Ghana makes you ask a lot of questions of the universe. One of the recent ones is, Why are chickens and goats running around everywhere, untended, in the middle of a city of 3 million people? At first I thought they were accidentally lost or abandoned, but there were far too many for that explanation, and besides - these are productive assets, unlikely to be misplaced. A goat can provide milk and meat; a chicken, eggs and a decent alarm clock. So why no chicken coops or goat pens?
It hit me - they're let out all day to forage for food. I guess the farmer's logic is, why buy feed yourself, when you could let nature re-distribute its resources equitably through a peck here and a graze there?
Of course, this system requires no small amount of community trust...I wouldn't let my animals out, even for free food, if I thought they were unlikely to come back to me at the end of the day. I can only do so if I trust that you - and everyone else within munching distance - will leave them alone. And here, that seems to be exactly the case.
I think a few economists out there might call this sort of community ethics "irrational," in that people are avoiding their own self-interest by NOT stealing these wandering animals for themselves. As the logic might go: not everyone is a chicken or goat farmer...if they were, then the incentive to steal would be decreased in order to avoid tit-for-tat...but since everyone does EAT, and goats and chickens are pretty good at meeting that need, the theft incentive seems to be pretty high. Basically, it would seem to be in the interest of a whole lot of individual poor folks to steal a chick every now and then that darted across the yard. In a way, the proof that theft doesn't really happen lies in the abundance of the opportunities to would-be thieves.
So, why does this phenomenon exist? (Discuss.)
PG
Monday, April 26, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Beer, Tro-Tro’s, and the Meaty Ghanaian Goat
As you might have surmised, I haven’t put my arms far enough around this place yet to tell many good stories. So, in lieu of actual stories to tell, you get the little mind-scratchers that cross my path. Here are a few of the latest:
In plenty of upstanding establishments, a large beer is cheaper than a large water. Accra may have a few faults...this is not one of them...
As for the food: I’d like to say that I’m used to it by now, but as much as my neo-socialist, inner-anthropologist, eat-it-and-say-thank-you soul desires to be, I’m still heading for the Indian and Lebanese spots pretty often. Overall, Ghanaian food is good, but a lot of goat is served here. And by a lot, of course, I mean not much at all. Goats aren’t exactly the muscle-bound of the animal kingdom, and especially not in Ghana…but they are plentiful. Anyway, the goat usually arrives in various bone-only forms in dishes with spicy red sauce and onions and more spicy red sauce, and is intended, I think, to serve as meat. Of the 18 individual pieces of “goat meat” I have been served, I think I've been able to extract actual meat – I’m using a 2-chew minimum here – from exactly three pieces. Now, I didn’t even bother with about the last six pieces, so maybe I’ve shortchanged the Ghanaian goat and its meatiness. At this point, I feel British in my apathy towards the Ghanaian goat, but I’m determined to show some old-fashioned American perseverance...
Emanuel, the affable security guard at our office building, asked me for an Easter gift. I asked him what he would like, and he said he’d like to go to Papaye with me: a joint near our office that serves up huge portions of rice and chicken for $4. A decent, cooked meal - that’s what Emanuel wanted for Easter. At lunch, I learned that Emanuel has been in Accra for ten years, during which time his wife and two small children continue to live in his home village, which is four hours away. This helps me deal with being apart from Jess for just the last month. For Emanuel, every month is like last month - and the payoff of his sacrifice is a life where a $4 meal is still a luxury? If his wasn’t the story of 100 million migrant men in cities all over the world, I might be tempted to ask what’s wrong with Emanuel. But because that IS the case, I find myself asking what’s wrong with the rest of us...
I reviewed the HR files of my employees, and found that my lowest-paid employees make $60 per month, or the proverbial $2 per day. This means that my employee is my target client. Not comfortable with this...
I took my first ride in a tro-tro over Easter weekend. Tro-tro’s are 12-passenger minibuses that serve as the extremely affordable public transport method for most residents of Accra. (These 20+ passenger vehicles will be familiar if you've traveled elsewhere: East Africans call them matatus, and Mexicans call them motorcycles.) Anyway, for 20 cents, you can take a 30-minute tro-tro ride all the way across town. I only had to go up the road, and I’m glad for it – my first tro-tro had 24 passengers. And the roof was low. And I'm enormous...
PG
In plenty of upstanding establishments, a large beer is cheaper than a large water. Accra may have a few faults...this is not one of them...
As for the food: I’d like to say that I’m used to it by now, but as much as my neo-socialist, inner-anthropologist, eat-it-and-say-thank-you soul desires to be, I’m still heading for the Indian and Lebanese spots pretty often. Overall, Ghanaian food is good, but a lot of goat is served here. And by a lot, of course, I mean not much at all. Goats aren’t exactly the muscle-bound of the animal kingdom, and especially not in Ghana…but they are plentiful. Anyway, the goat usually arrives in various bone-only forms in dishes with spicy red sauce and onions and more spicy red sauce, and is intended, I think, to serve as meat. Of the 18 individual pieces of “goat meat” I have been served, I think I've been able to extract actual meat – I’m using a 2-chew minimum here – from exactly three pieces. Now, I didn’t even bother with about the last six pieces, so maybe I’ve shortchanged the Ghanaian goat and its meatiness. At this point, I feel British in my apathy towards the Ghanaian goat, but I’m determined to show some old-fashioned American perseverance...
