the Beninese government establish a commercial arbitration system under the Chamber of Commerce (dubbed CAMeC) that should vastly improve the business environment. Along with the formidable yet affable Steve Meyers who is posted in the CAMeC office in Cotonou, our Steve has been able to draft the domestic and international marketing plans for the program. Taking the chance to reach back into his bag of tricks from his day’s as one of Walek’s merry band of Associates he drew up a plan that combines five different streams of public activity to raise awareness of services available and create a broader legal awareness (some standard media relations stuff for the domestic market, some press work targeting international financial markets, partnership programs with the domestic bar association are all pretty straight up; the proposed radio serial to create a Beninese commercial law version of “Law & Order” a bit more far out but not beyond the realm of possibility).
However, the real key to the plan is the one that works directly toward increasing demand for CAMeC arbitration services by increasing the amount of contracts in dispute. As Steve has seen over and over (and over and over and over) in Tchaourou, there are a lot of strategic business decisions artisans would like to make to better their businesses but don’t have the mechanisms and support to pull them off – things like merging businesses, marketing cooperatives, group purchasing agreements, warranties and other value-add pricing tools, subcontracting etc... So why not create a strategic management guide for artisans that comes complete with a variety of boilerplate contracts for basic business purposes? Think a plain language “business-in-a-box” kit tailored for the local market with simply worded explanations of management ideas and a step-by-step negotiating guide that corresponds to a boilerplate contract (one that of course includes the CAMeC clause). Given Jaren’s advanced French capabilities and desire to matriculate at one of the United States’ fine institutions of legal education after Peace Corps, her offer to join the project was warmly embraced.
Now, we are very aware of the limits of one size fits all contracts, especially for things like mergers – listen, we’re not doing Delta-Northwest here, just helping some folks take advantage of some economies of scale and amplified voices. And the best part – wait for it – is we get to roll this thing out in Tchaourou, allowing Steve to have the tools to help some of the more ambitious in this community make the leap.
- Savings and Credit Groups: Banking sucks something terrible in Benin, no way to sugarcoat it. We mean really sucks. They’re either too big to care or so crooked nobody takes them serious (or both as evidenced by the story of a volunteer who was told by the bank when she went to close her account that she owed them the equivalent of $50 for “holding her money for her.” Wrap your head around that one). Most people keep literally money under the mattress despite the high probability that it will be stolen by a family member or eaten by a mouse, as it is still safer than putting money in a bank that is constantly imposing unannounced arbitrary fees. For lending there are also a rash of state owned or affiliated microcredit organizations but they too have problems, mostly that people are less likely to repay faceless organizations anonymously headed in Cotonou and therefore the organizations have been forced to adopt ridiculous interest rates and fees to cover the cost of defaulted loans. Really, we didn’t believe the types of things people were telling us about trying to get loans here for about 6 months – institutional loan-sharking is about the best way to put it.
So what is your average village man or woman to do when she can’t trust anyone else to do something for her? How about gang up with others in her situation, save together, give loans to members and then divide up the profits from the loans. Sounds familiar right, kinda like the credit union down the road from where you're sitting right now?
In fact that’s exactly what we’re doing except that instead of a vault there is a sheet metal box with three locks on it, each key being guarded by a different woman. Records are kept in a very simple manner using stamps in photocopied savings registers and all transactions are done in front of the group, therefore creating total transparency. The group votes on loan applications demanding small sums for short amounts of time, and money is only lent if the group believes the purpose is one that will generate the necessary funds to repay. There is also a small social fund for the group to give financial gift to people in emergency situations (ain’t that sweet). And unlike the other organizations, if you don’t repay your friends and neighbors are at your front door demanding to find out where their damn money is.
So far Tchaourou is home to two of these groups (pictured above), one of which is a group of women who transform gari (shredded sweet potatoes) and happen to be one of the groups moving into the store fronts being built here. Guess who’s got a plan to use the one group as an example for the other nine? On a quick calculation, if we could get all ten saving and loaning together, we would mobilize roughly 2,600,000 CFA ($6,500) a year in self managed micro credit loans? Better yet, the savers would actually earn interest, a task that is otherwise terribly hard to do around these parts.
- Butchering Business: We live in a big cattle town, kind of the Kansas City of Benin, and yet there are kids with protein deficiency running around everywhere. Steve’s solid rapport with the butcher has given us a better picture of how this happens, and it pretty much comes down to three factors:
o Arbitrarily high fees to local government for each head of beef processed (Jack Abramoff is a semi-skilled amateur compared to some of the dirty tricks going on over here)
o Poor repayment rates on credit extended by butcher
o General belief that access to protein should be governed by seniority in the family
Now we know we can’t do a thing about the first, although we were happy to hear that there is a national effort underway to have those fees cut if not eliminated. As for the other two, Steve is going to work with Salou to create a credit management system that would allow him to better track and assess clients – restaurants and retail vendors mostly -- and therefore be able to better “price his risk.” It will be interesting - Salou is a halal butcher and therefore does not deal with interest, but the thinking is that down payments and other fees for chronically unreliable clients should work.
As for the second part, it will really be an extension of the enriched porridge project mentioned earlier in teaching families about the importance of giving kids protein. This one is in the early stages, more to come.
Baseball: The hot season shooed us off the field (you play ball in 125 degree midday sun) and when it finally relented, the kids had to get ready for finals. We’re hoping to get back on track very soon, think we’ve even found a field with a manageable amount of grass.
- Grand Popo: It’s a long story…