Emanuel, the affable security guard at our office building, asked me for an Easter gift. I asked him what he would like, and he said he’d like to go to Papaye with me: a joint near our office that serves up huge portions of rice and chicken for $4. A decent, cooked meal - that’s what Emanuel wanted for Easter. At lunch, I learned that Emanuel has been in Accra for ten years, during which time his wife and two small children continue to live in his home village, which is four hours away. This helps me deal with being apart from Jess for just the last month. For Emanuel, every month is like last month - and the payoff of his sacrifice is a life where a $4 meal is still a luxury? If his wasn’t the story of 100 million migrant men in cities all over the world, I might be tempted to ask what’s wrong with Emanuel. But because that IS the case, I find myself asking what’s wrong with the rest of us...
I reviewed the HR files of my employees, and found that my lowest-paid employees make $60 per month, or the proverbial $2 per day. This means that my employee is my target client. Not comfortable with this...
I took my first ride in a tro-tro over Easter weekend. Tro-tro’s are 12-passenger minibuses that serve as the extremely affordable public transport method for most residents of Accra. (These 20+ passenger vehicles will be familiar if you've traveled elsewhere: East Africans call them matatus, and Mexicans call them motorcycles.) Anyway, for 20 cents, you can take a 30-minute tro-tro ride all the way across town. I only had to go up the road, and I’m glad for it – my first tro-tro had 24 passengers. And the roof was low. And I'm enormous...
PG
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Easter Slumday
On Easter Sunday morning, I went to a small church in a slum in Accra. Tin roofs, containers for houses (and those were the nice ones), the whole bit. Chickens and kids all barefoot in the dust, both shouting at me when I rolled into town. One of my favorite things is to hear the kids that would normally shout, “Obruni!” at me, instead use English…so they point at me with a mixture of glee, horror and mystification, and say, “White man!” It’s great.
Anyway, so I went to this church. The church is held upstairs in a school that some entrepreneurial person likely built as a second-floor, rent-out portion of their residence. School desks, stacked precariously on the 2-foot-wide porch outside, looked as though a strong wind might bring them down. I went to the church with my Ghanaian pastor friend John, who had been invited to preach there. He had me start the preaching, so I got up (it being Easter and all) and said something about the scandal of Christ’s resurrection, how we shouldn’t get used to it and all that.
Then John got up to preach. And John started in the most logical place, of course – by talking about MicroEnsure. Part of it was to explain why this White Man was here, but most of it was to talk about God’s work in the world, and how it's ongoing, active, practical, and deliberate. And for John, microinsurance is part of that work. John explained a basic product to the people assembled in the church: for $1.40 (2 Ghana cedis), very poor people can have their loan with a microfinance bank paid back in case of death or disability, property covered in the event of a fire or flood, AND (not “or”) a lump sum funeral payout of around $175 in the event of a death of any family member, including the children. We can do all this because we serve 3.5 million people around the world, so we know the pricing and benefits and all pretty well in order to get a low-price, high-value product.
I was as surprised as you might be at what happened next. When John finished his very basic explanation of the product and its benefits, the people stood and cheered: shouting, clapping, hugging. It was like Ghana had won the World Cup.
It goes without saying that this experience showed me, in a new way, the power of our work. The poor know the risks they face – the evidence is everywhere. They want to be protected, and they will pay a little bit of money to get that protection through a sustainable mechanism. Problem is, no one thought until now that a range of insurance products could ever work among the poor...but it is working.
I’ll never forget that moment when they stood and cheered - certainly not as long as I’m in this job, maybe for as long as I live. The hope and joy that I saw that morning wasn’t a feel-good moment…it was a moment to observe the power of the poor: their capability, diligence, awareness, sacrifice, passion. Who am I to respond to their honest expression with my typical dose of self-serving do-gooderism? No, the moment made me think that all they need of me is to be good at what I do. They can handle the rest.
Anyway, so I went to this church. The church is held upstairs in a school that some entrepreneurial person likely built as a second-floor, rent-out portion of their residence. School desks, stacked precariously on the 2-foot-wide porch outside, looked as though a strong wind might bring them down. I went to the church with my Ghanaian pastor friend John, who had been invited to preach there. He had me start the preaching, so I got up (it being Easter and all) and said something about the scandal of Christ’s resurrection, how we shouldn’t get used to it and all that.
Then John got up to preach. And John started in the most logical place, of course – by talking about MicroEnsure. Part of it was to explain why this White Man was here, but most of it was to talk about God’s work in the world, and how it's ongoing, active, practical, and deliberate. And for John, microinsurance is part of that work. John explained a basic product to the people assembled in the church: for $1.40 (2 Ghana cedis), very poor people can have their loan with a microfinance bank paid back in case of death or disability, property covered in the event of a fire or flood, AND (not “or”) a lump sum funeral payout of around $175 in the event of a death of any family member, including the children. We can do all this because we serve 3.5 million people around the world, so we know the pricing and benefits and all pretty well in order to get a low-price, high-value product.
I was as surprised as you might be at what happened next. When John finished his very basic explanation of the product and its benefits, the people stood and cheered: shouting, clapping, hugging. It was like Ghana had won the World Cup.
It goes without saying that this experience showed me, in a new way, the power of our work. The poor know the risks they face – the evidence is everywhere. They want to be protected, and they will pay a little bit of money to get that protection through a sustainable mechanism. Problem is, no one thought until now that a range of insurance products could ever work among the poor...but it is working.
I’ll never forget that moment when they stood and cheered - certainly not as long as I’m in this job, maybe for as long as I live. The hope and joy that I saw that morning wasn’t a feel-good moment…it was a moment to observe the power of the poor: their capability, diligence, awareness, sacrifice, passion. Who am I to respond to their honest expression with my typical dose of self-serving do-gooderism? No, the moment made me think that all they need of me is to be good at what I do. They can handle the rest.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)